A Girl in Three Parts

by Suzanne Daniel

  Kimberly loosens her hold on her Nancy Drew novel. “But I definitely put it on your desk, Sister Josepha.”

  “Well, it doesn’t appear to be here. Would you like to come up and point it out to me?”

  Kimberly flicks confidently through the pile. She grows a little flushed and confused. She goes back to her desk, lifts the lid and searches under the Cuisenaire rods, the label maker and the souvenir ruler collection. She rifles through her schoolbag hanging on one of the hooks at the back of the classroom and goes back to Sister’s desk, now looking in the bin underneath. Tears are starting to pool in the bottom half of her aquamarine eyes. Roslyn is away sick from school, so Kimberly looks to the next rung down of the Popular Group for backup.

  “Karen, you saw me put it on the desk, didn’t you?”

  “I definitely did, Kimberly….Well, actually…I was at piano, but you deadset would have handed it in.”

  “See, Karen is my witness. And my dad is too—he helped me write it.”

  “All right, Kimberly, sit down. If you can’t bring it to me by the end of class today, you’ll have to do it again and bring it in tomorrow.” Sister goes back to her marking.

  “But I can’t do it again tonight,” bursts out Kimberly. “I won’t have time. We’re going to the drive-in for my sister’s birthday.” Her neck is blotchy red, and a couple of the boys are starting to smirk. Without Roslyn here today the scaffolding of the Popular Group is a bit shaky, and they’re not sure where to look or how to reinforce Kimberly.

  “Well, it’s up to you, dear, but I’ll be writing your reports next week, and this essay is worth sixty percent of your social studies mark.”

  “You can’t make me do it again. I’ve already done it. My parents will complain to Father Brennan and the Department of Education. They’ll complain to the Pope,” Kimberly lashes out.

  “Calm yourself, Kimberly, unless you want to go straight to three demerits.” Sister reins her in.

  I keep my head low, reading the same line of Watership Down over and over. A circuit in my heart releases a little electric charge at the sight of Kimberly, who usually fires out, getting so fired up before being shot down.

  The risk. The reward. The thrill.

  And it’s all happening because of something I’ve done.

  I know it’s probably bad and certainly not full of God’s grace, but right now it’s clearing all my pipes.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Matilde has finished her rush job, so her Singer has quietened for now. She’s back to her cooking and cleaning and gardening but isn’t saying all that much to me. Although she does have an almost-conversation one night with Rick out on the back porch, quite a while after I’ve gone to bed. I can’t hear every word, but I do make out that they’re talking about Joy and how long “she’ll be there,” how long “she’ll be staying away with her friend Wendy.”

  Joy must have gone on a holiday with Whisky Wendy.

  So that’s the important thing Rick said she had to do?

  The break she needed was a holiday!

  Why didn’t Joy just tell me?

  That part of my heart that counts on my grandmother being reliable feels sore and inflamed.

  Before school I slip into Number 25 with some lettuce for Simone de Beauvoir. Even though I’m still pretty mad at Joy, I know she would just die if Simone didn’t live. The penny tortoise is on the lookout for Joy. When I stand at the edge of the water-lily pond, she pops up hopefully, and while I know Simone and I are definitely friends, and she’s very pleased that I have brought her the lettuce, I see her lower her head just slightly in disappointment when she realizes it’s me and not Joy coming to feed her.

  While I’m there I water the bougainvillea, the paper daisies, the jasmine and fuchsias. Through Joy’s back window I can see the sweeties jar still opened on the table and the dirty dishes all still piled around the sink. Matilde would never leave dishes in the sink before she went on holiday. Then again, Matilde would never in a million years even think of going on a holiday.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We’re doing math before lunch, and Sister Josepha asks if anyone managed to do the extra challenge with the homework. I worked it out last night, but I’m sure not going to own up to it. Sister waits by the board. For a long time she waits, and she gets her waity face, popping the chalk with precision from one palm to the other. Not even Matthew puts up his hand.

