The Divine Economy of Salvation (40 page)

“Your father is coming to take you home.”

“For Easter weekend,” I offered. “He phoned.” But why she needed to speak to me about it struck me as odd. Unless she was worried about how well he was coping with my mother's death.

“My dear Angela, I am not the person who should be telling you this,” she said, interlocking her fingers, palms curved as in prayer, on the top of the desk, “but your father is not just taking you home for Easter. He's taking you home.”

“What do you mean?” My father had made it quite clear he was sending me back to school against my will the week after the funerals. I couldn't imagine him changing his mind. My father did not relent after he made a firm decision. It was against his nature.

“Your father,” she continued, “has not paid your tuition or room and board for this entire term. His cheques bounced at the bank. Mr. M. didn't want to tell us—it happened at his bank—but the teller, knowing his daughter is schooled here, brought the information to our attention. With your mother's funeral,” she said quickly, the words spoken under her breath, “there is no hope of him being able to pay.”

“I . . . I . . . don't understand.”

“Your father is bankrupt,” Sister Marguerite explained. “He doesn't have the money to pay for this school. It's not his fault. Remember God's commandment to honour thy father and thy mother. The school is in debt. Mother Superior feels she
has no choice.” I didn't understand whom she was asking me to forgive.

“Mr. M. gave me some money. He gave me fifty dollars,” I told her.

“Keep it,” she told me firmly. “It's not going to do you any good to give it to Mother Superior. You might need it.”

There was no way we could repay the school. Sister Marguerite had made that clear to me. I was being sent away.

Caroline was probably right, I figured. Saint Margery was certainly a fake. Her God was far too easily understood by her. I emphatically left the book open in my room when my father came for me. For if I ever understood God, it was as a child understands a parent. To simply trust that all will work out. And this could be comforting, like my mother's arms when I was sick, her hands on my forehead, the gentle way she would lift a straw in a glass to my lips, read to me at my bedside. Or how it was in the end with her. Pouring her water and ensuring her rosary was wrapped twice around her dwindling wrists so it would not fall to the floor in the middle of the night. The dishing out of her pills and how she would make it a game, saying she must have been a good girl to get such a handful of treats. And I would pretend I wanted them too, tucking the blankets under her chin when she fell asleep. But He was different. He scolded and kept aloof. He said,
Don't touch anything. Don't speak unless spoken to. Follow my instructions to the letter.
And what happened if you didn't? What happened if you couldn't read the instructions, let alone interpret them properly? The answer was clearly punishment.

Sister Marguerite stood up, extracting her body from underneath the desk with a shove, straightening out her skirt, and settling the cross around her neck in the middle of her chest. Her face returned to the rigid expression it assumed in front of the class when she lectured. She wiped her hands quickly together, and I was a fleck of chalk upon her dress, discarded with a flick of her finger.

THE POWER IS OUT.
Through my basement window there is no way of telling how much of the street has been affected by the storm. The winds howl and the space between the glass and the frame rattles repeatedly, causing me to shiver with each bump. More snow has fallen. The piles of snow, plowed earlier in the week into neat hills, will get even larger. Snowflakes lie prostrate against the glass.

Knock. Knock.

I mistake the noise for the window, for the storm, and wrap myself more snugly in my blanket, keeping my toes in, pinning down the cover. My hair is wet from an evening washing, and the draft in the room makes me tremble. When I place my hand against my stomach, I can feel latent warmth. I tried earlier to write Christine a letter and gave up. She has kept her word. She has not contacted me. I decide not to intrude on her wish to be forgotten.

Knock. Knock.

The weather haunts me. And now the noise. Insistent like a clock. Like the weather on the night my mother died. Our anniversary coming up. I cannot bear it any longer. I have
taken the pills Sister Ursula prescribed for me. A double dose. My dream is for sleep, and it must be washing over me in waves. It is working. I have needed a good night's sleep for months. In my sleepy mind's eye I can see the orchard outside the convent and feel the wetness of the snow, the smoothness of the hidden rock in the garden against my hands. I am tearing into the ground, digging, bringing up something that was buried there by me long ago. It is long and heavy and I am alone in the night, after having snuck out with my nightdress on, the cloth barely obscuring my body. The candle holder. The silver candle holder is in my hands. Could it have been me? Could it have been me who kept it all this time buried in the garden, forgetting one day I'd need to face it? When Rachel told me where it was abandoned, did I retrieve it? I must have. It belonged to me in the end. The burden was mine to carry. Mine to rediscover. To package it up, here in the convent, deliver it back to myself.

