The Divine Economy of Salvation

by Priscila Uppal

  “Esperanza,” I called from behind the curtain.

  She looked up, her face in the mirror, her eyebrows arched in confusion, trying to decipher the direction of the noise. She had not noticed anyone was in the washroom; she inspected the vent.

  “Esperanza, please,” I said again, and she ventured over to the shower stall, abandoning her baskets and her grey cart with the tiny wheels on the bottom that she dragged up and down stairs and along hallways. Her body was older than she was, her hands wrinkled from astringents and cleaners, the skin on her fingers calloused. A couple of the girls called her witch behind her back, for the way she rubbed her hands together with lotion as if casting a spell; some also teased her by anglicizing her name to Esther, which made her scowl. She approached, not with friendly concern, but not with disapproval either. The pockets of her eyes were deep, and I imagined she saw right through me.

  “What do you want? I don’t have extra shampoo to give you.”

  I held out my nightgown to her, displaying the bloody stain, a deep reddish-brown splatter like rust. “Do you think this will come out?” I asked, close to crying, as if I had wet my bed in the night and were showing her my sheets.

  “Sure. What do you want to give me for it?” she responded instantly.

  I hadn’t thought of that, but I knew Esperanza didn’t do any favours for free. Still, I half expected, with an entire school of young girls, that my request would be a fairly common one, not one that required immense secrecy, although due to my innocence in these matters, I wasn’t sure. Again I wished for my mother, who should have been beside me, who could have helped me wash the stains herself. The idea that I’d never experienced a period before might not have crossed Esperanza’s mind. It was probably the shame emanating from my washed body that made me suspect.

  “Rachel’s father is taking us to the movies tonight. Do you want to come?”

  Esperanza leaned back against the stall door, her light-brown skin dull in the brightness of the bathroom, twisting my nightgown in her hands. She had never accompanied us to the movies before, but I knew she wanted to go, had seen her regard Rachel’s father longingly as he left with a bunch of girls down the street, his stride fatherly and grand.

  “All right,” she said, and placed the nightgown underneath some white towels in her basket, hiding the stain. She was shaking her head, waiting for me to get dressed maybe, to leave her alone and go to choir practice like the others. I was going to be late. As she opened the door to leave, her cart squeaking on the wet floor she had just sprayed with cleaner, she threw back her head and laughed.

  “Your friend Rachel’s very strange,” she said. “Paying me off to bring a boy up for you. For you!” Her head bobbed faster up and down in laughter as Patrick’s body had against Rachel.

  Rachel’s father accompanied the girls to dinner in the cafeteria that evening, promised us ice cream after the movie, and advised we skip dessert. He sat with the nuns instead of with us, discussing plans for the Christmas pageant with them. There was no lineup to speak of on the weekends, so we quickly received our plates of food and headed to a distant table. The women who worked in the cafeteria were immigrants, newly arrived in Canada, and many were Chinese. They spoke little English and no French, and we simply pointed to the potatoes and beans, ham or fish that we wanted on our plates.

  “My father says they were traitors in the war,” Rachel said.

  “I think those were the Japanese,” Francine muttered between mouthfuls. “And not the ones in Canada.”

  “No matter,” Rachel claimed. “They are all going to hell anyway. They’re not Christian, you know. None of them are going to get into heaven. My father says so, no matter how many dishes they make for us. Besides, they get paid for it, it’s no act of charity.”

  Considering what Rachel said about her father’s dislike for the Chinese, I was surprised at the kind and polite manner in which he dealt with them. He even joked in their company, playfully poking an elbow into a rib, slipping a few quarters to them over the countertop. From the bank, he would bring Rachel a whole roll of quarters, wrapped in brown bank paper, at the beginning of each week, which she would unroll carefully, hiding the coins in her drawers, in socks and shirts, in envelopes. It was from these rolls that she could afford to buy cheap jewellery or makeup from Woolworth’s, or get us cigarettes and candy from the delivery boy. Every time she took out a quarter, she wove it in and out of her fingers like a magician, a trick she had learned from her father. In his heavy pockets, you could see the bulge of other rolls, dimes and nickels, that he kept close to treat us at candy machines or to dispense as little prizes when we pleased him. Rachel walked beside her father as if he were God, her eyes orbiting him, and the rest of the girls privileged enough to be on her list of friends followed suit. And he looked the way I imagined God would, towering over even Mother Superior, whose face relaxed as much as it was able to in his presence. He had made large donations over the years. The school couldn’t have continued without him. When in his presence, one felt honoured to be received.

