by Anbara Salam
27.
January
When I woke my head was throbbing and the room was a mess. I’d trudged muddy snow over the tiles, and there lay a half empty box of saltines I had risen and eaten in the night, crouched over the packet like a skunk in garbage. My suffering, which had seemed so dramatic the night before, now seemed banal and almost sordid against the dusty bottle of wine and crumpled tissues. I could smell my own sweat, acidic and flowery under my sweater. I remembered my victorious jig around the room when I realized I’d mistaken Isabella’s embrace. I was just as embarrassed as if I’d been standing outside myself, witnessing my own foolishness.
It was only half past five, so I went to the bathroom, my body aching, my shoulders taut from crying. I let the bath run, then climbed into the water and soaped my belly and thighs, thinking over the night before. I resolved to get better control of myself. Anyone could have seen me stumbling around the corridor. One of the sisters. Katherine, Joan, Isabella herself. No wonder she was now friends with Sister Teresa—my poor decisions spoke for themselves. I scoured my face with a washcloth, trying to scrub the poison out of my skin.
The door opened, and as I turned I twisted at the stiff muscles in my neck.
“Morning,” said Isabella, yawning. She had a pillow crease across her forehead and her hair was tied in bunches. “You’re up early.”
“Hi.” I began shampooing my hair, wishing I could cover my own nudity. As if she might see all the hysteria and shame written on my body.
“Turn the faucet on, will you?” she said, opening the stall. I heard the echo of her peeing.
I leaned across to the other tub and turned the faucet, dripping sudsy water on the tiles as I put in the stopper.
The toilet flushed, and Isabella came out and rinsed her hands, then stuck out her tongue and examined it.
“Actually, to hell with it.” She caught my eye in the mirror. “Can I jump in?”
“With me?” I both wanted her and didn’t want her. I wanted her to be close to me, but I felt self-conscious—my breasts heavy, my body puffy, spoiled.
“If you don’t want?” She looked amused.
“No, it’s just, I’ve got the curse,” I lied.
“OK, cellmates, then.”
She sat on the edge of the other tub and dangled her dirty feet in the rising water. I rubbed shampoo into my scalp, deliberately not looking at her. I lay back and rinsed my hair, the drip of the faucet loud over the sound of my own body swirling.
“It’s so nice, filling it right up to the top,” she said, pulling off her nightdress and throwing it onto the tiles. She climbed into the tub with a sigh. “I’ll hate it when the others get back.”
I squeezed the shampoo out of my hair. The water turned cloudy. “I hadn’t thought of it.”
Isabella laughed, dipping her bar of soap in the water and rubbing it under her arms. “God, Briddie. You’re as bad as the nuns.”
I smiled, unnerved. Was that a compliment now? Since she was back to being friendly with Sister Teresa? Or was she mocking nuns? Was it an insult?
“What’s up with you?” She reached over and pointedly turned on the faucet in my own bath.
“Nothing,” I said, but my voice sounded flimsy.
“Cramps? I have some of Barbie’s painkillers. The strong ones.”
“No, I’m fine.” I drew my knees to my chest.
“What shall we do today?” she said. “We should make the best of it while the others are gone.”
“You’re not going to the yard? Or the spa?” I couldn’t bring myself to say Sister Teresa’s name.
Isabella lifted one foot out of the water and rubbed a scratch on her shin. “I’d rather enjoy having the run of the place while we can.”
“Mmm.”
“Briddie—” She splashed me. “What is it?”
“Cramps,” I said.
“At least you’re not pregnant.” She was teasing me, but I wasn’t in the mood to play along.
“Sure.”
Isabella sat up. “Let’s do something fun today. We’ll climb the bell tower.”
I winced. Although I had lied about the cramps, I now felt the tenderness that did come with my period. I wondered if I was getting it after all.
“OK,” she said. “We’ll go into the cider cellar.”
“Sure,” I said, with the doleful reluctance of someone being treated after a trip to the dentist. At least, I thought, at least she wants to spend time with me.
“Breakfast first.” She leaped out of the bathtub and I turned to watch the drops gleaming on the dimples at the backs of her thighs.
“You stay in there and soak,” she said, tucking her towel under her arms. “I’ll go find us something to do.”
“OK,” I said. I lay weakly in the bath, overcome with tiredness, fixing on the spot where an empty hook hung from the heart of a ceiling rosette.
* * *
When my hair was dry, I went down to meet Isabella. She was on her way back up the stairs, holding a cup of coffee and a brioche roll. I took the coffee from her and she held out the roll, then pulled out a Hershey’s bar from her pocket and broke off a shard. “Wait.” She pulled open the bread and closed it on the Hershey’s. “Now it’s a pain au chocolat,” she said, holding it out to me.
I smiled, but it was pinched. I ate the chocolate bun in miserable, small bites. I tried to talk myself into being cheerful. But it was like someone had pulled my plug out and all my insides had swirled away, and now I was hollow.
Isabella stretched. “I’m dying for a smoke. You want one?”
I nodded.
“Drink up, and I’ll go grab our coats. Wait down at the bottom for me.” She disappeared up the stairs and I stood woodenly sipping my coffee.
