The Book of Shadows

by James Reese

  Order? Oh yes, life at C——was well-ordered. Our days were divided into canonical hours, those times appointed for an office of devotion: Matins, followed by Lauds, then Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. After Lauds we studied for one hour, at which time a bell would summon all the girls to a breakfast of white bread (wonderfully warm on Monday and Thursday), thick pats of cold butter, and coffee. We ate in silence, seated on benches before long oak tables. We wore our gray work pinafores, white puffs of tulle at the sleeves (so extravagant that seems now!); our hair was wound into braids or tucked beneath caps of white chamois.

  Breakfast lasted a half hour. A Low Mass might follow; typically, classes would commence directly. Then Terce, or High Mass on holy days. Followed by more study. Occasionally, the younger girls would be granted a fifteen-minute recess during which they would receive black bread and water. Thrice daily, at the discretion of the Mother Superior, the Angelus bell would sound and we would gather to commemorate the Incarnation.

  We ate our primary meal at Méridienne, or high noon. This meal—dinner, we called it—consisted of vegetables grown in our gardens, perhaps a stew of game, or seafood that Marie-Edith had begged from a fisherman “of the faith” down on the quay. Wine was often poured from the vast store kept by Mother Marie-des-Anges. We ate well, owing, I think, to her presence: she had a taste for…for life’s finer things. (At our meals, I served, eating only after the other girls, and in the company of various externs and aged, infirm nuns. This did not shame me, though it was often suggested to me that it should.)

  Dinner was followed by exercise, rest, or prayer—the decision was not ours. Then None. More study. Vespers. Meditation. Study. Collation: a light meal of fruits or cheeses. Compline. And finally, sleep. Our routine was only slightly more relaxed during summer recess, when the great majority of girls left C——to vacation with their families; many nuns, too, went on summer retreats of one kind or another.

  …Regarding my time at C——…I endured. Took refuge in the orderliness of the convent school, the ceaseless tick-tocking of that canonical clock, every day the same, same, same…. And I tasked myself with study.

  …Ah, but of course there is more to say. I do not wish to say it, but I must, and will.

  The school at C——was attended by girls of a particular sort, and it seemed to me that by some cruel act of Providence I’d been cast there to remind them of their many advantages. They were lace to my linen, jewels to my gimcrack. Upon maturation, they would ascend. Their fathers had made fortunes in commerce; the daughters of these men, though derided as “common” by the girls of bluer blood, were rich. They spoke of dowries and diamonds and what Papa and Mama were doing with whom and where—polo with a crowned prince, horse racing with the Raj, brunch in Paris with a Swedish baroness, et cetera. It was a language I could not speak.

  That no beribboned packages from Paris came for me was fine. True, I would never spend summers where another language was spoken. I would never “take the waters” here or there. No pieces for violin and pianoforte would be commissioned and played to mark my birthday. About this, nothing could be done.

  Though shy and unseen by the other girls, I, at an early age, became a favorite of certain nuns. Sometimes the attention accorded me in the classroom was an embarrassment. One nun in particular seemed almost smitten. She would stare at me, every question was asked of me, every answer presented to me as a gift. These attentions decreased over time; still, I would sometimes stare at my hands (so despicably large!) or at the bank of fir trees beyond the classroom window so as not to meet a sister’s gaze. There was one nun in particular…Of course, I’d no idea what this nun sought, if anything; now I might hazard a guess, for I know things about the lives of cloistered women, things I’d no inkling of then.

  Perhaps the nuns’ small favors encouraged some enmity among the other girls, but I didn’t care. Let them say what they will, I thought. Did I revel in their envy? Perhaps. I hadn’t their wealth, their graced and easy lives. Let them envy my learning.

  Yes, the more attention I received from the nuns, the farther I was distanced from my peers; it was an unfortunate equation. I did not fight this; indeed, I simply studied harder. For me there was nothing but the books. I lived in the learning.

  Yet, some years after arriving at C——, I began to sense…things. Sense the reason I lived life at a remove, distanced from the other girls, distanced from my true self…. In later years, I began to notice certain changes taking place as regards my body. My appearance began to change in ways that shamed me. The other girls were changing as well: some sprouted early into womanhood. None of the changes I noticed among them mirrored my own, and this alarmed me. I waited vainly for my figure to become fuller; but I remained…unendowed.

