The Divine Economy of Salvation

by Priscila Uppal

  I take her hand harshly, squeezing her slim fingers, and press the elevator button.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry,” she stutters, and I shoot her an outraged glance to silence her. My entire body is tense. I can feel my back stiffening. The side of my cheek twitches.

  Kim whimpers and I press the button again, although the light is flashing to tell me the elevator will arrive when available. I’m glad I decided to wear plain clothes instead of my habit. The effect is liberating. I can argue with Kim, express my dissatisfaction and scold her without being worried about how my behaviour as a nun might reflect on the Church.

  “That hurts.”

  “Shut up.” I stamp one boot on the floor, turn to face her. She’s flushed. My grip loosens on her fingers.

  “After I agreed to come with you . . . you lied to me. To all of us!” My voice is loud, and a few patients waiting in the reception chairs glance up momentarily from their magazines. The rattle keeps shaking.

  “I’m sorry,” Kim says quietly, squeezing the end of my jacket sleeve. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know.”

  “You must have known it was longer than four-and-a-half months! You must have known you couldn’t hide it forever!”

  I hiss the words at her and she averts her gaze, admitting guilt. I surmise from her erratic breathing that she is trying not to cry. A small group of people encircles us, all eyes on the flashing floor numbers overhead, indicating how long before it will be our turn. I feel swarmed, claustrophobic, and pull Kim closer to my side. The doors open.

  “There are things we need to plan,” I say to her. “It’s so soon. There are so many things we need to get for you. To prepare. You haven’t given us any time to prepare.”

  With the doors about to shut with the ring of the elevator bell, we rush inside, Kim’s body and mine close together, her chin at my chest. She angles her neck to huddle against me and I tense up but comply. I lift my hand and stroke her hair, slightly damp at the forehead with sweat, and am aware I have taken on her and her baby whether I want to or not. I laugh inwardly at the thought that I too am now a mother, a victim of immaculate conception. What will happen to you? I think, and hold Kim even closer, potential life stirring within her. She slides her arms around my waist as the floor gives way underneath us. We will not fall, I say to myself like a prayer.

  WHEN MY FATHER CAME to pick me up for Christmas holidays, discussing something intently with Mother Superior as I waited impatiently to get going, I noticed his body had grown tighter and thinner since I’d last seen him, the muscles on his face and arms shrunken, yet hard to the touch. The red and green sweater I remembered him wearing snugly the year before hung below his waistline, and the hair at his temples was practically white. He had grown a beard, a reddish-brown mix with a patch of black-brown at the chin, which contrasted starkly with the greying hair on his scalp.

  “Why the beard, Daddy?” I asked as he drove a car I’d never seen before, on loan from a neighbour. I hadn’t seen him since arriving at St. X. School for Girls on the bus. I wanted him to feel guilty for leaving me alone all this time, but I was giddy at our reunion, regardless of the friends I’d made. I didn’t want to upset my mother by causing any trouble. She was probably too weak to deal with my problems. I couldn’t let my anger out.

  “Oh, this thing,” he chuckled, stroking the bulk at his chin comically with his free hand. “I figured I might as well let it grow. I’ve been so busy. Barely enough time to shave. Your mother tells me they’re in style again?”

  “Sure, Dad,” I replied, though the pictures we cut out of magazines were of much younger men, with thin arms and legs, and they never had beards, their faces as smooth as satin. In my room, underneath the mattress of my bed, I kept a picture of an eighteen-year-old model from a magazine, his shirt sliding off his shoulders like a blouse. His cheeks, which I kissed with red lipstick Rachel lent me, were round, and his chin was free of hair, as if he’d never shaved in his life. As we watched boys walking by, I liked the ones whose skin appeared almost transparent. The one I particularly liked, Nathaniel, or Nattie, as I heard his friends call him, barely had eyebrows. He would stop by with other boys at the convenience store across the street from our school and we’d run over at lunch to meet them sometimes. Nathaniel knew Patrick but wasn’t friends with him, so I don’t know if he heard about Rachel or our club. He told me he played hockey and was going to be in the NHL someday. I thought he looked too skinny for that. He was shorter than most of the other boys; shorter than Caroline and me. But I liked the way he pulled licorice whips out of the jar and shared them with me and how his hair was blond and fine like Rachel’s. I was sure it felt like silk, not scratchy like my father’s new beard when he kissed my forehead to greet me.

