The Divine Economy of Salvation

by Priscila Uppal

  “Lift your arms,” the saleswoman said, coming up behind me and measuring around my waist, neck, and chest. “I know just what to get you.” She left immediately to rifle through a rack near the change rooms, twisting her neck around every few seconds to make sure we hadn’t left.

  Rachel was near. We had just been treated to a round of root beers before entering the store and I could feel her breath on my neck, sugary. “You don’t have to get anything you don’t want to,” she said, smiling sheepishly.

  I smiled back. She couldn’t be mean to me the whole time we’d be out. She might even be apologizing, I thought. None of our moods could be predicted lately, changing faster than the weather. I accepted her efforts. “Do you like anything?”

  “Sure, this one’s nice,” she replied, touching a peach-coloured dress with bows around the arms and three rows of ruffles along the skirt, meant to resemble that of a Southern belle. “Who cares, though? It’s only going to be us and our parents. What does the stupid graduation matter for?”

  The saleslady had lined up a number of dresses in bright colours—yellows, greens, and pinks—on an empty rack by the change room. “Come on, girls,” she chimed, opening the wooden door. “It’s rare I get to dress up such beautiful sisters as you two.”

  Rachel headed towards the change room, her head held high, kicking me in the heel as she passed. “She’s not my sister. She’s just an orphan we’ve taken on,” she said to the saleswoman.

  “Rachel!”

  Mr. M. pulled his suit jacket closed in front of him, his fingers curling tightly around the material. He pretended to do up his buttons, his bearded face set in a frown. He did not scold Rachel any further, and the saleswoman fluttered around us, brushing our flesh lightly as she checked to make sure the dresses we tried were fitted to our bodies’ shapes and not in need of tailoring. After twenty minutes Rachel had chosen an emerald-green chiffon dress with a heart-shaped collar and ruffles like sea waves along the hem. Mr. M. added socks, earrings, brooches, and two scarves to his bill, which also included my dress—red silk with a tight bodice, straight cut at the knees—and matching shoes with plastic bows on the back heels. I never got the chance to wear any of it.

  That Thursday Sister Marguerite kept me after class. Easter was approaching, and I wasn’t going to be a Leftover. My father was required to take me home for the holiday, the first holiday without my mother. He had telephoned, once, and in a hollow, distant voice said he was going to pick me up the following Thursday, after Mass. The coming Sunday would be Palm Sunday, my favourite church day besides Midnight Mass at Christmas, because we were usually given palm leaves to hold, to re-enact the procession. The leaves held a fascination for me with their weary strength, completely dried but difficult to tear. I would keep mine until it withered into nothing. Sister Aline had attempted to train Caroline for the solos in choir, but it hadn’t worked. Caroline couldn’t hold the long high notes in the style and manner of Bella. “From your diaphragm,” Sister Aline instructed, sucking in her rib cage and exhaling her breath slowly, her arms rising with the expelled air. “You need to feel the air coming out of you. Control it.” Caroline was a wreck. She studied the music sheets into the night, but her voice shook if anyone besides the rest of us girls and Sister Aline were in the church. Standing in front of people, performing, was not in her bones. In the end, Sister Aline needed three girls including Caroline to sing Bella’s parts, each responsible for a single octave. And I grew suspicious whether Caroline was even trying. Caroline had sung better before Bella’s death; maybe she could no longer bear to sing.

  “That was a good report you gave,” Sister Marguerite said, laying her hand on my shoulder briefly before turning her back to me to scrub the blackboard.

  “Thank you.” It was rare that I received praise, although I wasn’t a bad student. I was merely average. My report had been on a passage from The Book of Margery Kempe, a medieval mystic who was convinced God spoke to her directly. She flew into wild convulsions and crying fits at the mere mention of Christ’s Passion. She received letters from priests, bishops, and cardinals to tour around Europe; went on pilgrimages from church to church; and led a married life that was celibate and repentant. She wore hair shirts and flogged herself whenever she had impure thoughts. She asked one of her priests to write down all her visions, and she called herself by the name Creature. I had reported on repentance as an act of forgiveness from God.