Knock. Knock.

And this is how I imagined Death would come. The same as for my mother. The same horror awaiting me, although mine is deserved. Knocking at the door during a storm. I am nearly the same age as she was. I should not have the privilege of living as long. All the lights out and nothing to tell me where I actually am, except perhaps a smell that drifts away. Wrapped in my cocoon, this bed is the perfect grave. My hands dig deeper into the soil. I have the candle holder. But I am searching for something else. This isn't the only piece of evidence. What frightens me most is I do not answer the door. I do not try to hide. I do nothing.

The door opens.

“Angela.”

A woman's voice. Faint but surely a woman's voice. I did not think Death would be a woman. But it makes sense to me as it occurs. Of course it's a woman. A woman knows about these things. Old age has not yet stung me, but many have died younger than I. Sister Ursula says it can happen when you lack sleep. Your heart can stop ticking.

“I am ready,” I say, astounded by my confidence. “Come in. Speak.”

Noise against the tiled floor. Shuffling. A hand scratching against the wall. Breathing. Breathing. Steps. Steps closer.

“Angela. My water broke.”

I bolt upright in bed, brush a strand of hair out of my mouth. I cannot see the face in front of me, but I can feel it breathing a hot rush of air onto my face and lips. She must be right up against me. And then the weight on the mattress, pulling down. Two hands gripping the covers. The blackness a void.

“Who are you?”

“My water broke! It's all over the hallway! I don't know what to do!”

“I don't understand.”

“It's Kim, Angela, Kim! I think the baby's coming. I felt pain and got scared. And then on the way down to see you . . . on the way down . . . my water broke. Oh, God, I'm wet. My thighs hurt. I can't see anything.”

It is Kim. I had succumbed to the pills. Her voice sounded older. Much older than it does after I fumble around the room trying to figure out how to get her upstairs to Sister Ursula in the darkness of the power outage. And she used my first name, without my title. She used my first name like a friend.

I think I have a flashlight somewhere. When the fuse for the light in the basement toilet burned out last spring, I used the torch in emergencies in the middle of the night until the electrician could come by to fix it. Two weeks it had been, me creeping along the dark passageway with the faint light in my hands, creating shadows along the walls. Noticing the details I missed when the lights worked. The cobwebs in corners. The defects in the stones. The dirt in between tiles on the floor.

Crash.
My lamp smashes as it hits the floor. I catch the shade in my left hand, then discard it as useless. Kim is leaning against the headboard of my bed, her hands clasped around her belly, moaning in pain. Her cries intensify by the minute.

“Hurry. Hurry. Please.”

“Dammit,” I curse openly. “Dammit!” Nothing is ever where you think it should be. The top dresser is empty. No flashlight. I can feel only papers, the typewriter, and the ceramic lamp I purchased at one of my own rummage sales that is now in pieces.

“Watch your feet, Kim. There's glass all over the floor.”

I bump into the dresser. The angle of the wood hitting me against my chest, my left breast in pain. I try not to scream. I know it will only make Kim worse. In my sock drawer, I remember, are
candles I've kept as souvenirs from various services: the Christmas and Lent candles we Sisters make ourselves. I seek out their bodies.

“I've got a candle, Kim. Hold on.”

There is also a book of matches on the dresser, the pack I kept from the restaurant where Christine confessed to me. I had automatically dropped them into my totebag, not because I needed them but because I am used to hoarding what is free.

“Angela! I can't wait. I can't wait.” Kim is stumbling around. I can hear her trying to get back to the door. My eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness. Kim is no longer invisible, but a shadow whose movements I can follow.

“I've got it! I've got it!” I yell.

