by Regina Doman
The day after Bear had come to their house, Blanche sat in the storm of shouting and talking in the crowded cafeteria, trying to read Jane Eyre over peanut butter and jelly.
“Hey, Blanche!” a guy shouted at her from the other end of the table.
She half looked up. It was Carl Lester, the pimpled, loudmouthed boy from science class who thought himself a great comedian.
“Can you give me the answers to our homework for Biology?”
Whatever she said, he would play off it, somehow. “I’d rather not,” she said at last, brushing the crumbs off of her plaid uniform skirt. Carl’s companions laughed.
“Pleeeasse?” He slid down the bench towards her. He was bigger than her, with an unpleasant and aggressive attitude that he masked with humor. “Come on, Blanche, be my friend.”
Tensely, she glanced at him, and his friends burst into laughter.
Confident of his audience, he said, “You got a date for this Friday?”
She bit her lip. With Carl, it always ended up this way. She wished for the umpteenth time that she had some of Rose’s nerve, or at least that she could think of some decent reply to shut him up.
“Aw, playing hard to get, are you? Wanna go out with me Friday night? I could show you a real good time.”
Grimly, she stared at her book, trying not to look frightened. He went on.
“Come on, Blanche. You gotta start sometime. You and I would be good together, I know.” Her face went red as the other boys hooted. She got up as he pleaded mockingly, “Aw, now don’t run out on me!”
She gathered up her things as quickly as she could while he continued to hassle her, and walked as fast as she dared from the cafeteria, her face scarlet.
It was a relief to find the girl’s bathroom empty. Feeling cold and clammy, she leaned against the nearest bathroom stall and tried to fight off the faintness. The last thing she needed was to keel over on the bathroom floor. “Oh, stop it, please, not now,” she said beseechingly to her body, which always seemed to cave in on her when things became stressful. She undid the top button on her blue oxford uniform shirt. The tiny black specks that had been dancing before her eyes receded, and she breathed deeply. Thank God for that, at least.
When she felt more normal, she took some bathroom tissue from the stalls and blew her nose. There was one kid in the school who had seizures, and everyone made fun of him. God forbid they should ever find out about her fainting spells. She had enough strikes against her already.
Still shaky, she stared at her face in the mirror—a round white face with pale blue eyes. It was a child’s face, and Blanche wished that it were still possible to be a child. But here she was, stuck in an adolescent body in an adolescent world, and apparently failing miserably.
And her skin was very white, the heritage of an Irish ancestry. She rubbed her cheeks irritably and fumbled in her book bag for the necessary blush. I look like a china doll without the pink cheeks. Goodness, I could be dead, staring in the mirror, and not know it. She found her tiny compact and brushed on some of the pink powder. Better, but her eyes and nose were still red. She wet a paper towel and pressed it to her eyes, feeling very fragile.
The bathroom door banged open, and Eileen Raskin, one of the top girls in the food chain, walked in with her entourage. The blond girl’s green eyes alighted on Blanche and her mascara-heavy lashes lowered. “Hey, it’s the Immaculate Complexion!” she laughed.
Blanche had no idea why her one blessing—a lack of acne—should have become the target for her classmates’ ridicule. She put away her compact and turned from the mirror, hoping that it wouldn’t look like she had been crying.
Eileen’s sidekick, Lisa, a tall redhead who wore her uniform skirts as short as possible, sneered. “What’s up, I.C.? How’s the book reading?”
They think I’m their personal chew toy, Blanche thought irritably. “Woof, woof,” she muttered below her breath, making her way to the door.
“Have you found a date for the prom yet? Better start early!” Lisa called after her, and Eileen said, “I hear Carl is looking for someone to go with him!” Blanche heard their laughter as the door slammed shut behind her.
Now there was no place to go. Blanche didn’t think she could handle the lunchroom again. Slowly she started up the nearest staircase. Maybe she would just hang out in the halls until her next class started. But if she did that, she would risk being questioned by teachers, who seemed to have an inherent distrust of solitary students. As she walked onto the second floor, her eyes fell on the door to the chapel. Without another thought she slipped inside.
In the dark room, a converted classroom with stained-glass windows installed, a red electric light flickered by the round plain tabernacle in the corner. Blanche genuflected and gave the unadorned box a grim smile.
Apparently, once upon a time the chapel had been more beautiful. Blanche guessed the niches in the corners had once held statues, but there were now only artificial ivy plants and a banner for Peace and Justice Month. The altar was a plain wooden square, the crucifix unremarkable. But in the back of the room stood a lone statue of Mary that Blanche touched lightly with one finger as she passed.
She leaned against the bare wall by the windows—there were no pews, just floor mats—and tried to formulate a prayer. Instead, pictures of her dead father began to flash through her mind—Dad coming home from work, looking tired and relieved; Dad slicing potatoes to make his famous home-fries; Dad reading out loud to them after dinner, his wire-rimmed reading glasses making him look distinguished. Dad had always told her that she was beautiful, and occasionally she had even believed him. Dang it, this was not the way to stop crying.
