The Divine Economy of Salvation (10 page)

One hand flat on the table to support her weight, Kim bends to rearrange a bunch of sweaters at the front of our rummage table.

“You want to put the colours on top,” she tells me as I check the price tags. “To attract the eye.”

I let her have her fun. She is enjoying herself for once this morning, the feel of the fabrics in her hands, occasionally picking up a shirt or dress and pressing it over her body to see if it will fit her. The church basement has been transformed into a thrift shop, void of the solemnity it generally emits even when the Sunday school children meet here. The effect is good for Kim's health. I don't know much about pregnant women, but I do think a baby is better off if the mother is healthy and relaxed, so I am glad. She doesn't yet know I have put away a box for her. I've already sifted through the clothes to find things in her size. Father B. gave me his blessing when he caught me assembling the hand-me-down wardrobe. He thinks we women have a duty in such things.

The basement is packed a half-hour before morning Mass is due to begin, and Father B. reminds some of his regulars of the time, rolling up his sleeve to reveal his watch, then heads upstairs to robe and prepare the altar boys, to bless the wafers for Communion. We working Sisters are allowed to stay below. Yesterday, as we collected the boxes, I told Father B. the rummage sale was as popular as ever, informing him that many people had stopped by to inquire
about the hours and what items would be up for sale. A young woman with her “partner,” she said reservedly, elusive about her marital status, mentioned they were in need of furniture. A regular had a christening to attend and wanted to know if there were any baby items for sale. There were people looking for dishes, antique furniture, and jewellery. Many women asked about the bake sale.

“Yes,” replied Father B. “It seems to be, but I went down to see one of ours at the hospital, recovering from a liver transplant, and I drove by the United Church at the corner of the General Hospital, and they had posted on their billboard: Sunday Worship and Bar-B-Q. All welcome.” He stroked his collar absently, as if it were fur. “It's something to think about.”

“A barbecue?” I said. “Isn't that a bit crass? I mean, the rummage sale at least goes to charity. The items are recycled by the community. Who would be converted by a hot dog?”

“I know, I know,” he said, a bit distraught. “But times have changed. Does it matter really what we do, as long as they come?” He picked up one of the shirts I had just placed on the table, a white T-shirt with a pink heart on it and the single word “Hole” written across the chest. A rock band, Kim had informed me when I laid it out. “One day they get a shirt, the next something else they need. It's only our duty to provide it. Jesus did it with fish and loaves. We need to be practical. That seems to be the mandate.” Then he headed over to speak with Sister Greta, her stack of Harlequins in a neat row at the front of her table.

Kim asked me, somewhat hesitantly, after overhearing us talk, why I had become a nun. I brushed off the question, not
wanting to divulge the truth, just telling her it was difficult to explain and that I didn't regret my decision, if that's what she was wondering.

“That's three dollars. A real deal,” Kim argues beside me to a woman turning over a yellow silk blouse, the loud spiral design indicating its age. But the seventies are in style again, Kim told me as she went through a garbage bag full of vintage pieces. An elderly widower sent the bag. His wife died almost five years ago, but he hadn't been able to send them before now, couldn't bear to remove her things. There are many like him, who finally give in around this time, Christmas season approaching. I didn't bother to tell Kim the vestments were a dead woman's. She still doesn't eat much and keeps to herself about her past, her dark hair like a shroud over her thoughts. But she has been perking up over the last week, knowing the sale would bring a bit of the outside world to her. Why tell her we're in the business of selling the leftovers of the dead? Such knowledge might destroy the little pleasure she has managed to cultivate for herself.

The buyer in question, a regular, met Kim last week at Mass. She is surprised to see her behind the table, unaware that we have taken her in as our own. She holds the blouse across her arm to determine the sleeve length, but her eyes are focussed on Kim's stomach. If only Kim weren't so skinny, her pregnancy wouldn't be easy to detect, as she is not that far along. The woman snickers and openly reveals her disgust by sending me a stern look of disapproval.
I ignore her, pretend I'm looking for change for the five-dollar bill Kim has been handed for the purchase. Kim notices, though, and asks to switch places; she can hide her stomach underneath the table if she sits. She takes her Styrofoam cup to her lips and sniffles. I get up and count out the change.