  Rachel knew the power her father possessed. His frame was robust, large around the chest, and he sometimes wore his dress shirts open a button, where crisp brown hairs protruded like dried grass from the collar. The hair on his head, parted perfectly to the right, was a slightly darker auburn than that of his beard and moustache. He wore large navy blue blazers with silver buttons and solid-coloured silk ties and he smelled of money. When he would sit beside me, his thick musk cologne filled my nostrils, reminding me of my father before my mother got sick and he stopped wearing anything that might aggravate her lungs or sting her eyes. Rachel’s father called me Angel when I pleased him, in a lingering Irish accent that made his sentences seem like short songs. He loved movies and enjoyed taking the girls on weekends to see them. Sometimes we would see the same movie two or three times if we liked it. Mr. M. didn’t care what kind of movie it was, as long as we wanted to go with him. He easily forgot which movies we had seen, but he could remember in exquisite detail what we had worn. The best days, like that day, we would be giddy with excitement to see the new film advertised in the paper, for the nuns rarely let us watch the single television in the recreation room. We expected spies and intrigue, death and murder, sex and love—the bright colours of the adult world we hoped to be entering.

  When Mr. M. arrived, Mother Superior and the nuns swarmed around him, displaying the new banners for the church or the classroom textbooks they had purchased with his last donations. He nodded vigorously as if he adored each new item, exclaiming in brassy tones, “You ladies are really outdoing yourselves this time.” Sister Marguerite, so pale she was practically transparent, would turn a deep red and fumble with the object she was holding. He also supplied the nuns with blankets, the crocheted afghans Rachel’s mother made—between one and three in a week. The nuns loved them; each had their own, and they would keep extras for the girls and guests, donating the older ones when they became worn to the Salvation Army. Once Mr. M. had even offered to take all the nuns to the movies and out for ice cream, but they refused. He brought back a small tub of vanilla. “They can’t get offended by the colour white,” he joked, and Mother Superior accepted it kindly. I imagined the delicious pleasure the nuns must have had dipping their spoons into the soft cream and savouring the sugary taste that night, their habits stripped off and their hair running along their shoulders, tucked into warm beds with their reading lights turned on or gathered together in Mother Superior’s quarters the way The Sisterhood gathered in Rachel’s room.

  I was late to meet the girls after dinner, trying to get myself accustomed to the sanitary belt, practising the quickest and cleanest manner to get it on and off.

  “You’re usually the first one out, Angela. Angel?” Mr. M. called. “What’s keeping you? Choosing the right shoes?”

  He always treated the girls like budding women, tormenting us with jests that we had secret boys in our lives whom we were dressing to impress,
that this was the reason we went to the movies. “Not to be with an old man like me,” he would say, “that’s for sure.” But Rachel was the only one who had actually spoken to a boy on any of our outings with her father, and I was sure he knew nothing about it. When Mr. M. was around, we gave him our undivided attention.

  The door handle turned, and then Mr. M. in his heavy fall coat stood obstructing the doorway in front of me. I blushed and dropped the pads I had been about to throw in my closet, spilling them onto the carpet. Mr. M. fell to his knees and started to pick them up for me as I fumbled with the cardboard package. Horrified, I slapped his hand.

  “Don’t—” I squealed and started to cry, shoving the pads haphazardly into the flimsy box and stowing them under the bed. The room trapped me, and Mr. M. approached without hesitation, his smile wide, his teeth as white as the pads, his gums the colour of my blood.

