Counternarratives (19 page)

Each of the young gentlewomen was conducted individually into
the calefactory. Verily, each was asked to be seated in a chair facing away from
the window overlooking the west meadow, and was presented a series of questions
concerning the evening under scrutiny. The inquiries also assessed any and all
potential associations with any male person the pupils may have had, their
behavior in the weeks leading up to the above-cited events, and the general and
specific perceptions the reverend sisters may have had about each. With one
exception, the alibis provided by the young ladies were in various states of
conflict concerning their whereabouts between the evening inspection, conducted
by my person, and the morning call. With one exception, that being Miss Eugénie
de L'É., none was able to reply to any of the subsequent questions with
persuasion. Several of the girls appeared to be in advanced states of agitation,
which could have been the result of sin, ill or uncertain humor, or some other
cause. Only the aforesaid Miss de L'É. was able to reply with a demonstrable
measure of calm. It should be noted that the inquiries were conducted by all
three of the sisters present, though the author of this report served as the
primary inquisitor.

To go further, though in each case the child under
inquiry was able to cite a fellow room occupant, usually a fellow pupil, who
could vouch for her presence in her room throughout the entire period when the
said events are alleged to have occurred on the said evening, each mentioned a
detail or details that contrasted with the testimony of her schoolmates. In
several instances there arose conflict over the very question of whether the
girls were asleep for the entire period or even in their rooms. In the sole case
of Miss de L'É. there was, the inquisitors noted, a solid story, to which
another figure in the house, in this instance her bondswoman, might attest. One
pupil, Miss Mary Margaret S., developed considerable disquiet during the
inquiry, specifically on the question of her actions on that evening. Despite
the general concurrence of her answers by her roommate Miss Josephine O'G., she
became so discomfited at this particular question that she expelled the contents
of her stomach. The sisters present were not completely inclined to believe
them.

After this initial period of inquiry concluded, the pupils were
then individually asked to lie supine on the large serving table, which had
previously been cleared of its usual artifacts in preparation for this portion
of the inspection, against the east-facing wall. A white sheet was draped so
that it concealed both the upper and lower portion of their torsos. Each girl
was then told what this portion of the inspection would entail, which provoked
several exclamations. In the case of said Miss Mary Margaret S., Sr. Alphonse
Isabelle had to spend several minutes attempting to pacify her, and when this
did not succeed, she was held down, by force, until such time as she was
sufficiently becalmed, in order that the inspection could be properly
undertaken.

The small clothes of each of the inspected were removed.
In several instances this was only achieved with great difficulty. In the case
of Miss Mary Margaret S., further force had to be applied to ensure that she
would comply with this action. The author of this report, having served as the
director of the convent's infirmary since its establishment, and thus possessed
of deep familiarity with the human anatomy and physiological principles,
proceeded to examine each of the inspected. In half the cases the results were
inconclusive. Although it did not appear as though any of the inspected had
recently given birth, this inspector, having viewed in manuscript illustration
the essential parts at the conclusion of such an event, was unready to make a
decisive declaration. On this point the other nuns concurred initially, although
the Reverend Mother Superior, on continued examination, adjudged decisively that
the inspected were still in an unmolested state. Only in the case of Miss de
L'É. did it appear that the observed anatomy appeared incontrovertibly
unchanged, as it ought.

Given that none of the sisters was in the least suspected
in the matter, this second part of the inspection left all of the inquisitors
present with great disquiet, though each duly was subjected to a similar
examination, in the author's case the determinant being the Reverend Mother
Superior. In none of the reverend sisters, by the Grace of the Holy Mother, did
the observed anatomy appear incontrovertibly transformed.

In every instance in the inspection concerning the matter that
is the case, the effort was made to preserve the inspected's
dignity. . . .

Sr. Germain Ruth M. deP deK.

The nuns' official report, I heard Sr. Ambrose
Jeanne telling Sr. François Agnès early one morning several weeks later as I sat
undertaking piecework on the other side of the sewing room, having been
delivered to Gethsemane's mayor by the white driver and mechanic who had
returned from Missouri with Fr. Malesvaux, who was sojourning at the convent
before returning east to Maryland, appeared, at least temporarily, to have
soothed the passions of the sheriff and the townspeople, if not Reverend White.
The summer heat, which had returned full blast, turning the air inside and
outside the convent to glass, was, however, stoking the exact opposite
effect.

Among their own population, Sr. François Agnès explained,
they had identified a possible suspect: a white woman, the daughter of recent
settlers in the town, was thought to have been secretly with child. Sr. François
Agnès's expression, and the clipped, elliptical quality of her Latin, the
language into which she and the other nuns sometimes slipped when they hoped to
avoid being overheard, suggested she thought the penalty ought be severe.

