The Guineveres (14 page)

Our reverie lasted through communion, as we proceeded toward the altar and as Father James clumsily placed holy wafers on our tongues. We pretended these cardboard discs tasted like turkey dinner, homemade, like the gratitude of four families who had come together to celebrate Our Boys. As we waited for the succulence to dissolve on our tongues, for the sweet taste of pumpkin pie to fade from our mouths, it occurred to us what time it was for Our Boys. It was their time of need, and we would nurse them through it. That's what you do during difficult times: You stand by those who need you the most. You don't abandon them, don't just leave them alone to suffer. We grew angry again with our parents, and, at the same moment, we grew calm. There in the chapel, as we listened to the closing prayers, we believed to the core of our beings that our lives would be perfect if only Our Boys would wake up.

After mass, we single-filed to the Rec Room while the Sisters prepared our real Thanksgiving meal in the kitchen. No doubt, it would be some tasteless fare: globs of runny potatoes; stiff, dry dressing. The Sisters weren't known for their culinary skills, perhaps, as Gwen once suggested, because they never had to woo a man with them.

Jeanette and Polly and the rest of The Poor Girls had volunteered to help Sister Claire in the kitchen; they seemed to have an overattachment to food, but what did we care? It was no business of ours. The older girls retired to the Bunk Room for naps, and The Delinquents followed them, wishing they were older themselves. The Specials worked on their knitting in the corner, proud to be part of the War Effort, especially on a holiday. “The War Effort takes no days off,” they insisted. The rest of us lounged listlessly around the Rec Room, listening to the radio.

The radio was made of wood with a large dial and metal knobs that the Sisters usually removed so we couldn't turn it on. But today was a holiday, and, as Sister Fran claimed, holidays should feel
special,
even for girls like us. She permitted us radio time during Christmas and New Year, and she also made such allowances during Rec Time on the day before any girl turned eighteen. Perhaps she wanted to send whoever it was off into the world with memories of her leniency. Or perhaps she thought the radio would offer a glimpse into the outside world, now changed. For us, we'd come to associate the radio not with connection but with loss.

Sister Margaret had tuned the radio to a Thanksgiving Day parade. The tinny radio voice described the floats, not ones like at the Sisters' annual festival, but real floats that actually floated, led by men and women in costumes. We could hear drumbeats in the background, the occasional clash of a cymbal. Wherever the parade was located, it was raining there, too, because the man on the radio kept saying it was coming down like cats and dogs. We kept trying to picture what that'd be like—for cats and dogs to literally fall out of the sky in a biblical sort of way, like frogs. We were imagining these animals falling from the sky, landing, like cats do, on all four paws when the reporter introduced another man who'd just returned from the War. Our ears perked up, holding on to his every word. Win yelled for everyone to shush, and the room grew quiet.

“There's no place like home this Thanksgiving,” the radio voice said. “I'm sure that's how you're feeling today, thankful to be back on your own soil.”

A younger-sounding voice replied, “Yes, sir. It's good to be home.”

“What did you miss the most?”

“I missed my family,” the young man said. “And spaghetti. I missed spaghetti. With meatballs.”

The two shared a laugh; then the voices went quiet for a minute, observing a moment of silence. We could hear trumpets playing in the background, some clapping and whistling. We tried to imagine what the parade must look like with all this rain. Everyone must have been wet, their hair slicked to their foreheads, their clothes clinging to their bodies, the way Father James looked after emerging from the dunking booth.

The radio announcer came back on. He suddenly sounded very far away. “Thanks for your service,” he said. “And to the rest of you: Come home safely.”

At that moment, Sister Margaret turned down the radio. “You're in for a special treat, girls,” she said. Sister Margaret was in charge of supervising our Rec Time. She walked over to where she had spread out brown packing paper on the Ping-Pong table, along with some paint and small canvases. Ginny's face lit up, though she was trying to remain cool. We all hold ideas of who we are, images of ourselves that may or may not be accurate: Gwen was pretty; Win was tough; I was faithful. But Ginny's was more specific: She was creative, a painter—an artist—and she considered herself one even long into adulthood when it became apparent that she wasn't, when all she had to show for her art was some finger paintings her children had hung on her fridge. “We'll be sure your paintings are sent overseas,” Sister Margaret said. “It's part of the War Effort. We must all do what we can. And a pretty portrait would go a long way toward raising spirits, don't you think?”

