The Divine Economy of Salvation

by Priscila Uppal

  “I didn’t come here to fight,” Christine replies, shaking a few crumbs off her blouse. “I came here . . . I came here because I needed to see you. There’s a lot you don’t know. There are still too many secrets between us.”

  “You have a secret?” I ask. “I thought you couldn’t keep a secret if you tried.”

  “Is that what you think?” Christine eyes me offensively. Even when we are attempting to be lighthearted, none of our exchanges are very pleasant. She guzzles back some pop and makes a hiccup noise. “You don’t trust anyone, do you? Except maybe your God!”

  She knows where to hurt me. She thinks I throw Mother in her face, that I think I am as good as Mother because I’ve followed in the footsteps of the women who took care of her when she was orphaned. She thinks it’s my trump card. Maybe it is sometimes, but not always. Tonight it’s hers.

  “How little you know about me,” I counter sadly. “You’re right. There are still too many secrets between us.”

  “Not just between us, Angela. Did you know Dad wasn’t a Catholic before he met Mom?” Her eyes glower at me as I adjust the grey wool afghan on the bed, ironing out the creases with my hands.

  My manner instantly betrays me. I shake my head in the negative and she fluffs the pillow and replaces it to the small of her back, leaning against the headboard. Then she shifts the waistband on her skirt, which has sagged beneath the bulge of her belly. Her clothes don’t fit properly. She has red lines on her skin where the elastic had rested.

  “Dad was an Anglican, and not a fervent one either. His family couldn’t have cared less what religion Mom was, but Mom told him he would have to convert to Catholicism. He went to her parish and spoke to her priest. He did his catechism, was baptised, all before he even proposed. His parents never understood any of it. They basically concentrated on Aunt Heather after that, especially when Mom and Dad moved to Canada together.”

  I knew Father had recently retired from his construction work, work he wasn’t suited to perform after designing tables and bed frames, chairs and chests in his tool shed, then doing the varnishing and finishing work, his tools carving the wood with a surgeon’s precision. But after he moved to Toronto, he was forced into manual labour. He had no money and needed to live and bring up Christine and me. The last time I saw him was at the party for Leonardo. He shook my hand like a business associate, his attention on the baby dressed in a ridiculous sailor suit, a scarf with an anchor on it around his neck. He wasn’t exactly cold; he thanked me kindly, I recall, for bringing him a beer, but he kept his legs crossed in the other direction, uncomfortable whenever he dared look into my eyes. He didn’t search me out to say good night when he left.

  “He told me she was the most beautiful woman he had ever met. She was gentle and kind and had a way of making him believe in something beyond this world. He wanted to share in her God too.”

  “And—”

  “And he came to hate Him, not her. Him.” Christine fiddles with the discarded plastic of the dessert packaging, crunching it and letting it open back into its original shape in her hands. She hates Him too. She doesn’t believe in anything except what is directly in front of her, proven by scientific principles. Graphs, statistics, polls. These things assure Christine there is a pattern to the universe.

  I want to open up to her, tell her I hate Him too. That I don’t understand His ways any more than the next person. That I am only trying to find the same peace Father found with Mother. I want to love Him like she did. But all the studying, the praying, the social work, the community of believers—none of it has revealed His face to me or made Him more human. He is a ghost, invisible; an infamous rumour. I want to tell her He frightens me, with His judgements and His evaluations, with His horrible voicelessness. That I haven’t discovered Mother’s kind and loving God, but am desperate to prove her right. I want to tell her about St. X. School for Girls, Mr. M., the candle holder, Rachel, all of it. How it is for me. How when I entered the convent at twenty years of age, Mother Superior took me aside, sensing something amiss. How she tried to make me confide in her. Questions about the men in my life. Whether I had been hurt. Turned down. Jilted. The men in my life. Never the women. No one asked about the women. And then she asked the worst question of all: “Who has come for you?” We were in the orchard, the same orchard I now visit regularly to touch the autumn leaves in their seasonal bleeding and water the still-blooming flowers, trimming vines and stems, collecting the dead matter in my hands, worrying over the buried heads in the winter-time. I looked Mother Superior straight in the eye, without a quiver in my voice or a shake in my limbs, and said, “He has. Him.” It was a bold-faced lie. I’d never heard Him speak or felt Him beside me. I didn’t even love Him. It was Her, Her. She was the One I prayed for. She was the One I wanted to know. The only One who could bring me redemption. My mother, frozen in the snow.

