The Guineveres (3 page)

When it was time, we walked through the festival, now buzzing with people, with women in sundresses and strappy sandals, with small kids who held balloons that floated like the Holy Ghost above their heads. At the high striker, Regina, one of the newest girls, swung the rubber mallet. She went by Reggie, and despite her thick frame and legs set a shoulder's width apart, the puck didn't rise even halfway to the bell. After each attempt, she'd tuck the mallet between her legs, and she'd wipe her sausage hands on her uniform skirt. Next to Reggie, cheering with strained facial expressions, stood her sidekick, Noreen, mute as always. She had a green apron tied around her waist, and she was supposed to be selling raffle tickets, but considering The Guineveres had never heard her speak, we didn't know how this would be possible. Some of the older girls—the ones who were almost eighteen—had spread out in front of the bandstand, kicking off their shoes and leaning back on their elbows. A few of them had only a matter of weeks before their birthdays, and then they'd be sent away, off into the world, forever free. We envied them their ages.

“Any cute boys?” Gwen asked as she scanned the crowd. Her lips were still stained pink from the cotton candy we'd eaten earlier when we worked the concessions booth. She had pressed strands of fluff to her mouth and let it melt there.

“None that I see,” Win said.

“Maybe they're turning them away at the gate,” Ginny said.

“Lead us not into temptation,” I added.

Oblivious to all but our own purpose, The Guineveres walked through the crowd transfixed, like Moses must have felt when he parted the Red Sea, leading his people to the Promised Land.

The convent itself towered behind the festival tents. Its gray stone had grown lightly mossed, and to see to the topmost cross affixed to the highest spire, we had to crane our necks back, giving us the feeling of staring straight up into the heavens. And as we stood there, doing just that, our necks exposed, the backs of our heads resting on our shoulders, we felt the weight of the convent, the sheer enormity of it. Its windows were eyes staring down on us, unblinking. Unsympathetic, too.

We climbed the steps to the main archway, and from there we saw that the Sisters were beginning to corral the old folks toward the parade's staging area. We made our way inside, down the long corridor that, though it had plenty of windows, was shrouded in shade. Regardless of the time of year, the hallway felt chilled, the way dirt does if you dig down far enough. The size of the convent taught us how space related to time. It took us several long minutes to cross through to the Sick Ward. Nobody was in the main room, except Mrs. Martin, who sat at one of the front tables, a deck of cards stacked in front of her, two hands neatly dealt. She didn't look up as we walked past.

We arrived at the back door to the courtyard just in time to catch a glimpse of Sister Fran holding her clipboard. She walked on the tips of her toes, bouncing as she exited through the open gate in the direction of the festival crowd. We could hear the squeal of her whistle, short staccato beats, and though she was yelling something, it sounded to us like the garbled warble of a bird. Gwen shoved my back, and I stumbled forward a bit.

“Go,” she said. “Move.”

I sensed the urgency, and I can say that up until that point, I hadn't been scared. But now, faced with the reality of the situation, my limbs felt mired in quicksand. It'd been three long years since I'd stepped foot off the convent's grounds. What did I know about the world?

“Vere,” Win said. “Go!” Her voice was not unkind, and so I stumbled forward, and, despite my fear, my legs carried me the rest of the way.

A tall stone wall stretched the perimeter of the courtyard, enclosing it. We could see above the wall to the striped tops of the festival tents that billowed in and out in the breeze like they were breathing. Because the Sisters believed that functionality preceded beauty in all areas of their lives, and because they did not tolerate waste of any sort, they had filled their old black shoes with soil and lined them along the base of the wall in tiers, using them as planters. From these rows of leather lace-ups sprang purple geraniums that were pretty enough, except for how creepy it looked. The toes were scuffed, angled out from one another in pairs. Moss had grown in the shoes' worn crevices or along their busted seams, and every so often the head of a geranium popped through a weak spot in the leather, eaten by decay. These shoes gave us the distinct impression that the previous owners, whoever they were, wherever they were—alive or dead—were guarding the courtyard like invisible sentinels. Even out of doors, these shoes reminded us, we could not escape the omnipresence of the Sisters in our lives.

