The Divine Economy of Salvation (39 page)

“It occurred to me today that we've now known each other for twenty-five years. Do you think I'm right?”

Sister's Aline's tone is nostalgic, not alarmed. She regards me as an equal, someone who participated in a reality she too lived. The
cake has finally turned to mush in my mouth, and I push it down my throat with my tongue.

“I know you are . . .” I do not know how to proceed delicately. Luckily, Sister Aline does not ask me to elaborate. She shifts a little in her seat, pulls up a sleeve.

“It's a blessing to be around people who know you. Who live the way we live, isn't it, Sister Angela?”

Sister Aline is being sincere, I realize. She has not come to talk of Bella to me. She does not know. She wants us to celebrate our mutual acknowledgement of each other every year. The quiver in her voice is tender.

“How have you been?” I finally reply.

“I'm well. Not as young as I used to be, but who would want to be young again? I've got more peace in my mind now than I ever did before. With each day I get closer to God in age, I suppose. He must be lonely with no one to understand what it's like to live and witness for centuries. But there's still more work I want to do. Mother Superior jokes we'll have plenty of time to rest when we're dead. I somehow doubt it. There are more children being born, more people to worry about. I think there'll always be more work to be done.”

Sister Aline slaps the table with her hand, tilts her head backwards. Her smile is contagious. I find myself eating the rest of my cake as she describes the renovations in progress at their church: new windows in the rectory, revarnished pine pews, and a ceremonial vestment with gold trim for Father L. “A bit extravagant, I suppose,” she says, shrugging her shoulders, dismissing her own
criticism as soon as it is uttered. Sister Aline knows nothing about me and I know nothing about her. Our age difference saddens me, the lines around her eyes and on her forehead foretelling an eventual separation. Ours may be the longest and truest friendship I have ever sustained.

MR. M. TOOK RACHEL
and me to buy graduation dresses. He said he had spoken to my father about it and that they'd worked out the details for the cost, but I knew he was lying. As far as I knew, he didn't even know my father's first name.

Rachel kept aloof for weeks, making excuses about upcoming tests and finishing assignments for class to get away from Caroline and me after dinner. She was not cold to us, simply curtailing, her eyes wandering over us vacantly. While she shut herself up in her room in the evenings, I sought any kind of distraction, latching onto Caroline, who also desired the company. Our twosome, however, felt incomplete. We were as if disabled, moving in stops and starts, fumbling in the most routine pursuits, the safest conversations. The ability to relax had left us. We might walk and speak and eat and play, but essentially we were sentenced, brought together out of necessity rather than choice. I missed Rachel's smile, her bold laughter, the way her curls bounced when she walked. I missed the colour of her eyes. I missed noticing the colour of her eyes.

Mr. M. directed us to the dresses on the ladies' rack at the entrance of the store. They had spaghetti straps and airy material, light to the touch. Attached were slips a shade darker than the dresses: a budgie yellow underneath a soft lemon, a burgundy under an apple red. The dresses had beads attached at the cuffs and on the hems, and I glanced at the price tags, which were considerable. I didn't want to owe Mr. M. any more than I already did and was uncomfortable as the saleswoman discussed the upcoming graduation with him, the two like conspirators as Rachel and I shuffled between racks, fiddling with the fabrics, ignoring each other with our eyes but stone sure of the other's presence on the opposite side. The store was one I knew my father couldn't afford. The saleswoman wore enormous gold rings with blue gems on the middle finger of each hand. She waved them around as if they were inconsequential. I was careful not to leave fingerprints or smudges on the cloth.

“Angel,” Mr. M. called.

“Yes, sir.”

“Sir, sir . . . what's wrong with you girls today? Rachel, come over here. The lady wants to measure you. I'm sure you've grown at least an inch since the last time.”

Rachel emerged from the back of the store where she had been picking out socks. She had collected three pairs in her hands, identically white.

“Put those down,” Mr. M. said. “You can get socks any time.”

“I'm the same height as I was last year. I've been the same height for two years now. I don't need to be measured.”