She came back with our coats, took my coffee mug, and put it on a side table in the hallway. “Let’s go,” she said. I didn’t protest at leaving mess for a sister to clean up. I didn’t much care about the sisters’ workload at that moment.
We went out into the courtyard. A fresh powder of snow must have fallen overnight, as the courtyard was a flawless, paper white. I followed her around the left side of the building, where we usually didn’t walk. I searched for the path leading up to the shrine, but it was buried in snow. It seemed like a hundred years ago we had gone up there with Nancy and Greta and Sister Teresa.
We came to the grated door of the convent, and Isabella looked around, then slid her hands through the bars and unsnipped the lock.
“Don’t,” I said.
She shook me off. “Shh, it’s fine. No one’s even here.” She pulled the grate and it swung with a screech.
I peered down the dark corridor. And then someone came out of a room on the left. I yelped. I heard Isabella behind me laughing, and her hand rested on my shoulder. But my senses were all going at once. Behind the grate was Sister Teresa in her tunic and head scarf.
“I thought it was just you and me today,” I said, turning around to Isabella, unable to keep the accusation out of my voice.
Isabella frowned. “We’re going to tour the convent—isn’t that a scream?”
I looked back toward Sister Teresa. I nodded and tried to smile. The pleasure of having Isabella to myself was gone, but so was my numbness. My pulse quickened, and all the heaviness of moments before broke off like a plaster cast. Now that they were together, I would be able to observe them. I would have to pay careful attention to Sister Teresa, to find out what it was that Isabella liked so much—why she chose to spend time with her. Over me.
Sister Teresa grinned and waved us through, miming that Isabella should shut the door behind her.
“We’ll have to be super quiet,” Isabella whispered in my ear.
My blood washed against my eardrums. How did Isabella know we had to be quiet? Had they been there often, together?
We went down the corridor in single file. Unlike the academy, this building was made from whitewashed rough stone. I could see the texture on the walls where the brush had missed pores in the rock. The corridor was gloomy, and it gave me the distinct impression of traveling to the bottom of a shaft. As we passed the cells, I glanced through the doorways. From the brief glimpses, they looked cramped and austere, with a bed and a cross on the eastern wall. The air was icy, and I shivered.
“Sorry about the cold,” Sister Teresa said.
“It’s OK.” My voice was hoarse. I turned to Isabella. “Are we allowed to be in here?” I whispered.
Isabella wrinkled her nose. “It’s not forbidden or anything.”
That didn’t reassure me much. Especially as I could see the back of Sister Teresa’s head jolting from side to side as she peeked about us. There came the sound of boots across the tiles, and Sister Teresa ushered us through a doorway and onto a narrow ledge, where we all pressed together, shuffling to make room for each other while Sister Teresa groped in the air for a light pull. It swung against my head, and as her hand brushed my cheek I felt the dryness of her skin, the calluses on the pads of her fingers. With a click she turned on a naked bulb overhead, the filament glowing in wiggles on the inside of my eyelids.
We were standing above a set of steep wooden stairs with gaps between the treads, like a ladder. Sister Teresa went first and I followed her, allowing each foot to dangle and make contact with the next step before transferring my weight. I had a childish fear my foot would get snared in the space between the steps, and I would fall headfirst.
“Here we are. This is the apple store,” Sister Teresa said.
It smelled sweet and grassy, like a barn. A wooden crate filled with straw was standing on the right-hand side, apples gleaming in the straw like Christmas ornaments. Sister Teresa picked out three apples, throwing one to me and one to Isabella. Isabella caught hers, but mine slipped from my hand. I rolled it under my fingers, probing the flesh where it had grown loose and wrinkly. I was unsettled by the way she had lobbed it across the room, the swift athleticism of her arm. The Rosaria-ness of it. She crossed to a set of round metal disks on a sort of press, with a long lever.
“After the harvest, we put the cider apples into this. It crushes the fruit. Then the fiber comes out of the bottom. We pile up the crush into the circles.”
“They’re called cheeses,” said Isabella proudly.
“When they get this high”—Sister Teresa held out her palm—“we wrap it in cloth, and repeat until we have a cake. Perhaps eight cheeses.”
“When the cake’s made—,” prompted Isabella.
“We squeeze it with these bricks.” She gestured to a huge brick in the shape of an old-fashioned iron. “Then we squeeze out all the juice.”
But I didn’t care about the apples or the juice or the squeezing. I hated how Isabella already knew the script.
Sister Teresa walked over to place her hand on one of the huge wooden barrels. “The cider is stored in these, and we leave it here in the shed for a year or more.”
“Show her the bottles,” Isabella said, and crunched into her apple.
I glanced at her, feeling vindicated, as if she had just trapped herself in a lie. So she had been there before. Maybe many times. Why had they never invited me? I wanted to throw my squishy, sagging apple at the wall and splatter it against the bricks.
Sister Teresa went over to a wooden door on the left and it opened with a squeak. Inside were hundreds of misshapen green glass bottles along two shelves. “We only use these when we sell the cider.” She smiled at me. “You may have seen them in Milan?”
