The Guineveres (42 page)

The Sisters scurried about in their pink skirts, creased, no doubt, from being folded and stored since last summer. Sister Tabitha ran the turtle races again—Turtle Downs—and she stuttered out their names through the bullhorn as the creatures ambled dispassionately toward the ends of their lanes. Not much had changed in this year, yet everything had.

Gwen and I worked the concession booth, filling paper bags with popcorn and cotton candy. The booth was constructed of wood with only a small window for ventilation, a little hotbox. Gwen had pulled her hair up, but a few tendrils fell down the back of her slender neck, clinging with dampness. Sister Monica manned the register, and as she stood with her broad back to us, we noticed sweat had rendered her shirt see-through. She wore a thick-strapped beige-colored bra. It surprised us anytime we were reminded of the Sisters' actual bodies—of their having breasts or other attributes of womanhood—because they seemed so androgynous beneath their habits. Our own bras were beige, too, starchy and uncomfortable at the elastic that dug into our backs or beneath our young breasts. I hooked my bra strap with my thumb, eyed Sister Monica, and mouthed “Look” to Gwen. She laughed beneath her breath, which sounded like a hiccup, and then went back to filling boxes with popcorn, her pale lips holding little amusement.

Around midday some girls our age visited the booth, standing in front of the sign that listed prices. We recognized them from church. They wore patterned sundresses and open-toed shoes that strapped around the ankle and revealed red-painted nails. Gwen and I stared at them, wondering what it was like to be on the outside, looking in, looking at us. We suddenly became aware of our wool skirts that itched our thighs, slippery and fragrant with sweat. I looked at Gwen, who'd closed her eyes, and I thought about Ginny, about Win, about what they'd do at this moment. Ginny would have sucked in her cheeks, made Holy Constipation faces, and Win would have snarled her lip until the girls moved away. But they weren't here—only us—and Gwen sluggishly opened her eyes and pretended not to see them. Their skin glowed in the heat; moisture dampened their upper lips, and when they waved paper fans in front of their faces, the smell of perfume wafted toward us. Their voices projected, clear and excited, unrestrained by sideways glances that told them to speak in quiet tones.

“Now what should we get?” one of them said, sighing as though oppressed by the decision. Her hair was pulled back with a red bow, which she twirled around her finger as she thought about it.

“I can't decide,” said another.

“Have one of each,” Red Bow said, and she paused, drumming her chubby fingers on her gloss-tinged lips.

I wondered what it was like to live in a world with the freedom to choose. Did you somehow lose yourself, or your focus, when decisions pulled your mind in so many directions? Was it confusing, burdensome, somehow? Father James said that happiness is largely a matter of where you place your attention, and with the oppression of options, where does one place it? I'm not sure I knew at that moment, and I still wonder from time to time, even now, as an adult, if the removal of choice is not a sort of gift, one allowing for supreme focus. In this way, I've come to understand the asceticism of the Sisters, if only obliquely.

“I'll have some cotton candy,” Red Bow said. “Blue, not pink.”

Gwen handed me the cotton candy, and Sister Monica counted change, dropping it into my hands with her fat fingers. I returned it to the girl, hot with embarrassment, especially when she said “Thank you” in a tone that conveyed she felt sorry for me.

We saw these same girls beneath the shade tent later after Gwen and I finished with our shift. We sat on opposite sides of a table sharing a funnel cake, each pinching at the corners with small nibbles. Gwen's fingernails were chewed to the nubs, unusual for her, jagged and rough, a punishable offense, were Sister Fran to notice. Gwen pushed the rest of the plate toward me, yawned, and, crossing her arms on the table, rested her head on them, her hair gathering like a bird's nest.

“I wonder what they do all day?” we heard one of those girls ask, the one with the red bow again. I wanted to tell her we weren't deaf, not like Saint Mark or Saint Ren
é
. Gwen raised her head off the table and sat back in her chair, combing her hair with her fingers, her small nose raised just enough in the air to prove that she still had her dignity.

“Are they training to be nuns?” another girl asked.

“I don't think so,” said the third. She was the largest, and her dress hugged her hips and her stomach, shaped like a barrel across her torso. “I think their parents just didn't want them anymore.”