  “Your mother is doing so well, Angela. She’s like a whole new woman!” He was tapping the dashboard with his fingers, listening to jazz on the radio, humming contentedly, though it was clear he didn’t know any of the words to the songs.

  I hugged my small duffel bag with pleasure, a few clothes and a couple of pictures we had drawn in art class to give to my mother. I worked on a bowl of fruit for hours, contouring shades on grapes and apples. I was less successful than many in the class, but I knew that my mother would want to see something I’d done, and she’d praise me anyway.

  “Does that mean I’m coming home soon?”

  The thought made me anxious and relieved at the same time. I missed my mother, and I hated the nightmares I had in my room. Always filled with young children tending the wounds of women; my mother’s face streaked with dirt and blood, her glasses smashed on the floor. The children had white hair and were horribly thin; they ripped paper off the walls with their fingernails as they cried. With small needles, they pricked my mother’s flesh, draining her. I feared many times the ghosts of the past were seeping in through the walls, through the floors, as was rumoured. Yet I also knew that if I was allowed to return home, it would mean a new school and new friends, and I wouldn’t be able to do the things I did with Rachel, Caroline, and Francine. I liked being part of The Sisterhood. The girls had accepted me. They made the isolation endurable. I didn’t want to start all over.

  “She’s home,” he hummed, bopping his head to the rhythm.

  “Yes, I know Mom’s home. She’s home all the time,” I answered. “What about me? Or Christine?”

  “You’re home for Christmas,” he said and squeezed my arm beside him, then ruffled my hair.

  “Am I going to be there all year?”

  He stopped tapping the dashboard and checked the side and rear-view mirrors. “Did I miss the street? I think I missed the street, Angela,” he said, squinting to make out the signs covered with snow as we drove past a park on a sloped road. “There should be a house here with a yellow veranda. I think I missed it. What was I thinking?”

  He turned the car around.

  The snow had fallen gently and steadily for a week. It lined roofs and trees, piled up on driveways and road signs, and made the city’s breath exhale the fantasy of new beginnings. The festivity was getting to me, after the pageant and the treats at St. X. School for Girls and The Sisterhood’s trek to the boutiques lining the Market streets, where we peered in the windows, ran our hands over expensive dresses, and spent our change on maple candy. Rachel bought me a gold-painted ring with a fake purple stone. It wasn’t worth more than a dollar, but I adored it and slid it on my finger right away. It didn’t matter if the stone didn’t sparkle, I felt incredibly proud. “Sisters,” she said as I opened the white box. We had our gift exchange right on the city street, not waiting to wrap the presents. I bought Rachel a bottle of perfume from the Hudson’s Bay Company cosmetics counter. The clerk claimed many women who wore the scent attracted their future husbands. Rachel broke the seal and sprayed herself four times. Men and women carried boxes and bags, tissue paper and bows. On the frozen canal, couples and families skated in snowsuits and scarves, gliding across the ice, their faces flushed. The Christmas
cheer was infectious.

  Coloured lights in green, red, and yellow, strung around maple trees in front yards and evergreen bushes lining the streets, were plugged in and sparkling despite the afternoon whiteness, the sun directly overhead. Father said the city Christmas lights were overwhelming, nothing like what we were used to in the country. Every house was draped in light and sported a wreath on the front door or ornaments and tinsel on the windows and the lawns. Even our neighbourhood appeared lived in.

  “Look at it all,” he said as we drove. “I’m going to take your mother out to see the trees along the canal tomorrow.”

  I was about to tell my father I’d already been but decided against it. I hadn’t heard of my mother leaving the house for anything except doctors’ appointments. He might be hurt I hadn’t invited them, or he might ask too many questions about Mr. M. I’m sure he wouldn’t have thought it odd one of the girls’ parents had taken us on an outing, but I wanted to keep Mr. M. to myself. My cheeks went red in the car, my heartbeat quickened. I could not mention Mr. M. in my father’s presence. He might guess I had a secret. Instead, I agreed my mother would love to see the lights and decorations around the neighbourhood and downtown, and Christine and I could be taken later on in the holiday. I insisted they should have a nice day alone. My father was pleased.