  “No need to cry,” he spoke softly. “No need to cry, little Angel.” And he stroked my hair, while I, frozen, let him, his pungent cologne wrapping around me. I felt a tingle where the blood was, an ache, like the way I felt when we looked at pictures of men in magazines with their shirts off, but stronger. I wanted to push myself away from him, protect that feeling for pictures and not for real male bodies, but I couldn’t. “It’s a natural thing, you know. You don’t think I do, but I do know about these things. I’m a married man. I’ve known girls in my day.”

  His words swarmed me and I wanted to swat at them like flies, but the stroking soothed me.

  “I want my mother,” I said, and buried my head in his chest, his warm skin close enough that if I quivered I’d be kissing him, his hair in my mouth. I was utterly flustered to have Rachel’s father discover I was having my period, and afraid at what I was allowing myself to feel for him in the process, but I parted my lips slightly and tasted salt. I’m sure I felt him tremble.

  Rachel found us in this way, me tight in her father’s arms, and she kicked her shoe against the door, annoyed we were keeping her from leaving for our outing. Ashamed, I burrowed deeper into Mr. M.’s chest to avoid her gaze. I didn’t know what she would think of me seeking comfort in her father’s arms, whether she would tease me or force me to stay away from him. I envied Rachel for her father, who always wanted to be close to her.

  “Dad,” she said forcefully. “Let’s go.”

  Mr. M. rose to attention. His entire body stiffened, abandoning with it the illusion of continuous movement that he normally possessed. Rachel traipsed back down the hallway and Esperanza, wearing her new red beaded necklace, followed. Mr. M. wiped his hands across his pants, mumbling under his breath words I couldn’t quite make out, except for the end of a sentence: “she doesn’t know.”

  “She doesn’t know,” he said then in a louder voice, “what it’s like to be lonely.” He patted my shoulder and placed a couple of quarters into my palm, whispering, “You get yourself something to make you happy.”

  We joined the other girls, a group of about eight Leftovers. Rachel was a Leftover too, technically, but no one treated her that way. She seemed, of anyone, the most loved daughter. I tried to take my mind off the new pain I was feeling in my abdomen, my mind off the blood, off what it might lead to, off of Rachel’s newly broken body. Esperanza had thought it was I who was changed and I was secretly pleased by the mistake. But she was wrong. And I wondered whether Mr. M., who had known girls in his day, sensed the change in Rachel, if that’s why he rose to attention when she spoke. Because she was now a woman, and I was still only a girl.

  When Rachel introduced an anxious Esperanza to Mr. M., he welcomed her in as large a voice as he could muster within the school walls, “Well then, since you are new, you must sit beside me in the theatre.” The sparkle from his gold cufflinks transferred directly to the irises in Esperanza’s eyes.

  THE POLICE COME BY early in the morning to take Kim to the station. She had been forewarned a couple of days before, but still appears shocked as two officers pull up, their car’s siren turned off, in the back lot of the convent. She wears fresh clothes, washed by Sister Josie and donated by Sister Bernadette, who is close to her in size, and her hair is brushed back into a short and stubby ponytail. She appears much younger than fifteen, despite her swelling middle. One would almost think she were afraid of her first day at school, the way she clings to my hand as we walk towards the lobby, her hands nervous, her voice high-pitched and slightly pained, trailing half a step behind.

  “I’m going to come back, right?” she asks me, her eyes, generally oval, round with fear.

