The Guineveres (21 page)

It was only a couple of days later when my mother asked for help shoving Grandfather's old trunk in the back of the car. “We're going for a ride,” she said. These were the first words she'd spoken to me since my incident. She wore her winter dress, cream with a red belt, the one she usually reserved for Christmas. At that moment, I would have done anything she asked, so I scrambled to help her. I lifted and heaved that trunk with all my might into the car. I didn't think to ask her why.

Grandfather appeared at the door once the car started up. “Where are you going?” he asked, probing my mother suspiciously. The car was his, after all; my mother just borrowed it. He stood on the porch, leaning up against the rail that I knew to be wobbly. Glancing up at him from this angle, I could see the lines on his face, deep crinkles on his forehead and around his eyes. His white hair looked like wispy clouds that were trying to lift off his head.

“We're just going for a little ride,” my mother said. “This girl could use some scenery.” Grandfather widened his eyes and cocked his head in a quizzical yet vaguely threatening manner. He called for Grandmother, who came out of the house and stood next to Grandfather on the porch.

“Where you riding to?” Grandmother asked. She stood next to Grandfather and wrapped her arm around him. I wish I had a picture of the two of them standing there like that, my grandmother in her apron, my grandfather in his favorite old checked shirt. But I can tell you, if I did have that picture, it would only make me sad.

“Well, I can't tell you without ruining the holidays, now can I?” Mother said. She rested her hand on my shoulder.

“I just made a blueberry buckle,” Grandmother said. Her apron was smeared with dusty flour handprints. “Why don't you come get some while it's still warm?” Grandmother took a step forward, and Grandfather placed his hand on her shoulder. “Come on, Guinevere,” she said, waving me out of the car.

I turned to my mother, who was sitting next to me in the driver's seat. Her hands were on the wheel, and she was checking her makeup in the rearview mirror. Eyeliner extended out past her eyelid, like a genie's. I touched the car handle, intending to open the door, but my mother gripped my shoulder, her fingers digging into me. “Not now. We don't have time,” she said, then hollered out the car window, “We'll get it later. Keep it warm for us.” My mother put the car in reverse and backed out slowly as Grandmother and Grandfather both now walked toward us. Their faces stretched into a look I recognized only in retrospect.

“I love you,” I could hear Grandmother say, her voice fading over the sound of the car.

“I love you, too,” I said, not realizing it was the last time I'd ever see them.

The sky was slate colored, no sun in sight. Yet, despite this, my mother wore her sunglasses. Tears dribbled from beneath the frames.

“Are you okay?” I asked her. She didn't respond, just faced forward, both hands on the wheel. I turned my head and watched out the window as the trees blurred by us; their leafless limbs were crooked fingers pointing us somewhere. But I didn't know where yet.

After a while, my mother turned on the radio, and we listened to Christmas music, which made me feel kind of sad—the opposite of what Christmas music is supposed to make you feel. My mother kept blotting her eyes with a handkerchief. “Why'd you do it, Guinevere?” she finally asked. “Tell me what I've done wrong.”

“You didn't do anything wrong,” I said quietly.

“Tell me I've been a good mother. Tell me I've been good at something,” she said.

“You've been a very good mother,” I said. And at that point, I really meant it because I didn't know how else I could feel toward her.

“If only your father had been here for you.”

We drove for a long time in silence until the road narrowed and we appeared to be in the country. Wherever we were, I had never been there; I knew that much.

“Where are we going?” I finally asked, but she didn't say anything. “I won't do it again,” I said. “I'm sorry. I don't know why I did it. But I'm sorry.”

My mother placed her gloved hand on my knee and patted it.

Finally, we crested a hill, passed a church, then turned down a long gravel drive, and in the distance I saw this huge stone building, a fortress on the horizon.

“Are we going to church?” I asked, confused. I could see crosses sticking out from the roof, though no signs marked the place. It reminded me of pictures from my history books. I remembered that King Henry VIII lived in one, and he'd killed some of his wives, chopped off their heads.

“We're here,” she said.

“Where?” I asked.

My mother didn't say anything.

