Black Apple (16 page)

“Rose Marie will take you up to your room, Sister Lucy,” Mother Grace shouted. “You need to rest.”

Rose Marie took her arm, and they climbed to the second floor, Sister Lucy moving at an alarmingly slow pace.

“Are you okay, Sister?”

Abruptly, Sister Lucy stuck a crooked index finger in her face and shook it. “You are one shameful girl, Sister Mary of Bethany. It’s disgraceful, the way you prance around here. I have eyes, you know. I can see what’s going on with you, with you and, and that so-called—” She waved at the floor below.

For no reason at all, Rose Marie was stung with guilt. Who was this Sister Mary? She opened her mouth, but she was stopped by Sister Lucy’s expression of outrage. She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  *  *  *  

After Mass on Sunday, Rose Marie spotted Papa going to Mother Grace’s office rather than the visiting room.

She waited for him in the hall. “What is it, Papa?” she asked him as soon as he emerged.

Facing her, he cupped her shoulders in his hands. “I have to go back up north.”

“No, Papa. Just one more Sunday.”

“I can’t wait any longer. Joseph has to start school. Day school.” A pleased expression glanced over his face. “He will come home on a bus every day.”

“Fine!” She sounded just like Sister Joan. “You’re leaving me after only—what?—six or seven visits? So you can see him every single day, all year round. That’s just fine.”

Sister Lucy limped in and sat on the other side of the visiting room. As if they needed a guard. As if this were a prison, a goddamned prison—and it was. It most definitely was!

Rose Marie stamped her feet, trying to stop the heat darting up her calves.

“Sit down, my girl.”

“I’m not your girl!”

Sister Lucy squinted at her. How could the old bat hear only when she didn’t want her to?

“You don’t even love me,” she flung at Papa. She was about to run, but he caught her arm.

“I talked to that Mother Grace again,” he said. “She won’t let you come with me.” His hand gripped her arm more tightly as she tried to shake him off. “Stay still, Sinopaki. That Mother Grace got another letter from Indian Affairs.
Kiikaa!
I seen it myself. Just now, she shoved it in front—”

Papa started to cough, and she broke free. Down the hall to the kitchen she ran, Papa coughing and waving his arm at her. She banged through the back screen door into the blinding afternoon.

Papa had Joseph. Why would he want her? No one cared. She raced past the garden, past the shed, down the path to the barn, where no one would look. She hated them, hated the school and all the nuns! She hated Papa and Joseph.

The stink of chickens. Oh, at her feet, a flock of headless birds! Pulpy-necked, their feathers slick with blood, they staggered around her. A scream hatched in her throat. Headless chickens lurched and stumbled, smearing her with their blood and feathers and stink. Just as the scream flew through her mouth, the birds faded, disappearing in their own deaths.

She ran faster, past the wire-mesh fence and into the barnyard. No one but Brother Abe was supposed to go near the barn. The chickens wouldn’t lay if they got scared, he always said. She didn’t care, not even if it was true that any little noise made them start pecking one another. She didn’t care if they all moved in for the kill at the first sight of blood. She didn’t care, she didn’t care, she didn’t care!

As she raced around the barn, she could hear the chickens start up, the pound of her feet driving them into a loud squawk. In her mind, she saw Papa and Joseph having supper together in Aunt Katie’s kitchen. The squawking and flapping in the barn grew frantic, her breath coming hard. She would run them all away—the birds, the sisters, Papa, Joseph, and Aunt Katie—beat them into the ground with her beating feet.

She ran until her eyes blurred and her breath caught on fence wire. Gasping, choking, she stumbled through a chaos of flaps, pecks, and
blue
; through straw, dirt, and chickenshit. She fell against a fence post.

Up, way up, at the very top of the barn, a flicker of movement caught her eye. There, near the overhang of the roof, at that small door, was a thick man’s shape. Then a hand outstretched, pushing.

The black shape plummeted against the blue sky, the flaring afternoon sun.
You bitch!

Oh God,
she
was flying, falling, cursing! She smacked the earth with a bone-crushing thud. Pain ripped out her breath and drove through her head, her chest, her splintered ribs.

Forgive me.
A guttural voice bubbled in her throat, words grinding in her jaws like broken teeth. A man’s voice:
For I have sinned. In te, Domine, speravi, non confundar in aeternum.
A priest’s language. A cold wave of fear surged from her belly.
Forgive me, oh my God.
She/he was dying.

