The Eliot Girls (10 page)

“So,” Arabella said. “We were just talking about that gross handout Ms. Crispe gave out the other day in gym.”

The previous day, Ms. Crispe, the gym teacher, had given the class a detailed lecture about personal hygiene on gym days. Accompanying this talk was a handout upon which she had listed the five cardinal rules of gym attendance, and although the majority of girls had appreciated her insistence upon the use of antiperspirant, less welcome was her legislation on menstruation. The first rule was introduced by the title, “To Pad or To 'Pon? That is the Question.” Only tampons, Ms. Crispe instructed, were to be used on gym days, since girls wearing sanitary pads were unable to give the games their all. In the locker room before the bell rang, the girls had fumed about the handout while forming countless theories about what they deemed a homoerotic interest in their vaginal proclivities. During lunch, Whitney had suggested that they all wear pads to the next gym class as a matter of principle.

“We've all agreed that we have to do something,” Arabella said. “It's not enough just to complain about it. Or wear pads, since she might not even notice that anyway.”

“She's totally violating our privacy!” exclaimed Dougie.

“And our civil liberties,” added Whitney.

“And, like, why is she so obsessed with our menstrual blood?” Arabella said. “Don't you find that really disturbing?”

Audrey nodded.

“
So, listen. Whit came up with the most hilarious plan.” Arabella fizzed with excitement, her hands fluttering in her lap as her hair fell across the aristocratic slope of her long neck. On her chin was a pimple, small but clearly still at the beginning of its life. Audrey glanced away, hoping Arabella hadn't seen her notice it.

The idea was to leave a pad, smeared with ketchup, in the middle of the locker room floor. When Ms. Crispe came in, clipboard in hand, whistle around neck, to badger the class to hurry up, she would spot it. From there on, the plan grew more formless, its goal somewhat unclear. It wasn't even about the rules anymore, Whitney insisted. But there was a point, and it seemed to them an important one. It was a matter of honour, almost, to humiliate Ms. Crispe for talking about their periods so openly, for forming her beliefs into a list of regulations and then detailing them on a handout. A lesson had to be taught. The girls looked at each other and aimed squalls of hyena-like laughter at the ceiling.

“Isn't it an awesome idea?” giggled Dougie.

Audrey had to agree that the plan was, in its sheer pettiness, rather formidable. The amount of energy and passion they poured into these trivial injustices astounded her. There was no precedent for it in her life. At her old school, all any of the girls had cared about was boys. And the size of the school had prevented any single event from having such resonance. She wondered what Ruth would say if she knew that such things went on.

Arabella looked slyly at Audrey. “Do you want to do it?” she asked, as though offering an opportunity she might not grant.

“I want to do it,” Dougie whined.

Arabella ignored Dougie and fixed Audrey with her magnetic stare.

“Now?” Audrey said.

“Well, we have gym first period.”

Audrey glanced at her math book and then at the clock. It was almost 8:30. If there had been morning soccer or basketball practice, the locker room would soon be full of girls changing into their school uniforms. But refusal was not an option. She nodded her consent. They clapped their hands in glee as Arabella stuffed a wrapped sanitary pad and a restaurant packet of ketchup into Audrey's knapsack.

The locker room was in the basement, and when Audrey swung open the door, she discovered it empty. Her instructions were simple enough. She unwrapped and unfolded the pad, smoothing out the creases and twisting it up roughly in her hands in an attempt to make it look used. Then she opened the ketchup and smeared it down the middle, rubbing the surface with her fingers to make it look more natural, like blood that had been collecting for hours. It wouldn't absorb, though, and lay glistening and congealed on the top, quite obviously ketchup. It smelled obviously of ketchup, too. It was at this point that Audrey realized she had nothing with which to clean her fingers, so she picked up the pad's crinkly paper wrapper and wiped her fingers as best she could, then buried it under a mound of used Kleenexes, a dirty, torn gym sock, and an empty carton of skim milk in the big rubber garbage can.

She set the pad conspicuously in the centre of the floor and stepped back to get a view of her handiwork. The plan suddenly seemed less a subversive and witty comment on a teacher's overstepping than a prank by twelve-year-olds. Outside the door, a herd of footsteps might have been headed towards her or away, so she grabbed her knapsack and headed for the bathroom, where she washed her hands, then sat in a cubicle until the bell rang, breathing deeply to calm her galloping pulse.