To steady herself, she began to look at the only concession to beauty in the room, the stained-glass windows, a triumphant medley in blue, gold, red, and purple. Today, the winter skies made the colors murky, but the hues still glowed with an unearthly, comforting light.
She rested her hot forehead against the cold glass and tried to find a transparent panel. Through a chink of clear glass, she could make out the parking lot below. Was Bear there today?
She could not see him through her tiny peephole. He might be there, or he might not. If he was not there, where was he?
Turning back to the room, she stared at a dedication plaque, stating that the windows had been donated by friends and faculty to honor the memory of Fr. Michael Raymond, chaplain of St. Catherine’s. There was a picture of Fr. Raymond in the hallway downstairs. He was a formidably handsome priest whom the girls said looked like James Dean in his fifties. There wasn’t a chaplain at St. Catherine’s any more.
The bell rang, shocking Blanche into the present situation. She knelt down before the tabernacle said a quick formal prayer, then carefully opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.
Blanche straightened her posture in her desk as Sister Geraldine came into the room. The English teacher in her long white Dominican habit and black veil was about eighty years old, shriveled and walking with a cane. She had continued teaching English because she liked to, and had reached the stage where she was no longer offended that many of her students were not interested in literature. She simply taught the course as if they were all college literature majors, and never graded on a curve. That meant that even the laziest students had to work hard to keep up the pretense of passing. Blanche enjoyed being pushed academically.
Today, Sister Geraldine returned their poems. In general, Sister Geraldine frowned upon “creative writing” as a diversion from studying the classics, but when they had reached the section on poetry, she had reluctantly directed the students to write an original poem in one of three classical styles, just for practice: sonnet, villanelle, or terzanelle.
Blanche had spent long hours laboring over her sonnet, and was dismayed to find it returned covered in blistering red slashes and writing. Sister Geraldine, who seemed to like Blanche in an odd, roundabout way, had criticized the poem harshly. The poem was “technically well done, but s
uffers from a poor handling of the subject.”
Blanche had written about flowers at sunset, because she could find the most descriptive words to use on this subject. She had some thought about trying to work in her grief over Dad’s death, but the rigid form of the sonnet wouldn’t allow it. Every line she came up with about death that rhymed just sounded stupid. So she got rid of death and just talked about flowers. Sister Geraldine’s caustic remarks hurt, because she had intended the poem to be so much better than it was.
Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who was upset by her grade. Lauren Berger, who had written what Blanche thought was a pretty funny villanelle about studying for an algebra test, raised her hand and complained. Lauren was the top student in the senior class, and was used to getting A’s. Sister Geraldine had never given her more than an average grade, which Lauren resented bitterly. Sister Geraldine listened to Lauren’s hurt remarks for a few seconds, and launched into a lecture which Blanche thought didn’t really answer the question. Sometimes she was sure that Sister was a little deaf.
Well, maybe not. Leaning on her cane and staring at Lauren with beady blue eyes, Sister expostulated, “The problem is not in your technique, which was fairly good, but in the handling of your subject matter. Two qualities of great poetry are that it deals with a universal subject matter in an original manner. Now, while everyone might be able to relate to the frustrations of studying for a test, your poem didn’t adequately convey what we might call the ‘human realities’ of that sensation. It was clever and even humorous, but was too exclusively ‘yours.’ You provided your audience with too few avenues through which they might become immersed in the experience and so sympathize, identify, and participate in the poem’s sentiments. Now, Miss Brier—” here she indicated Blanche with a wave of a shaking hand “spoke with a familiar voice that the reader could emotionally respond to on a universally significant topic—death—but her thoughts on the matter were poorly formulated and unoriginal, although she handled the sonnet form nicely.”
How did she know that I was writing about death? Blanche was silently amazed. Sister Geraldine went on, and Lauren continued to look glum and irritated. At last, Lauren said, raising her hand again, “So I think you’re saying that it’s impossible to get an A in this class unless we’re Shakespeare or something.”
The class chuckled, and Sister Geraldine permitted herself a rare smile. “Oh, it’s not impossible, just very, very difficult.”
She paused. “Actually, if it will make you feel better, I did give out an A to a student poem, once.”
Really? Blanche and the rest of the class were interested in the poem immediately.
Sister sensed that, and opened her briefcase. “We had just studied Robert Frost, one of the moderns, and I gave the poetry assignment then. One remarkable student turned in this poem. It is meant as a response to Frost’s famous poem, ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay.’” She pulled out a folder and paused. “Perhaps it might not make sense to you if you’re not familiar with the poem, but I think that it stands on its own.”
With her white, veined hand, she took out a piece of paper and read aloud, her thin voice rounding out the words,
“The first tree-flowers float
wisp on water, though it’s air.
Each prism parallel,
Suspended there.
Suspended there as sap is rising,
growing as it stays,
Bending under sap’s height,
Giving praise.
Giving praise, but oh, they have been bent
growing green for which they fade.
Singing only to be silent.
To rest laid.
To rest, laid low in the earth’s brown dust,
the Autumn grey dust they had been,
Again themselves to dust, but born
Again to all things then.