Her body was a bag of sand and splinters. Everything else had seeped away. She opened her eyes, unsure of where or who she was, what had happened.

In the barnyard, yes. Hurting, retching, she crawled. Like tape pulled from a window, the priest’s broken body separated from hers. She crumpled against the garden shed and sucked in barbed air. She’d stay here until death had folded itself back—years, lives away—from that terrible time.

  *  *  *  

“I don’t know where Sister Cilla got to,” Sister Bernadette huffed as Rose Marie dried the supper dishes. “You’ll have to put them away tonight, dear.”

“Sister Bernadette, I was just wondering,” she began. She bit her lip to stop her voice from trembling.

“Yes?”

“Who is Sister Mary of Bethany?”

Sister Bernadette’s hands shot out of the dishwater, one falling to her breast. “Where did you hear that name?”

“Sister Lucy called me that.”

“Well, she shouldn’t have!” Sister Bernadette slipped her hands back in the water, her brow furrowed.

“Is she the sister who died?” It was just a guess, but she had to know.

“A terrible tragedy.” Sister Bernadette sighed. “How did you hear about it?”

“Mother Grace.” She crossed her fingers behind her back. At least she wouldn’t have to invent anything to confess to Father William that week.

Sister nodded. “We never found out why exactly, what claimed her. Father Alphonses brought old Doc McDougall from Hilltop—that was the year before he retired—but there were no visible signs. And not a month after that
other
death.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “No one wanted a fuss made. Dr. McDougall put it down as a heart attack, young as Sister Mary was.” She rubbed a forearm over her brow and sighed. “It may very well have been a heart attack, for all any of us knows.”

“Sister Mary of Bethany slept in my room, right?”

“Yes. Why? You haven’t seen—”

“No,” she said quickly. The lies were slipping from her mouth as easily as prayers.

“It’s just that there were some silly stories afterwards, that’s all.”

“But did she—Sister Mary of Bethany—stay in the dormitory sometimes?” She had seen her there countless times.

“Yes.” Sister Bernadette grabbed a clump of steel wool and started scouring a pot. “Sister Mary was not always dutiful, and she was required to do penance in the dormitory one summer once the students left. She was, well . . . she liked to flirt. You know, with the volunteer painters from the community, farmers bringing food, anyone. Harmless enough, but not suitable for a servant of God. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but Mother Grace said that if she wasn’t acting as a sister should, then she couldn’t sleep on the sisters’ floor.”

“The other death, Sister—”

“I’m not saying another word!” She rinsed the pot under a torrent of water and banged it into the dish rack.

“Was it a man, a pr—”

“Enough, Rose Marie!” Sister Bernadette scuttled over to the stove.

“Please, Sister.” Oh, she had a million questions, but Sister Bernadette’s unyielding back told her their conversation was over.

T
HE BUSES WERE
scheduled to come back to St. Mark’s on Monday, the fourth of September. Classes were to start the following day.

Right after breakfast, Rose Marie helped Sister Cilla carry the ladder from the tool shed up to the dormitory. They set it under the first window, and Sister Cilla, climbing to the top, instructed Rose Marie to sit on the second rung from the bottom. “For stability, dear.”

Rose Marie was anxious for Taki to arrive. Already bored with helping Sister Cilla, she slouched, resting her chin in her hands.

“Dear, oh law,” Sister Cilla panted from above as the ladder quivered. “This one’s stuck.”

Rose Marie got up and turned sluggishly around, kneeling on the bottom rung and placing a hand on either side of the ladder. She found herself staring up Sister Cilla’s long stockinged legs, oh, and white drawers! Quickly, her face burning, she looked down at the floor she had spent most of the previous day washing and waxing. This summer she was seeing all sorts of stuff she wasn’t supposed to see and didn’t even want to! She closed her eyes, braced her feet, and held tightly to the ladder rattling under Sister Cilla’s tugs and jerks.

As Sister Cilla descended, they both heard the popping slide of wheels coming to a stop on gravel and the huff of a bus door opening. They ran to the one low window in the dormitory, shuttered and locked during the school year “to keep busybodies in their beds,” Sister Margaret claimed. Sister Cilla kept it open all summer just as she did the high windows. Now she and Rose Marie stared down at the first group of girls spilling into the schoolyard.