When she returned to the locker room after chapel, much of the class was already there. She took a spot in the corner, pushed her bag into the cubbyhole overhead, and started undressing. The pad was already garnering much attention. Upon entering the locker room, most girls sidestepped it deferentially, giggling. Rebecca Knowles called out, “Is that real blood?” To which Dougie answered, “Yeah, that's my big bloody pad. Sorry, I'm just human.” Audrey's face was burning. A part of her thought that she should have been proud of her part in it, flattered and exhilarated to have been taken into one of Arabella's plots, but the prevailing part of her was still afraid of getting into trouble. Ms. Crispe was due to arrive at any moment, and Arabella kept glancing knowingly in Audrey's direction.

A hush fell over the room as the door swung open and Ms. Crispe, wearing khaki walking shorts and a white-collared polo shirt, a pencil behind her ear, walked in and planted herself stockily by the garbage can, hands on her hips. Like everyone else who'd come in, her eyes immediately went to the crimson pad, but unlike everyone else, she offered the pad no deference. She said nothing, her very body the antithesis of a girlish squeal. Then she took one step over to the pad, squatted, and picked it up by its corner, holding it aloft under the fluorescent lighting.

“What is the meaning of this?” she asked calmly.

Half-dressed, the girls stared at her, unanswering.

“To whom does this belong?”

The girls remained silent for some seconds. Then Arabella raised her hand.

“Maybe it belongs to someone who has her period?” she said in a querying, helpful tone.

“Thank you, Arabella,” said Ms. Crispe. “What is this doing on the floor?”

“I'm not sure what it's doing on the floor, Ms. Crispe,” Whitney said innocently, “but remember you said we're not allowed to wear pads in gym class? I guess maybe someone just remembered that and was trying to respect your rules, but didn't have time to go to the bathroom before the bell?”

Ms. Crispe turned around and flung the pad face down into the garbage, where it landed with a squelching wetness.

“You have one minute to finish getting dressed,” she said.

When the door swung shut behind her, muffled laughter issued from all corners of the room, but the joy was gone, not so much because the incident was over as because of Ms. Crispe's deflating reaction, her refusal to get particularly angry or to acknowledge the ketchup, to seem at all ruffled, or the least bit aware that her rules had been shown up by the grade tens. Arabella and Whitney, lacing up their shoes in the opposite corner, were conferring.

“Just ask for a tampon next time, Seeta,” called out Dougie.

Seeta was pulling on her gym shorts, and she looked up, startled to hear her name.

“What? I didn't—”

Arabella burst into laughter, relieving Seeta of the need to finish her sentence.

Seeta sat on the long wooden bench and concentrated on tying up her running shoes. Whitney whispered to Arabella something Audrey couldn't hear. Seeta seemed to be moving very slowly—whether in an effort to calm herself or to resist intimidation, Audrey couldn't tell. She looked up from her shoes and gave Audrey a small smile, then finally stood to leave. When the door swung shut behind her, Arabella exclaimed, “That was classic!”

“Did you see Ms. Crispe's dykey face, like, salivating over that pad?” exclaimed Dougie.

Audrey wasn't sure that was what she had seen, but she smiled as if in agreement. She got up to leave before their approval was withdrawn, turned skilfully by Arabella's sleight of hand into its inevitable contrary. Just as she was crossing the room, Dougie jumped off the bench and shrieked that her bladder was going to burst. As she sprang forward, she fell theatrically into Audrey, knocking her to the floor. Writhing in some combination of pain and hysteria, she howled that she had twisted her ankle. Audrey lay trapped beneath her as she squirmed, laughing uncontrollably. “Who's the lesbo now?” Whitney said, poking Dougie's stomach with her foot as she walked past.

“Oh my God, I'm going to wet my pants!” Dougie screamed.

“Not on me!” Audrey said, trying to wriggle free. She didn't want to laugh. She wanted to hang on to her guard, but something was releasing, almost without her consent.

Whitney and Arabella piled onto Dougie, tickling her to see if she would wet her pants. Giddiness had infected them all by now. On the other side of the door, the school day was starting.

So this was how it felt, Audrey thought, to be on the inside of the noise. This was the sound of your own resurrected laughter.

