by Anbara Salam
Sister Teresa gave me a half smile. “She might not understand now, but you could try explaining it to her.”
Irritation blistered in my gut. “Explain to Isabella that it’s hard work just being normal? Isabella is pretty shortsighted about what it’s like.” I paused, evaluating Sister Teresa’s expression. I needed her to understand. To coax her into even a reluctant alliance. After a moment, I added, “And she’s often judgmental.”
Sister Teresa’s eyes softened. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
But she had no idea about Isabella. How unpredictable she was. How unreliable. My lower lip wobbled. “No insult intended,” I said. “But we’ve been close for a long time. And she can be pretty brutal. In private.”
Sister Teresa gave the most minute of shrugs, as if she had never seen evidence of this prejudice. My earlier admiration for Sister Teresa splintered. She was so meek. So placid. It was maddening. All that stuff about the death of the self. She was mild as unflavored toothpaste. How could Isabella bear to hang out with her? If anything, Sister Teresa should be siding with me. She should recognize Isabella was wrong for gossiping behind my back.
“You’ve never heard the things she says,” I said, pressing my fingernails into my palms. “About—” I had a sudden flash of inspiration. “About people like us.”
Sister Teresa opened her mouth, but I continued.
“She couldn’t keep my confidence, even though I begged her. And you shouldn’t trust her either. You—it would be better if you kept your distance from her.”
“Bridget, would you like to sit down?” Sister Teresa said.
But I was distracted by flickery premonitions. Sister Teresa might easily reveal my falsehoods to the other girls if she thought it was the right thing to do. She’d probably even believe she was helping. And once the girls realized I had defrauded them, I’d be poisoned. Abandoned. Isabella wouldn’t dare to come near me. And then there would be questions about why I had gone home. About Rhona. About phobias of oral impregnation.
“I had to keep it a secret,” I said, my pulse lurching. “But Isabella would never understand.” What proof did I need? How could I bind her to silence and ensure her distance from Isabella all at once?
“Bridget.” She was watching me. “We don’t have to talk about this anymore—”
“My sister died.”
Her mouth opened. “Bridget—” She put her hand out and touched my arm. Her fingers were cold.
I was reeling. It had dropped from my tongue unplanned. There was time—I could yet pull it back. I could say “for a moment” or “that’s what I thought.” But instead, I heard myself seize on it.
“She died when I went home and that’s why you can’t tell anyone about my family.” I began to cry.
All the long hours at the hospital, pulling tufts of Rhona’s hair from the shower drain, rubbing her swollen knuckles, the waiting. All of the awfulness of it came out in an unwinding roll of sobs that clattered from my chest in painful twists. I leaned against the fence, my fists at my face, and wept.
Slowly, Sister Teresa patted my back. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”
I gulped. “I’ve always been afraid she—Rhona—that she would die.” Sister Teresa rummaged in her tunic and pulled out a handkerchief. “She gets this empty look—you talk to her but she’s not even there. But even so, she’s walking around in the middle of the night, like a robot.” I shivered, remembering how Mama had to hold her down in the hospital bed to keep her from exercising. Even though it was untrue, it felt extremely true. I had an alternate life where Rhona had died. Where she would die. Where everything I was saying was real. I was squeezed by a slippery sort of relief. Finally, I was admitting it out loud. “It’s like, like she doesn’t want to get better. I can’t bear to talk about it.”
“Oh, Bridget, I’m so sorry.” She continued patting me.
“You must think—think—I’m a terrible person,” I said.
“No, of course not.”
“Rhona’s been sick for a while.” I sniveled into her handkerchief. “And that’s why I don’t like to talk about my family. Because then I’d have to explain why—why—” I sobbed into the handkerchief. “And I’d have to explain her soul is probably in purgatory.”
“Bridget—” She rubbed my shoulder. “I am so sorry for your loss.”
I nodded.
“Have you talked to anyone? Father Gavanto?”
I shook my head. “No, I can’t.” I looked at her. “I have to pray. For her soul.”
