Black Apple (18 page)

There had been a time when she felt fire within her own bosom, an unruly, unmanageable fervour. There was a time when being close to Father Patrick, her professor, seemed to give credence to that fire, to both feed and control it, to turn it from a volatile blaze to a powerful furnace.

As a student, she would see him on campus during his office hours, and they bantered about matters of theology that suddenly became exciting, essential even, igniting her brain, while Catherine, her companion, waited, impatient and cranky, to walk back to the Mother House with her. A brief question about the story of Susanna and the Elders in the book of Daniel had turned into a discussion about the diminishment of female figures in doctrine, she recalled, that lasted two riveting hours. After that, Catherine, despite the regulations for novices of their order to travel in pairs, had taken to waiting in a cubicle down the hall, her head on the desk, her snores discreet.

Oui
, and one day while Catherine dozed, Grace had realized that being close to Father Patrick no longer checked her fervour, but made the fire leap higher and burn hotter within her. That day she had reached out and touched his hand. Abruptly, he had stood, and, stunned, she rose too. As Patrick strode around the desk towards her, she found herself leaning into him, ready to be caught up in his arms. She would not resist, she knew, could not. There was nothing she had wanted more.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement in the doorway. She gasped, Patrick turned and dropped his arms, and both of them faced Catherine, who was peering in, her face creased with sleep. Seeing her companion, she had felt not relief, but disappointment, God forgive her. And she knew it was disappointment she had seen on Patrick’s face too.

After her course finished the following week, she would see Patrick only by accident. That was when they had begun to correspond. And in the end, she had given all her passion back to the Lord. She looked up at the wooden cross hanging over her door, the one Patrick himself had made her.

Rose Marie was now a young woman. Would she succumb to a similar disturbance of the heart? Would the fire within her burn faithfully, a beacon to the unholy world from which she had sprung? Would it blaze up erratically, dangerously, as it had for a few months with her? Could it engulf her as it had engulfed Sister Mary of Bethany, destroying all potential?

“Lord, allow me to help, to guide her, to fulfil Your purpose here on earth. I am Your instrument.”
She longed for an event, a cause, an epiphany—something important to direct the rest of her life—a burning bush, a sign, a miracle.
Dieu soit loué.

A
FTER RECOVERING IN
late October, Anataki took sick with a fever and that terrible cough again in early November. On St. Elizabeth’s memorial day, she was in bed when a snowstorm closed the roads and brought down telephone lines.

At the start of their catechism lesson, Mother Grace complained to Rose Marie that with the damage done by the “inclement weather,” she was unable to get Dr. Stanton’s advice by phone or medicine brought in by car. “Though why he refused to drive out here and check Anne and the other sick girls earlier, I don’t know.” She did, of course, know, but she wouldn’t tell Rose Marie how little most of the outside world thought of residential schools and their students. “I called the man every single day for a week. The next week he had the nerve to have his nurse tell me he was ‘indisposed.’ Indisposed indeed!” Mother Grace’s blue eyes narrowed. “And now it’s too late. No one can get through. We’ll just have to make do.”

  *  *  *  

Poor Taki had to be helped to the toilet, her arms looped over Rose Marie’s shoulders or wrapped around Sister Cilla’s waist. She was scalding hot and thin as a reed.

“She’s really, really sick, Sister Cilla,” Rose Marie said. “What can we do?”

“Anne really should go back in the infirmary as soon as a bed comes free.”

“Don’t put her there. Please, Sister. It gives her the creeps.”

The next day Sister Cilla had Rose Marie, Beth, and Susanna help her lug Anataki and her bed to the west side of the dormitory. “Now her coughing won’t disturb the other students, and we can keep a close eye on her.”

“Jam,” Rose Marie heard Taki whimper to Sister Cilla, who instead brought her chicken broth from the kitchen. Watching Taki’s nostrils quiver, she knew the broth had been sitting warm on the stove far too long, that it should have been outside in the cold. Why was Sister Bernadette so careless? Most of the girls’ stomachs were used to sour broth by now, but not Taki’s. She watched as Sister Cilla raised a spoonful to her friend’s lips.

“No, Sister,” she cried, running over. “The chicken broth isn’t good for Anne.”

