The Guineveres (43 page)

“Father James. Did he touch you?” she asked me again.

“No, Sister.”

She sighed, relieved, then placed her hand over her eyes as if they ached.

“Did she spend time alone with Father James? Did you ever leave her there alone?”

“Well…,” I stuttered. I studied Gwen, but at this point her face was expressionless, as if she were playing her starlet role like she sometimes did. I imagined if she spoke, her voice would sound high-pitched, rhapsodic. I wanted to sink into the floor, melt like candle wax.

“Thou shall not lie,” she said.

“She did. We left her behind. We didn't mean to, but…,” I stammered, trying to explain how Win and I abandoned Gwen to Father James, closed the door behind us, even though we knew we shouldn't. I wanted to defend him, but I could only picture Father James's rouged nose, his lip scar more visible when he smiled, his muscular hands that that he sometimes rubbed together as if he were smoothing lotion onto them.

“I knew it,” Sister Fran snapped. Her face lifted back to the ceiling, her hands on her ears as though trying to unhear what she'd just heard.

Gwen took that moment to sit down on the bench against the wall. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her like my mother used to do. We must have looked silly sitting that way in Sister Fran's office, and I used to try to imagine that moment, Gwen tucked into the pit of my arm, leaning her body's weight into my chest, her delicate palm resting just below my rib cage. She smelled sweet, I recall, like her berries from breakfast, which she no doubt had rubbed onto her lips, so desperate to wear makeup. I tried to smooth her hair, cooed, “Don't be afraid.” I'll admit, it felt good having Gwen rest there in my arms, as if I could care for both of us, as if we were The Guineveres again.

“God knows your shame,” Sister Fran said. Pretty chirped from its cage in the corner. “He forgives all, but only if you confess it,” she said. Gwen lowered her eyes. That's one thing we always believed: If you confessed your sins, then you'd be set free. The great power of absolution.

“Pretty's so pretty,” Pretty squawked, then ruffled its wings.

“Shh,” Sister Fran said to the bird.

“God doesn't make junk,” Pretty said, and at this Sister Fran rattled the cage to silence the bird.

Soon Sister Tabitha returned with Father James. He was unshaven, his eyelids bloodshot and his hair disheveled. “What's this about?” he said. He saw Gwen and me sitting on the bench, and his body became rigid as an oak tree.

“You,” Sister Fran said, more an accusation than answer. “This child … this girl. She's…” Sister Fran couldn't bring herself to say it, but her lips curled, and I could see revulsion in her face. “With child,” she finally spat out. “Tell me if it's your doing.”

Father James's face jerked, startled. His eyes rolled around in his sockets like marbles. “Mine?” he bellowed. He uprooted his legs from the floor, walked forward.

“God does not abide fools nor liars. Make not of me one and you the other,” Sister Fran replied. “This girl is pregnant. She says it was the Holy Ghost, and I am not inclined to believe that,” she said. “Are you?”

Father James said nothing, just slowly turned toward where we were sitting. His face had gone white; his hands shook; he licked his lips nervously. “Is this what you've told them?” he said. I couldn't look at him—not at that moment. I could only imagine him passing us a bottle after mass, his boyish grin inviting us to drink.

“She didn't have to tell me anything,” Sister Fran said. “An abomination. That which you do to the least of His people. Young girls! They're here for our protection,” she bawled. Then, with a shaking fist, she swiped a stack of papers off her desk, and they fluttered to the ground, wings flapping.

“Preposterous,” he said. His voice quavered when he spoke. He placed his hands in his pocket, then immediately withdrew them, held them out the way he did during church, right before we washed them. “That's the truth. Tell her this is the truth, girl,” he shouted to Gwen, but she wouldn't look up. “The girl is clearly troubled. Tell her,” he said.

“I shall call the archbishop,” Sister Fran said. “I have no other choice in the matter.”

“Frances—stop. Listen to me. I've done nothing,” he said, and this struck me as odd. I'd never heard Sister Fran addressed like that before, not without her title, not with such familiarity.

“You will not tell me what to do,” she said. “She is a child. A lamb!”