“Wonder what they did to deserve that?” Red Bow said, biting into a piece of licorice. The corners of her mouth were tinged blue from the cotton candy she had eaten.

Gwen and I pretended we didn't hear. Instead, we watched as Father James slumped over like an old man in his trunks and T-shirt atop the dunking booth. His wet shirt clung irreverently to his nipples, and his rosy face gave him away. “Dear Lord, have mercy,” Father James kept yelling, but most of the parishioners didn't have much aim.

“Want to go see Our Boys?” I asked. They were never far from my mind. I fanned myself with our now empty funnel-cake plate.

“Nah,” Gwen said. She looked into the distance, past the church perched on the hill above us, past the billowy clouds that filled the sky like powder puffs in a glass jar. She seemed to look right up to the heavens, to where you got to live if you were holy and good and dead. If you were a saint. Later, Gwen and I watched the annual parade make its way toward the church. We moved to the lawn, made a blanket of grass, and surveyed the floats as Sister Tabitha hollered out their names on the bullhorn. Fewer floats marched in the parade this year than last, since the Sisters scrutinized all entries more thoroughly, making sure none of them could hide human contraband. As a result, the floats were smaller, nonspecific, and unimpressive: a cross, a star, a garland, some praying hands, and a few formless saints who looked especially short. The Sisters trudged up the hill toward the church, the floats trailing behind them like low-flying kites. One by one, they crested the hill, then disappeared into the shade of the courtyard, beyond our sight.

“Think anyone's inside one?” I asked.

“I hope so,” Gwen said. “I hope it's Lottie.”

I was on my back in the grass, and when I laughed it felt like the whole sky was shaking.

We talked about our failed attempt last year, how hot it was inside that float, how Sister Monica looked from behind as she tugged us all the way to the courtyard of the church. We laughed as we thought about Sister Fran—how she looked like an angry vulture when she found us hidden inside. Her eyes bulged out of her face and her lips contorted into her Holy Constipation look.

“How do you think she knew we were inside?” I asked.

“Probably because the float was so heavy,” Gwen said. “Or maybe because we weren't at the parade.” She was sitting on the grass, picking blades, then peeling back the fibers.

“Maybe she's omniscient,” I said. “Maybe it came to her like a vision. That can happen, you know. Visions.”

“I don't know. It doesn't matter anyhow,” she said.

“Maybe not,” I said. Then I offered, “It's probably lucky we were caught.”

“Lucky?” She scoffed. “You think
we're
lucky?”

“We'd have never met Our Boys,” I said. “We'd never get the chance to go home with them.” Gwen flicked the blade she was peeling, then lay back in the grass and watched the clouds that formed vague animal shapes above us. She closed her eyes, and I thought she'd fallen asleep, until I heard her voice above the din of the parade.

“Yes, Our Boys,” she said, her eyes still closed.

*   *   *

The next day: the Feast of the Assumption, a holy day of obligation. We ate a breakfast of buckwheat and toast, then attended mass in the chapel. Gwen didn't sit by me. A few rows up, she knelt, bent over the pew in front of her as though impaled by it. Her prayer hands were propping up her forehead, and she looked like she was praying, really praying, not just sitting there thinking about something else, like most of us did. Her eyes were shut, and she breathed heavily, and she looked so pretty, like a picture you might find on a prayer card. Only people like Gwen don't wind up on prayer cards.

Yet I wish I could hold that vision of Gwen in my mind: Gwen with fluttering lids, so innocent, so fervent in her prayer, so hurt, so alone, so beautiful because of this. They say everything happens for a reason, but I don't believe it now. I don't know if I ever did. Sometimes things happen that we don't understand, that we'll never understand. Sometimes the people we love invite suffering into our world for no cause at all. But I didn't know that back then, as I admired Gwen from a distance. What I knew—what I believed—was this: Gwen, at that moment, was my friend.

Gwen's secret unraveled later that day. I wasn't the first to know, but I wasn't the last. Some may have suspected all along, I'm sure, but we never spoke publicly of such things as times of the month at the convent. The Sisters left belts and cloths in the sanitary closet, and when necessary, we removed them discreetly. Nobody kept tabs. Why would we think to? We all bore that monthly shame.

Except, now, Gwen.

