The Guineveres (4 page)

“Right over there,” we heard Father James say. He'd changed out of his indecent swim trunks and wore his usual black outfit, slacks and a shirt. The Hand of Benediction turned one hundred and eighty degrees before coming to a quick stop. And just like that, we arrived.

We began to feel edgy with excitement, but we knew we couldn't risk moving. We'd wait until we heard no more voices, until long after we heard no more voices. We weren't allowed watches—we lived on God's Time at the convent—so we'd decided to say the rosary three times in our heads, since praying it three times, from start to finish, all fifty-nine beads, lasted about an hour.

We waited. We recited the Our Father. We'd learned patience while sitting through long sermons or tedious lectures given to us by Sister Fran during Morning Instruction. We waited. We recited the Hail Mary. We'd learned to be still while kneeling in rows during prayer time, our knees growing numb from the wood. We waited. We recited the Glory Be. We'd learned to be silent while single-filing through the convent, treading as gently as possible through the stone foyers that felt chilly even in the summer.

We heard some murmuring and muttering, idle chatter among the Sisters. We heard Sister Lucrecia's laugh, five high notes descending the scales. Sister Fran asked Sister Tabitha for the bullhorn back; Sister Tabitha hesitated to relinquish it. She sang into it—“La, la, laaaaaaaa!”—until she lost her breath and gasped for air. This aural display was followed by subdued snickers, a sound that unsettled us, for we'd never known the Sisters to be jovial. The Guineveres wondered what else we didn't know about them.

The band's happy cadence faded. We heard a running faucet in the distance. We heard some birds chirping somewhere beyond. Then we felt the lightest sprinkling of water—was it raining? It hadn't looked threatening. We hadn't noticed any clouds. The cool droplets would have been a welcome respite from the heat, if not for our next realization: Tissue paper dissolves in water.

It was like coming to from a dream, or maybe like Jonah when he first emerged from the belly of the whale. We were disoriented; we couldn't see clearly at first. The spray of water revealed the blue sky above us, bit by bit. Then the water came on heavier, the full force of it stinging our skin till we were crying out in pain. “Stop!” we screamed in unison, breaking our vow of silence. We couldn't open our eyes, only stand and wait for it to end.

And when it did, we opened our eyes slowly, one at a time. There stood Sister Fran, holding a hose like the staff of Joseph. “Where are the others?” she asked, then hunched down to peer inside the base of the float. She stood again, slowly, brushing her skirt with one hand to smooth out wrinkles. She was quiet for a moment, and the quiet was excruciating, so we just stood there, blinking slowly and waiting for the end.

“Get. Out,” she said in two sentences.

Win looked like a wet, rabid rodent. Her hair clung to her forehead and cheeks, and her dark eyes were glossy, stunned. Beneath me I could hear Gwen and Ginny untangling their bodies from their hiding spots.

Sister Fran squeezed the nozzle again, and water pelted our skin. Then she dropped the hose, and it became a serpent in the grass. Water dripped down our faces. Or were they tears? I can't remember. The Guineveres stood paralyzed with fear, with disappointment.

“Out,” she said again. This time she said it softly, but not without anger.

One by one—much more slowly than we had gotten in—we climbed out.

 

Saint Rose of Lima

FEAST DAY: AUGUST 23

As Saint Rose grew into womanhood, her body became her burden: hands white and tidy as church gloves, a slender nose, dark almond eyes, round hips, and an ample bosom. Everywhere she went, people stopped to appreciate her beauty; they stared at the lovely sight of her clear, porcelain complexion, so out of place on the dirty streets of Lima. Rose, afraid that such admirations would lead to temptation, cut off her long raven hair. She was saving herself for one man and one man alone.

Her parents encouraged her to marry, but she refused. Instead, she'd rub her face with pepper, splotch her skin with welts and berry-shaped blisters. Once, an admirer swore hers the most delicate hands he'd ever looked upon. Disgusted, Rose went home and rubbed them with lime, burning them so badly she couldn't move them for a month, not even to button her nightshirt.