The room got quiet. Sister Tabitha stood wide-eyed at the door while Sister Fran and Father James faced off: a nun versus a priest, each devouring the other with glances I could only describe as unholy. They turned toward us sitting on the bench, both with pleading stares. With Holy Consternation.

Gwen untucked herself from my embrace, and where she had been resting quickly grew cold. She rose to her feet, spoke in a broken voice. “It wasn't him,” she said.

Father James looked relieved, and he removed a handkerchief from his breast pocket to wipe his forehead.

“Then who? Where have you been?” Sister Fran asked. Gwen leaned against the wall, refusing to say another word.

Sister Fran then turned to me once more. Her face tensed up again, her eyes narrowing. She didn't look like a Frances to me, only a Sister Fran, the only Sister Fran I'd ever known. “Who else did she see? What other … men?” she asked, spitting out the word. “Someone you met? Another priest? A parishioner?”

“Nobody,” I said.

“Thou shalt not tell a lie,” she said.

I felt heady, like I did when I drank church wine or Sunny Brook. My wool skirt itched my legs, and I scratched them. I couldn't think, couldn't do much but peer down at my shoes, toes pointed inward. I was scared for Gwen, but I knew I couldn't protect her.

“There are Our Boys,” I said after a long pause.

“Boys? Which boys?” Sister Fran probed, her nose needling the air.

“Our Boys,” I said. “Our Boys in the Convalescent Ward. The ones who have been here since last year,” I explained, making certain she knew it wasn't the new soldiers, the older ones in the Front Room whom we could barely stand to lay our eyes upon.

For a moment, a smile flitted across her face, as if she might sneeze. As if she had just thought of something funny. “But those soldiers—they're … halfway to death.”

I clamped my jaw. “No, they're not,” I said. Sister Fran ignored me and turned to Gwen again. “They're not dead,” I said, this time louder, and at that point Gwen hung her head. She didn't speak—didn't have to.

“Was it one of these boys?” Sister Fran questioned, clearly confused.

“Yes, Sister,” she said quietly.

“See, they're not dead,” I said again, relieved.

Sister Fran quieted me with a wave. “Which one?” she wanted to know. Gwen covered her mouth, as though that might prevent her from revealing the truth. Then her arms went limp. She looked at me and shook her head, the corners of her mouth bending downward, her bottom lip pouting to reveal fleshy pink. Her blue eyes flashed, and then it hit me. My body froze.

Time slowed at that point. I noticed every drop of perspiration form as a bead beneath my skin, then squeeze out of my pores. I sensed blood surging through each of the four chambers of my heart. In the distance, the church bell rang. I felt, at that moment, what all those saints must have felt at some point, the dissolving of earthly time. I was transcendent. I prayed silently to God, to My Boy, to anyone who would listen, and I waited for Gwen to speak.

“It was Her Boy,” she said, finally pointing to me.

Her finger could have been a dagger, like Juliet's. Like Saint Lucy's, who gouged out her own eyes. My vision tunneled; the world contracted to a pinpoint.

And at the end of the pinpoint I beheld Sister Fran's perplexed face.

“The one without any bandages,” Gwen clarified for her.

“That's impossible,” she said softly. “Sister Tabitha, isn't that impossible?” Sister Tabitha came forward. I rubbed my blurry eyes. I felt lightheaded. I felt sick.

“S-s-s-sinful, but not impossible,” she said, flushing. “Anatomically sp-sp-sp-speaking,” she finally spat out.

“I'm confessing. I did it,” Gwen said. “I'm absolved now because I'm saying I did it.” She tried to cry, but no tears came. Instead she looked like she was squinting from sun. “I did it,” she said. “Isn't that what you want? My confession. There. Now you have it. I did it.”

And then it struck me, appeared like a vision that must have come to some of the saints. I could see it all laid out neatly before me: I thought of My Boy, of his body, of Gwen's steely eyes ogling him. “Men have needs,” she had told me. “Men are snakes,” she had said. But I couldn't think of it. I shoved it down. I couldn't breathe. My fingers pulsed; they ached. “Maybe it
was
the Holy Spirit,” I managed to stammer. “One never knows why or when miracles happen,” I said, a line Sister Fran had repeated to us many times before. It was in this way I could convince myself My Boy had done no wrong. He couldn't have. Not to me.

