The Guineveres (7 page)

“And for me?” I asked. My mom sent me a series of cryptic postcards once, about three months after I arrived, before I ever even met The Guineveres. On them were passages from the Bible. “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock,” one said. “And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters,” read another. She signed her name, but nothing else. I asked Sister Fran about the passages, and she assured me that they spoke to faith and obedience. Still, the postcards scared me, despite the fact that I was happy to hear from my mom and know she was okay.

“I'm sorry, dear. None for you, either. Maybe next time.” Sister Fran offered The Guineveres conciliatory glances as we spread our palms on the smooth surface of our desks. We looked out the window, to the sky, the way Ebbie always did. We waited while the other girls read and reread their mail, and then we lined up for lunch.

That evening we were allowed Rec Time for watching the filmstrips the Sisters screened against the white wall of the Rec Room. Most of these filmstrips were educational, about animals and plants, where they lived, how they grew. Time-lapse photos showed flowers budding, then blooming, then shrinking again. Others had names like “Danger and Dignity,” “A Guide to Good Grooming,” and “The Perils of Pants,” and these were the ones that bored us the most. During this hour, The Guineveres sulked in the Bunk Room. Ginny wrote to her dad. I worked on a letter to my mom. Win and Gwen sat on the floor beneath us and played with each other's hair.

“Oh, quit that,” Gwen said, looking up at us. “You both look so serious. You know you won't hear back.” She flung a hairband in our direction, and it hit Ginny on the forehead.

“Ouch.”

“Come on,” Gwen said. “I'm just trying to help.” She stood up and grabbed my notebook and turned to a new page, and together we composed a fake letter home, a note to convince our parents to come get us, take us away from Sister Fran and the Sick Ward and the dying convalescents.

Gwen sat down on the bed beside me. “Dearest Parents,” she said as she began to write. She clicked her tongue and bit into the end of the pencil with her front teeth before going on. “I write to inform you of the peculiar habits of Sister Fran, a most devoted abbess, and a woman I deeply admire. This evening, while she was praying her nightly devotional, I kept hearing her breathlessly shout, ‘Sweet Jesus! Sweet Jesus!' I heard some bumping and crashing, and even some grunting, so she must have been praying vigorously. When she opened her door, none other than Father James walked out, adjusting his collar. Imagine my pleasure to learn he's just as devoted as she. I truly hope someday I can dedicate my life to such an enduring and most pleasurable cause. It's so very good to see men and women of the cloth working so closely together. Practically on top of one another.”

Gwen stopped, handed her pencil to Ginny, who continued, “But I do worry if I'm doing enough for my spiritual life, as I know you want me to develop as a good Christian girl. Recently I read about Agatha of Sicily, whose breasts were cut off after she refused a suitor, and in turn she was made a saint. I'm writing to tell you that I plan to amputate my boobs. I've not developed much in the way of fullness, but at least if I'm not made a saint, I'll no longer have to invest in a bra.” Ginny held out the pad of paper for Win to take.

“Well, that's rather violent,” Win said.

“I was trying to be convincing,” Ginny said.

Win shook her head, propped the notebook on her knees, and contributed to the letter: “Despite these atrocities that I may or may not decide to commit to my body”—and here she paused to eye Ginny disapprovingly—“I want you to know that I'm in good hands. Just the other day, Sister Claire accidentally put Epsom salt in the vegetable broth. It gave us all the runs, but I have to say, the soup never tasted better. Flavorful, actually.”

The Guineveres laughed.

“How positively crass,” said Gwen.

It came down to my turn, so I took back my notebook and my pencil, and I wrote, “Please come back. I'd rather be with you, even if you think I'm better off here. I know you said you'd always be with me in spirit, but that's what Sister Fran says about the Holy Ghost and angels and saints. I feel awfully alone for a room so crowded with invisible people.” I looked up when I finished writing to see three faces devoid of expression, then three fake, exaggerated yawns.

“But that's not funny,” Win said. “That's true.” The Guineveres didn't want to hear the truth. The truth bored them. Maybe the truth
was
boring. “Write about how you fell madly in love with Mr. Macker instead.”