Her wool skirt no longer fit, so she really couldn't hide her growing stomach much longer. Her shirt filled out, gaping at the widest point. Lottie Barzetti had seen her dressing for breakfast, attempting to shimmy her uniform around her widening hips. Lottie noticed Gwen's rounded belly, and she ratted to Sister Fran, who pulled Gwen by her collar from the table in the cafeteria. Her gray oatmeal steamed dolefully on her abandoned tray, her spongy fruit half eaten. The cafeteria grew hushed with whispers. I was alone. I felt like Mary Magdalene, only the stones were glances, and the other girls were happy to throw them in my direction. They assumed I was guilty, too, somehow. Complicit.

After breakfast, Sister Tabitha came for me. We walked in silence down the checkered corridor, past alabaster busts of holy saints, past the bronze Stations of the Cross plaques, down the cool, shadowed hallway to Sister Fran's office. The door stood ajar, and I could see Sister Fran holding Gwen by the wrists as she tried to squirm away. Her hair was tangled, and she looked like an unbridled horse. Gwen kept trying to wrangle herself free, but Sister Fran was stronger than she was.

“The Holy Spirit gave it to me,” Gwen said, all spitfire and sarcasm. “Just like the Virgin Mary. It can happen.”

“You shall not speak sacrilege in this house, ungrateful girl,” Sister Fran said, a layer of rage revealed in her voice, years in the making. She swung her arm back and slapped Gwen across her cheek.

Gwen stood there stunned, her long, thin legs bent slightly at the knees as though she were bracing herself for a fall. Her eyes became quarters, round and shiny—wet, but no tears fell. A slap-shaped red mark streaked across her face. Sister Fran wound back to hit Gwen again but stopped herself, softened, and inhaled audibly.

“You must tell me,” she said. “You must tell me, girl. God knows already, and soon I shall, too.” Her brow furrowed and her eyes sank. For the first time, I noticed how old Sister Fran was—as old as some of the old folks in the Sick Ward—and I felt sorry for her. Her nose crinkled as though she smelled something foul. “Was it Father James? One of the others? Which one?”

“No” was all Gwen managed to stammer; her narrow shoulders crunched forward, and she covered her head with her hands.

“I told him girls should not be altar servers. There are reasons for these rules,” Sister Fran grumbled beneath her breath, as if she were chanting a prayer, perhaps to Saint Regis, the patron saint of wayward women. “Father James, laying hands on our innocent lambs…,” she said, disgusted. Her upper lip twitched. She looked behind me toward Sister Tabitha. “I knew he had problems, but
this
?”

Sister Tabitha made wordless sounds like the low whining of heat pipes in winter. “S-s-s-sinful,” she said.

“Go get him,” Sister Fran said to Sister Tabitha. “Now.”

Sister Tabitha stood there for a moment, her mouth agape. She fiddled with the cross pendant that hung around her neck.

“Now!” Sister Fran said again, then turned and slapped Gwen across her cheek, this time lightly and for show. Sister Fran looked like a rabid raccoon in her black-and-white dress, with her lips snarled and thin, her eyes beady and dim. “You will go to chapel, and you will pray until you tell me,” she said.

Sister Tabitha turned quickly and left the room, and Gwen stood erect, wiping the tears from her face; her eyes shimmered, so pretty, so magnified, they seemed unreal. “You can't church it out of me,” Gwen said, and at this Sister Fran struck her harder than she had yet.

Then Sister Fran swiveled. “You will tell me,” she said. Her long, crooked finger extended toward me.

As though propelled by some unseen force, I stumbled forward on wobbly legs. Sister Fran grabbed my forearm and yanked me around next to Gwen. I stood so close I could feel her warm skin against mine, her rapid, audible breath. I reached for her hand and squeezed it. I wanted her to know she wasn't alone.

“Was it Father James?” Sister Fran asked me.

“I don't know, Sister,” I said. And I didn't. Not quite yet. I still had faith; it was only just beginning to unwind.

“This will be a
bastard
child,” Sister Fran said to nobody in particular. She shook her head and walked in impatient circles.

“Yes, Sister,” I said in response.

“Did he … did he touch you?” she asked me.

I looked at her blankly, wrung my hands. My mind raced, and I tried to catch up with my thoughts, tried to scan every memory of Father James in the rectory, or in the vestry, or at the back of the church.