Counternarratives (18 page)

Krik krak, a week later at midday, as I sat in
the cellar workroom in the rear of the nunnery, making new blouses out of old
linens under the nominal supervision of Sr. François Agnès, who had slipped away
to make a toilette, I heard a hubbub emanating from the first floor. The summer
brazier that been pressed to the sky above the convent and town had yielded to
several days of light, intermittent rain, but the basement remained humid as a
cave, and I found myself intermittently reciting lines of Scripture, switching
from English to French to Spanish to Kreyòl to Latin to Greek to myself in order
not to fall asleep. Sr. François Agnès's Bible sat on the table beside me, open
to the Gospel of John. As I brought the needle to the sleeve, the warm, dense
air, which filled the air as if I had conjured it from my childhood, enfolded me
like a lullaby. . . .

When I awoke, having not missed a stitch, I could still
hear a din above, though now it was feet scurrying rather than voices. Sr.
François Agnès had not returned, nor had any other nuns or enslaved girls. I set
aside my needle and fabric and hurried out of the room to find out the source of
the commotion. Down the hallway, I saw Sr. François Agnès huddled with Sr.
Ambrose Jeanne in the doorway to the storeroom, their whispers caroming off the
walls. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and lips and slowly, step by step as if to
render myself invisible, approached them.

Sr. Ambrose Jeanne was telling Sr. François Agnès that
given the circumstances, the Mother Superior had no choice but to conduct an
inspection, it was a disgrace that such events should come to pass in a house
dedicated to the Lord, but under the circumstances there was no choice. Sr.
Ambrose Jeanne shook her head violently; it was simply impossible that any of
the nuns, let alone the girls, had been involved in such abominations. Sr.
François Agnès agreed, pausing to look in my direction, her gaze arrowing past
me towards the far wall, but added that the Mother Superior had no other
option—the sheriff, Reverend White, had given her an ultimatum, and if she was
unwilling to examine the girls, he would bring a party similar to the one that
had just accompanied him, firearms in hand and deputized by the Commonwealth of
Kentucky, to the convent's front steps, either do his work on the premises or
take the nuns and girls by force to the town.

At these words both sisters embraced each other tightly,
and Sr. François Agnès held Sr. Ambrose Jeanne as the latter sobbed her
astonishment away. The examinations were to occur early that evening instead of
supper, and as it was to be, so be it. Then they knelt on the warm stones and
prayed, and after two rosaries, both nuns headed quickly down the catacomb-like
hallway to the stairwell. After a pause of my own and still unsure of what was
going on, I followed. When I was almost at the stairwell, I could hear other
voices rounding the corner. It was two of the schoolgirls: Josephine O'Grady
from Georgia, and another girl who was not Eugénie. I leaned back against the
limed wall and crouched to listen.

The girls' voices trembled with shock as well. Josephine,
her English thick as a magnolia petal, asked the other girl who on God's earth
could have possibly done such a thing? She ticked off the list of nuns, not a
single one had been with child, of that both were sure. They saw them daily at
breakfast, at supper, at dinner, in class, in chapel, not one was with child.
How could anyone have assumed such a thing? And then there were the schoolgirls
themselves, only five now in summer residence, Josephine and Mary Margaret, both
speaking to each other now, who were each sure that the other was as virginal as
their other classmates, Catherine, Dorothy Angelica, and even the sickly, greedy
Eugénie—none of them could possibly have been with child either, it was as clear
as the reflection on the chapel patin. Sr. Germain Ruth, who ran the infirmary,
would attest to that. And it had not come from any of the slaves, Josephine
assured Mary Margaret, because, as they'd seen with their own eyes when the
sheriff had thrust the tiny corpse into the Mother Superior's hands, Mary
Margaret gasping at the very memory, its tiny fists seizing at the air, its
mud-caked face petrified in a shriek, its icy blue eyes staring out fishlike as
if glimpsing the netherworld for the first time, its azure placenta eeling out
of its swaddling, and most horribly, the calligraphy of marks and hatches, as if
a demonic stylus had been drawn across its forehead and chest, it had been as
clear to everyone assembled, all the nuns, all the schoolgirls, all the slaves,
and the sheriff and his party of a dozen, that although the withered infant body
had been found bundled in what appeared to be a slave girl's shift, it was not a
product, as he had clearly noted, Josephine's voice breaking, “of that infernal
race.”