We tried to put this out of our minds as we made our way to the concrete patio in the center of the courtyard where the floats were parked, lined in rows. Our Hand of Benediction wasn't so shoddy compared to some of the others: an enormous fish with streamers for a tail; some lumpy nondescript saints; a dove with an elongated neck; a lamb that looked more like a dog; a tree of life that resembled pom-pom fronds; and a float that simply spelled out L-O-V-E, each letter in a different color. We hurried in silence toward our Hand of Benediction. Sister Fran had made a sign that read
A BLESSING FOR YOU
and affixed it to the front of the float; the smell of fresh glue stung our noses.

Getting into the float was like getting into a canoe—it wasn't easy. Though the float didn't tip and turn, the angle was tight as we climbed through the hollow plywood base and into our hiding spots. We hadn't accounted for the space taken up by our stash of blankets and supplies, so I scraped my back as I slid up into position, and I grabbed hold of the chicken wire to get my balance.

“I can see your fingers poking out, idiot,” Gwen snipped, so I loosened my grip a bit and allowed the frame to hold my weight. Waiting for everyone to take their places, I felt like a caged animal ready for transport.

“Okay, ready,” Win said.

“Hurry,” I heard Ginny say.

Gwen grunted somewhere beneath me. The float rocked and knocked as she slid inside the platform below.

“Okay,” Gwen said.

“All aboard,” Win said.

“God save us,” Ginny said.

“Amen,” I said.

We didn't have to wait very long. Only a few minutes later the short punctuation of Sister Fran's whistle grew louder. Through small gaps we could make out the outline of some Sisters approaching. We closed our eyes, hoping if we couldn't see them, we'd be invisible. Our hearts were beating quickly; we swallowed pitifully. We could hear our stomachs grumbling from too much funnel cake we'd eaten earlier in the day. We didn't know when we'd be able to eat again. Soon we could hear footsteps surrounding us, and then Sister Fran began coaching the others.

“Parade route is same as last year. Be sure to keep moving at all times—and stay a good ten feet back from one another. No accidents this time, please, Lucrecia.” Sister Fran then began calling out the assignments. Sister Margaret would march with the L-O-V-E float; Sister Magda would be pulling the lamb; Sister Claire would walk with the Saint Theobald.

“Which one is Theobald?” we heard Sister Claire ask.

A pause. Claire was not known for her brains. “The monk,” replied Sister Fran with a tone of disappointment. She sighed audibly, then continued her list of assignments.

Sister Fran answered our prayers and assigned Sister Monica to pull our float. She was the largest sister in the order, so presumably the strongest. Her hips were wide, her back end was huge, and she sort of hunched and waddled when she walked, swinging her legs out and around her body, earning her the nickname Sister Hippomonica.

Now Sister Monica's enormous derriere faced us. It looked like two oblong melons beneath her skirt, and I thought I heard Win restraining a laugh. Sister Monica picked up the long handle attached to our float and jerked it lightly to test its weight. “Jesus help me,” she muttered, then turned to face front.

We heard Sister Fran's whistle again—a long, low sound followed by an up-pitched zip. Soon we were moving—not quickly, but moving. Inside the float, our muscles already began to ache from the odd angles at which we held our bodies. We couldn't think of where we'd sleep or how the woods at night would be crawling with spiders and snakes. We couldn't project our thoughts very far into our futures. We could only recall our pasts in silence. We considered our present, too, and we marveled at what had become natural in our lives: the stone structure itself, now looming behind us; the Sisters who normally resembled black-cloaked matryoshka dolls; the alabaster statues of saints that lined the corridors of the convent, staring down at us like disapproving parents. But not our parents. Our parents were far away. What would they think of us now, we wondered, as Sister Monica unknowingly pulled us up the hill, our bodies twisted and contorted inside our Hand of Benediction. Together we took a deep breath of stale air and exhaled. All these years later, and I can attest: This may have been my only out-of-body experience. I felt like I was watching the scene from a distance, from the crowd of onlookers in the parade. In fact, I'm certain I can see it in my memory, that jalopy of a float, our Hand of Benediction, slowly wobbling its way up the hill, the four of us hidden inside.