Her body troubled her. It was her home, her prison—this thing that stirred her at night sometimes; she could not escape it. During the day, she'd wear a wreath of thorns concealed with roses, pressed into her scalp so firmly it pierced her skin. Light drops of blood crowned her head like morning dew. In this manner, she'd toil in the garden, and at night she'd labor by candlelight on her needlework.
Increase my suffering,
she'd pray.

And her suffering increased. She was lonely. Her friends and family ridiculed her, yet she remained obedient, steadfast in her devotion. To help her family, she sold her flowers and her fine, hand-tatted laces at the market. With her leftover profits, she fostered the sick and the poor. Rose fasted weekly, then started abstaining from meat altogether, until eventually she ate only the paltry amount of food required to survive. She grew thin, but this thinness only highlighted her perfect bone structure, her fine jawline, her high cheekbones. She didn't often leave her little room, a grotto she'd built in the garden.
Increase my suffering,
she'd pray, and she'd go to sleep on her bed made of broken glass and stone.

Her suffering increased. She toiled in the garden, numbed her scarred fingers with her lacework and embroidery, carried her goods to the market, fed the poor, tended to the sick, all while press-pressing that thorny wreath into her scalp. She grew tired, but the dark circles under her eyes lent her an exotic look. People praised her beauty, even then. Rose smeared lye on her face and retreated to her grotto, where, hidden away, she awaited even the smallest of signs from above. She felt such distance between herself and the sky, such distance in the world, such sadness.

Then one morning, in the quiet of the dawn, when the light cast gray, grainy shadows on the wall of her grotto—so early yet, the birds had not begun their warbling—she saw Him, standing above her. He wore a simple robe, His hair moving as though stirred by wind. His eyes were gentle. He smiled as He touched her, and when His hand grazed her skin her face cinched in ecstasy, and her body: It unfolded; it tensed; it bloomed.

Rose was thirty-one when illness took her. As the first saint of the New World, she's remembered for her devotion, for her pious suffering, and, above all, for her beauty. She died a virgin; yet, she never regretted a day of her suffering—not a single day. For in the end, she knew He'd come again. And He did.

 

Penance

The Guineveres resolved to face adversity with grace, as the greatest of the saints had done. We'd recently learned during Morning Instruction that Saint Marguerite had survived Iroquois attacks, fires, and plagues, and that Saint Barbara's own father had locked her in a tower for years. Still, we couldn't help feeling more than a little defeated. We sat on the cool tile floor of the Bunk Room, which felt like a prison with its slate-colored walls, with the meager amount of light let in from the single window. Bare rafter beams ran the length of the ceiling, forming bars above us. At that very moment, we should have been bounding through the woods or boarding a bus to the city. Instead, Ginny kept rubbing her palms together, crying that she was afraid she might never see her father again. Win reassured us that we'd find another way out.

“Did you see the look on Sister Fran's face?” Win said, trying to lift our spirits. She had positioned herself behind Gwen and began finger-combing her hair, parting it in pieces. “Pure constipation!” We all laughed, even Ginny. We spent the rest of the afternoon in silence, watching the room turn gray, prohibited from joining the other girls for the picnic supper. When we stood by the window, we could hear squeals of laughter and the murmuring of the festival crowd that, when we closed our eyes and pretended, sounded like the ocean. Ginny wept quietly; Gwen slept with a pillow covering her face; Win braided tiny sections of her own dark hair until she looked like Medusa. As for me, I prayed my usual prayers; I prayed for my mother to return for me.

The next day, Sister Fran brought Father James in to take our confessions, though he must have known what we'd confess: We didn't want to live here anymore. We didn't want to wear our scratchy uniforms, so out of fashion, according to Gwen; or fast on Fridays when we were already hungry; or single-file from place to place like a row of ducks, minus the quacking. Only silence. We'd grown tired of staring out the window during Morning Instruction, and up the hill toward the church, wondering what our families were doing now. Did they think of us? Did they regret leaving us here? Maybe things could be different, if they'd only take us back. The Bible contains all sorts of stories about second chances. Look at Noah, or Samson, or Abraham's son Isaac, who was nearly slaughtered by his father. Even Isaac forgave Abraham in the end.