The stench, Josephine continued, she could not ever
forget, even less than that horrific image. And its unheard cry was still
ringing in her ears. But, she told Mary Margaret, shortly after the sheriff and
his party had descended the hill, aggrieved and barely satisfied, and everybody
had been sent to their rooms or stations until another order was to be given
about what would occur next, she had spied the Mother Superior and several of
the other nuns, including Sr. Germain Ruth and the disciplinarian, Sr. Charles
Thérèse, in the parlor looking at the small, bloated body, which they had placed
on a table, and she had heard them saying that it did not appear to have been
mutilated or used for some diabolic ritual, as the sheriff and most in his party
had alleged, but rather as if it had simply been expelled from its birthing
place too early, and been buried in that shallow grave just on the other side of
the creek, at the rim of one of the many tiny sloughs the flood had created—a
tiny blue waxen doll, not murdered by some mortal hand, despite its pose and cry
and open eyes, because it was already deceased, though in the sheriff's
conclusion, the two amounted to the same thing.

Given that there was no priest in residence, Josephine
added, as Fr. Malesvaux had departed by coach for Saint Louis only a week before
and no other priests were scheduled for several more weeks, she thought it only
proper that the nuns bury the child themselves, praying for its soul and
returning it back to the earth, on the convent's grounds. The entire incident
was even more terrible, she added, than the flood and its aftermath, and the
unspeakably bitter winter, and then the heat which now seemed to emanate from
the gates of Hell itself, and the problems with her second slave girl, Phèdre—at
whose name I moved away from the wall, nearer the speakers, neither of whom
appeared to notice me—once so gentle and passive, who had gotten airs and become
defiant and begun behaving as if she were in a bilious humor, even engaging in
strange rituals, such as drawing crosses on the floor and talking in riddles and
murmuring almost as though in a trance, so much so that she and the nuns had
had, as Mary Margaret already knew, to remand the girl back to Savannah and
request that her parents send her another in her stead. As Mary Margaret also
knew, the new girl had not arrived and, this was news, as soon as Mlle.
Josephine returned to her room she was going to write her parents a letter
entreating them to remove her from the school as quickly as possible, she was
not sure she could last another term.

Mary Margaret assented: she did not want to stay any
longer either, though both would have to endure the inspection that evening, and
then wait till as long as the post would take to travel to their respective
homes before they could return, since the nuns would not send them on their way
otherwise. I then heard both girls scramble up the stairs, and when there was
nothing but the general sound of movement, I ascended the stairs myself on my
way to the bedroom.

At the landing, I saw two of the bondswomen who, during
my entire stay at the convent, had mostly kept their distances from me, though
today, as in recent weeks, they did not bolt but unexpectedly lingered, as if
they were gliding into my orbit. Though they still pretended not to want to sit
beside me during our brief meals, today, as when we were in the same room
undertaking our various tasks, they were drawing closer, closer still, until we
sat or stood only fingers apart. We did not exchange a single word, but these
two, who had been given the ridiculous names Daisy and Avondale, I had chosen to
rename respectively Diejuste, because of her usual genial manner, and Ayidda,
because twice while working in the gardens in her presence I had seen garter
snakes. Each gave me the hint of a smile, as if I had shared with them some
secret that offered a clue to the brouhaha now unfolding, and though I had not,
I returned the slightest smile to each of them.