Sister Teresa bit her lip. “Of course—”
“And Isabella doesn’t know.”
“She—”
“You can’t tell Isabella about Rhona.” My breaths were coming in ragged, wet heaves. I felt wild, unshackled, like I had leaped off a diving board. “You mustn’t tell her about my sister dying.”
“I don’t— But why not try and talk to her?”
It took several moments before I steadied myself. “Isabella can’t know. She would judge. She said—she says—she thinks Rhona’s only sick because of my mom—my family. That it’s hereditary. Because we’re mixed.”
Sister Teresa took a sharp inhale of breath.
I waited a moment for Sister Teresa to absorb this. Her forehead scrunched in fine fractures. “You have to keep this all secret. Like confession. Right? I need time to pray for her soul. My sister’s soul.”
“Bridget.” She swallowed. “I am so sorry.” She hugged me. “I can’t imagine how you are suffering.”
“But you won’t say, will you? To anyone? About anything?”
“Not if you don’t wish—”
“I don’t wish.”
Sister Teresa nodded. Her eyes roved over my face, her own eyelashes wet. “I will pray for your sister,” she said, grasping my hand. “Shall we pray together now?”
“And you especially can’t tell Isabella. You have to promise.”
“I promise.”
“On the Holy Bible. A holy promise.”
Her pupils flickered in a strange way. But dutifully she crossed herself, slowly. “A holy promise.”
22.
December
That evening I sat alone in my room instead of going down for dinner. I felt like a cushion that has had its stuffing pulled out. Every time I thought of my conversation with Sister Teresa, my body rattled. I sat on the tiles, put my fists to my face, and rocked back and forth. I pressed my forehead into the coverlet and prayed for Rhona in earnest. What if my lie was a jinx—and God would now punish me by making it true? I whimpered into the bedclothes. I began with prayers for Rhona, and then for Mama, and Granny and Dad. Reluctantly, I included Isabella.
There was a knock at the door and Sally stuck her head around. “Bridge? Oh—” She saw me on my knees. “Sorry,” she whispered, closing the door.
I crawled into bed and lay awake, jittering and fretful. I heard the girls come back from dinner, smelled the wood smoke of the common room grate. I tossed and turned and quailed until the girls retired, the bathrooms gurgled water, owls began to call from the orchard. Finally, long after midnight, I slept.
The next day, white clouds rolled over the lake, threatening snow. I joined the girls in the common room with a heavy ache in my muscles. Isabella wasn’t there. Joan, Barbie, and I bundled around the fire in sweaters and blankets, drinking cocoa made with Nancy’s heating coil, listening to the draft surging through the floorboards. Katherine, Sylvia, and Isabella kept to Sylvia’s room all weekend, and occasionally I caught the muffled sound of Isabella’s voice from outside the door. I set my nerves. It was only a matter of time until Isabella realized how much she had hurt me. How wrong she had been to betray me. And until then I had to be alert to rumors. And to focus, carefully, on protecting my reputation.
A strange listlessness spread over the academy with the change in we
ather. The wind was sharp and sought out vulnerable skin to slice, slamming unseen doors, whistling frosty arias in the courtyard. Apart from Nancy, the rest of us barely left the upper corridor. Instead, we entertained ourselves by watching from the common room windows as the sisters shoveled grit on the pathways around the building. Growing contemptuous of each other’s opinions, we stopped setting our hair or wearing lipstick and dressed in old shirts and boyfriends’ sweaters and went about with holes in our socks. If I happened to come across Isabella in the queue for the telephone I turned pointedly and went back to my bedroom.
Over the next week, I nodded obediently as Nancy delivered tedious lectures about regional dialects while her dirty hiking boots dried out by the fire. I painted Patricia’s nails. I held Greta’s yarn as she knitted and unpicked a sweater for Bobby, never tutting when she dropped a stitch, never complaining when she made me count for her. When Sally wanted to compare dress sizes, I let her try on my skirts and provided deferential compliments about the slack material of my gowns around her waist. I helped Joan paste the photos from her sister’s wedding into a scrapbook, supplied her with tissues as she mourned not being a bridesmaid. I loaned homework assignments and searched for lost earrings. I rescued spiders and shared cigarettes. I was the perfect companion.