“There’s Rachel Useful,” Sister Cilla pointed out. “Dear, oh law, look at those little first-years. One, two, three; looks like four from that bus alone. And there’s Judith Shot One Side looking more . . . mature than ever.”

“Yeah.” Rose Marie, surveying the outline of Judith’s large, high breasts and long legs, had to agree. “She looks like a grown-up.”

But it wasn’t Taki’s bus, and Judith’s figure couldn’t hold her attention for long. She went back to the ladder and waited for Sister Cilla to take hold of the other side. Together they carried it to the next window.

A window later, they heard the second bus arrive and scurried back to the low window. Looking down on the girls, Rose Marie quickly established that this wasn’t Taki’s bus either, but Sister Cilla wouldn’t budge.

“Becky Old Bear isn’t on that bus,” Sister Cilla said. “Ager Many Guns wasn’t on the first one. What will the older girls do if they don’t come back to school, Rose Marie?”

“Stay on the Reserve, most of them, I guess, Sister.” She really wasn’t sure. She hadn’t been to the Reserve for years. But she had heard the senior girls chatter about their plans, and often the intermediates and juniors had gossip to share. “Some might go work in the city,” she added.

She dimly recalled her grown-up boy cousins Elias and Charles, who had left for jobs in the mines just before she was taken away to school. Soon afterwards, Auntie Constance had followed them. She hadn’t thought of those relatives in years. Was Auntie Connie still in Coulee? Had the boys married?

“Some might get married,” she added.

“That’s what I’m afraid of! They’re far too young for that kind of responsibility. It’s a very big decision for a young woman to make. For any woman. She has to know what she truly wants and what kind of man her husband-to-be is.” Sister reached down and placed long, warm hands on her shoulders. “Promise me you won’t do that, Rose Marie. Leave the school at fifteen or sixteen. Promise me now.”

“No, I won’t.”

Sister smiled. “You seem very sure of yourself.”

“I am. It’s because I have nowhere to go. I’m stuck here.” Her words surprised her, but yes, that was it.

Sister Cilla gave an abrupt laugh. “It’s all right. I’m stuck here too.” She paused. “You make your bed, you lie in it.”

Moving slowly, they set the ladder beneath the last window. The sky had turned dull and gloom seeped into their limbs. Rose Marie was heavy with it, and she could tell that Sister Cilla was as well.

“When they were done, they went downstairs to help out with the students, but Rose Marie couldn’t seem to shake the
blue
that had come over her, and she plodded back and forth with piles of nightdresses, towels, and face cloths, ignoring the sisters’ orders to “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” She filled and dumped basins, threw piles of severed braids into the garbage can, and guided snivelling first-year girls in and out of the bathroom, but she was doing it, Sister Joan complained, in an “irritatingly unhurried fashion!”

“Slow as molasses in January,” Sister Margaret agreed.

She heard girls’ voices coming from the front hallway. Within seconds, she was at the front doors under Our Lord Jesus Christ, hugging Anataki.

“The bus kept breaking down,” Taki explained, squeezing her.

Taki’s hands were cold, but her eyes held the light that sometimes seemed to fill her to the brim.

“Hey, you’re taller,” Rose Marie gushed, noticing how her friend had changed over the summer. “You’re so tanned, and your hair’s sun-streaked.” As they hugged, she could feel Taki’s body—substantial, with no poking bones, and, jeez, her boobs seemed to have sprouted as well.

“I sure missed—”

A whack across the back of her head.

She spun around to find Sister Joan standing over her, lips pursed. “Stop that!”

Hugging was forbidden, as far as Sister Joan was concerned. But Rose Marie couldn’t care less what Sister Joan said or did. “The old rhymes-with-witch,” she whispered to Taki, and the two of them giggled into their hands.

At supper she announced, “This year’ll be better,” to Anataki, Maria, Susanna, and Martha, all sitting at her end of the table. “Sister Cilla’s in charge of the dorm now. We won’t have to worry about old Sister Margaret coming up after lights-out, swinging her stick.”

She and Taki stayed up late that night. Like several of the other intermediate and senior girls, they comforted the sobbing first-years long after lights-out, stroking their newly cut hair and reassuring them. “Everything will be fine in the morning. Don’t worry, your mama and papa will come visit before you know it.”