“Say that you had a threesome, once you figured out how it worked,” Ginny added. They all three giggled, but I didn't think it was funny at all.

“Tell them you're studying a new language and that you're learning to speak in tongues,” Gwen added. She then explained she had once gone with her cousins to a Pentecostal revival where congregants spoke in tongues, calling out like wild animals. She described how they'd writhed on the floor, kicking their legs and arms as if they were doing the backstroke in invisible water.

“It was kind of”—she looked side to side to make sure a Sister wasn't in the room—“sexual.”

“Not everything is sexual,” we said.

“
Body
language? They didn't even use real words.” And then she imitated what she had seen, throwing herself on the floor of the Bunk Room, pumping her hips and moaning monosyllabic sounds until Lottie Barzetti and the rest of The Specials came over to see about the fuss.

“What are you
doing
?” Lottie asked. She wore glasses, dark-rimmed, cat eye–shaped ones that, coupled with her floppy bangs, made her resemble a puppet.

“She's speaking in tongues,” Win said flatly.

“What's she saying?” Lottie was younger than us, but had lived at the convent longer than anyone else, a fact that made us resent her even more. When her parents wrote her letters, she'd stand in the middle of the Bunk Room and read them aloud to the rest of the girls in an affected, authoritative voice, proselytizing as though Sister Fran had put her in charge. Her parents were missionaries, and their letters sounded like sermons. They bragged about the difficulty of their work and of their perseverance, and they begged Lottie to do the same: to work hard, to persevere. Once she turned eighteen, Lottie left the convent, and I later learned she died in a car accident in South America, where she, too, then worked as a missionary. She was only twenty-three. All these years later, I still feel badly for the way The Guineveres treated her. She didn't deserve that fate.

“She's saying God knows what you do when nobody's looking,” Win replied. Win had naturally wavy hair that grew frizzy between Wash Days, and she had a habit of spitting on her hands to smooth it down, as she did now.

Lottie's nose crinkled as she tried to keep the glasses in place, and she folded her arms over her chest. “That's sinful,” she said. “To pretend to talk to God like that.”

Win stepped close to her, hunched down a little so she was nose to nose with Lottie. Then she removed Lottie's glasses so she could get a better look. “He
knows.
”

“He knows about you, too,” Lottie muttered in defense, then swiped her glasses back from Win. “He's omniscient.” She took a few steps backward until she ran into a bunk. Win moved closer, The Guineveres on her back like birds in formation.

“But you know what the difference is?” Win asked. She moved so close to Lottie she could feel her breath, then went right ahead and answered her own question. “
I
don't care.” Lottie twisted her face in abhorrence.

“You're just sore because you never get mail,” chimed Shirley. She stepped forward to wedge herself between Win and Lottie. Shirley had auburn hair that she wore in a short bob, and white teeth that were perfect squares. She was angular and tall, and there was a stillness to her that suggested extreme restraint. “I feel kind of sorry for you.”

Win would have lunged for Shirley, no doubt, but at that moment we heard Sister Fran's whistle. “Lights Out!” she yelled. The lights flickered three times, the fifteen-minute warning. As the other girls began to fill the Bunk Room, it grew quiet, save for the squeaking of the beds as the girls climbed their bunks, gathering their nightgowns and toothbrushes from the baskets that hung from metal bed frames. Some girls, like Dorrie Sue and Nan, had decorated the wall above their pillows with photos of family or prayer cards. Some of The Poor Girls decorated with flowers from the courtyard that they'd dried by pressing into books. Lottie hung the letters from her parents above her bed. Reggie decorated her space with a photo of a man she claimed was her father, but nobody believed her because he looked too handsome. Sister Fran usually didn't say anything about these spaces, unless something caught her eye that she deemed particularly improper, like the time one of The Delinquents hung a drawing of Joan of Arc burning at the stake, her eyeballs popping from her sockets, hanging there by little curlicue springs. Sister Fran simply ripped it down herself during Morning Roll without saying a word.