  “Like I said, as long as you don’t have a record and no one’s filed a Missing Person Report, you’ll be back before you know it.” I try to make my voice sound cheerful. I am, however, exhausted, deprived of sleep by nightmares about the past and the quest to discover who wants me to remember it. At evening Mass I almost grabbed a woman from behind, her voice reminding me of Caroline. But she stopped to chat with another woman and I saw that she was far too old. She had a wider nose and higher-set eyebrows as well. Notwithstanding the mistake, the hint of familiarity around me has been consistent and palpable; I can taste it, the way you can taste the seasons changing in the air. A hair colour, or a scent, an inflection in a voice, a mannerism in the hands or in a person’s stride—anything and everything is feeding my imagination to couple the present with the past. The woman behind the counter at the grocery, the woman who bent her head and opened the confessional at church, a woman’s feet outside my window: all hammer the same question, Who has come for you? We have a lot of Spanish families who attend church, and I could have sworn there was a young woman whose hands were exactly like Esperanza’s. I forgot to do the math. Esperanza would not be nineteen with calloused fingers any longer. She’d be a woman only slightly older than me, with kids and a husband most likely. But I eyed the Spanish families suspiciously. If Esperanza did send the candle holder, she’d have done it like this. Let me wait in silence, torturing myself. She’d have enough bitterness welled up in her, I’m sure, to strike out at the most inopportune moment. I’d nearly forgotten about her. But she knew everything that transpired at St. X. School for Girls. She knew what was in our hampers, what was in our garbage. I used to wonder how she kept so many secrets to herself. Then again, I had something on her too. I suppose it is all important now, if there’s a debt to be paid. In order to carry or uncover a secret, one must first determine its worth.

  “I don’t have a record,” Kim states defensively.

  I trust her on that account. She’s a good kid. A little too trusting maybe to some boy who told her she was beautiful and he’d love her forever, or a little too curious or stupid to take the proper precautions she could have obtained at a medical clinic, from a drugstore pharmacy counter, or from the metal dispensers in public washrooms. She isn’t rude or disrespectful, and blushes when anyone asks her a personal question. It’s as if it’s never occurred to her that the day might come when she would need to explain her situation. As if she herself has no idea, has been struck unwittingly with a bulging middle, a Virgin Mary without an angel to explain the grand purpose of her pregnancy.

  “So,” I repeat, releasing my hand from hers as we approach an officer, a man in a bomber jacket and beige slacks leaning against the wall beside the convent door, the other officer in the front seat of the car. “Unless someone’s looking for you, they’re going to bring you back here.”

  I’ve salvaged a jacket from our Lost and Found to keep her warm, as it has started snowing and the winds have picked up force over the last two days. She arrived here with nothing, this girl, like an orphan dropped off on our doorstep. An orphan going to give birth to an orphan, I think. The blind leading the blind. The rummage sale over for another season, I am now required to go through the items in the Lost and Found. My method involves dating the items. A one-year time limit, because there are those who only come to church on the festive occasions of Christmas or Easter. The usual things are left over: black umbrellas, odd mittens a
nd gloves on church pews or buried underneath snowbanks that become visible in the spring, scarves and skull caps, bus passes now expired, small pieces of jewellery such as earrings or bracelets thought to have been lost somewhere else, a binder or datebook, the events since transpired. Purses, of course, are always retrieved, and with complete relief and thanks. As are jackets in the spring or autumn, which tend to be left behind because the weather has warmed for the day. These things are expensive to replace. Yet people do return for things I wouldn’t think twice about. Once a woman took a cab to the church to retrieve a lip balm, asking me to keep it aside with her name on it in case I wasn’t here when she arrived. A man lost a button from his coat and came every week to search for it, because each button had been stitched on by his late wife. An older woman who could barely manage to walk down the hallway to the Lost and Found booth was nearly in tears one Sunday because she had lost her bus transfer. I’ve learned you just can’t tell what people will want back. I am no closer now than I was when I started this duty fifteen years ago to discovering what people value most. Whenever I remove things from the box, I’m worried someone, some day, will come back and accuse me of depriving them of their ownership rights. Even though the jacket I gave Kim has been ownerless for only about a month, I rationalize that if anyone had needed it, they would already have come back to get it. If anyone asks now, I’ll say it was never here.

  I lead Kim through the cold air, which tastes of the brutal winter to come, over to the cruiser with its motor running. I try to keep my face hidden, wearing my wimple purposefully, keeping my chin down. But the men, as usual, seem to have their attention on the young girl, on Kim. I am just the deliverer.

  “No one’s looking for me,” Kim says, settling into the back of the cruiser, behind the screen. For a second, it seems almost possible that she is in one of the church confessionals and not in a police car. I’d never thought of it before, but it occurs to me now that both are used for similar purposes. I hope the policemen will be good to her, not ask too many questions, not force her to speak directly about her past.