  “I bet she didn’t want to sleep with her husband,” Caroline whispered to me afterwards, alluding to Margery’s demand that the priests allow her to travel alone and commit herself as a bride of God.

  I didn’t like her explanation. Saint Margery had affected me. Her endless stream of tears, her closeness to the thoughts of Jesus as she inscribed them. That her religious choice could be a practical matter to avoid the grossness or brutality or simple boredom of her married life took the mystery out of it for me. It didn’t seem fair if she was faking her way into heaven.

  With her back still to me, Sister Marguerite added, “Don’t stop with your religious education. You’re coming along nicely.”

  “Thank you,” I repeated, about to leave for lunch, when Sister Marguerite let out a long breath with her last wipe of the blackboard and, collecting her papers, said, “I hope you will think of this place well.”

  Since our encounter in the stairwell, she had said nothing to me about the events of the last weeks. Then she had shared her story with me about how she had been scarred by fire as a child. I thought perhaps I was supposed to comfort her with assurances that I would not be scarred by my experiences here.

  “Sure,” I said as she inserted her papers into a folder and tucked them underneath her arm. I tried not to stare at the discolouration on her cheek, the reminder of her confession.

  “It’s a shame,” she said seriously, shaking her head. “I want you to know I don’t think it’s right, what they’re doing to you. It’s not Christian.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. Lately everyone seemed to be speaking in codes. Rachel, back in the dormitory the previous Saturday, with our dresses in paper bags and wrapped in scented tissue paper, had waited by her room and said, “It could be true, you know,” before shutting her door, not asking me to come in, her father dropping us off at the entrance without staying for dinner. Mother Superior had told us in History that “Evil in the world is not the responsibility of God,” after we had re-read a chapter on the Great War for the upcoming exam, the number of young men who had died in our city alone added in a footnote to our reader. No one spoke directly. Everything had to be interpreted.

  The confusion I felt must have manifested itself in my demeanour. Sister Marguerite halted in her steps, then closed the classroom door, motioning to the nearest desk for me to sit down. She took the seat next to mine, and I almost chuckled at the sight she made lowering herself to my level, her dark habit’s hem draping the floor, her body scrunched into the small desk.

  “They haven’t told you,” she stated, angling her face towards the blackboard she had just scrubbed, lines of grey streaked across it in stripes, the crucifix above. “When were they planning on telling you?”

  I remained silent. The chalk dust on her hands made her fingernails appear white. She looked as if she had been painting, chips of chalk on her habit and a smudge on her chin. I had the urge to wipe them off her, the way my mother used to whenever I was untidy. I wondered if Sister Marguerite had a mother, or only the direction of Mother Superior, who wasn’t a real mother, just a mother in title. Maybe that’s what made her feel responsible towards me. I had no mother. I had touched her cheek with my jaw. Maybe it was through touch that we connected ourselves to others. I certainly wouldn’t have felt close to Sister Marguerite if she had turned away that night. I could still remember the scent of her hair, tucked in under her wimple, as she confessed the indiscretion that had stained her forever.

  “Your father is coming to take you home.”

  �
��For Easter weekend,” I offered. “He phoned.” But why she needed to speak to me about it struck me as odd. Unless she was worried about how well he was coping with my mother’s death.

  “My dear Angela, I am not the person who should be telling you this,” she said, interlocking her fingers, palms curved as in prayer, on the top of the desk, “but your father is not just taking you home for Easter. He’s taking you home.”

  “What do you mean?” My father had made it quite clear he was sending me back to school against my will the week after the funerals. I couldn’t imagine him changing his mind. My father did not relent after he made a firm decision. It was against his nature.

  “Your father,” she continued, “has not paid your tuition or room and board for this entire term. His cheques bounced at the bank. Mr. M. didn’t want to tell us—it happened at his bank—but the teller, knowing his daughter is schooled here, brought the information to our attention. With your mother’s funeral,” she said quickly, the words spoken under her breath, “there is no hope of him being able to pay.”

  “I . . . I . . . don’t understand.”