  Of course, the majority of the girls must have been simply made; but to me they were perfection. Delicate as dolls in their lacy white dresses; one, I recall, wore a cameo of her mother, deceased in childbirth, on a ribbon of apple-green silk; another, pale and sickly, was sometimes let to wear the pearl earrings sent to her from the Azores by her father—and those adornments, like calcified tears, seem to me now to be emblematic of the girl. It was to her that I was most drawn. (Pride bars me from naming her here. And to deem her a “friend” would be inaccurate.) Frail and often ill, she lived her life at a remove from the sorority. Our physicality set us each apart: she was weak and I was…alors, I was me…. She was kind to me on occasion; unaccustomed to such and ever-wary, I took her kindnesses and tried to spend them in turn…. No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever forgotten; this I believe. It becomes an emotional currency, remaining in constant, universal circulation. As for the opposite of kindness, which I have known well, it deserves no name.

  …Yes, the girls were the manifestation, the literal embodiment of my dreams. They were what I wanted, impossibly, to be. Understand: I hoped then that I might change. Hoped that I might yet ripen into an approximation of what they were: beautiful girls. But I was…indelicate, graceless, and overgrown. In time, I lost that hope and reconciled myself to my fate, to my physical state…my particular, my peculiar physical state.

  I had always been tall, but by thirteen or fourteen I stood a full head taller than any other girl at C——. My form lacked the roundness, the suppleness of the other girls. I was angular where they were curvaceous. I was lean where they were plump. My limbs were embarrassingly long, and I possessed an uncommon strength. (How I would flush with shame when asked by Sister Brigid to reach down a jar from the cupboard, or force a stuck door, or pull a swollen cork from a jug of wine!)

  Even the features of my face began to change; imperceptibly, of course, but to me the changes appeared sudden, drastic. My forehead grew more prominent, and the planes of my cheekbones seemed too high and angled. My eyes embarrassed me: they seemed the portals to some secret place, and I was loathe to meet anyone’s gaze. (My eyes are well-shaped, and of an uncommon blue-green…. I will say that I have recently been told they call to mind the shifting shades of shallow seas.) My nose, which had been pug, slightly upturned, matured to its present shape—Roman, one might say, well-shaped; at the time it seemed to me grotesquely long. My lips grew full to frame an overly large mouth. My skin—unblemished, fast to blush—bore a natural pink tinge; other girls used powders, or pinched their cheeks to achieve a similar effect. As for my neck, it seemed an aberration: spindly, too long and thin. My hair was like straw to me then, unruly, brittle and thick. I wore it in a tight plait that hung down, bisecting my back. I would wear no ribbons. I did nothing to attract attention…. My feet? What horror they stirred in me! Laughable now, really, but at the time I strove to conceal them. I, like Cinderella’s stepsisters, tortured myself with shoes whole sizes too small. And I wore gloves to hide my hands, which seemed to me those of a giantess.

  Enfin, every detail of my physical being embarrassed me. My stomach was in a constant state of upset, so scared was I that someone would tease me, or even talk to
me. The nuns and girls had the power to mortify me with a single word, uttered innocently or not. I lived in a state of abject discomfort…physical, social, and emotional discomfort. I wanted to disappear, dissolve into imagined worlds, the worlds of which I read.

  The nuns at C——knew where their charges were headed: back into the bourgeois homes from which they’d come—having left one as Daughter, they’d enter another as Wife. And so the requisite skills were taught them. “Parlor skills.” I had no aptitude for such. I hated those long hours engaged in inane handicrafts: the spinning and whittling of little masterpieces destined to gather dust in drawing rooms; the making of fabric-covered buttons intended to bedazzle a maiden aunt or adorn the waistcoat of a younger brother…. We were schooled in the mending of lace, taught to paint mini-portraits on ovals of ivory with single-bristle brushes (the worst!), and shown how to tie off needlepoint knots so that the back of a canvas was as tidy as the front. Never in my life have I felt more keenly the passage of time, its utter waste.

  I managed to turn my scholastic success to my advantage; it seemed a matter of my sanity! I petitioned for and was granted time away from those handicrafts to study independently. It was tacitly held that I would have no use for such skills; what parlor talents I’d acquire would never be put to practice, for the wars of my life would not be waged in parlors. I’d need no such arsenal to back my efforts at securing a husband or subordinating a servant.