  As we drove he continued to be amazed by the decorations. Even though it was daytime, the lights made the snow glitter in the sun.

  “Sister Aline told us the Christmas lights show God how much we thank Him for His son.”

  “I suppose she’d say so,” replied my father gravely.

  “I think they’re to make sure He can see us.”

  He tapped the dashboard with his gloved hands. “And what did Sister Aline say?”

  “She said He’s watching us all the time. But I don’t see how He can. There’d be so much He probably wouldn’t want to see. Brushing our teeth, sleeping, taking notes in class. Why does He want to see all that?”

  I was playing a bit, tired of pondering God and His ways, happy to be away from the presence of the nuns, their dark habits and conservative natures, their continual reminder of things beyond our control and their strange answers to our questions. He works in mysterious ways was what they said if they couldn’t explain a passage in the Bible or answer a question about a recent event or hypothetical dilemma. It was what Mother Superior finally said when we asked why there were so many religions in the world and only one true God. It was what she said when we asked why children were orphaned and abandoned and left hungry if they were innocent. I was perplexed the nuns seemed to know so little about Him, their only knowledge obtained through the teachings of others, through confessionals and gospels. Sister Marguerite told us not to worry, others had searched before us and found the truth and we were lucky to follow. Sister Aline tried not to circumvent our questions, but her answers were equally incomprehensible to us most of the time. Ultimately, she said, God is a healer, and we are all his patients. The word Patient means Long-Sufferer and the purpose of God is to alleviate our suffering. Mostly she made little sense to us; we believed we had no experiences comparable to those in the Bible.

  “I don’t think He does,” my father said, smiling in my direction as we approached the empty driveway.

  When we entered the bungalow on Ashbrook Crescent, my mother was wearing her rose-coloured glasses and lying on the couch in the living room, Christine playing cards by herself on the floor. My mother’s flesh was shockingly white, and the skin on her elbows and knees was pinched around bone. The lines on her face were deeper, even her chest was smaller and caved in. I couldn’t believe my eyes. She had deteriorated so drastically in the last two-and-a-half months she reminded me of a plant at the end of its season, the way I knew our Christmas tree would feel to the touch in a few weeks: brittle, unable to drink water, the roots cut. She was a new woman, as my father said, but not the one I had been expecting. Had he grown blind? Was he trying to make me aware of the parts of her growing healthily, her teeth and her fingernails, perhaps? Had he stopped noticing any more? Or was it me? Had I not perceived how badly off she was when I left? She did smile more often, though, so it might have been that change in her he was speaking of so optimistically. I noticed over the next couple of days that she had new mysterious pills in a plastic container divided into sections, and more of them.

  As I put down my luggage and wiped my wet boots on the welcome mat, Father ran over and placed a kiss on her lips. A pink streak spread across her cheeks.

  “Look, Daddy!” Christine said. “Mommy missed you as much as I did!”

  My father scooped Christine off the floor, her gangly legs dangling over his arms, accidentally kicking the cards astray, whirling her around.

  “Oh, Joe. Watch out,” my mother warned half-heartedly. “You’ll make the girl all dizzy.”

  “Dizzy, dizzy. I want to be dizzy!” Christine squealed as I walked over and hugged my mother; her neck smelled of cream. Strangely, she had more hair than when I had left, darker and thicker. I ran my fingers over the top of it and found it rough, hard to separate. She gently pushed my hands away, taking them into her own and squeezing.

  “Your hair?” I asked. “What—”

  “It’s a wig, Angela.”

  “A wig?”

  Christine was simultaneously laughing and coughing, her long hair fanning out as Father spun, her heels kicking, his arms straining with the weight of her. “Yeah, Mom got a wig!” Christine cried. “It’s pretty, don’t you think?”

  Father was running out of breath.

  “You’re getting too big for this,” he said, lowering her to the floor.

  “Yes, it’s pretty,” I said. “But—”

  “My hair’s almost gone.”