  “Why didn’t he ever tell me?”

  “Did you ever ask?”

  Ask and ye shall receive.

  My choices. I want to tell Christine, but I don’t. It is too late. None of this can make a difference now. “They say God provides what we need, whether we know what that is or not.” I take another sip of the pop.

  Christine snorts, removes a Swiss roll from the cardboard tray. “They say a lot of things. Nothing gets done without other people, without money. Does God provide everything for you?”

  “I don’t know what I want,” I reply, startled I would tell her the truth. But she doesn’t take the statement seriously, treating it as part of our usual banter.

  “I want my house paid for and my children to grow up bright and protected, for Father to be happy, and never to die. Do you think I’ll get it?”

  There is no right answer when arguing with Christine. I am reminded of the re-enactment of Confession in catechism lessons. The priest would ask a string of questions for which we would be prepared to provide the answers. The right answers. “Do you love your God?” “Yes.” “Do you love your mother and father?” “Yes.” “Do you love your sister and brother?” “Yes.” “Do you love those who do not deserve love?” “Yes.” “Do you love yourself?” There is no right answer to that one. The question is a trick. If you said yes, you would be accused of pride. If you said no, of ingratitude.

  “No,” I say. “But who wants to live forever, Christine?”

  “We all do,” she replies, settling back onto the pillow propped against the headboard, putting distance between us, alarmed I should ask such a thing as she licks melted chocolate off her fingertips.

  WITH THE NEW YEAR I still possessed a voice as unlike an angel’s as before and was placed, once again, in the last row of the choir. I thought I would give it another try for the first few weeks back at school, but Sister Aline reiterated that God would appreciate my silent devotion as much as he would if I could express it. Francine was also stuck in the back row on the opposite side, whereas Rachel and Caroline were in the middle row. Bella returned to her solitary position in front of everyone, one step down, close to the altar. Her voice seemed to have grown even stronger over the break. Sister Aline’s could no longer hold a candle to Bella’s. “She must have been born singing,” Sister Aline proclaimed to us, shaking her head in awe.

  After Rachel’s birthday party, we spoke more about Bella at Sisterhood meetings than we had the previous term. Instead of pretending she didn’t exist, we mocked her—not for anything she did wrong, but simply because we could. We were tired of hearing the teachers praise her constantly. We were tired of comparing our voices to hers during choir. Caroline imitated Bella holding up her hand in class, echoing Sister with her answer to every question in class. Francine laughed at the way she ate her lunch, consuming each portion separately. I poked fun at her thick black eyebrows and predicted they would grow together into one when she got older and she’d have to shave the middle like a man. Rachel boldly claimed she’d be a virgin until her wedding day as the greatest insult. But our ridicule was nothing more than h
ow we spoke of others in the school. It was a routine game. Bella was just added to our list.

  The previous weekend, Bella had been a Leftover. Her mother and father were out of town and Bella stayed behind. Her parents wanted her to accompany them on the trip, but Bella insisted her schoolwork was more important. I couldn’t believe she’d give up the opportunity for a brief vacation to stay at St. X. School for Girls, but she did. “What an angel!” Rachel cried in ridicule. “More angel than Angela!” It was the only time in Rachel’s memory that Bella had stayed for a weekend in the three years Bella had been at the school. But it wasn’t the same as for us. She was here out of choice, and for a single weekend. It wasn’t enough to make us equals.

  Mr. M. took us to a movie and invited Bella to come along. “I haven’t been to a movie since summer,” she said to the nuns, who had informed Mr. M. of her parents’ trip. Mr. M. was happy to include Bella in his daughter’s activities. “That’s quite a girl. Her mother must be proud,” he said to them.

  Bella was shy with Caroline, Francine, Rachel, and me, staying close to Mr. M. He told her how much he enjoyed her performance in the pageant as we shuffled our boots across the slushy winter downtown streets to the theatre. “You’ve been given your gift for a reason,” he said. “You don’t want to waste it.” She nodded with an adultlike understanding, though I wondered if she heard regret in his words, as I did. I had the urge to take Mr. M.’s hand, but he wasn’t looking in my direction. He hadn’t asked me how I was, or what I had accomplished in class this week, or any of the usual things we would talk about as a group on our way to the movies. His attention was on Bella. There was no physical reason to believe Bella was more womanly than the rest of us, but I sensed she was as she walked side by side with Mr. M. With a few more years added to her face, a passerby, noticing their comfortable gait and speed, their pleasant exchanges, might have thought they were lovers out on a stroll.