After the hubbub waned Eugénie had for several weeks
remained in bed. The summer air cottoning everything had wrapped her in fevers
and induced fainting, from which she now appeared fully recovered. The ranks of
her classmates had, however, thinned only to three white girls, two of them
Josephine and Mary Margaret, neither of whom had been fetched home as she had
requested, though Josephine's replacement servant, an often surly young woman
named Marvel, who quickly took up with Diejuste and Ayidda, and whom I renamed
Marinette because of her temper, had shown up, a sack in hand, on a coach from
the east. The only other white girl was Annie Lawrie Geddes, who may or may not
have been from New Jersey. These three white girls moved about as if in a state
of shock, or suspended animation; their regular classes having ended, they had
only to attend a daily course, after breakfast, that involved close reading and
study of the Scriptures, in English, and because of the heat to participate in
the various light indoor domestic tasks in the convent, such as replacing
candles in the chapel, or helping to dry herbs and blooms and the first summer
fruits for preservation, or copying out passages from English-language religious
books to be sent to Catholics elsewhere in the countryside and country. At all
other times they were allowed to read, or knit, or embroider, or sketch. None
showed enthusiasm in anything she did, Eugénie even less so than the rest.

Sr. François Agnès concluded her conversation and
called me over, telling me that I should wrap up my sewing and attend to Miss
Eugénie, who would be finishing her breakfast and heading to class. I ascended
the stairs slowly, as I had of late ceased to move with dispatch, unless it was
absolutely necessary. Since the incidents of several weeks ago, Eugénie,
recognizing the changes in my behavior, had responded accordingly. She no longer
expected me to wash with her waste water; she took good care not to hand her
comb to me in expectation that I would run it through her hair, or point to her
chamberpot unless I was ready to touch it. In the hallway I saw Marinette; she
was sweeping, but paused as I passed, and greeted me with her eyes. I replied in
kind. The main floor was otherwise quiet; I imagined the sisters were either in
the refectory or the chapel or downstairs, or otherwise occupied. At the
stairwell to the next story, I saw Ayidda polishing the banister; we exchanged
fulsome waves. The stairs themselves seemed to melt as if wax under my feet; it
took me a while to reach the bedroom.

Eugénie was not there. I had already made my bed so
I fiddled a bit with hers. I bundled her dirty clothes up and, exerting no real
effort, lined her books up on her desk. She had forgotten to cork her ink
bottle, to put her nibs away, to grab her writing book for class. I thought of
taking it to her but decided not to. I set the main lamp outside our door so
that it could be refilled for the evening, lazily brushed her shoes and beat out
her pinafore, then closed up the room. This floor also was mostly quiet, though
in the large room at the end, I knew, the class was unfolding. Behind me someone
was padding quickly, and I turned to see Diejuste gathering up my lamp; we
parried smiles. I proceeded down the hall until I reached the door of the class,
which stood slightly ajar. All four of the white girls sat in a row at the first
table, Eugénie on the end nearest me. I could hear Sr. Alphonse Isabelle's voice
rising and falling like a rattle. I stared at Eugénie until she was compelled to
look in my direction, though by the time she, and the girls beside her, would
have done so, I was already on my way back to the sewing room.

The summer heat grew ever more tropical,
provoking fainting spells and transforming the upper floors of the convent to a
kiln. By late June, the nuns canceled all activities for the white girls and
themselves, save prayer, from midday to the early evening, that could not be
undertaken in the basement. We thus rose just before dawn, before the the sun
broke, to fetch water, empty chamberpots, clean, cook, cultivate the garden,
move all unused tools and implements, including a store of gunpowder, indoors,
prepare whatever else was required for the white girls, and assist the sisters
as they saw fit. The religious class moved into the sewing room, which had been
my refuge, and I and Sr. François Agnès moved to a smaller room down the hall, a
large closet really, which had been used for storage. It was far more cramped,
but cool and peaceful, and as she assembled or disassembled garments, knit,
embroidered, and darned, I worked on what I had at hand and tried to let my mind
float free of everything around it.

Though I still read just before going to sleep and
maintained my journal, my entries now tending towards a brevity so extreme that
sometimes only a word or two, at most a sentence, resonant for my memory and me
alone, would suffice, and I filled whatever space remained with minute line
drawings of my fellow bondswomen, of the animals, of the grounds; and with
caricatures of the nuns, the white girls, and the glimpses I had gotten of the
townspeople and of the convent's visitors, including the Reverend White's son
Job Jr., whom the nuns had contracted to repair damage caused by the rainstorm,
to the front portico and to re-wash, in white, limed paint, the entire façade, I
seldom undertook the more elaborate drawings that had been my regular practice
since arriving with Eugénie, though from time to time I would extract the
journals in which I'd drafted them, documents I kept carefully hidden in a
storage space underneath the head of my cot, which I had dug out over a period
of months and re-covered with a large paving stone, to review them, usually with
a bit of bemusement at the queer constellation of imagery and signification that
I had developed—what on earth or in the heavens had I been thinking?—and with
admiration that, despite all the constraints I had faced, from lack of materials
to disapproval to potential punishment, I had produced so much and, I was not
unashamed to say, of such a high quality. Of course no one else beyond Eugénie
knew, and even she was unaware of the full extent of my efforts, not that she
would have been able to appreciate them anyway. Sometimes I had the thought that
I should share this work, at least with the bondswomen, but I decided that I
would wait until I was surest the right time had come, and undoubtedly, it had
not.