The Guineveres (32 page)

“But … but … but…,” she sobbed, wiping her nose on my shoulder as I held her. Black ash transferred to my blouse.

“He's in a better place,” I said.

“You don't know that,” she said, and she sobbed harder. “I'll never love anyone again.” Her tiny body shook, and I hugged her gently, afraid if I held her too tight I'd crush her fragile bones. “Never.”

“Everything happens for a reason,” one of us said, though at this point, I'm not sure any of us really believed it.

She stopped crying for a bit and sucked snot through her nose. She rocked herself forward and backward, then said quietly, “He was the only one I could talk to.” Her voice was empty, fragile like a teacup. “Even though I knew he wasn't really there.”

I agreed there were certain things we couldn't say to anyone else, not out loud. Certain things we couldn't even confess to each other, to The Guineveres, even though we promised not to keep secrets. Private things. Feelings we'd stuffed inside so long, pushed down so far, crumpled inside us like little wads of paper. We didn't know how to smooth them out. But I had to believe, I
did
believe—for my own sake, perhaps—that Ginny hadn't lost faith in Her Boy.

“He was there,” I said, stroking her wild hair. “He was there all along.”

We all felt Ginny's loss lodge itself in our stomachs till we felt sick, like we'd eaten too much of Sister Claire's plum pudding. What one Guinevere felt, we all felt; what one of us lost, we all lost.

“He suddenly made a turn for the worse,” Sister Fran told us when we saw her in the cafeteria. “Such a shame—and so young. But, on the bright side, he'll no longer suffer. God called him home. You never know the time or the place, girls. You know what I say about not waiting for a hearse.”

“Yes, we know,” we said.

“Can we do something for him, Sister? Something to memorialize him? The War Effort?” I asked. Ginny poked her sweet potato with a faraway look in her eyes. She'd lost the one thing that gave her hope; she'd lost her reason to believe.

“That might be a fine idea, girls. Perhaps a mass in his honor.”

“Not a mass,” I said. I was thinking of something else.

Later that afternoon, during what would've been Rec Time if not for Lent, Sister Fran gave us permission to visit the Sick Ward. The place felt different somehow, hazy and moody, but calm. The sun peeked through the windows, casting the room in an orange-red glow, as if the whole Ward were on fire. Maybe the whole world, too. Sister Connie showed us to the duffel of Ginny's Boy, though we already knew where it was. We retrieved a pair of his boots from it and handed the bag back to her. She nodded to dismiss us.

The boots were heavy, with thick, cleated rubber soles caked with mud. The tops were made of leather and canvas, and small brass eyelets lined the arches. Ginny carried them to the courtyard, one in each hand, balanced on the tips of her small fingers. The Guineveres followed behind her, a somber processional. We wore handkerchiefs tied over our hair like scarves for respect, but the wind attempted to tear them away. The day was cloudless but cold. Our skirts whipped around our legs. Our faces felt pricked by a hundred small needles. Ginny was on her knees, digging through the soil with her hands.

She carefully filled each boot, patting down the soil with her fist. Dirt streaked her cheekbones from where she occasionally stopped to wipe her tears. Or maybe it was just the wind hitting her eyes. Nobody spoke. Nobody had to say a word. Ginny filled the boot with a small packet of seeds Sister Fran had given us. The Guineveres helped her locate a spot, rearranging some of the Sisters' old shoes to make room. It wasn't spring yet, so no flowers had budded, but in a month or two, this whole row of planters would sprout to life, and Ginny's Boy would be among them.

That evening, we were all uneasy, wondering if Our Boys would be taken from us, too.
You never know the time or the place,
Sister Fran had told us.
He suddenly made a turn for the worse.
We were on edge, anxious and scared. Gwen coiled in her bed, Her Boy's ring on her finger. Win tried to give Ginny Her Boy's wooden horse, but she refused to accept it. The Bunk Room air tasted of urgency. Lights Out couldn't come quickly enough. We had to see them, had to hold their hands and tell them how much they meant to us, how we loved them, and how they gave our lives meaning. Nobody could love them better than us. Not more than us, either. If only we could convince them to stay.