I could hear the slow crunch of the gravel as my mother parked the car. She paused to take a deep breath, checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror, and opened her door. I got out of the car, too, and followed her as she walked toward the stone building, up a short flight of stairs, through an archway, and to a door rounded at its edges.

The door opened before my mother had the chance to knock.

A set of eyes peered out, and at first I thought these eyes belonged to an old man. When the door opened wider, however, I was surprised to see a nun standing before us. Were we here to volunteer? Was this my punishment? We hadn't been to a church since my father went away. Since long before he went away, and even then only on holidays. But my grandparents did have a crucifix hanging in the house, and every once in a while I saw Grandmother praying to it, her lips muttering something in the language of the Old Country.

“I'm glad to make your acquaintance,” Sister Fran said. “Welcome.” She took my hand into hers; it felt frail and thin—like fish bones. We stepped into the cold foyer, colder even than the winter day we had just left behind us. The place smelled like a church, like spice-scented smoke that made my throat tickle. Ever since, when I smell incense I think of that moment, standing in the chilly foyer, Sister Fran to one side of me, my mother to the other, like I was being given away at the altar. Or just given away.

“This is Guinevere,” my mother said.

“I'm Sister Frances Nazarene,” she said to me, now shaking my hand as she held it. “You may call me Sister Fran.” She faced my mother. “Do you have her things?”

I turned toward my mother, but she stared down at her feet. She was wearing blue eye shadow, spread evenly from her lashes to her brow. My mother nodded. “Just for a little while.” She finally looked up. Her lips were pursed, and her eyes looked like two dark marbles sinking into sand—they were shiny, but she wasn't crying. “Until we get things sorted out.” Then she kissed me on the cheek. Her lips were dry.

My mother walked away.

“You can't leave me here!” I shouted. “Come back!”

“We'll have none of that here,” Sister Fran said. “Happy are those who long only for their souls. And from what I understand, my girl, we have a lot of work to do.” She walked toward a small corner table and picked something up, then stood in front of me. I was too frightened to move. “The joy of God is the innocent,” she said. “You shall be washed of your sins.” There was a lilt to her voice that sounded like an accent, but it was not—just primness, I later realized. She reached out her thumb and rubbed my forehead with something cold and wet. The liquid dribbled down my face like a tear. But I wasn't crying.

Someone brought in Grandfather's trunk, which was filled with my things. I was given my uniform, asked to remove my new saddle shoes, the ones like Linda Carol wore. “We'll keep them in your trunk,” Sister Fran explained. Sister Tabitha showed me to the Bunk Room, where all the girls stared at me with button eyes, wide and unmoving. I sat on my bunk until it was time to eat supper. Nobody said hello to me.

I never cried, though. Not then. Not once.

 

Baptism

On the third Sunday in Advent, the sole rose-colored candle is lit, Sister Fran explained to us during Morning Instruction that Friday. A miniature replica of an Advent wreath rested on her desk, a circle of pine with four long candles nestled into it. “We call this Sunday Gaudete Sunday, which means to rejoice. Now I want you to repeat this three times. Gaudete,” she said.

“Gaudete,” the room chanted, three times over.

“Excellent. Now who wants to light the candle today?” Sister Fran asked, holding up a matchstick like a tiny conductor's baton.

Reggie raised her fleshy arm, and when Sister Fran nodded toward her she made her way to the front of the room. Reggie struck the match easily, but it took her a full minute to ignite the candle.

“Come on, Reggie!” cried a voice from the back of the room, one of The Delinquents.

“Shhh!” Sister Fran snapped. “Patience.”

Reggie finally got the wick started and stepped back to reveal her handiwork. The flame bounced, but it didn't extinguish. “What are we rejoicing for?” Reggie asked.

“Do not end your sentence in a preposition,” Sister Fran said.

“What are we rejoicing for, Sister Fran?” Reggie offered.

Sister Fran clenched her jaw but let Reggie's grammatical inexactitude slide. She was only one person. “Because the wait till Our Savior's birthday is almost over.”

“But that'd be like rejoicing that the War is over before it actually ends. Why not just rejoice on Christmas Day, when the wait actually is over?” she asked.