“Rose Marie, it’s exactly what Mother Grace ordered, and she used to work in a hospital, you know.” Sister Cilla continued spooning the broth into Anataki’s drooping mouth.

Ten minutes later, Rose Marie held Taki’s hair off her face with one hand and grasped the back of her nightdress with the other as she bent over the toilet bowl, vomiting. More than the chicken broth, she noticed. Something greenish-black.

“Jam,” Taki pleaded to her that night when she snuggled in beside her. “Bread with jam,” she croaked once before falling asleep.

  *  *  *  

The following day, Rose Marie spread her bread with the dollop of jam on the side of her plate and put it on the bench she had always shared with Taki. Then she was on her feet again, squeezing herself back in the cafeteria line in front of Abigail and Leah, who were too busy talking about putting their hair up in pins to even notice.

On her third try, Sister Bernadette looked her full in the face. “Just what do you think you’re doing, Rose Marie? I already gave you lunch.”

“Anne,” she whispered. “She’s so sick, and all she wants is jam, Sister.”

“Mother Grace said that the sick girls are to be given water and broth only, things easy on the stomach.”

“But, Sister, she won’t eat broth. All she’ll eat is jam.”

“Heavens to Betsy. Well, I guess it won’t do her any harm.” Sister Bernadette retreated to the back of the kitchen and returned with a jam sandwich wrapped in wax paper.

My, oh my, the smile on Taki’s face when she saw those two slices of bread with jam and one jam sandwich! By noon the next day, Taki had eaten them all, and she didn’t even throw up. She slept all afternoon, and sleep was good, Rose Marie knew. But not that cough. Different from Mama’s or the one Papa had. “Whooping cough,” she heard Mother Grace whisper to Sister Cilla. Rose Marie didn’t like the tone of her voice one bit.

  *  *  *  

Late that night, sitting on the toilet, Rose Marie opened
The Magnificent Prayers
she had borrowed from Mother Grace and flipped through the book. She had always said her prayers, she had to, but like the other girls, she muttered them mainly out of duty and habit. Now, she decided, she would take them seriously. She used to take the medicine of Papa and Tallow, her grandmother, her Naasa, seriously, but what good had that done? Mama had died, Papa caught the bad cough, and she was stuck at the school all summer, Christmas and Easter too. She would find the very best prayers in this book and memorize as many as she could. She’d see if they worked on Anataki.

Tiptoeing through the dark dormitory, she knelt by Taki’s bed.
Through torments and insulting words, I beg Thee, O my Saviour, deliver Anataki and me from all enemies.
Including sickness
, she added, climbing in beside her friend. Taki was light in her arms, like a bird, a baby bird struggling to fly. “I won’t let you go,” she whispered as she threw a leg over Taki’s shivering body. “You have to stay here with me.”

Gradually Anataki’s shivering fits lessened in the night. She was barely trembling when Rose Marie, her arms and legs still locked around her, floated down the grey river to sleep.

They were lying against the walls of a tipi: she, Anataki, Taki’s mama and papa, and two big brothers, each of them wrapped in a skin, ready for sleep. She could hear Taki’s breath slow and deepen, feel the shift of her body as she curled in on the night. Up through the smoke hole, summer stars blazed like hope in the black night.

  *  *  *  

Early the next morning, as she crept from Taki’s bed to her own, she prayed.
Merciful Jesus, who art the consolation and salvation of all who put their trust in Thee, I humbly beseech Thee by Thy most bitter passion, grant the recovery of Thy servant, Anataki Two Persons.

Wind howled outside the school and shrieked threats through door and window cracks. The roads were still closed, and no visitors or supplies had reached the school for weeks. There was no medicine for Taki, and Sister Cilla kept bringing her sour chicken broth from the kitchen.

“She’s too sick for bread and jam now,” Sister Bernadette told her at lunch. “I’m sorry, Rose Marie.”

  *  *  *  

That night, snuggled beside her friend, Rose Marie drifted into sleep, dreaming of Taki’s summer camp.

As the morning sky turned from pink to egg-yolk yellow, Taki helped her aunt and mother clean up after the morning meal while Rose Marie, in the meadow close to the tethered horses, watched Sik-apsii creeping towards her. Suddenly Awa-kaasii was behind, pulling her braids. She cried out, spun around, and ran after him, the three of them laughing and sprinting through the long grass, dodging, calling out, and backtracking. They darted between the horses, past the two older women and Taki, who looked wistfully after them as they chased each other over the long, loping plain.