Later that night, we made the quiet trek up to the third floor and then down to the Sick Ward in the dark. By now, we knew our way by heart; we didn't jump at the shadows or cling to one another so tightly.

Ginny came with us, too. She couldn't bear being alone. When we arrived, she made her way to Her Boy's bed, where we could hear her weeping in the dark. I knelt by My Boy, squeezed his hand, and tried to convey to him, through prayer, through telepathy, through sheer will that I was there, and he wouldn't have to be alone. I squeezed his hand harder as I prayed; it was large and bony, and I could feel small bumps where I knew some scars to be. As I prayed to God—or to whoever would listen—not to take My Boy from me, I felt his hand squeeze back, just lightly, but I felt it nonetheless. My heart quickened, and I rested my forehead on his palm, as if I were receiving a blessing.

Later, in the stairwell, Gwen reported to us that she crawled beneath the covers, pressed her body against Her Boy, then placed his bandaged hand up her shirt.

“You let him go up your shirt?” Win said, and I couldn't tell if her voice was full of disgust or delight.

“Yes! Yes!” Gwen was smiling so big, so toothily, that there was no mystery to her at all. She described the way she'd cupped his hand around her breast, squeezed a little bit so he knew what he was holding.

“Would you do that for Your Boys?” she asked. “For the War Effort?”

“I don't have anything for him to grab,” Win said. “Just these two mosquito bites.” And she smoothed down her nightgown over her chest to reveal her round breasts, the size of grapefruits.

“My dad used to paint pictures of naked ladies. They had these big breasts that almost looked like another set of eyes,” Ginny said quietly. “Sometimes I'd stare at them, thinking that's what I'd grow up to be when I got older. Now I don't know what I'll grow up to be.”

“Why do women want large chests?” Win asked. “I don't get it. They just get in the way,” she said, looking down at her own ample bosom. “I can barely see my feet!”

“Who cares about seeing your feet?” Gwen said. “It's not about your feet.”

“Well, you've got to walk, don't you?”

“You're awfully quiet,” Gwen said, now looking at me. “Would you let Your Boy go up your shirt? Because once he goes up, he must come…”

“Down!” Win said.

“And you know what happens when he touches your button, don't you?” Gwen said.

“It's not actually a button,” Win explained. “But I know what happens.”

“Pleasure. Exploding pleasure that makes you feel like you're on fire.”

“Not actually on fire,” Win said.

“An orgasm,” Gwen said. “It's why people have sex.”

“And for babies,” Win clarified. “Procreation. Populating humanity.”

“Don't you want to have an orgasm?” Gwen asked. She leaned backward against the wall and crossed her arms, waiting for my answer.

I stood there in my thin nightgown, exposed; my legs felt weak, as if my knees were made of water. “I don't know,” I said. In truth, I didn't. The thought of being naked around a boy made me wriggle with discomfort. I didn't understand the thrill, how someone could take off her clothes without embarrassment. And why would I want to feel like I was on fire? It sounded painful, quite frankly. “Modesty is attractive, too,” I said.

“Sister Fran is modest,” Win said. “But she's not attractive.”

“This is stupid,” Ginny said. “Who cares?”

“Freezer,” Gwen said, explaining that a freezer freezes up when it comes down to physical affection. A freezer doesn't know how to show love.

I thought about this as I lay in bed that night, staring at moonlight from between the window slats. I didn't want to be a freezer. I needed to be ready to show My Boy love. Beneath my covers, I touched my own body. I slipped my hand up my nightgown and ran it over the smooth, sloping skin of my breasts. I squeezed and pinched just to see what it would feel like. At first nothing happened, but then I imagined My Boy, and slowly my breasts changed shape. My nipples tingled and hardened, as if I were cold, and a surge of electricity whooshed through me,
down there.
I felt ashamed.

If God truly saw all, then He saw me doing that, there in the darkness beneath my covers. My body stiffened at the thought. I straightened my nightgown, and I felt the great weight of guilt bearing down on me until I fell asleep.

Confessions were taken the next week. Still no sign of Father James.

“I was immodest with a boy once, and I don't regret it. But he's gone now, and I think I love him and hate him all at once,” Ginny said to her old priest as The Guineveres lined up behind her.