Rachel stacked the socks on the counter beside the cash register so they wouldn't be left behind. The saleswoman smiled broadly as she bent over with her tape, a silver cap on one of her teeth.

“Yes, we'll get them. But the dresses, look at the dresses. Rachel, you might have grown in other places? Let the lady find out. Angela, what colour do you want to wear?”

Rachel glared, emanating hostility. I leaned against Mr. M. as if for protection and he absently patted my hair. I missed her so much I thought I was going to cry. Rachel broke away from the saleswoman, who hadn't finished measuring her bust, and grabbed the first dress in front of her, pulling the tape from under her armpits. The saleswoman sighed but tried to sustain a cheerful air, shrugging her shoulders casually for Mr. M.'s benefit.

“I'll take this one,” Rachel said to the saleswoman. She held up a dusty-blue dress that hung down to her calves and was obviously too large for her.

“Rachel, that dress isn't half as pretty as some of the others here. Look.” Mr. M. held up a purple satin dress with lace sleeves, a green flowered sash around the waist. “Now, this is a dress to dance in!”

“What would you know about that?” Rachel muttered. Mr. M. took the saleswoman aside and whispered to her. Her face took on a sympathetic softness, a poignantly exaggerated commiseration. “The girl has cramps,” I heard him say.

“Angela,” he called again. “Angel, I think you'd look best in red.”

“Lift your arms,” the saleswoman said, coming up behind me and measuring around my waist, neck, and chest. “I know just what to get you.” She left immediately to rifle through a rack near the
change rooms, twisting her neck around every few seconds to make sure we hadn't left.

Rachel was near. We had just been treated to a round of root beers before entering the store and I could feel her breath on my neck, sugary. “You don't have to get anything you don't want to,” she said, smiling sheepishly.

I smiled back. She couldn't be mean to me the whole time we'd be out. She might even be apologizing, I thought. None of our moods could be predicted lately, changing faster than the weather. I accepted her efforts. “Do you like anything?”

“Sure, this one's nice,” she replied, touching a peach-coloured dress with bows around the arms and three rows of ruffles along the skirt, meant to resemble that of a Southern belle. “Who cares, though? It's only going to be us and our parents. What does the stupid graduation matter for?”

The saleslady had lined up a number of dresses in bright colours—yellows, greens, and pinks—on an empty rack by the change room. “Come on, girls,” she chimed, opening the wooden door. “It's rare I get to dress up such beautiful sisters as you two.”

Rachel headed towards the change room, her head held high, kicking me in the heel as she passed. “She's not my sister. She's just an orphan we've taken on,” she said to the saleswoman.

“Rachel!”

Mr. M. pulled his suit jacket closed in front of him, his fingers curling tightly around the material. He pretended to do up his buttons, his bearded face set in a frown. He did not scold Rachel any further, and the saleswoman fluttered around us, brushing our flesh
lightly as she checked to make sure the dresses we tried were fitted to our bodies' shapes and not in need of tailoring. After twenty minutes Rachel had chosen an emerald-green chiffon dress with a heart-shaped collar and ruffles like sea waves along the hem. Mr. M. added socks, earrings, brooches, and two scarves to his bill, which also included my dress—red silk with a tight bodice, straight cut at the knees—and matching shoes with plastic bows on the back heels. I never got the chance to wear any of it.

That Thursday Sister Marguerite kept me after class. Easter was approaching, and I wasn't going to be a Leftover. My father was required to take me home for the holiday, the first holiday without my mother. He had telephoned, once, and in a hollow, distant voice said he was going to pick me up the following Thursday, after Mass. The coming Sunday would be Palm Sunday, my favourite church day besides Midnight Mass at Christmas, because we were usually given palm leaves to hold, to re-enact the procession. The leaves held a fascination for me with their weary strength, completely dried but difficult to tear. I would keep mine until it withered into nothing. Sister Aline had attempted to train Caroline for the solos in choir, but it hadn't worked. Caroline couldn't hold the long high notes in the style and manner of Bella. “From your diaphragm,” Sister Aline instructed, sucking in her rib cage and exhaling her breath slowly, her arms rising with the expelled air. “You need to feel the air coming out of you. Control it.” Caroline was a wreck. She studied the music sheets into the night, but her voice shook if
anyone besides the rest of us girls and Sister Aline were in the church. Standing in front of people, performing, was not in her bones. In the end, Sister Aline needed three girls including Caroline to sing Bella's parts, each responsible for a single octave. And I grew suspicious whether Caroline was even trying. Caroline had sung better before Bella's death; maybe she could no longer bear to sing.