The Guineveres waited our turn in the Wash Room until four sinks opened up, and we scrubbed our teeth until they were minty. Gwen brushed her hair, and Ginny splashed her face, and then I divided the butter that we'd secreted from dinner, and we rubbed it into our rough elbows and through our hair. Gwen glossed her lips with it, and Win smeared some on the dark circles beneath her eyes. When Jeanette and Polly, the last of the other girls, finally left the Wash Room, Win mouthed to the rest of us, “Follow me,” and she gathered several handfuls of toilet paper from the bathroom stall, urging us to do the same. The Guineveres ran the toilet paper beneath the faucet and balled it into our fists. We walked casually back to the Bunk Room, hiding our hands in the fabric of our nightgowns. While Lottie gabbed with Dorrie Sue, we located Lottie's bed, pulled back her covers, and emptied the contents of our hands.

We were required to sit atop our bunks for Evensong for as long as Sister Fran stood in the doorway, illuminated by the single light above her head. “Pleasant dreams, my girls,” she said finally, once we finished with prayer. “May the angels keep you.” She pulled the chain to extinguish the light, then darkness. At that moment everyone shimmied beneath their covers, but above the shuffling and screeching of bed frames we heard Lottie whimper.

“Someone's wet my bed!” she said.

“You wet your bed?” one of The Delinquents asked from the dark, and the room exploded with laughter.

“My bed is wet!” Lottie said. “And no, I didn't do it.”

“The Guineveres did it,” Barbara said. Her parents, we'd heard, had died in a house fire on Christmas Eve. Snippets of every girl's Revival Story drifted through the Bunk Room or Rec Room—those occasionally Sisterless spaces—at some time or another. These stories found ways to tell themselves, even against our wishes. Stories are like that; they seek to unravel. Nobody wanted to be the most pitiable girl in the convent, so The Guineveres found it was better to tell our own stories than to leave them to the whispers of the other girls.

Our eyes adjusted to the darkness, and we could see Lottie kneeling atop her bunk, collecting wet wads from beneath her covers. Her bed frame moaned with each movement of her body, a singular noise made louder by the quiet.

“You're making an awful lot of commotion up there,” Gwen said.

“And you wonder why your parents want nothing to do with you?” Shirley snapped. Her parents, we'd heard, ran a coffee plantation on another continent. They were wealthy people, and from time to time they sent Shirley money, even though she didn't have anywhere to spend it. During chapel, she'd make a show of putting it in the collection basket, laying it two-handedly atop the other donations left by the girls: coins, drawings, hair ribbons. Someone had even once donated a pair of socks because Sister Fran insisted that each of us could find excesses in our lives, if only we looked harder. “Leave her alone,” Shirley said.

“Are you making love up there?” Gwen continued. “Maybe to Saint Fiacre?” she asked. The room heaved a collective gasp because we'd recently learned from the library's copy of
Lives of the Saints
that Fiacre was the patron saint of sexually transmitted diseases.

“That's not funny,” Lottie said.

“I thought you were saving yourself for marriage,” Gwen said.

“We all know that
you're
not,” Shirley said. The other girls didn't even try to conceal their laughter, bravery coming to them in the cover of dark.

“I'd be careful if I were you,” Win's voice warned from the other end of the room, and at that everyone
oohed
and
aahed,
and then grew quiet again.

“Why are you Guineveres so mean?” Polly finally said. She came from a big family. Her father was dead, and her mother didn't make enough money as a hotel maid to support all her kids. When Polly came to the convent, her hair had thinned to the point that her scalp showed, earning her the nickname Polly-Polly Ping-Pong. “None of us wants to be here.”

Silence washed over the room, and one by one, everybody fell asleep. Except The Guineveres. The Guineveres let Polly's words sink in until our stomachs grew heavy. The Guineveres felt guilty, but we didn't know how else to express our pain. The Guineveres cried ourselves to sleep, as we did some nights, knowing the only thing we had in the world was each other.

*   *   *

In the morning, just as the sun was coming up, Sister Fran woke us, as she always did, with the zip of the whistle she wore around her neck. We clambered off our beds for roll. Unless we were on kitchen duty, we were given fifteen short minutes to make our beds, brush our hair and teeth, and dress for the day. While we scrambled to get ready, Sister Fran walked up and down the aisle of bunks like a drill sergeant, making sure everything was in good order: beds made, nightgowns folded.