Tears glittered in her eyes, deep down, like the sinking reflection in a well.
AL I
“It was so hard, Marie,” she gasped. Her hands were shaking.
The kettle clattered against the stove. “But I have used all the water up now. I think he is gone.”
“I prayed,” I said foolishly. “I prayed very hard.”
“Yes,” she said. “My dear one, I know.”
We sat together quietly because we had no more words. We let the dough rise and punched it down once. She gave me a bowl of mush, unlocked the sausage from a special cupboard, and took that in to the Sisters. They sat down the hall, chewing their sausage, and I could hear them. I could hear their teeth bite through their bread and meat.
I couldn’t move. My shirt was dry but the cloth stuck to my back, and I couldn’t think straight. I was losing the sense to understand how her mind worked. She’d gotten past me with her poker and I would never be a saint. I despaired. I felt I had no inside voice, nothing to direct me, no darkness, no Marie. I was about to throw that cornmeal mush out to the birds and make a run for it, when the vision rose up blazing in my mind.
I was rippling gold, My breasts were bare and my nipples flashed and winked. Diamonds tipped them. I could walk through panes of glass. I could walk through windows. She was at my feet, swallowing the glass after each step I took. I broke through another and another. The glass she swallowed ground and cut until her starved insides were only a subtle dust. She coughed. She coughed a cloud of dust. And then she was only a black rag that flapped off, snagged in bob wire, hung there for an age, and finally rotted into the breeze.
I saw this, mouth hanging open, gazing off into the flagged boughs of trees.
“Get up!” she cried. “Stop dreaming. It is time to bake.”
Two other Sisters had come in with her, wide women with hands like paddles. They were evening and smoothing out the firebox beneath the great jaws of the oven.
L PP
“Who is this one?” they asked Leopolda. “Is she yours?”
“She is mine,” said Leopolda. “A very good girl.”
“What is your name?” one asked me.
“Marie.”
“Marie. Star (if the Sea.”
“She will shine,” said Leopolda, “when we have burned off the dark corrosion.
The others laughed, but uncertainly. They were mild and sturdy French, who did not understand Leopolda’s twisted jokes, although they muttered respectfully at things she said. I knew they wouldn’t believe what she had done with the kettle. There was no question. So I kept quiet.
“Elle est docile,” they said approvingly as they left to starch the linens.
“Does it pain?” Leopolda asked me as soon as they were out the door.
I did not answer. I felt sick with the hurt.
“Come along,” she said.
The building was wholly quiet now. I followed her up the narrow staircase into a hall of little rooms, many doors. Her cell was the quietest, at the very end. Inside, the air smelled stale, as if the door had not been opened for years. There was a crude straw mattress, a tiny bookcase with a picture of Saint Francis hanging over it, a ragged palm, a stool for sitting on, a crucifix.
She told me to remove my blouse and sit on the stool. I did so.
She took a pot of salve from the bookcase and began to smooth it upon my burns. Her hands made slow, wide circles, stopping the pain. I closed my eyes. I expected-to see blackness. Peace. But instead the vision reared up again. My chest was still tipped with diamonds. I was walking through windows. She was chewing up the broken litter I left behind.
“I am going,” I said. “Let me go.”
But she held me down.
“Don’t go,” she said quickly. “Don’t. We have just begun.”
…. …. ……. I was weakening. My thoughts were whirling pitifully. The pain had kept me strong, and as it left me I began to forget it; I couldn’t hold on. I began to wonder if she’d really scalded me with the kefflc. I could not remember. To remember this seemed the most important thing in the world. But I was losing the memory. The scalding. The pouring. It began to vanish. I felt like my mind was coming off its hinge, flapping in the breeze, hanging by the hair of my own pain. I wrenched out of her grip.
“He was always in you,” I said. “Even more than in me. He wanted you even more. And now he’s got you. Get thee behind me!”
I shouted that, grabbed my shirt, and ran through the door throwing it on my body. I got down the stairs and into the kitchen, even, but no matter what I told myself, I couldn’t get out the door. It wasn’t finished. And she knew I would not leave. Her quiet step was immediately behind me.
“We must take the bread from the oven now,” she said.
She was pretending nothing happened. But for the first time I had gotten through some chink she’d left in her darkness.
Touched some doubt. Her voice was so low and brittle it cracked off at the end of her sentence.
“Help me, Marie,” she said slowly.
But I was not going to help her, even though she had calmly buttoned the back of my shirt up and put the big cloth mittens in my hands for taking out the loaves. I could have bolted for it then. But I didn’t.
I knew that something was nearing completion. Something was about to happen. My back was a wall of singing flame. I was turning. I watched her take the long fork in one hand, to tap the loaves. In the other hand she gripped the black poker to hook the pans.
“Help me,” she said again, and I thought, Yes, this is part of it.
I put the mittens on my hands and swung the door open on its hinges.
The oven gaped. She stood back a moment, letting the — ANA first blast of heat rush by. I moved behind her. I could feel the heat at my front and at my back. Before, behind. My skin was turning to beaten gold. It was coming quicker than I thought.
The oven was like the gate of a personal hell. just big enough and hot enough for one person, and that was her. One kick and Leopolda would fly in headfirst. And that would be one-millionth of the heat she would feel when she finally collapsed in his hellish embrace.
Saints know these numbers.
She bent forward with her fork held out. I kicked her with all my might. She flew in. But the outstretched poker hit the back wall first, so she rebounded. The oven was not so deep as I had thought.
There was a moment when I felt a sort of thin, hot disappointment, as when a fish slips off the line. Only I was the one going to be lost.
She was fearfully silent. She whirled. Her veil had cutting edges.
She had the poker in one hand. In the other she held that long sharp fork she used to tap the delicate crusts of loaves. Her face turned upside down on her shoulders. Her face turned blue. But saints are used to miracles. I felt no trace of fear.
If I was going to be lost, let the diamonds cut! Let her eat ground glass!
“Bitch of Jesus Christ!” I shouted. “Kneel and beg! Lick the floor!”
That was when she stabbed me through the hand with the fork, then took the poker up alongside my head, and knocked me out.
It must have been a half an hour later when I came around.
Things were so strange. So strange I can hardly tell it for delight at the remembrance. For when I came around this was actually taking place.
I was being worshiped. I had somehow gained the altar of a saint.
— Okla bolt.I was laying back on the stiff couch in the Mother Superior’s office. I looked around me. It was as though my deepest dream had come to life. The Sisters of the convent were kneeling to me.
Sister Bonaventure. Sister Dympna. Sister Cecilia Saint-Claire.