Inserting the candle into the silver candle holder, I wince, but take hold of it. Mine all along.

I strike a match. Kim holds onto the doorknob, her legs crossed as if she needs to use the washroom. I carry the silver candle holder against my sore chest, to keep the weight balanced so the candle, slightly thinner than the opening, won't fall forward and hit the floor, or fall backwards and burn my nightgown. I am awake. Determined. The fog of the pills lifts.

As I get closer to Kim, who is also in her nightgown, a long pale-blue cotton dress with small bows, the blood is apparent. Blood down from her thighs to her toes in thin streaks and patches. The candlelight makes it visible. Kim gazes at herself in horror and crumples the skirt of her nightgown to find out where the blood is coming from and how bad it might be. She holds in a cry. I take her arm and hook it into mine. She requires aid. I cradle the candle
holder in the crook of my other arm. The weight, distributed in this manner, makes it easier to manoeuvre.

“Don't look at yourself,” I tell her as I kick the door open with my heel. “Look ahead.”

The place works. Upon reaching the first floor, I call out for help and Sisters come running in the dark, some with flashlights, some with candles, and some without any aid, using their voices against mine to feel out where we are. The Sisters are like trained police squads or firemen. All working in unison in a disaster, following the unwritten rules that they know to be the correct way of proceeding. Kim almost fell twice on our way up the stairs, and I want someone with a flashlight to take over for me. I am afraid I will burn her accidentally, trying to save her from falling. At the top of the stairs, the flame from the candle singed a strand of my hair. Kim coughed and plugged her nose momentarily before her labour pains started up again.

On the way to Sister Ursula's office, Sister Irene can be heard screaming.

“Baaahhh!” she roars. “Baaahhh!”

I am about to rush up and help her, but Sister Ursula stops me. By this time all the Sisters on the first floor are gathered around and, with little direction, divvy up the duties to be performed. Sister Rosalind goes to find Sister Bernadette, who has a cellphone, to call the hospital, our phone lines being affected by the storm. Sister Josie leaves to inform Father B. that the baby is coming, and Sister Frances runs up to the other floor to get any of
the Sisters with medical training to help out. I think I shouldn't be here, even if Kim has asked for me, because I have no medical training, except for a St. John's Ambulance course that all the Sisters took together a couple of years ago. I breathed into a plastic doll. We did not learn how to deliver babies. So when I hear Sister Irene screaming, that is where I think I should be, assuming each Sister ought to use the tools they have to take care of each other. Sister Irene is my care. My presence might calm her down.

“Don't abandon the living for the dead,” Sister Ursula says curtly. “Go to Sister Irene,” she orders Sister Mary, another older Sister who spends most of her time in her room and handles the prayer meetings on Thursday nights with Father B. Sister Mary obeys.

Sister Ursula, with the help of Sister Katherine and Sister Sarah, manages to get Kim to her office and placed on the examining table. She keeps looking to make sure I am there. I tell Kim I will stay with her as long as she needs. I try to appear calm, but under the beams of light, everyone can see she is bleeding badly. Sister Ursula scrubs her hands and puts on plastic gloves. Sister Katherine gets some water and bandages and towels to place underneath Kim, while Sister Sarah wipes the sweat off her forehead and places a pillow underneath her neck. I place the candle holder outside the door like an offering.

“It hurts too much,” Kim pleads. “Oh God. It hurts!”

It takes the three Sisters to convince her to open her legs.

Kim screams with all her strength, her lips contorted into a rectangular shape, all her teeth pushing the skin to the outermost edges. She grips the padded cushions of the table and the white paper rustles underneath her, her legs in the stirrups meant for internal exams.

“Try to push,” counsels Sister Ursula, pulling her white lab coat over her pink pyjamas. “Now try to breathe evenly.”

Four Sisters stand guard like bedposts, each holding a flashlight, and many other Sisters come and go from the room, snatching anything that can be used for light: candles, bedside lamps that work on batteries, key chains that glow, lighters. With the women around her, Kim's legs spread while Sister Ursula bends in between, the room resembles a vigil. The uttered phrases are low and precise, incantations.