Sister Margaret was the youngest of the Sisters and also the kindest. After dinner in the cafeteria, she often walked around asking if we'd had enough. On occasion, she'd slip us pieces of hard candy, little strawberry-shaped ones that we'd tuck into our cheeks and let dissolve slowly like communion. Her eyes were set far apart, and her pupils were misaligned, but she was pretty in her own way. Though she wore her habit, we could see her brown hair and a bobby pin that had fallen out of place. A loose curl hung from her forehead, making her seem more human somehow. Beneath her habit Sister Margaret was just like us, a girl who pinned her hair.

“Does God approve of war?” Shirley asked. Shirley had the posture of someone rich, perfectly straight, as if her spine were fashioned from a golden rod. We were all standing around the Ping-Pong table now, watching Sister Margaret set up the painting station.

“If it's warranted, if you're fighting to preserve the good, like we are, then yes. In a world full of evil, war is inevitable. We are born to struggle. Just think of Eden,” Sister Margaret said. She pried the lids off the paint canisters with a butter knife.

“But there wasn't a war in the Garden of Eden,” Nan said. The Guineveres felt sorry for Nan because her face was covered with acne, but this didn't stop us from disliking her. She was a Special, after all, and so probably deserved it.

“Oh, but there was,” Sister Margaret advised. “The struggle between good and evil is a war indeed. We're always fighting it. That's a never-ending battle, and you'll wage it until your death.”

“So, then, you're saying God approves of war,” Gwen said. She stood with her hands intertwined behind her back, her head cocked to the side. She seemed genuinely concerned, though she could easily fake such expressions. Such was her nature, a quality that unsettled us all because we never knew when she acted out of sincerity.

Sister Margaret set down the butter knife and carefully placed the paint lids in a bucket. Then she began to organize the brushes. “Well, He doesn't approve of it, per se, but recognizes its necessity. In the Bible, He authorizes war to protect the faithful from their enemies or to punish those who disobey Him.”

“If He protects the faithful, then why didn't He protect the soldiers in the Sick Ward?” Ginny asked. She picked up a dry brush and began dotting the freckles on her arm with it.

“Oh, girls. I shouldn't get into this. This is Sister Fran's domain. I don't want to overstep my bounds.”

“If they're on the side of the good, our side, God should have protected them,” Ginny pressed.

“It's not our place to say what God should do. War is a human initiative and will necessarily involve some human casualties. It's an unfortunate reality. However, think of all the lives that wars have saved in the history of time.” Admittedly, we didn't know much about war, or its history.

“What about ‘Thou shalt not kill'?” Barbara chimed in. We called her Barbaric behind her back because of the permanent scowl on her face. “Wouldn't soldiers have to break one of the Ten Commandments in a war?”

“That would make every soldier a sinner,” Lottie said. She squinted as she said this, then pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

“My dad killed people in the War, but he's not a sinner,” Reggie interjected. “He's a general, and he has a very important job.” She rubbed her neck as if lathering it with soap. “He's a good person. You'll see when he comes back for me. He said I could invite you all to my welcome-home party, but only if Sister Fran says it's okay. Do you think Sister Fran will say it's okay?”

“Take this up with Sister Fran, girls,” Sister Margaret said. “I've said too much already. War is complicated, that much I know.”

At that point we didn't understand what was so complicated about it. There was good and there was evil, just like in the Garden of Eden. There were Our Boys and there were those who had fought against them. How I wish I could still render the world so clearly in black and white.

“Just remember what Father James said during today's sermon,” she added.

“But we'd need clocks to figure out what time it is,” Shirley said, and the room filled with giggles that summersaulted through the air, then stopped just as abruptly as they'd started.