“I tried to kiss a boy again. I mean, really kiss him,” Win confessed. “I didn't like it, and I'm not sure I ever will. Are you supposed to feel something more? Because I didn't feel anything at all, and it tasted awful.”

“I went to second base with a boy,” Gwen confessed to the priest. His pockmarked skin indicated he'd had acne in his youth. “Do you need me to explain?” she asked amidst the background of Sister Lucrecia's organ music. “Because I can.” She didn't blink, and neither did the priest, just faced off in a great battle of stone face.

“I'm a freezer,” I told the Father. When he asked what I meant, I said, “I need to love better.” The old man tilted his head. “And I…” I paused, thinking of that night in the Bunk Room when I'd allowed my hands to touch my own body, to know its curves in the dark just to see what it would feel like.

“Yes?” he said, his eyes watering, his jaw locked, restraining a yawn of boredom.

“Never mind.”

“God already knows.”

“I know. Never mind.”

A few days later, Sister Fran called an all-school meeting, the topic: The Flesh. Though Father James's flock of priests could not break the bonds of confessional confidentiality, it had leaked out that some of the girls had exhibited promiscuous behaviors likely to incur penalty in the afterlife.

“We cannot tolerate sins of the Flesh,” Sister Fran said, her cheeks sunken in and her skin grayed for want of meat and sleep. Maybe for want of flesh, too. “Your bodies are temples,” she said, leaning in and scanning all of the girls sitting, knees pressed, on the floor of the Rec Room. Everyone looked around, trying to spot the harlots among us. “I may not know who you are, but your maker does,” she said, as she pointed toward the ceiling, and the black fabric of her sleeve fell back to reveal a thin, pale arm. Her wrists looked like chicken bones. “And He's the one who matters.”

*   *   *

Holy Week: It was torturous. We were all required to observe the Sisters' vow of silence. In the cafeteria, the clinking of forks was unbearable. During Morning Instruction, Sister Fran wrote out directions on the board that we were to read select passages from
The Lives of the Saints
and write a five-paragraph essay about what these saints had in common. Saint Basilissa was beheaded for refusing to marry Pompeius, a Roman patrician. Saint Macrina the Younger died an untouched maiden after she refused all her suitors. Saint Cecilia married, but she convinced her husband to let her remain a virgin. I wrote an essay about the virtues of abstinence. Gwen wrote about holding out for the right man.

On Holy Thursday the sky was purple-green. Holy Thursday celebrated the Last Supper, and we, too, felt something stirring inside of us, as if a wait were coming to an end. We visited the Sick Ward that night. We waited until after Sister Tabitha came around for Checks. We wanted to wish Our Boys a happy Easter. Easter marked the resurrection of Jesus, how he rose from the dead. And even though The Guineveres found this creepy and kind of gruesome, like a ghoul or a zombie, it was a new beginning, and this notion felt romantic to us. Our Boys would help us start anew as well, provide us with our final Revival Story, and perhaps our truest one.

When we stepped into the Sick Ward, we each went to our separate beds. I crept up slowly behind My Boy, then placed my palm to his face. That's when it happened: He awoke. His eyes darted back and forth, confused, like a man looking for something he'd lost.

I didn't speak, didn't say anything. I couldn't. I removed my hand from his face and took a step back and tried to catch my breath.

“Are you an angel?” His voice was rough, strained. “Am I dead?” He blinked groggily, from sleep or from morphine, and then he grabbed my wrist.

The touch of his hand startled me, and I stepped back, nervous. Although I'd played out this scene in my head a thousand times—My Boy waking—I didn't know what to say to him. I looked down at the floor, at my feet, then reached for him, our fingers finding each other, intertwining like prayer hands.

“You're not dead,” I managed to stammer. “You're alive. You're right here with me. I've been taking care of you,” I said, touching him, aware of my clammy hands, my damp underarms. My limbs tingled; my mouth went dry. I tried to think what The Guineveres would say. My heart bounded around my chest like a clumsy wasp, looking for escape. I poured him a glass of water from his bedside table, then fed him small sips, though he resisted.

“You've been taking care of me?” he said, the water smoothing out his voice.

“Yes,” I said. My mouth felt so dry.