Rose Marie awoke. Sweaty, lips crusted, Taki mumbled in her sleep.

“What? What did you say, Taki?” But she couldn’t make it out.

Heal her for her soul’s welfare, that with us she may praise and magnify T
hy holy name.
My Taki.

  *  *  *  

Another night, another dream.

She and Anataki, on one horse, her two brothers on another, rode along the cricket-buzzing bank. “There,” Sik-apsii said, pointing. Down in the creek bed, a frantic calf nosed the bloated corpse of its mother lying in shallow water. Glancing
around, Rose Marie noticed two coyotes slip through the grass. Awa-kaasii and Sik-apsii urged their horse to a gallop. Awa-kaasii raised his arm and swung a rope in a loose circle. It flew towards the skittering calf, flopping in the water beside it. Cursing, Awa-kaasii pulled the rope back and tried again. This time the lasso landed on the calf’s woolly back, but he bolted away, shaking it off. Damn! The coyotes slunk closer.

Rose Marie prayed:
Look upon Anataki in T
hy lovingkindness, preserve her in danger, give her help in this time of need.

She dabbed Taki’s burning cheeks with a damp face cloth, and Taki’s eyelids fluttered. She grunted, then waved a hand in front of her face, knocking the cloth away. A sound trickled from her lips.

“What?” Rose Marie leaned closer. “What did you say, Taki?”

“If should die before I wake—”

“No. No, don’t say that.”

Taki coughed, her torso heaving and crumpling on the bed, her hair dry twigs scattering over the pillow.

Through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I pray, I beg, please make Anataki better.

Rose Marie ran to the bathroom and held the face cloth under the tap. Returning to the bed, she squeezed a little water into Taki’s mouth, then gently pressed the cloth to her cheeks, throat, and forehead. She took Taki’s hand and held it tight—a burning coal.
Soul of Christ, be her sanctification. Body of Christ, be her salvation. Save her life here, on earth.

She went to her bed for nightly prayer, then lay down, closed her eyes, and waited. As soon as the dormitory was quiet, she stole over to Anataki and climbed into bed beside her. Curled into her friend’s warm back, she fell asleep.

  *  *  *  

The next day at catechism, Mother Grace said, “This is what Esther prayed in her time of trouble:
O my Lord, who alone art our king, help me, a desolate woman, and who have no other helper but Thee.
”

That night Rose Marie prayed by Taki’s bed, ending as Esther had, but with a small revision:
O God, who art mighty above all, hear the voices of we who have no other hope, and deliver Anataki from illness.

She and Taki were riding their horses in the summer afternoon heat, racing through goldenrod and broomweed, the haunting scent of sage. As the western sun dazzled their eyes and licked their shoulders, joy gushed from their mouths. Just then, Taki’s horse cut in front of hers, and turning, Taki whooped, waving crazily.

“Wait for me, Taki,” Rose Marie shouted, giggling and spurring her horse on. Ahead, Taki’s hair whipped from side to side, black as midnight, white as summer stars. The wind, the grass, the horses’ manes, even her own hair flew wild and free through the heat and grass and insects.

Jesus Christ, do not forsake Anataki in her needs and afflictions
, she prayed when she awoke later that night.

Ahead, Taki’s horse charged forward in a lightning flash of speed.
Rose Marie lowered her head and urged her own horse on, “Go-go-go . . .” her heels tucking into the horse’s flanks. Below, hooves stitched a carpet of gold to the golden light and the golden rope of the horizon that went on forever and ever, amen.

Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on her.

Beside her in bed, Taki burned like a candle.

Far ahead, Taki rode into the vivid setting sun. Her horse’s hooves flicked light as he reared.

Rose Marie pressed a cold cloth to Anataki’s forehead and temples. “Come back, Taki.”

Maybe there was mud under her horse’s hooves. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t sprint as fast as Taki’s horse. The harder she kicked, the slower he moved and the farther they fell behind. “Taki, wait!” she cried, but the earth was holding them. She dropped her head along the horse’s long, sinewy neck, whispering, “Go-go-go,” but her voice was waterlogged, heavy, sinking in prairie gumbo. Around her, the clouds shuddered to a standstill.