  “Your father is bankrupt,” Sister Marguerite explained. “He doesn’t have the money to pay for this school. It’s not his fault. Remember God’s commandment to honour thy father and thy mother. The school is in debt. Mother Superior feels she has no choice.” I didn’t understand whom she was asking me to forgive.

  “Mr. M. gave me some money. He gave me fifty dollars,” I told her.

  “Keep it,” she told me firmly. “It’s not going to do you any good to give it to Mother Superior. You might need it.”

  There was no way we could repay the school. Sister Marguerite had made that clear to me. I was being sent away.

  Caroline was probably right, I figured. Saint Margery was certainly a fake. Her God was far too easily understood by her. I emphatically left the book open in my room when my father came for me. For if I ever understood God, it was as a child understands a parent. To simply trust that all will work out. And this could be comforting, like my mother’s arms when I was sick, her hands on my forehead, the gentle way she would lift a straw in a glass to my lips, read to me at my bedside. Or how it was in the end with her. Pouring her water and ensuring her rosary was wrapped twice around her dwindling wrists so it would not fall to the floor in the middle of the night. The dishing out of her pills and how she would make it a game, saying she must have been a good girl to get such a handful of treats. And I would pretend I wanted them too, tucking the blankets under her chin when she fell asleep. But He was different. He scolded and kept aloof. He said, Don’t touch anything. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Follow my instructions to the letter. And what happened if you didn’t? What happened if you couldn’t read the instructions, let alone interpret them properly? The answer was clearly punishment.

  Sister Marguerite stood up, extracting her body from underneath the desk with a shove, straightening out her skirt, and settling the cross around her neck in the middle of her chest. Her face returned to the rigid expression it assumed in front of the class when she lectured. She wiped her hands quickly together, and I was a fleck of chalk upon her dress, discarded with a flick of her finger.

  THE POWER IS OUT. Through my basement window there is no way of telling how much of the street has been affected by the storm. The winds howl and the space between the glass and the frame rattles repeatedly, causing me to shiver with each bump. More snow has fallen. The piles of snow, plowed earlier in the week into neat hills, will get even larger. Snowflakes lie prostrate against the glass.

  Knock. Knock.

  I mistake the noise for the window, for the storm, and wrap myself more snugly in my blanket, keeping my toes in, pinning down the cover. My hair is wet from an evening washing, and the draft in the room makes me tremble. When I place my hand against my stomach, I can feel latent warmth. I tried earlier to write Christine a letter and gave up. She has kept her word. She has not contacted me. I decide not to intrude on her wish to be forgotten.

  Knock. Knock.

  The weather haunts me. And now the noise. Insistent like a clock. Like the weather on the night my mother died. Our anniversary coming up. I cannot bear it any longer. I have taken the pills Sister Ursula prescribed for me. A double dose. My dream is for sleep, and it must be washing over me in waves. It is working. I have needed a good night’s sleep for months. In my sleepy mind’s eye I can see the orchard outside the convent and feel the wetness of the snow, the smoothness of the hidden rock in the garden against my hands. I am tearing into the ground, digging, bringing up something that was buried there by me long ago. It is long and heavy and I am alone in the night, after having snuck out with my nightdress on, the cloth barely obscuring my body. The candle holder. The silver candle holder is in my hands. Could it have been me? Could it have been me who kept it all this time buried in the garden, forgetting one day I’d need to face it? When Rachel told me where it was abandoned, did I retrieve it? I must have. It belonged to me in the end. The burden was mine to carry. Mine to rediscover. To package it up, here in the convent, deliver it back to myself.

  Knock. Knock.

  And this is how I imagined Death would come. The same as for my mother. The same horror awaiting me, although mine is deserved. Knocking at the door during a storm. I am nearly the same age as she was. I should not have the privilege of living as long. All the lights out and nothing to tell me where I actually am, except perhaps a smell that drifts away. Wrapped in my cocoon, this bed is the perfect grave. My hands dig deeper into the soil. I have the candle holder. But I am searching for something else. This isn’t the only piece of evidence. What frightens me most is I do not answer the door. I do not try to hide. I do nothing.