  And so on those afternoons when all the girls strove to acquire the arts requisite to their success as ladies, I wandered the gardens alone. In dire weather I took refuge in the Mother Superior’s rooms, at a tiny table inlaid with roseate marble.

  I read while the others darned and sketched and sang. In time, I came to long for books physically—the ink-scent of a new book, the musk of an ancient tome. I would finger the threads of the sewn bindings; and how luckless I felt if a favorite book did not have gilt-edged pages. These works transported me; and the leather-bound pages forged a shield behind which I hid.

  Such friends I made: Mrs. Radcliffe and the Scotsman for romance. Their novels were read by the light of pilfered candles in my pantry-room, or slipped between the leaves of some more suitable work. They were scandalous, not the proper pastime of a girl…. Ah, yes…It was in the works of those two novelists that I lost myself, wholly and happily. What a world they conjured, filled with love affairs, sly mistresses, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely country houses, post-riders slayed at every relay, horses ridden to death on every page; there were dark forests, mountain vistas, palpitating hearts, vows, sobs, tears, kisses, skiffs in the moonlight, nightingales in thickets, and gentlemen brave and virtuous as God. In my dreams I was the chatelaine in the low-waisted gown whiling away her days with her dainty elbows at rest upon the casement, chin in hand, attendant upon the white-plumed rider who’d gallop toward her across a windswept moor. Sometimes, too, I was the white-plumed rider. (Of course, I didn’t know a skiff from a barge and I’d never set foot upon a moor, windswept or otherwise, but that mattered not at all.)

  I had Browning for beauty, Shakespeare for the lot of life. I committed whole soliloquies to memory, treating stands of trees and inquisitive squirrels to my theatrics. I favored Hamlet’s indecisiveness, Prospero’s pained anger, and Lear’s loneliness. I attempted Lady Macbeth’s crazed strength, but I could never quite achieve it.

  Quieter hours were passed with Pliny and Plutarch. (Nothing rivals the romance of a fallen empire—the intrigues of statesmen and debauched emperors, daggers drawn from cloaks, and poisons tipped from rings into gem-encrusted goblets….)…It was Ovid and me. Horace and Homer. Plautus, Pythagoras…any philosopher I could get my hands on. I read everything. One long weekend, I recall, I even read a collection of papal bulls!

  …And through all the reading, I held to a false belief: that this was living. I know now that books are but ashes to the fire that is life. Still, I do not regret a single moment spent reading, not a one. I am thankful for the diversion the written word afforded. I don’t know what I would have done otherwise, for my life was horrid. Horrid and unlivable. Yet I lived it, I survived. Granted: I do not speak of cramped quarters, consumptive girls sleeping four to a bed, or meals of chestnut gruel…. No; I speak of things far less common than that, and far, far stranger.

  …I am trying to summon courage here. There are things that must somehow be said. Yet I hesitate. It’s not that I grasp for words—the opposite really: I’m afraid that once I start telling this tale I won’t be able to stop. No, I know the words will come; it’s controlling the rush of recollection that concerns me. But there is a story here to tell, and I have sworn myself to tell it truthfully. To tell it even though the facts are preposterous; they strain credulity and will be, for some readers, beyond belief.

  …But please, you must believe me, or I cannot go on. And you, Reader…well, there is a reason you hold this work in hand, no? Perhaps that reason is clear to you now; if not, trust in this tale of mine and all will come clear in time. I promise you that.

  …We return to C——.

  Long years passed. I remained apart from the others. Apart from life. No one touched me, and I touched no one; no mother’s touch, no sister’s touch, and certainly no lover’s touch. True, I excelled at my studies, and was eventually let to determine my own course of study. So I would retreat into St. Augustine, or lose myself in the labyrinth of Latin grammar…. Books, books, and more books. It was all ash; no fire; and no warmth.