Once we got to pavement, the ride felt smoother; the wheels purred beneath us. The crowd now clapped in rhythm with the band. Sister Fran clapped along with them, her broad smile revealing her teeth that were small and pointy like a cat's.

The float in front of us had no wheels, and so it was carried by handlebars at both ends. From behind, it looked like a giant misshapen mushroom, but it was supposed to be a saint. The float kept tilting from side to side, swaying so it seemed as though Saint Whoever was dancing, but once Sister Fran marched up beside the Sisters carrying it, the dancing stopped and the float straightened.

Tucked inside our Hand of Benediction, we felt dizzy with excitement. The world looked overmagnified somehow. Though we'd often fantasized about leaving the convent, conjuring up great scenes of escape—with tied bedsheets thrown out the Bunk Room window and Sister Fran in hot pursuit, her whistle bouncing up and down on her chest as she ran after us—in the end, we simply believed our parents would come back for us. That they'd show up one day, wet-faced, frantic with apology. We even figured we'd forgive them. They were our parents, after all, and though they let us down, we wanted to love them. That's how love works. It conquers all. Back then, the solution seemed pretty simple.

Sister Monica's breath grew labored as she strained to pull us up the incline of the long drive. Her face glistened. She kept stopping to wipe her palms on her skirt and to get a better grip. Just as we began to crest the top of the drive, Sister Fran walked toward us again with a look of stern indignation on her face. Holy Constipation.

“Here,” Sister Fran said, grabbing the handle; then her voice changed. “Dear heavens,” she said. “It's like hauling the Rock of Gibraltar.”

We all froze, our muscles stiffening. Anxiety overcame our cramped hiding space in the form of warmth, as though blood simultaneously rushed to our faces, which kicked on like little space heaters.

But the float kept moving forward, upward, toward the top of the hill, to where, just a little beyond, sat the church and our salvation. Our Mount Sinai. Our Promised Land. Sister Fran and Sister Monica each gripped the float's handle with one hand, waving to the crowd with the other. Sweat soaked the backs of their thin white blouses. Their smiles looked more like winces.

Onlookers lined the parade route, their gazes aimed toward the top of the hill, where Sister Tabitha now stood announcing the floats in the same scratchy voice that had called out the names of the turtles at Turtle Downs. She held the megaphone to her lips and lifted her head to the sky, so she resembled a bugle player in a marching band made of one.

“The S-s-sacred Heart,” she said, “by Lottie Barzetti, Sh-Sh-Shirley Mitchell, and Nan Waggler.” We could hear the crowd clapping slowly, either tired or unenthused. We couldn't blame them. Who, after all, really enjoys parades after the first ten minutes, The Guineveres had wondered while building our float in the courtyard, twisting paper around wire. Certainly not us. We found it all so embarrassing somehow.

“S-s-s-saint Philomena, patron s-s-saint of youth,” Sister Tabitha said through her megaphone another minute later, as the brown hump of a float in front of us cleared the top of the hill. The crowd's clapping grew louder, and we knew we were almost there. Our breathing became shallow; our heads buzzed; our fingers were wet with sweat and anticipation. We'd never felt closer to freedom.

“A Hand of Benediction: A Blessing to You,” Sister Tabitha hollered, and she read our names off, one by one. We winced when we heard them, spoken so publicly. We could tell by the volume of the clapping and the angle of the float that we'd reached the top of the drive. If we could have seen behind us, we'd have waved good-bye to the old gray building shrinking in the distance. We'd have waved good-bye to years of loneliness, of guilt because we never felt we could live up to the expectations of perfection demanded of us by the Sisters. They say good-byes are always hard, but not for us. Not on that day.

We eased up as we rolled farther away from the convent and toward the churchyard. Sister Fran surrendered the handle to Sister Monica, and we were gliding along the smooth pavement, which bumped every once in a while when we hit a crack or a rock. The hypnotic sound of the wheels on concrete nearly lulled us to sleep.

Soon the sounds from the crowd quieted, and we could feel the coolness of the shadows in the courtyard. Some Sisters giggled in hushed tones; wheels scraped and grated. We knew we'd almost made it, and tension rose up from our bodies like souls from the departed.