  My hand instantly reached out to touch her again. The wig went down to her shoulders, curled at the ends in an attractive bob. Each strand was thick and strong as I tugged. Until then I thought only movie stars wore wigs.

  “Not too hard. It can come off,” she said, readjusting the net to her forehead. “I can brush it, comb it, and cut it,” she added. “I can put it up or down. And my head, it’s as smooth as a baby’s. Like yours was.”

  “Can I see it?” I asked.

  “Later, Angela,” she replied, a little sadly, pulling the blanket on the couch up to her chest. “You just got here.”

  “I like the wig,” Christine offered. “You look glamorous.”

  Christine had also changed in the past couple of months. She was wearing rose nail polish on her fingers, and her bangs were held back with a stylish matching barrette. She had gained none of the visible signs of womanhood—the budding breasts or shifting bone structure—as I had in the last year, but she appeared less childish to me in some way. Maybe being on her own she had gained confidence, giving her strength I almost admired. She didn’t seem distressed by Mother’s appearance, nudging her calves playfully, then taking her tired toes into her hands and rubbing them. She’ll be a good mother, I remember thinking.

  The house was spotless, smelling of cleaners and disinfectants, the floors freshly mopped, their tiles slippery, the windows washed and the mantels scrubbed. There were only a few decorations: a pinecone wreath on the inside of the door with a bright red velvet bow, a plastic vine resembling fresh holly outlining the edge of the hallway, a few hanging cinnamon sticks that gave the room’s air a spicy taste, and our simple red stockings hanging over the fireplace. Yet the entire house was transformed by their presence, bespeaking comfort. A green mat with “Merry Christmas” stitched on it lay in the corner by the window. A place to the left of the fireplace was reserved for the tree.

  My father went into the kitchen to make sandwiches, and my mother asked me to bring her knitting bag out of her bedroom. In it were balls of yarn and an assortment of smooth brown sticks. She laid out the yarns on the couch according to their colour.

  “We’re going to make some Christmas presents with these,” she proclaimed. “Look at t
he great colours you can get nowadays.” She had balls in yellow, green, blue, red, and white. “There’s more in the bag. Purple and pink, multicoloured yarn. Fantastic.”

  Her rose-coloured glasses, together with her wide smile, gave her a clownish appearance. The rather stark features of her face—the high cheekbones and long thin nose, her triangular chin—added to the effect. However, she had rarely seemed so light to me, so beautiful. Her hands moved as if skimming through water, effortlessly pulling out the strings. She held up a finished example of what we would be making: a star woven around the wooden sticks, crossed in the middle, the tightly wound yarn fanning out to the four points, front and back identical.

  “Did you make that, Mom?” I asked, impressed by its exotic flair. We had made ornaments for the Christmas tree at the school—pieces of cloth pinned in sections to Styrofoam balls and clay cutouts of angels and trumpets—but this was a shape I’d never seen before.

  “Yes, I did. They’re quite easy, really. You’ll see,” she said in excitement, her words rushing out of her. “At first I didn’t believe the nurse—I mean the neighbour, that I could do it. My hands were very sore the day she taught me. But once I got going, it was simple.”

  Christine was already rummaging through the knitting bag to find the purple yarn, and Mother passed me a large ball of yellow.

  “Wool is a little more elegant, but it’s more expensive,” she added. “There’s only two rolls in there. You can have one each if you like.”

  “Wool makes me itch anyway,” I replied.

  “That’s right,” she said, patting my head as she did when I was small. “I’d forgotten that. Well, the yarn’s easier to work with too. Wool doesn’t like to be separated.”

  Father came in with the sandwiches and some eggnog and sat in the recliner beside the fireplace, his eyes fixed on my mother as she demonstrated how to tie the first knot to keep the sticks in place and the way to wind the yarn in order to keep the pattern consistent. She had given up sewing and crocheting, and it was the only time in the last year I’d seen her use her hands with such concentration besides saying her rosary. In fact, the rosary was curiously out of sight for once, and its absence gladdened me as I thought that even my mother was capable of forgetting about Him once in a while and thinking of herself first. But the illusion soon vanished when she told us the name of the objects we were crafting.