  Finally, one morning not long ago, while I was rolling dough in the kitchen, Sister Isadore came to request a moment of my time. We quit the kitchen together. We walked in silence through the gardens near the kitchen, traced with our steps the narrow paths of flagstone; the whole of the garden was bordered by boxhedge, and geometries of box within the garden kept our herbs from overtaking the cellarer’s vegetables, kept the tomato stalks from leaning too far into bright batches of begonias, dahlias, fleur-de-lis, oleanders, marigolds, purple ageratum, and gray artemises…. Sister Isadore asked how I was progressing with my studies. Well, said I. Did I enjoy my kitchen chores? Yes, I lied; she said she was glad. Silence ensued, and I broke it, as I knew I ought, by expressing yet again my thanks to the Order for taking me in when I, as a child, had run crying to their door. Sister Isadore bowed deeply to accept my thanks.

  “Confirmation is fast approaching,” said she, finally. She stood straight-backed and tall, weaving her long spiderish fingers into a web. I stared up into her colorless eyes, for already I knew a pronouncement was in the offing.

  “Yes,” I said. All those younger girls who were set to be confirmed were busy with preparations, as were we in the kitchen. “In July, no?”

  “July the sixteenth, to be exact. Mere weeks away. After confirmation, as you know, there is always a…a reordering of the girls.” Sister Isadore fell silent. I understood when finally she said, absently, more to herself than me, “Of course, there’s the slight matter of the exam…”

  “Yes, Sister,” I said.

  “But surely that will not trouble you at all.” Sister Isadore congratulated me, assured me that this was in my best interest—which meant, of course, What else was to become of me? I’d come from nowhere, and had nowhere to return to. Evidently, she deemed me unworthy of a sacral marriage to Christ. What else was I to do but teach?

  Yes, I was to be sent up. To the Upper School. There I would be trained to teach.

  My only thought was this: that I would have to live in the dormitory, among the other girls. Sister Isadore confirmed this, and congratulated me again; she added that less would be expected of me in the kitchen, though I was still to serve at mealtime. She looked at me incredulously when I asked if I might remain in my room. No, said she; clearly the cellarer had succeeded in her long campaign to win back her pantry and root cellar. I begged to remain in my room and Sister Isadore grew impatient. In the end, she walked away.

  When next the test was administered, in the week preceding confi
rmation, I sat for it. I had already filed my birth certificate at the office of the superintendent. (Actually, as I have no birth certificate, I presented a letter from Sister Isadore.) The mayor of C——endorsed a certificate of good morals on my behalf, though he knew nothing of me, let alone my morals. I more than passed: I answered every question correctly, thus earning for myself the unframed picture of the Virgin that had long hung in the laundry.

  The day of confirmation—16 July—came quickly and passed slowly. At day’s end, with the greater part of the girls gone, I was to move into the dormitory.

  Twenty girls dressed in white formed a procession that wound through the house and yard toward the chapel. They were slick with perspiration beneath their decorative dresses, lace-fringed confections. We older girls, confirmed in years past, sat shoulder to shoulder in the back of the chapel, among mothers, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers busily fluttering fans before their flushed faces. (No men were allowed within our precincts. They waited at the gates.)

  The ceremony progressed with all the pomp and severity a holy house can display on such occasions. Afterward, the double-parlor beneath the dormitory was opened to receive the girls and their female relations. There were hugs and kisses and introductions, invitations to meet here or there during the recess. I stood idly by in a corner for nearly an hour, still as the portraits hanging above me, and having no greater role to play in the day’s events than they. Finally, unable to bear that society a moment more, I made my way back to my room. It was dark and dank and undecorated, but it was mine, and I was loathe to leave it. From my tiny trunk, I unpacked a simple shift. I slipped from the kitchen through a back door.

  I did not know of my destination until I arrived there: a faraway, neglected grotto. This tiny structure built of stone had long ago fallen into disuse and disrepair: it sat too near the dairy and the fetid perfume of our few cows wafted over it when the wind blew just so. I loved the grotto for its seclusion, for its lichen-covered statues, for the pocked and friable faces of its unknown saints standing sentinel beside the Virgin. There was a rusted stand of wrought iron, intended for votives, which stood on bowed legs, brittle and thin. Sundry ferns, seemingly borne on the air, grew from between the mounded stones. There, in the grotto, I had often spread a shawl on the bench beside the Madonna and sat reading for hours. That day, I sat staring at the Blessed Mother and the idling saints. When I began to pray—rather absently, I confess—my prayers fast dissolved to tears, and for a long while I sat crying for reasons I could not have named.