  Waiting out in front of the theatre while Mr. M. bought our tickets, we shivered and jumped up and down in our coats and boots. Francine kept rubbing her nose in her mittens, and Rachel called her gross. Caroline pointed to a purple evening dress in the window of a store, her hands smudging the glass, while I noticed a woman pushing a metal shopping cart along the sidewalk, full of plastic bags in which there seemed to be clothes and blankets, her hair hidden by a knitted skullcap. We’d seen her before on our way to the theatre. Mr. M. had told us to ignore her. Once, Rachel had offered her some change, but she had refused it. “I do not take money from children. What have you ever done to me?” she’d said. It was difficult to watch her trudge along in the brutally cold winter, open sores on her lips, her few possessions grey with slush, and I turned my face to the window.

  The movie was about to begin. Mr. M. and Bella emerged from the theatre with the tickets. They barely interrupted their own conversation to collect us. “You should spend more time with my daughter. You’re such a good girl,” Mr. M. said, his arm wrapped around Bella’s shoulder.

  It was unfair, I thought, for Mr. M. to make such a fuss over Bella when she would never need to go out with us again. He had yet to compliment Rachel, and she was wearing a necklace he had given her for her birthday, leaving it on her pillow as a surprise for when she returned from playing in the snow. Rachel tried to hide her frustration by covering up the necklace with her scarf, pretending he hadn’t seen it when she put it on. But she had worn it especially for him. She had even asked him to help lift her hair. “Could you get it, Angel?” he had asked me. And so it was I who had lifted her soft blonde curls to reveal her neck, securing the clasp. How Rachel could be obscured by Bella when Bella wasn’t singing astounded me. Besides, Bella didn’t need Mr. M. Rachel needed him. I needed him. Maybe I could even understand that Esperanza needed him. But Bella certainly didn’t need him. We were the ones who needed parents. We were the ones who were practically orphans.

  “Let’s invite the little bitch to a Sisterhood meeting,” Rachel said, joyously swearing under her breath in the church as we took a break, sitting on the stairs, and Sister Aline approached Bella to praise her for her solo of “Lamb of God.”

  “Why?” I asked. “You don’t even like her.” Bella accepted her accolades humbly, then addressed a section on the music sheets that she wanted to clarify. Sister Aline spoke to her intimately, holding the crook of her arm and pencilling in a series of notes.

  “We could trick her, have some fun,” Rachel said flippantly. I don’t think she had any idea what she wanted to do. And to be honest, I was intrigued by the idea of humiliating Bella, but I resisted.

  “What’s the point? She’d only tell on us,” I countered.

  “No, she wouldn’t,” Rachel replied. “She’d like to come. She’d just be too embarrassed to admit it.”

  “Are you sure? She wants to join our group? I mean, she seems happy being by herself.” She did. The Sisters and teachers flocked around her like birds to a feeder. It was obvious Bella sought approval from the nuns and teachers more than she did from her peers. Bella had never shown the least interest in any of us unless there was group work to be done in class.

  “Nobody likes being alone,” Rachel said. “I’ll ask Francine and Caroline about it, and we’ll discuss it at the next meeting.”

  Sister Aline clapped her hands for our attention, and we all returned to our positions. I stood at the back, merging myself into the wall. It was stupid for me to be obligated to attend practice, I thought, if I wasn’t allowed to sing, even if I was horrible. As I began to mouth the words of the Psalm, Bella’s voice rose hauntingly into the air. She pleaded to the stained-glass windows of Mary and Jesus adorning the walls of the church for the mercy the Psalm claimed came with belief.

  I wake with a pain in my side, forgetting for a moment I’ve shared my bed. Someone sleeping under the same blankets, a body beside me, the first time in twenty years. Christine’s left hand, curled into a fist, pokes into my ribs. She makes mumbling noises as I sneak out of the covers to shower. By the time I return she is also awake, dressed in the same blazer, blouse, and skirt as the night before, spraying perfume in between her breasts and on her wrists.

  “I’ll shower later,” she says, ignoring me as I adjust my wimple. I don’t want to wear my habit again, but it would be inconsistent after wearing it the day before. I am now ashamed over how I acted in front of her and the position in which I put Kim.