In the bedroom I found Eugénie slowly taking inventory of
her personal effects, strewn across her blanket like a market stall. She moved
as if performing a masque. I tried to get her attention and pinched her gently
on the arm, but Eugénie pushed me away. She went to the door and, using a loose
corner floorstone, wedged it shut. As soon as she'd done this, she crawled down
under her bed and extracted a small bundle from the corner behind the portion of
headboard nearest the wall. The stinking, reddish-brown mass of fabric made me
retch, but I knew what she wanted me to do, so as soon as she handed it to me, I
slid it under my own cot.

The white girl, still not uttering a word, approached me
and, seizing both of my hands, plunged them in one dead swoop between her
thighs. I drew them back, but the white girl grabbed ahold of them and again
buried them between her thighs, clamping down so they were vised in there, a
rosary bundled between the flesh scraping my knuckles. As she did so she mumbled
several prayers, though I could not make out what they were. For a while we
struggled as an onrushing current surged through my fingertips, my fingers, my
hands, my arms, until I was finally able to break free. I settled on the end of
my cot farthest away from Eugénie, and looked away.

She appeared satisfied by my actions, and resumed
cataloguing the clothes before her. When she had finished, she carefully folded
each of them up and stacked them into neat little piles. Then she turned to me
and pointed to them, which meant that I was to pack them away in her trunk. She
stepped back to watch me work. I carefully placed each of the garments in the
trunk, counting as I did so. I tallied combs, wool stockings, bodices, bonnets.
There was one petticoat and one pair of small clothes missing: these, I guessed,
were the dried carbuncle I had stored beneath my own cot. When I was done,
Eugénie gestured for me to open my own sack of garments. I did so. She ordered
me to pull everything out.

On my cot lay a long, threadbare linsy-woolsy shift,
spangled with patches, that I alternated with the slightly newer one I now wore.
There was my other linen head scarf, a faded rose castoff gift from her aunt,
Mrs. Francis. There were my mismatched pair of repeatedly darned woolen socks,
which I had not worn since the winter. Finally from the bottom of my sack I
extracted my several tattered petticoats, which had belonged to Mme. de L'Écart,
my own small clothes, and my woman's garments, all of which, though gray from
reuse and repeated washing I kept meticulously clean. Where was my other shift,
the gray wool one I, like all the other slave girls, wore during the winter? I
was sure she had not removed it from the sack in months.

The white girl pointed to one of the petticoats and one
of the pairs of undergarments, and indicated that they be placed in her trunk.
When I hesitated, her blue eyes smacked me so hard it was as if I had been
struck by an open palm. I folded a petticoat and the small clothes, and layered
them atop her pile. I sat back down on my cot without permission and replaced my
small menagerie in its storeplace. Then we stared at each other, in silence,
until Sr. Ambrose Jeanne appeared at the door to fetch Eugénie for her
inspection.

As soon as the door closed I tidied up the room, then
returned to my cot. I considering saying my rosary but did not.

Excerpts from a report by Sr. Germain Ruth on the
Inspection of the Pupils

On the 25th day of August, 1806, in the convent of the Holy
Order of the Most Precious Charity of Our Lady of the Sorrows, in Gethsemane,
Kentucky, under the supreme guidance and counsel of the Heavenly Father and our
patron, Most Blessed Virgin Mother, Mediatrix of Grace, and in the presence of
our Reverend Mother Superior, Sister Louis Marie K., as well as our Associate
Superior, Sr. Alphonse Isabelle D., I have, in accordance with the teachings of
our faith, the wishes of our reverend leader, and the rules of our order,
prepared the following report on the requested examination of the pupils
enrolled in the convent's school concerning the matter that is the case. This
activity, extraordinary in light of the habitual occurrences of this house, was
conducted to ascertain the possibility of a particular and unspeakable
trangression by any of those entrusted to our care and formation. The particular
case encompassing, in short, the tragic series of events that unfolded one week
prior just across the estuary separating the convent's grounds from those of the
town.