  “Allegra, dear, what about you? Can you show us how to graph the image of the rectangle after a rotation of 35 degrees counterclockwise around the origin?”

  Of course I can, but why always me! Doesn’t Sister know how picked on I am each time she singles me out to give the right answer? But you can’t say no to Sister Josepha.

  Even before I get to the board, the sniggering starts. It seems louder than usual. I’m up to the third rotation, face to the board, and the Popular Group is erupting. Kimberly is laughing louder than anyone else. Turning around briefly, I see her pointing at my back from her desk. Sister tells her sternly, “Be quiet!” and, coming in close to me at the board, says gently: “Allegra, let’s step outside for a minute together.”

  In the corridor outside the classroom she half whispers: “Dear, it seems that you have become a woman.”

  “A what?”

  “A woman, dear. You have become a woman. It seems that you have started your monthlies.”

  The bell rings for lunch, and Sister escorts me to sick bay and gives me a floral pack to take to the bathroom and “sort myself out.” I’m horrified by what I find. And it’s on the back of my uniform as well. I’m going to stay in the bathroom all day. All week. All term if I have to. I can never go back into that classroom again.

  “Allegra, can I help you in any way?” Sister is hovering outside the cubicle. “I have a clean uniform for you, dear.” This is getting worse by the minute. And now I can hear that other girls are coming into the toilets.

  Sister passes me the uniform over the top of the door. It’s crushed and smells of used tea towel and is definitely too tight across the chest, but I have no choice but to wear it. I feel hot and teary and wobbly.

  After a while Sister tells me that it’s time to open the door. I slink out. Sister takes me by the hand—patting it a few times—and, walking past the office, she tells the secretary that we’re going to the convent and if she’s not back by the end of lunch, please send the sixth grade next door into Miss Hunter’s room.

  The convent is across the road from the school. It’s where the nuns live, and I’ve never been even close to going inside before. Nobody has, except for Thomas O’Malley, who went there in third grade because his mum is cousins with Sister Claire. He told us afterward that they had a platter of Holy Communion hosts topped with devon for dinner and that he fed the leftovers to a three-headed horse called Holy Trinity that the nuns keep out the back. Thomas’s nickname is Tall Tale Tom.

  I follow Sister into the convent kitchen. She pours me a glass of milk and puts a couple of Shortbread Creams onto a plate. We move into the lounge room, and she tells me I can sit on the tapestry couch by the television set. Even though it’s a convent, it almost seems like normal house, except there’s a soapy clean smell, lace doilies galore and pictures of Jesus looking loving and sad, pointing to his red heart, hanging above every doorway.

  “Now, Allegra,” says Sister. “Do you fancy a game of Chinese checkers?”

  I’d probably prefer a bit of telly, but I guess that Chinese checkers is better than the science lesson I’d usually be doing in class on a Friday afternoon.

  Sister clears the table, sets up the board and asks if I’d like to be yellow or green. After just a few moves I can see that she’s quite the champ at Chinese checkers. She beats me quick smart in the first two games, but I manage to win by a whisker in the third and am well ahead in the fourth.
Actually, Chinese checkers is a pretty good game.

  I’m picking my path across the board when Sister says without looking up, “Allegra, what happened today is perfectly normal. Yes indeed, natural, in fact. It’s called menstruation, and it happens to all healthy girls at some point, and it will even happen to Kimberly.” She jumps three of my marbles and continues, “I’ll send you off today with a note to give to your grandmother. She’ll explain everything and help you with what you need.”

  I have read about menstruation in Matilde’s biology books, but I never guessed it could lead to something embarrassing on the back of my uniform.

  “That’s it. Well done, dear,” says Sister. “You’ve got all your marbles home. Would you like another Shortbread Cream?”

  I take the note home to Number 23. Matilde reads it and I’m looking at her, waiting for her to explain everything and help me with what I need like Sister Josepha said she would. Instead she studies me briefly, pea-sized displeased, and swiftly slaps me across my face.