  The door opens.

  “Angela.”

  A woman’s voice. Faint but surely a woman’s voice. I did not think Death would be a woman. But it makes sense to me as it occurs. Of course it’s a woman. A woman knows about these things. Old age has not yet stung me, but many have died younger than I. Sister Ursula says it can happen when you lack sleep. Your heart can stop ticking.

  “I am ready,” I say, astounded by my confidence. “Come in. Speak.”

  Noise against the tiled floor. Shuffling. A hand scratching against the wall. Breathing. Breathing. Steps. Steps closer.

  “Angela. My water broke.”

  I bolt upright in bed, brush a strand of hair out of my mouth. I cannot see the face in front of me, but I can feel it breathing a hot rush of air onto my face and lips. She must be right up against me. And then the weight on the mattress, pulling down. Two hands gripping the covers. The blackness a void.

  “Who are you?”

  “My water broke! It’s all over the hallway! I don’t know what to do!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s Kim, Angela, Kim! I think the baby’s coming. I felt pain and got scared. And then on the way down to see you . . . on the way down . . . my water broke. Oh, God, I’m wet. My thighs hurt. I can’t see anything.”

  It is Kim. I had succumbed to the pills. Her voice sounded older. Much older than it does after I fumble around the room trying to figure out how to get her upstairs to Sister Ursula in the darkness of the power outage. And she used my first name, without my title. She used my first name like a friend.

  I think I have a flashlight somewhere. When the fuse for the light in the basement toilet burned out last spring, I used the torch in emergencies in the middle of the night until the electrician could come by to fix it. Two weeks it had been, me creeping along the dark passageway with the faint light in my hands, creating shadows along the walls. Noticing the details I missed when the lights worked. The cobwebs in corners. The defects in the stones. The dirt in between tiles on the floor.

  Crash. My lamp smashes as it hits the floor. I catch the shade in my left hand, then discard it as useless. Kim is leaning against the headboard of my bed, her hands clasped around her belly, moaning in pain. Her cries intens
ify by the minute.

  “Hurry. Hurry. Please.”

  “Dammit,” I curse openly. “Dammit!” Nothing is ever where you think it should be. The top dresser is empty. No flashlight. I can feel only papers, the typewriter, and the ceramic lamp I purchased at one of my own rummage sales that is now in pieces.

  “Watch your feet, Kim. There’s glass all over the floor.”

  I bump into the dresser. The angle of the wood hitting me against my chest, my left breast in pain. I try not to scream. I know it will only make Kim worse. In my sock drawer, I remember, are candles I’ve kept as souvenirs from various services: the Christmas and Lent candles we Sisters make ourselves. I seek out their bodies.

  “I’ve got a candle, Kim. Hold on.”

  There is also a book of matches on the dresser, the pack I kept from the restaurant where Christine confessed to me. I had automatically dropped them into my totebag, not because I needed them but because I am used to hoarding what is free.

  “Angela! I can’t wait. I can’t wait.” Kim is stumbling around. I can hear her trying to get back to the door. My eyes are beginning to adjust to the darkness. Kim is no longer invisible, but a shadow whose movements I can follow.

  “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” I yell.

  Inserting the candle into the silver candle holder, I wince, but take hold of it. Mine all along.

  I strike a match. Kim holds onto the doorknob, her legs crossed as if she needs to use the washroom. I carry the silver candle holder against my sore chest, to keep the weight balanced so the candle, slightly thinner than the opening, won’t fall forward and hit the floor, or fall backwards and burn my nightgown. I am awake. Determined. The fog of the pills lifts.

  As I get closer to Kim, who is also in her nightgown, a long pale-blue cotton dress with small bows, the blood is apparent. Blood down from her thighs to her toes in thin streaks and patches. The candlelight makes it visible. Kim gazes at herself in horror and crumples the skirt of her nightgown to find out where the blood is coming from and how bad it might be. She holds in a cry. I take her arm and hook it into mine. She requires aid. I cradle the candle holder in the crook of my other arm. The weight, distributed in this manner, makes it easier to manoeuvre.