Now she was excluded, it had never been so apparent how closely everybody in the Order lived. People walked together, talking endlessly, arms linked, hips bumping together, heads bowed closely, lips brushing in platonic kisses. Sometimes, in the refectories, you would see groups of ten or fifteen or even twenty girls, joined one to the next by linked arms or hands on shoulders, or bodies pressed together. At intense moments people would grab each other’s arms and shoulders, even kiss. At night, too, it wasn’t uncommon for two, three, or four to cluster together in a few pushed-together beds, whispering, kissing, at last sleeping in each other’s arms. There was nothing sexual in any of this, for there was nothing sexual about the sisters. As slim as seven-year-olds, they huddled together innocently for companionship and warmth.
But not Lucia, not anymore. Nobody came near Lucia, no nearer than a yard or two, never near enough to touch. It was as if she were trapped inside a big bubble of glass, around which people walked without even noticing what they were doing.
Or it was as if she smelled bad. And perhaps she did, she came to wonder. Sometimes, when she walked into a crowded room, she would detect a subtle scent, a kind of milky sweetness, gentle and welcoming. It was the smell of the sisters. By comparison her smell must be of blood and sweat, of a rutting animal, as if she was a beast in the field, not a human being like the others at all.
Once she was aware of it the scent of rut seemed to fill her head, day and night. She took to showering, two, three, four times a day, scrubbing at her skin until it was raw, and changing her clothes all the time. But still that stink gushed out of her body, a foulness that she couldn’t escape — for it was the essence of her.
It went on and on. Food seemed to lose its flavor; it was like trying to eat cardboard or grass. It got to the point where she couldn’t sleep. She would lie there alone in her bed, listening to the whispers and giggles and gentle snores that drifted around her. The lack of sleep and her poor diet soon wore her out. She dragged herself to work. But the work seemed as pointless as the rest of her weary days. In her spare time she would simply sit alone, silently loathing herself, aware of every pore in her skin oozing blood and dirt.
After a month of ostracism, she suffered violent stomach cramps. She staggered to a bathroom and endured half an hour of dry retching, bringing up nothing but acidic bile that burned her throat.
Rosa came to sit opposite her in the refectory. “I saw you in the bathroom.” Her tone was analytical, not sympathetic.
Lucia had been sitting alone, without touching the cooling plate of food before her. She tucked her hands between her thighs, head down. Over her head an elaborate mosaic design showed the Order’s kissing- fish logo.
“You know why you’re ill, don’t you? You’ve hardly eaten for a month. Or slept, by the look of you. The weight is falling off you.”
“I don’t care.” Lucia’s voice was scratchy. She couldn’t remember the last time she had spoken to anybody, exchanged a single word. It must have been days, she thought.
“You feel like you don’t exist. As if you’re not really here. As if this is a dream.”
“A nightmare.”
“We aren’t meant to be alone, Lucia. We’re social creatures. Our minds evolved in the first place so we could figure out what is going on inside other people’s heads — so we could get to know them, help them, even manipulate them. Did you know that? We need other people to make us fully conscious. So if you’re alone, if nobody is looking at you or talking to you, it really is as if you don’t exist.”
“Everybody hates me.”
Rosa leaned forward. “Can you blame them? You let us down, Lucia. The Crypt is a calm pond. You threw a great big rock into that pond, making a huge splash, sending ripples back and forth. You upset everybody.”
Lucia dropped her head.
Rosa asked, “Do you remember what happened to Francesca?”
Lucia frowned. She had forgotten about Francesca.
Francesca had been a sister from Lucia’s dormitory, neither more or less popular than anybody else, never standing out from the crowd — but then nobody did. Then, one day, suddenly Francesca hadn’t been part of the group anymore. Everybody else, including Lucia, had simply stopped talking to her.
It was just as was happening to Lucia herself.
“Francesca was a thief,” Rosa said sternly. “She had an obsession for jewelry and accessories — sparkly, glittery things. She would steal from her sisters. She built up a cache under her bed. Of course she kept it all secret. When it was discovered — well, naturally, nobody wanted to talk to her again.”
Lucia had never known about the thefts, about why Francesca’s exclusion had come about. But then, you never asked questions like why. It had been easy, she thought wonderingly, easy just to ignore Francesca, to behave as if she didn’t exist — for in a way she didn’t anymore. As for Lucia, she had just gone along with what everybody else had been doing, as she always did, as she had been encouraged to do since she was a toddler, never questioning. She had scarcely noticed when Francesca had literally disappeared, when the pale solitary ghost in the refectory or the dorm had evaporated, never to return.
“What happened to her?”
“She’s dead,” Rosa said. “She killed herself.”
Despite her own turmoil, Lucia was shocked. Dead, for a handful of cheap jewelry? How could that be right ? … She should not think such thoughts. Yet she couldn’t help it.
And she became afraid.
“I can’t change,” she said desolately. “Look at me. I’m a big stupid animal. My head is full of rocks. I stink. I know you can smell it. I can’t help it, I wash and wash …” Though her eyes prickled, no tears came. “Maybe it’s better if I die, too.”
“No.” Rosa reached forward, pulled Lucia’s arm out from under the table, and took her hand. It was the first time anybody had touched Lucia for weeks. It was as if an electric current ran through her. Rosa said, “You’re too important to lose, Lucia. Yes, you’re different. But the Order needs girls like you.”
Lucia said weakly, “Why? What for?”
But Rosa drew back, subtly, breaking the touch.
You weren’t supposed to ask. Ignorance is strength. It said so, in big letters on the wall before her. Lucia said quickly, “I’m sorry.”
Rosa said, “It’s okay.” She stood up. “Everything’s going to be okay, Lucia. You’ll see.”
Lucia, weak, starved, sleep-deprived, clung to that. In her dazed, hurting state, all she cared about was that her isolation should end. And she did her best to ignore the small voices in her head that even now asked persistent, impertinent questions: How can it ever be made okay again, how, how? And what do they want of me?
Rosa booked Lucia into the downbelow hospital.
The doctors said her condition wasn’t too serious, though she had lost more weight than was healthy for a girl her age. She was given some light medication and put on a special diet.
Rosa encouraged Lucia’s friends to come visit her. They came slowly and shyly: Pina the first day, Idina and Angela the second, Rosaria and Rosetta the next. At first they stared at Lucia with wide, curious eyes, as if she hadn’t been among them for weeks — and, in a sense, she hadn’t. They talked to her, feeding her little dribbles of gossip about what had been going on during her “absence.”