“Silly girl,” Sister Fran began, then stopped herself. Reggie annoyed even Sister Fran, a fact she could not fully conceal. There was just something about the girl: her pudginess, her earnestness, her constantly stained shirt, the way she often stood on one foot, scratching her ankle with the other. Later in life, Reggie would become an elementary school teacher, and she'd curry her students' favor by taking them on field trips to amusement parks, petting zoos, and roller rinks. My best guess is that she was trying to regain the friends she had never known in youth, and that realization makes me wish we had all been kinder to her. But kindness toward Reggie was difficult, even for Sister Fran, who closed her eyes and drew in a few deep breaths. “I do not suggest one compare the War to Advent,” she said, dismissing Reggie and facing the rest of the classroom. “We're not waiting for the War to arrive. We're waiting for it to end. On Gaudete Sunday, however, we rejoice in the promise. The hope of our redemption.”

The Guineveres were hoping for redemption. For answers. In the library, we crouched between the stacks and pored over geography books, old art books, and topographical maps, trying to locate anything that could provide us information about Our Boys. Gwen skimmed
Spacious Skies: An Aerial View of Our Country
looking for terrain similar to that found on Her Boy's postcard.
This postcard reminded me of home,
he had written. But where was home? Ginny fanned through a copy of
Wonders of Wildlife,
slowing down when she came to the section titled “Rebellious Reptiles.” She found pictures of cobras with heads of pharaohs and fat pythons with sharp saws for teeth, but nothing looked like the self-consuming snake on the front of Her Boy's wooden box. Win flipped the pages of
Exploring the West,
and when she found nothing of use, not even any pictures of cowboys, she picked up a copy of
Exploring the Orient.
That's when she nearly shrieked. There on page 117 was a black-and-white sketch depicting a snake devouring itself. Ouroboros, the book called it. An ancient pagan symbol. A sign of cyclicality, of re-creation, of eternal return. At the ending is a new beginning; in death, life.

Nobody knew what to say. Ginny traced circles around the snake's body with her finger. Gwen snapped shut her book, and the small puff of air smelled like wet newspaper.

“Do you think they could be Buddhist or Hindu or …
something else
?” I asked. We collectively gasped. The very thought scandalized us. I worried for My Boy and the possible sacrilegious contents of his duffel. Ginny recalled a woman who lived down the street from her in her Unholy Life. She wore a red dot between her eyes, and she smelled like body odor and spices. She never smiled, and sometimes she didn't wear shoes, so Ginny assumed she was a member of a cult. Gwen quickly located a copy of A
Brief Look into Religions and Cults of the World.
The cover was layered in several years of dust, and we crowned Gwen with our bodies as we all tried to glimpse the pages at once. We saw photographs of bearded men in turbans, shrunken human heads attached to the end of stakes, drawings of women with multiple limbs growing out of their torsos like oblong spiders. Despite the fact that we'd found this book in the convent's library, we felt sacrilegious looking at it, especially during Advent. We didn't find anything else about the Ouroboros specifically, but we did see several pictures of serpents.

“Do all serpents represent evil?” Ginny nervously asked. She rubbed her palms; her invisible stigmata wounds flared up again. She had tucked her Lucky Talisman up her sleeve, and we could see it poking out like a little brown tongue.

We spotted an illustration of a snake dangling from the branch of a tree. Beneath the snake, a long-haired woman leaned her back against the trunk, her eyes closed, presumably sleeping, unaware of his forked tongue only inches away, or the fire emanating from his mouth. The caption read, “Idleness is the devil's playground.”

We gulped. It was at that very moment we collectively decided that Our Boys needed to be baptized—just in case—and we'd be the ones to do it. We'd once learned during Morning Instruction that the sacrament of baptism need not be administered by priests alone. Sister Fran taught us that the infant mortality rates of the earlier centuries allowed for midwives to baptize babies, just to ensure they'd make it to heaven in the case of illness or defects. To our surprise, church canon dictated that in the case of necessity
anyone
can baptize
anyone,
and if Our Boys didn't demonstrate the specialized case for necessity, The Guineveres didn't know what did. The next time we had the chance, we assured ourselves, we'd baptize Our Boys in water.