Sister Margaret grew serious. “No,” she said. “You're lucky to be here, that's what he said, and you should be thankful. It
is
Thanksgiving, after all.” With that she lifted the hem of her skirt, swung around, and walked out of the room. “I expect to see some of your paintings after dinner. Make them cheerful,” she called from the hallway, her voice bouncing off the walls.

Left to our own devices, The Guineveres commandeered the painting area, readied our canvas, and mixed colors together to create a morose shade that reflected our mood. We didn't say much, didn't talk about what we'd do once we could no longer see Our Boys during Sick Ward duty, which concluded the next day. Instead, we worked with one palette, each taking a turn making brushstrokes on the empty canvas until it was completely covered in dark paint, like a sickly night sky without stars.

“We'll call it
Blind Leading Blind,
” one of us said when we stepped back.

“They always wind up in the dark,” another Guinevere added.

A group of older girls went up to the Bunk Room, and we claimed their spot, picking at the jigsaw puzzle they'd left unfinished on the coffee table. We knew the puzzle by heart now. It was an image of the Sistine Chapel, only the pieces of Adam's manhood were missing, his nipples, too, so it could never be finished. We weren't sure if these pieces were lost or if the Sisters had claimed them in an act of censorship. However, what the Sisters didn't realize was this: What we conjured up in our imaginations was far more graphic than any single puzzle piece could have depicted.

“Missing: the first phallus of humankind,” Win said, pointing her index finger to where Adam's genitalia would have been, as if she were marking a spot on a map. She was trying to ease our self-pity, our hopelessness, our anger about being so far from home on a holiday.

“Why do priests need one anyway?” Gwen said. “They're not supposed to use it.”

“Adam wasn't a priest,” I said.

“Well, they need it to pee,” Ginny said matter-of-factly. She had pulled up her sleeve and was rubbing at the dried paint on her skin, trying to remove it. “There's a time for everything, even for going to the bathroom.”

“I wish we were allowed to wear watches,” I said, then spread out on the couch. “My mom gave me a watch, but Sister Fran took it away.”

“She takes everything away,” Ginny said. “She'd take the sun out of the sky if she could.”

“But this watch was special.” I didn't tell them what my mom said when she gave it to me, that the watch held powers, special ones that would protect me. I didn't tell them a lot of things about my mom, not only because I thought they wouldn't understand, but because I wasn't sure I even did.

“Well, I don't need a watch to tell me it's Vere's time,” Gwen said. “I saw her dip into the sanitary closet,” she sang. My face grew hot, ashamed of my body or of my biology, or both. Gwen was right, and they all knew it. I covered my face with a pancaked throw pillow. “What? It's no big deal. I like getting my period. It's a woman's truest suffering.”

“Like how all the saints suffered. Like how artists suffer for their art,” Ginny said.

“Well, that's a bit dramatic,” Win replied. “It's so embarrassing, really. Down
there
? I'd rather have a nosebleed.”

“Like that wouldn't be obvious,” Gwen said. “Besides, what's there to be embarrassed about? Menarche is a point of pride. It means you're a woman.”

“We're not women yet,” I said, hoping to shift the conversation. I sat up and crossed my legs, placed the pillow on my lap.

“That's what the Sisters want you to believe, with all their ‘girls' this and ‘girls' that,” Gwen said. “In some countries, you'd be married off by now; you'd have a baby or maybe even two. Just because you want to remain a virgin your whole life…”

“That's not true,” I replied, but maybe it was. The thought of intercourse terrified me, and the fact that I referred to it as “intercourse” was likely proof of that.

“I want to have a baby with My Boy someday,” Ginny said. And we all turned, looked at her with surprise. “What?” She smiled. “I love him.”

We would have responded to Ginny, but in that moment Reggie came up to admire our progress with the puzzle. “Can I help?” she asked. Reggie wanted so badly to be part of our group, but that was as impossible as a camel passing through the eye of a needle. She often followed us around the courtyard during our constitutional walks or chose the sink next to ours in the Wash Room at night. During chapel she sometimes tried to squeeze into our pew, but we widened our postures, spread our legs indecently so as to take up as much space as possible.