Again to all things then they’re flying
tallest mountains, highest skies,
All things green and good are falling,
Only to rise.”
She cleared her throat at the end. “Perhaps I was a bit hasty in giving it an ‘A,’ but I did, so I let it stand. For a student composition, I thought it was excellent.” She laid the paper on the desk. “Please open your literature books to page 103.”
Lauren turned to a girl across the aisle and whispered. “That didn’t sound like a villanelle or a sonnet. Huh! I bet the one who wrote that poem was her special pet.”
“Must have been, to crack Sister Geraldine,” was her friend’s remark.
Blanche wasn’t sure. She expected Sister Geraldine to be far more objective than that.
As she found page 103, Blanche thought about the images in the poem. The apple blossoms on the farm that was no longer theirs were dead now, though the promise of next year’s buds slumbered in the black frozen branches. Would she ever see them again? There’s such a thing as hope, she thought. Mom has it. Rose has it. Just not me.
After class was over, she hesitantly went up to the old nun who sat at her desk, checking off items in her schedule.
“Sister, I wondered … might I have a copy of that poem you read us?”
Sister Geraldine looked at her over her bifocals with sharp blue eyes. “Certainly. Take it to the School Office and ask Sister Maureen to make a photocopy of it for you, then bring it right back here.”
She handed Blanche the poem. Blanche did not dare disobey, though it would probably make her late for the next class. As she hurried down the hall, she scanned the poem again. It was signed “A. Denniston.” Blanche wondered if A. Denniston was a boy or a girl.
When she opened the office door, Mr. Edward Freet was talking to the nun who was the office manager, a formidable woman with a stylish haircut. Mr. Freet was a commonplace sight at the school, although Blanche had never been able to figure out if he held an official post there. A short, older man in his sixties with iron-grey hair and a red, wrinkled face, he seemed to be friends with all the teachers and secretaries, although he was more brusque to the students, at least to the girls. In his patterned vests and collared shirts, he was a peculiar and distinctive figure. Blanche had heard he was the principal’s brother and owned an art gallery in Greenwich Village.
“What do you want?” the nun said to Blanche as she approached them.
“A photocopy—for Sister Geraldine,” Blanche faltered.
Mr. Freet looked annoyed at the interruption, but the nun took the poem from her and went to the copier. He continued to talk in petulant tones about art and music.
“You can’t pretend that this trash they’re putting out today is really music,” he was saying. “It’s abysmally inferior to just about anything from the eighteenth century. Take Mozart, for instance. None of these contemporary composers can hold a candle to him!”
“Truth can be found in all times, in many forms, even ugly ones,” the nun intoned mildly.
“Art isn’t about truth, it’s about form,” Mr. Freet said indignantly, rapping on the Formica desktop with his fingernails. “That’s why the absence of a beautiful, structured form destroys music. Yes, and art, too. That’s why I don’t hold with your modern churches and their formless abstractions. Garbage and tripe, all of it.”
He shot a look over at Blanche, who couldn’t help following the conversation with interest, and glared at her.
Blanche swiftly dropped her eyes and pretended to read the fire drill procedure taped to the top of the counter.
“So you would have us remain frozen in admiration of Michelangelo’s nudes?” the nun said over the noise of the copier.
“Why not? Stay with the perfect. I agree with the Greeks.”
“There were a lot of flaws in the philosophies of the ancient Greeks.”
“Oh, I suppose you mean because they revered the male body over the female body as exemplifying perfection,” he said. “So what’s wrong with that? Here again, Michelangelo is a perfect example. Take his David for instance, over his grotesque female nude
s.”
The nun crossed to Blanche and handed her the poem and its copy with a reassuring smile, then turned back to her conversation. “You see, that’s your view of the truth, Mr. Freet. It’s perhaps different from other people’s point of view.”
“Which is why I say art is about form and not truth!”
Blanche closed the door, thoughts whirling around her head. She would have to repeat the strange conversation to the family at home and try to make some sense of it, if there was any sense in it at all. It sounded terribly refined and reasonable, but somehow she found herself lost in the middle of it.
When she came back into the classroom, Sister Geraldine was standing at her desk, rearranging papers in her briefcase with delicate precision. Her cane was on her elbow.
Blanche gave the original poem back to her and asked hesitantly, “How did you know my sonnet was about dying?”
“I read between the lines,” Sister said cryptically. “It’s a difficult subject for a young person to handle.”
Blanche stared at the nun’s gnarled hands, and thought, That may be true, but young people still have to deal with it. But, of course, she couldn’t say that to Sister, who might not know about her father’s death. So, she thanked her teacher quickly and went to her next class.
Rose hurried towards her sister as she saw Blanche leave Sister Geraldine’s room. “Hey! How are you doing?”
“The usual.” Blanche gave her a bleak smile.
“You don’t look too good.” Rose studied her sister’s white face anxiously.
“I was feeling a little dizzy after lunch. That’s all.”
“Was someone teasing you again?”
“We both know that’s the school’s second most popular sport.”