I wasn’t sure if it was really a question, so I gave her a noncommittal shrug.
“Can we show her the music thing?” Isabella said.
Sister Teresa smiled indulgently, a sort of child’s-birthday-party smile.
From a rusty faucet in the wall, she filled three of the green bottles with small amounts of liquid, gauging each one by stooping and squinting at the water. She settled on the floor and knelt in front of the bottles. She licked her index finger and traced the tip over and over the top of the middle bottle until it began to hum. Then she brought her other index finger over the far bottle and rubbed it until the glass was warm and singing.
Isabella laughed, and Sister Teresa hushed her.
“I can’t,” said Isabella helplessly, tears streaking down her cheeks.
“Quiet or you won’t hear,” Sister Teresa said.
Isabella wiped her eyes and crawled forward to join her, tracing circles on the lip of the third bottle until a strange chord rang in the air.
I watched them giggle, running their fingers along the mouths of the bottles. I wished with all my heart that they would both shut up.
28.
January
Term began again and the girls came back from their vacations. They were tan from skiing and plump from Christmas. They had new haircuts and new gloves, and new furs and new engagement rings. Patricia had gotten engaged to Charles, and Sylvia was now engaged to Patrick. The academy was overstuffed. Shampoo bottles bubbled stickily onto the tiles and stockings trailed over the bathtubs. Grammar books lay facedown on the floor, and pens were abandoned without their caps, and brassieres hung by pegs from the fireplace, and the place was soupy with hairspray and cigarette smoke and Chanel and face powder and damp wool. I felt strangely disoriented by the intruders in what I had begun to think of as my space. But my grumpiness soon wore off as girls stopped by my room to drop off magazines and melted packets of Junior Mints. The girls were glossy with time off studying; brimming with stories of flirtatious ski instructors and reunions with beloved pets. Greta even gave me a Christmas gift: a pair of truly ugly gold earrings in the shape of rabbits. I was so touched I almost cried. I was happy to see everyone, except Ruth perhaps. She was fresh from her pilgrimage and particularly intolerable. She’d brought back a bag of rosaries purchased in Jerusalem and went around giving them to each of the sisters with an obsequious note. I squirmed even harder to learn she had traveled back via a one-week detour in Egypt, to visit St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai.
“And did you have to wear a turban?” Bunny said.
“Don’t be dumb—only the men wear turbans,” said Barbie. “Right, Ruth?”
Ruth simpered. “No turbans. Though, of course, I had to wrap my hair, to be modest,” she said, gesturing to the collection of photos of her at various crumbling walls and dusty gates wearing a head scarf so tight she was bundled like a dowdy little grandma.
“And did you ride a camel?” Sally said, chewing a toffee so loudly each smack of her lips came with a great kiss.
“No,” Ruth sniffed. “That’s only for the tourists.”
As they spoke, I sat on my hands, allowing the conversation to pass above my head. I focused so intently on the rug I grew cross-eyed and woozy.
“They don’t actually ride camels,” Ruth continued. “Honestly, Arabia is really quite civilized. Especially Jerusalem.”
My cheeks prickled. I knew from Mama’s box of photos that she had spent her childhood riding a tricycle around the suburbs, eating ice cream, visiting zoos. I’d seen the evidence that she’d worn white gloves to church and had a pet dachshund and that her cousins had dressed in straw boaters for picnics. But somehow, I still harbored a slender fantasy in which one day, I would descend from the stairway of the Orient Express and slink into a welcoming gauze of dust. Where I would mount a fierce stallion and canter across a landscape of coral sand, jewels glittering on my fingers, a silk shroud rippling back to reveal my ivory-handled pistol.
“I’m going to the library,” I heard myself say, standing up. No one took any notice of me. Sally and Bunny were bickering about the Mohammedan tradition of harem dancers. I left the common room as quickly as possible and went to the library, where I took a seat at the
table with a slump of immediate relief. At least we were forced to be silent there. The potbellied coke heater on the right wall smelled like warm chemicals, and the stuffiness of the room was soporific and comforting. I opened my textbook.
In the new term, I was determined to prove to Elena and to Signor Patrizi that I had caught up with my studies, and to dazzle Nancy with my new skills. I would not be left behind again, stuck indoors on Saturdays. With the trip to Rome coming up, I wanted there to be no excuse for me to be excluded on account of schoolwork.
And there was a different reason. The more I thought over the night I had seen Isabella and Sister Teresa in the spa, the more I was sure I’d overreacted. When I tried to recall the details in my mind, they became hazy and clouded, like looking at something from the bottom of a tumbler. I was deeply embarrassed by my hysteria, but also protective of myself, as if there were a small wound now in my chest, a cigarette burn, that I had to defend at all costs. And the way to defend it was to be prepared. Watchful.
I took to knocking on Isabella’s door after lunch, to check she was inside. And when she said she was off to the enoteca in La Pentola, I let myself into the spa and slammed the door hard enough to make the chandelier shake, so if Isabella was there, she would know I was also there. And when Sister Teresa appeared, looking harried, her cap tied on at the side, I was glad.