  “Remember that the life of a woman is one full of pain and restraint, Allegra. Wait in your room while I go to the pharmacy. And keep away from my rising dough.”

  I’m completely confused. The slap wasn’t that hard, but Matilde has never hit me before, and I have no idea what her rising dough has got to do with anything.

  When she gets back, she places a package at the end of my bed. I go to the bathroom and sort myself out for the second time today and come out for my dinner: a big bowl of still-pink-inside chicken livers. Everything about today is disgusting.

  If only I could Behold My Mother. She could hold me, and make everything right.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  “I have a terrrrible earache, Matilde,” I tell her, coming out late for breakfast on Monday morning after deciding an earache is something she can’t see, measure with a thermometer or test with the palm of her hand. I just can’t face going to school today, not after what happened in front of everyone at the end of last week.

  “A clove of garlic will remedy that in no time, Allegra,” announces Matilde, smashing one with the back of her carving knife. “Is it your left or right ear?”

  “Ah…left,” I say, expecting she’s going to make me eat the garlic…raw.

  “You will notice a difference by the time you are dressed for school,” she says with a healer’s confidence, coming over my shoulder while I’m hunched at the table moving my food around the plate. But instead of putting the garlic in my mouth, she puts it in my ear.

  “I’ll give you a couple of peeled cloves to keep in your pocket so you can change them during the day. Now hurry up and get ready—you don’t want to be late.”

  I don’t hurry. Instead I do a whole lot of D words. I Dawdle, Delay and Drag the chain. I do want to be late. So late that it’s too late to go to school at all. But Matilde is right on top of me and insists on walking me there so she can set a making-up-time pace. There’s no missing school with Matilde around.

  Arriving at St. Brigid’s gate, I stop and it just bursts out of me. “I can’t go in, Matilde, I can’t. They were all laughing at me…Kimberly Linton worst of all. And now that Patricia’s gone, I don’t have any friends….”

  “You have your good self, Allegra, and that is life’s most dependable companion. Now, draw on your dignity and hold your head high. And here—put these cloves in your pocket….I suspect your earache is cured, but the garlic will repel that Kimberly Popular.”

  It repels everyone, except for Mary-Anne Wilson. She probably can’t smell me over her own scuzzy smell.

  “Can you be partners with me for art this afternoon? Allegra…please?” Mary-Anne asks like someone too used to being turned down. “I don’t even mind about the mess on your tunic last week. It just means you’re mature.”

  She is looking at me hopefully, almost kindly and perhaps even knowingly, like she might be seeing something the Popular Group doesn’t: something other than mature.

  “Yeah…okay. I’ll be your partner, Mary-Anne,” I say, feeling worn down. I take the squashed garlic out of my ear and put it into the bin. Her face lights up, and I can’t shake her for the rest of the day. It doesn’t take much to make Mary-Anne Wilson happy; in fact, it’s kind of contagious, and after a while my good self feels slightly better than terrible. And while Mary-Anne was no good at sticking matchsticks straight, it turns out she’s actually not bad at mixing colors and painting Blue Mountains landscapes. Not bad at all.

  * * *

  ■ ■ ■

  Sister Josepha asks me to stay back and help her wash out the paintbrushes after school. Once I finish drying them all, she calls me to her desk and says she has something to give me. I’m terrified that she has solved the mystery of Kimberly’s missing essay; I probably deserve a detention…suspension…maybe expulsion.

  But when Sister opens the desk drawer, I see Patricia’s writing on the front of a letter, a letter addressed to me at St. Brigid’s School.

  I can barely wait to read it but work hard at accepting it casually from Sister, just like I would if I got a letter every second day. Once under the mulberry tree, I open it quickly and try to understand all the things Patricia has to tell me.

  I read it again, more slowly, because my eyes went all fuzzy the first time:

  Dear Ally,

  I didn’t have a chance to say good bye to you and to tell you that I have been to 8 schools but no one was ever such a good friend to me as you are. You are fun and smart and you’ve got guts Ally. But mostly you are loyall.