Sometimes I caught Isabella looking over at me in the refectory and felt a sting of bitter victory. It was only a matter of time before she apologized, begged for my forgiveness. It was clear she missed me. Of course she missed me. She had said it herself—I was her favorite.
The meals grew heavier and heartier: quail with polenta, tiny ravioli filled with pumpkin and sage, slippery saffron risotto. And hazelnut cake with fresh cream, and trembling egg yolks whipped with sweet wine. I retreated straight to my bedroom after supper and lay on my bed, gratefully stunned with food and clumsy with cider.
One evening for dessert we were served cups of crispy fried pastry filled with semisweet ricotta. I ate two, one after the other, showering myself with powdered sugar.
Sally poked one of the shells suspiciously with her fork. “Is it Bridge-approved?” She’d never quite recovered from the treachery of a seemingly chocolate bun that turned out to be marzipan.
I lifted my third pastry and contemplated it. “It’s so good I want to salt it with my tears,” I said.
The table fell silent. A row of faces was staring at me. I reeled with shame. Where had that sentiment come from? It had flown from somewhere uncensored inside me. I was mortified. It had eased out so quickly I hadn’t had time to catch it.
“Bridge,” Sally gasped. “You’re like a poet.”
“So passionate,” Greta said to Sally.
“Is that from the Bible?” Bunny squinted at Barbie, who shrugged, staring at me wide-eyed.
I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “It’s nice, is all I mean,” I said, and took a long sip of cider.
“Well, we figured that,” Sally said, laughing. The girls were smiling at me, at each other. Sally picked up her pastry and tapped it against Greta’s. “Cheers.”
I felt almost giggly with relief. “Cheers,” I said.
Although I searched for her, Sister Teresa was no longer working in the yard. Instead she was often down in the spa, where the sisters took turns chasing out roosting birds and lighting the ancient furnace to keep the pipes from freezing and shattering. I watched her and Sister Luisa walking back and forth between the cypress trees with a flounce of shallow triumph. I didn’t see her and Isabella together anymore.
* * *
On Friday night after dinner, I returned to my room to find Isabella sitting on the right-hand bed. She was turning a soft pack of Lucky Strikes over and over in her hands.
“Oh,” I said, almost tripping over the threshold.
“Will you shut the door?” Her voice was hoarse.
I closed the door and took an awkward seat on my own bed. I slipped my hands under my thighs.
She put the cigarette pack down on the coverlet. “I feel like everyone hates me,” she said.
I said nothing. Her face was drawn, exhausted.
Isabella cleared her throat. “Even Rosie—Sister Teresa is hardly speaking to me.”
A soft warmth illuminated in my chest, slight as a birthday candle. After a moment, I said, “I don’t hate you.” As I said it, I tried to gauge if I was truly ready to forgive her.
“Sorry,” she said finally. “For telling Sister Teresa about your family.” Her lips were chapped, her face blotchy. “I know it’s kind of—sensitive.” She looked disheveled, almost pitiful. I shouldn’t have punished her for so long. I held my arms out and she crossed the room to hug me.
I closed my eyes, squeezing her as hard as I dared. She nudged her head into the crook of my shoulder, and I buried my face in her neck, taking deep, damp breaths.
“I missed you,” I said. My heartbeat skittered into the arches of my feet. I flashed back to the last time we had fought, the last time she had come to me.
“So we’re OK, right?” she said, pulling back. A strand of my hair snagged on her lips.
“You swear you’re done gossiping?” I said, my voice wobbling.
She almost smiled. “I swear.”
“Nothing to no one.”
She crossed herself. “Double swear. I’ll be as silent as the nuns.”
“The real nuns.”
The almost smile became a hollow laugh. “The real ones, yeah.”
I leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, lightly. As I pulled back, her breath was heavy between us. My stomach tightened, my fingers trembling. She was so close I could see the flecks of green in her irises. She glanced down at my mouth, only for a second.
I kissed her.
Her lips were rough against mine, her tongue hot and sour from cigarettes. I leaned into the kiss, tight with an unbounding ache that throbbed through the core of my body. Shakily, I reached for her neck, her shoulders, her hair.
Gently, she closed her lips against mine, easing herself away.
I swallowed wildly.
She ran the back of her wrist over her mouth, tucking her hair behind her ears. “Friends again?” she said. The skin around her lips was swollen from the force of my kiss.
I nodded, my pulse stuttering.
With a sigh, she slumped forward, resting her head against my collarbone. I wrapped my hands around the back of her head, trying to steady my heartbeat. Every muscle was jolting, my skin burbling with hectic shimmers.
With a groan, Isabella flung herself aside onto the bed, bouncing on her back. “God, it was boring when you were away,” she said loudly.
I laughed, but I was delighted.
“Briddie, let’s never fall out again.” She held her hand up and I pressed my palm against hers. We clasped fingers and she shook our joined hands from side to side roughly. “I was going out of my mind without anyone to talk to.”
23.
December
It was the final week of term, and oyster-colored clouds released flurries of snow over the academy. The powder settled over the hills, frosting the rocks around the lake, sliding from the branches of the apple trees with sudden sighs. The last day of term fell on the feast day of St. Allegra, and Father Gavanto announced he would be leading a special prayer service each afternoon of the preceding week. I began wearing earplugs while studying; else it seemed like the chapel bells never stopped ringing. Each day after lunch, Isabella went to chapel for the special services, while I stayed behind to work on my Bernini essay. I waited in the upstairs corridor until she crossed the courtyard, stopping to turn and blow me a kiss, crystals of snow in her hair.
The girls began packing their cases for the Christmas vacation. We drew our own Christmas cards and made trips down to La Pentola to buy plum wine and splintery icons of St. Teresa from the market. We constructed paper garlands to hang from the lampsha
des and cut holly sprigs to put in jelly jars. The girls who were packing recklessly donated barely worn stockings and sweaters and tubes of lipstick, confident they’d be getting replacements at home anyway.
Since I was the only one with work left to do, the girls became my cheerleaders. Nancy sat next to me in the common room, offering assistance from her thesaurus as I scribbled and cursed. Bunny provided me with two packs of oatmeal cookies. In the spirit of true camaraderie, Mary L. drew me a picture of the Quattro Fiumi fountain to attach to my essay. It was lopsided and kind of smudged, but I pretended to be grateful anyway. Ruth, meanwhile, was going on a special trip to the Holy Land over vacation and became even more insufferable than usual. In preparation for her visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, she was conspicuously fasting between sunrise and sunset, clicking her rosary while she sat by the fireside, solemn-faced and weary, as if she were personally atoning for all of our sins.
And gradually the girls peeled off one by one. Greta left on Thursday morning, grinning and waving from the front step like Mamie Eisenhower boarding a plane. Afterward I had to spend an hour consoling Sally, who was sobbing on my bedspread.
By the Sunday of St. Allegra’s feast, there were only five girls and the sisters left at the academy. The feast-day service was held so early I could smell the starch on the sisters’ tunics as I entered the chapel. Isabella was already seated between Katherine and Mary B., so I sat with Joan across the aisle. During Mass there was a loud clatter from the sacristy as a mousetrap snapped, but Father Gavanto carried on, pretending to be oblivious to the piteous squeals. Next to me Joan’s body was shaking with stifled laughter, but when I tried to catch Isabella’s eye, her head was dropped. Maybe Ruth had been rubbing off on her.
Breakfast was truly depressing: water and St. Allegra crackers with salt. The sisters then led a procession down to La Pentola. I squeezed in next to Isabella and kept my eyes on where Sister Luisa’s boots marked the slush so I wouldn’t slip and fall.