  “Did you sleep well?” I ask Christine.

  “No. But it’s not your fault.”

  In my single bed, Christine and I were practically on top of each other. I’d offered to get a cot, but she had refused. “Don’t you think we should be forced to lie beside each other for once in our lives?” she asked. “I think you’re right,” I replied. And we both smiled, because for once we had agreed on something. But what a night beside each other was supposed to accomplish hasn’t come to fruition for me. Christine is too large for the small bed, and we slept spooned, my body wrapped by hers, her back right up against the wall. At several points in the night, I almost fell off the side.

  “It’s cold in your room.” I’m used to the cold; the tiles are freezing on bare feet, and the window lets in a draft. It snowed silently in the night, and the fresh white blanket glistens in the morning light, covering half the glass. Christine brushes dark-brown mascara onto her eyelashes over the layer from the day before.

  “After tea this morning, I’ll say my goodbyes and then let’s go eat somewhere.”

  I know Christine said she’d stay here only for the night, but I thought she might stay at a hotel in the city for at least another day. She checks herself in a portable hand-held mirror she’d given me and which I had placed on the dresser before her arrival. She pinches her cheeks and plucks a few stray hairs from the ends of her eyebrows.

  “So soon?”

  “Yes. Anthony is working overtime on a case and I really should get back.”

  “But what about—” I pull the sleeves of my habit down over my w
rists, irritated. I had decided to prove something to her this visit, and she’s left me no chance. Kim had also begun to open up to her a little. I almost believed Christine might really offer her some advice on pregnancy that we childless women are not able to give. But she will leave Kim to us, just as her own parents have.

  “I’m not going this year with you. I’m not going to visit Mother’s grave. Anniversary or not.” She finishes brushing her hair and twists it up, holding the sides flat with bobby pins. “I hope you understand.”

  “Yes. I understand.” She has only visited the gravesite on a couple of occasions. It is near the hospital where Mother stayed. My father has not been since the funeral. But I go every year on the anniversary of her death. I go without flowers. I kneel beside her stone, brush the snow from the cold rock, and recite prayers I know she would have liked. I will sing of the Mercies of the Lord forever: Thy Faithfulness to all Generations. I recited this one last year; it was on a banner in the church at St. X. School for Girls. Sister Aline would sing that line to us whenever we were lax in our attendance or dedication in choir. She believed we were offering the world mercy through the beauty of song. Music is a holy activity, she told us. Art is one of God’s ways of bringing part of heaven down to earth. I know my mother would have agreed.

  “OK, Christine. Where do you want to go?”

  “Somewhere neither of us has been before.”

  “I’ll have to think. I need to run some errands later.”

  “We can just wander.”

  I agree, although I’m not sure I can handle wandering without knowing where we are headed. I can’t believe she is leaving so soon, when I haven’t had the opportunity to share anything with her in the way she has with me. Too many secrets between us, she said. I know I must get rid of this heavy feeling in my side. I pack up the candle holder when Christine leaves to use the washroom.

  WHEN KARL Z. THE THIRD asked me outside the gymnasium turned dance hall to show me his father’s World War II medal that he kept in the pocket of his dress slacks, I went, not to impress him, but to impress Rachel. She was busy disco dancing with a senior and they were both acting ridiculous, pointing their fingers in the air and gyrating their hips to the music, the boy with a small white carnation in his lapel, she with her red scarf scooting down her neck at every turn. But she was dancing with a senior, and Caroline and Francine had only managed to dance with freshmen or sophomores. Earlier we girls had taken a break to trade notes and giggles about the various boys we had met: who had the best hair, who wore cologne, where hands had roamed, how they had managed to get away or what they had allowed them to do. Francine had let a boy touch the curve of her buttocks and Caroline had let one kiss the nape of her neck. We approached the discontented teacher at the drink stand and asked for sodas. Rachel had a small flask of gin in her purse. She’d taken it from her father’s suit jacket. She told us the altar boys Father McC. brought with him for Mass stole the leftover wine from the chalice, so her theft couldn’t possibly be as bad. We each had a single sip and forced the liquor down. I didn’t feel much, but pretended to be slightly tipsy so I wouldn’t have to drink any more. Rachel dumped the rest in the toilet. “I don’t know how my mother can stand it,” she said as she flushed.