  But this is no suprise because Mum says you’ve got good genes. Joy is cool and copped a blow for me. Fake dad was on a bender, he’s not my real dad, and he blew up when we tried to leave and he found us hiding at the naybours. He threw the boiling hot kettle at me but Joy stood in the way and she saved me but she got the hot water all accross her face. I felt real bad Ally. I still do. It looked like it hurt her alot. Tell Joy I say hello and tell her I say sorry and tell her I say thankyou Joy.

  We are in Armidale now but we might move around a bit so its hard to give you our adress but Mum is going to keep in touch with Joy so may be we can be pen pals so give a letter to Joy and she can send it to the right place.

  I hope you like high school when you go and that we can do a trip around Australia together one day like we talked about in a flower power hippy van with curtens.

  Give Kimberly and all the popular group a bite on the bum from me.

  Love from your best-ever friend,

  Patricia

  Something that tastes like metal pushes down any happiness I might feel about hearing from Patricia, because right now I just need to see Joy. I need to know where she is. I need to know that her face is not boiling hot, that her eyes aren’t burnt closed, that her voice can still hum, her arms can still hug and that her bosom is still my safe harbor.

  I run and don’t stop until I get to our lane. At Number 23 Rick is reversing his van out of the driveway. I stand blocking his way.

  “Where’s Joy?”

  Rick sees me, cuts the engine and jumps out of the van.

  “Tell me, Rick, where is she? I know she’s not on a holiday.” I’m panting, and as my words come out I realize I’m crying, too. “I know she’s been burnt. Where is she?”

  “It’s okay, Al Pal. Calm down. Joy’s going to be fine.”

  “But tell me where she is.”

  “She’s safe and sound at Wendy’s.”

  “Take me there. Take me to Wendy’s house—please, Rick! I need to see Joy.”

  Twenty minutes later, Whisky Wendy opens the door of a house that smells completely different from Number 23 and looks nothing like the convent. She tells us to just step around the holes in the floor as we weave our way behind her down a dark corridor. There’s a room at the end with cane furniture, a fishbowl, a
desk with a typewriter and posters on the walls. I read a few quickly as I walk past.

  “What does ‘From Adam’s Rib to Women’s Lib’ mean, Rick?”

  “Buggered if I know, Al.” Rick’s head is down and he’s not stopping to read anything.

  Wendy beckons us outside into the backyard, where some little kids on dinkies are making their way around trotting toddlers in nappies. Some women sitting on mismatched chairs on the back veranda are holding cups of tea and smoking cigarettes, chatting to each other while keeping half an eye on the children. One of them dashes out to scoop a child off a tricycle and onto her hip as soon as she spots Rick.

  We follow Wendy past the women and children through to the end of the yard, where we come to what looks like old horse stables. She tells us to wait at the door and she’ll check if Joy is up to having visitors.

  Visitors…Wendy sure does describe me in weird ways. A few weeks ago I was a sister; now I’m a visitor. I don’t think she realizes who I am to Joy and what Joy is to me.

  And then there is my Joy. Altered. Moving slowly. No matte makeup. But her eyes are smiling and her arms are open.

  I don’t want to look too long at Joy’s red-and-brown face, so I bury mine, eyes closed, into my berth in her harbor. She hums “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral” gently into the top of my head. And I exhale. But with my next deep inhale, longing for lavender, it’s not the scent of Joy that hits the back of my throat but more the smell of something Matilde would use to clean the bathroom floor. That part of my heart that grabs feelings before they escape takes hold and tells me not to let Joy see what I’m seeing or sense what I’m smelling.

  “Ally, darling, I didn’t want you to see me with this silly burnt face. I really didn’t want to frighten you.” Joy leans lightly on my arm to walk across to an old velvet lounge. We sit together. Her voice sounds a little bit different. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t be at your Confirmation, darling. Was it a wonderful, magical day?”