 

RUTH WAS STILL MOVING
through the smog of sleep-deprivation when she reached for the staff room door and Larissa McAllister nearly opened it into her face.

“Ruth!” she cried. “Good morning to you.”

“Hello!” Ruth returned with inexplicable conviviality.

Even when she'd fallen asleep the night before, Ruth had been merely dozing, and her dreams had been light and misleadingly realistic—negotiating shower times, finding the milk carton empty—so that only upon waking did she realize they were dreams. Being poorly rested had initially made her feel heady and buoyant, weirdly energized. But after teaching two classes, math and science, her least favourite, she had been able to think of little other than coffee, the smell of which wafted out from the staff room behind Larissa.

Sipping from her steaming mug, Larissa cast her eyes over Ruth's outfit. “Ruth,” she said, “perhaps your educational agenda would be better served if you fastened one more button on your blouse.”

Ruth looked down in surprise. Only one button below the top was undone, and even from her prime view, only a small, flat patch of chest was visible. “Oh, I didn't realize. Of course.” With her free hand, she fastened the pearly button above her collarbone, eliciting a nod of approval.

“To show too much skin strikes one as a touch bourgeois, no?” Larissa peered down at Ruth's hand. “So, what is that weighty tome you're brandishing?”

“Oh, it's, um, Flannery O'Connor.” Ruth had taken the book from her briefcase with the intention of retreating to a corner of the staff room for a bit of reading while her class was in gym. “It's part of an idea I'm working out for an English assignment for the kids. Not the book itself, but—” She stopped. It was implausible that she'd be using Flannery O'Connor with grade fours.

But Larissa nodded, seemingly intrigued, and Ruth felt a forgiving rush of warmth and gratitude that Larissa was, in fact, as forward thinking in her academic objectives as she purported to be. Lying could be easy under such circumstances.

“I'll leave you to it, then,” said Larissa, turning from Ruth to issue a sharp rebuke to a pair of grade sevens who were running in the hall. Ruth slipped into the staff room and made straight for the coffee machine, hoping that the right dose of caffeine would disarm the irritability that was building inside her. She had never thought of her mental state as something that required diligent maintenance, but for several days now, she had felt frustratingly volatile—one moment skittish with energy she didn't know how to channel, the next moment lazy and discouraged. Her disconnection from Audrey was part of it. The more helpful Ruth tried to be—she had offered to sit with Audrey, in case she had any questions, while Audrey was doing her French homework—the more Audrey treated her presence as a bother. Ruth had done her best to keep her own moodiness in check. She continually reminded herself that Audrey was adjusting. But she was more than a little disheartened that Audrey's acceptance to Eliot, the move that ought to have brought them closer, had begotten only estrangement.

Lorna Massie-Turnbull was standing by the counter, humming as she prepared a cup of herbal tea. As Ruth rooted around in the fridge for the cream, she set a loaf of bread on the counter, and Lorna tapped her back, saying, “Ahem, um. Sorry to be a pest, Ruth, but the bread…” She grimaced apologetically and gestured at the counter.

“Oops, sorry,” Ruth said contritely, removing the offending loaf.

Lorna had been diagnosed with celiac disease the year before and had since isolated one corner of the kitchenette—the stretch where Ruth had placed the loaf—for her food preparation. There sat a deluxe avocado-green KitchenAid toaster, as far away as it could get from the ancient dented toaster designated for communal use, several bread boards personalized in permanent marker with the initials L.M.-T., and a glass jar full of utensils. On this bit of counter also sat a white wicker basket loaded with homeopathic remedies. These also belonged to Lorna, but she was happy to share them with anyone in need. Once, when Ruth had been complaining about a headache and asking around for Advil, Lorna had intercepted Sheila's tablets and insisted she take several drops of gingko biloba in a glass of water instead.

Ruth generally preferred to eat away from Lorna, whose lentil and quinoa salads made her feel obscurely guilty about her own food choices, especially after she observed Lorna regarding her peanut butter and jam sandwiches with a mixture of disapproval, pity, and fear. Although Ruth didn't doubt the legitimacy of Lorna's diagnosis, she couldn't help viewing Lorna's dietary restrictions as a feature of her general hypersensitivity. In response to a recent remark of Ruth's that she was craving chocolate, Lorna had exclaimed, “Then my naturopath would say that it's the last thing you should be eating! Have these soy nuts instead.”