“That was a good report you gave,” Sister Marguerite said, laying her hand on my shoulder briefly before turning her back to me to scrub the blackboard.

“Thank you.” It was rare that I received praise, although I wasn't a bad student. I was merely average. My report had been on a passage from
The Book of Margery Kempe
, a medieval mystic who was convinced God spoke to her directly. She flew into wild convulsions and crying fits at the mere mention of Christ's Passion. She received letters from priests, bishops, and cardinals to tour around Europe; went on pilgrimages from church to church; and led a married life that was celibate and repentant. She wore hair shirts and flogged herself whenever she had impure thoughts. She asked one of her priests to write down all her visions, and she called herself by the name Creature. I had reported on repentance as an act of forgiveness from God.

“I bet she didn't want to sleep with her husband,” Caroline whispered to me afterwards, alluding to Margery's demand that the priests allow her to travel alone and commit herself as a bride of God.

I didn't like her explanation. Saint Margery had affected me. Her endless stream of tears, her closeness to the thoughts of Jesus as
she inscribed them. That her religious choice could be a practical matter to avoid the grossness or brutality or simple boredom of her married life took the mystery out of it for me. It didn't seem fair if she was faking her way into heaven.

With her back still to me, Sister Marguerite added, “Don't stop with your religious education. You're coming along nicely.”

“Thank you,” I repeated, about to leave for lunch, when Sister Marguerite let out a long breath with her last wipe of the blackboard and, collecting her papers, said, “I hope you will think of this place well.”

Since our encounter in the stairwell, she had said nothing to me about the events of the last weeks. Then she had shared her story with me about how she had been scarred by fire as a child. I thought perhaps I was supposed to comfort her with assurances that I would not be scarred by my experiences here.

“Sure,” I said as she inserted her papers into a folder and tucked them underneath her arm. I tried not to stare at the discolouration on her cheek, the reminder of her confession.

“It's a shame,” she said seriously, shaking her head. “I want you to know I don't think it's right, what they're doing to you. It's not Christian.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. Lately everyone seemed to be speaking in codes. Rachel, back in the dormitory the previous Saturday, with our dresses in paper bags and wrapped in scented tissue paper, had waited by her room and said, “It could be true, you know,” before shutting her door, not asking me to come in, her father dropping us off at the entrance without
staying for dinner. Mother Superior had told us in History that “Evil in the world is not the responsibility of God,” after we had re-read a chapter on the Great War for the upcoming exam, the number of young men who had died in our city alone added in a footnote to our reader. No one spoke directly. Everything had to be interpreted.

The confusion I felt must have manifested itself in my demeanour. Sister Marguerite halted in her steps, then closed the classroom door, motioning to the nearest desk for me to sit down. She took the seat next to mine, and I almost chuckled at the sight she made lowering herself to my level, her dark habit's hem draping the floor, her body scrunched into the small desk.

“They haven't told you,” she stated, angling her face towards the blackboard she had just scrubbed, lines of grey streaked across it in stripes, the crucifix above. “When were they planning on telling you?”

I remained silent. The chalk dust on her hands made her fingernails appear white. She looked as if she had been painting, chips of chalk on her habit and a smudge on her chin. I had the urge to wipe them off her, the way my mother used to whenever I was untidy. I wondered if Sister Marguerite had a mother, or only the direction of Mother Superior, who wasn't a real mother, just a mother in title. Maybe that's what made her feel responsible towards me. I had no mother. I had touched her cheek with my jaw. Maybe it was through touch that we connected ourselves to others. I certainly wouldn't have felt close to Sister Marguerite if she had turned away that night. I could still remember the scent of her hair,
tucked in under her wimple, as she confessed the indiscretion that had stained her forever.