Gwen looked at me, surprised. Her eyes were upside-down frowns that said they were sorry. But it was too late for sorrow to make a difference. I felt sick to my stomach. I wanted to run to the Sick Ward and find My Boy. Ask him: Is it true? Ask him:
Why?
Ask him: Have I not loved you well enough? But Gwen was the one who held the answers, and here she was in front of me now, strained with a pain not localized to a single part of her body. She was beautiful, standing there, her hands crossed over her belly, her legs crossed, too. She was icy and distant and hurt and beautiful, and as much as I wanted to hate her, I couldn't. It's not what the saints would do. The saints would barrel down into the pain. If their right hand were cut off, they'd offer their left. If that were cut off, too, they'd offer a leg, until limb by limb and piece by piece they were condensed into a tiny sliver. That's what the saints would do: offer themselves.

So I reached out and touched Gwen's stomach, protruding over her unzipped skirt fastened with a hairband. “Forgive this child,” I said. They were the only words I could think to speak, the incantation of the priests after confession. I tried to mean it, I did.

But I can tell you now, I suffered as I spoke those words. I suffered. And maybe suffering is the point, its own end. I can't say I regret the way I reacted, that with perspective or time I wish I had lashed out in that moment, that I had shamed Gwen, or unleashed onto her my anger. What good would that have done? We
all
suffered. All of us.

Some years later, when Gwen lived in a city far away, she called me. She'd been divorced three times by then, worked as a secretary at an insurance agency somewhere in the middle of the country. She had begun soul-searching, seeking answers that maybe she'd never find. That old desire for absolution crept up on her, which led her back to me. She wanted to confess to me the details. She wanted me to forgive her. She told me about her secret shame, told me how she'd sneak into the Sick Ward, how she blamed herself, how she hated herself. More than anything else, she hated herself. So she found My Boy, and she—

I stopped her. I forgave her, I said, but I couldn't hear it. I would not let her tell me. I would not bear that story. I would not provide her with absolution.

“You need to forgive yourself,” I said. I quickly hung up the phone and sat motionless until it was night, until it was black, and I disappeared into the darkness. Maybe I took the easy way out. Or maybe I just didn't want to know her truth.
My
truth was this: My Boy loved me. He had given me the gifts of faith, and hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.

 

My Revival

My mom told me that the difference between superstition and faith is that one produces fear and the other comfort. But I'm not sure I recognize that difference. Because when my mom talked to me about our family's curse, I felt scared more than anything else. You see, she believed the women in my family were cursed to die young. When I asked Sister Fran about it, she reminded me that only God knows the time and the place of our end, but that's not what my mom believed. Her sister and her mom and her grandmother and her great-grandmother, going way back, they all died by age thirty-three, just like Jesus. I didn't know what it was about that age, but Mom told me that's when she'd die, too. She knew it the way she knew when it would rain; she felt it in her bones.

“That's faith,” she told me. We were huddled in the back storage room of a church where we'd been staying for a while. The room could only accommodate one cot, so we crowded together on the bed. Mom's long, wiry hair tickled my neck as I lay on my stomach, but I didn't mind. “I'm not afraid to die,” Mom said after a while. She believed God called her to higher purposes, and dying young was just one of them. But I was afraid, and I told her so. I didn't ever want to leave her, not even for heaven. She wrapped her arms around me, and her skin smelled like incense because she'd been praying in the chapel.

Some people called Mom fanatical; others called her worse names than that, especially when she'd stand on sidewalks or barefooted in fountains and preach her visions. Strangers stopped to gawk at Mom, whose hair shot up at the roots as if she'd been electrocuted, whose mouth jerked and pulsed as she shouted, sometimes only sounds and spittle leaving her lips. I'd stand with her, but I never spoke a word, just stood to the side as quietly as possible, holding an upturned hat for spare change. Occasionally some nice folks would toss coins inside. I think they felt sorry for me, having to stand there like that while Mom stamped her feet and raised her hands to the sky, shouting out messages she claimed to have received from above.