One by one, Father James called us into the chapel confessional, a small room with an opaque penitential grille to obscure him. Father James was a young priest then; he'd taken over as pastor only shortly before I arrived at the convent. However, to us he seemed old. He even
smelled
old, like aftershave and something sweeter, but sour, too, something Win told us smelled like the way her mother often did after her father had left. Since Father James was tall—or the grille was short—we could still see his smooth forehead, his dark, bushy brows, his hair, prematurely gray, combed flat to the side.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” we had each said during our separate visits to the confessional.

“I wanted to run away,” Ginny confessed, “to visit my father. He can't visit me, you know. He would if he could.” She curled herself into a ball on the confessional bench, tucked her head between her knees.

“I designed the float to hide us,” Win confessed. “It was originally supposed to be a victory sign.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest, self-conscious of her well-developed breasts. Of all The Guineveres, she wore the largest-sized bra, a fact that Gwen resented.

“It was my idea,” Gwen confessed, peeking above the grille and smiling with one corner of her mouth. “I'm full of ideas.” Father James nodded sanctimoniously.

“I wanted to go,” I said, and as soon as the words flew from my lips, I recognized my utterance as sin. I felt disloyal in admitting my relief that we'd been caught. It's not that I didn't want to be out in the world—I did. When I couldn't sleep, I'd reach for my notebook hidden beneath my bunk, and I'd remember myself on a bus, circling a city. My mom and I used to do that, sit for hours in the back to observe other riders because Mom believed that's where one got the truest glimpse of humanity. She was giving me a lesson, one I couldn't get from school. Who stood to offer up his seat to someone else? Who tugged impatiently at the cord that ran above the windows like a clothesline? Who refused to move over, or fell asleep against the window, pocking it with grease marks that looked like tic-tac-toe boards? Who smiled at us, even though we looked like Gypsies, our hair unwashed for days? The bus would stop and start, stop and start. From my window, I'd watch the cityscape, tall, angular buildings passing above me like geometric clouds, and I'd wonder who was inside. This is what I dreamed of at night: the fullness of a world.

However, the thought of leaving the convent scared me, too. I was only fifteen. How would my mother find me again? How would I find her? “I don't like it here,” I confessed to Father James, and that part was true. I could see his half-moon eyes above the divider. They were the eyes of God Himself.

After confession, The Guineveres sat squished together in the first pew, so close we could still smell grilled meats and grass in one another's hair. Father James stood before us, listing forward against the front of the pew so that his arm muscles bulged. It was hard not to notice. He had a small scar above his mouth that cut into his upper lip, and his nose and cheeks were rosy in a way I'd later learn was an alcoholic's rouge. Sister Fran perched herself just far enough behind Father James so she appeared like a menacing bird on his shoulder.

“Your sins may be absolved, girls,” Father James said, “but your work has just begun.” We sank deeper into the pew as if our spines had dissolved, our bodies now putty. He continued, “After all, young girls need guidance. I don't think a singular JUG will suffice this time. Three months of service in the Convalescence Ward will hopefully reawaken your sense of gratitude. For when you wish to see yourself as fortunate, you should spend time with those who have less. Happiness, girls, is a matter of where you place your attention.”

Father James examined us closely, focusing on us one at a time, trying to determine the fates of our souls. He could have been handsome if he weren't a priest, but he was a priest, which made him seem almost otherworldly to us. At that moment, he was running his hands down his sides as though counting his ribs. Gwen later claimed he was trying to imagine us without clothes on, sizing us up, as men are wont to do, which is why Sister Fran intervened.

“Thank you, Father,” Sister Fran said. “I think you've shown more leniency and graciousness than the case warrants. Don't you agree, girls?” she asked.

“Yes, Sister,” The Guineveres said, even though we didn't.

Father James nodded and began to walk away. But then he stopped midstride, turned around, and smiled a sad kind of smile, no teeth, just the bending of his lips. “Life is not always better on the outside, girls,” he said gently. “Remember that.”