“Mass is starting any second now,” I say.

“Oh, yes,” the buyer replies, slipping her coins into her purse. “I'm on my way up.” She is wearing a green blazer and holding a white wicker purse. Her gait is that of a patron.

“You think you are,” I mutter to myself, amazed at the anger she has wrought in me over the girl. I have the scandalous desire to ask the woman to open her bag so I can check whether she's been stealing.

Kim is finished with her coffee and places the empty cup by her feet. Her head is bent now, and I feel like comforting her, knowing at the same time that she must expect the treatment she receives. We can't protect her from everyone. Child or not, she has her sin marked on her skin and will pay for it, regardless of the more liberal attitude the Church and society have adopted in the past decades.

Even though Mass has begun, the basement is still full of people. Money changes hands. Goods and services are provided. Many shoppers are hoarding items underneath the tables until they can return for them.

“You know the story about Jesus in the temple?” Kim asks me.

“I'm a nun, you know,” I reply, handing her the ten we just received for a winter jacket, somewhat taken aback that Kim has knowledge of the Bible after all.

“Don't you think it's a little strange?” she asks, jutting her chin towards a group of women at the ceramics table who are fighting over a lamp as politely as possible, each insisting they know someone who is Catholic and perfect for it and doesn't have much money.

“Father B. no longer reads that passage at Mass,” I whisper to her, afraid I might be betraying one of our secrets. “Because people leave less in the collection plate.”

Kim eyes me warily, trying to determine whether I'm serious or not, which I am. I then point to the cardboard box underneath the table that I've saved for her. It is unmarked, but I know it is the right one because I placed it there myself. I even hid it in the broom closet for a week so she wouldn't see the surprise coming. The box has a picture of a television on it.

“The things in there are for you,” I tell her. “I thought you could use some new clothes while you're here.”

She smiles weakly, close-lipped, but I can tell from her fidgeting hands that she's eager to open the box. I've made sure there are enough dresses that are loose around the middle, elastic-waistband skirts and pants that she can wear throughout her pregnancy, but perhaps afterwards as well. Kim being so slight, they were difficult to find. Most of what seemed the right size were children's clothes. I had to gauge how childish some of the frills on the dresses appeared and take a closer look at the magazines lying around the convent to become current with what's in style. Strangely enough,
a lot of the women's styles portrayed in the magazines were closer to a child's wardrobe than an adult's. Models in baby doll dresses sucking on lollipops or wearing cut-off shorts and halter tops with butterflies and unicorns on them. Barrettes with bobbles glued to the spines and sprinkled with glitter, short skirts with polka dots, and nylons in offbeat colours, including gold and bright pink. Although I find the trend somewhat unnerving, my research enabled me to salvage more of the children's clothes than I had first imagined. What Father B. doesn't know is that I also went to the department store and bought a few more things for Kim out of my own pocket—a dress, a sweater, and a pair of baggy pants as well as socks and underwear—tearing off the price tags and throwing them in the outside garbage bins near the window to my room. Kim cannot have this child in rags. This is not the age of perfect births in mangers. I figure sometimes what we need, we must seek out ourselves.

“Go on,” I tell her. “Take a break. Try them on. If they don't fit, we can put them on the table. But keep the ones that are a little large, because you'll need them in the next few months.”

Inwardly I wince. I shouldn't have mentioned the child even if the child is on my mind. Kim drags out the box now as if hauling a stone across a bridge. There is always a catch, she must be thinking. These are for the baby, not for me. I have made the gift a practical matter like the other Sisters who tell her to take her vitamins, stretch out her legs, drink milk; I've taken the joy out of it. She opens the cardboard box and sorts through it with her hands.

“Remember when you asked me why I became a nun?” I say as she unfolds the dress I bought for her at the department store, long and purple with spaghetti straps crisscrossed at the back. “I think it was for the clothes.”

She smiles then and takes her new dress to the washroom to try it on. I watch over the table, pleased that, at least for a moment, we are able to find the humour in it all.

BELLA IS SINGING, HER
thin body like a candle in the darkness of the church, her braids like curls of melted wax. Her arms are raised up to the heavens, and a bright white light shines down from the rafters. There are other singers, hazy outlines swaying in the background, their voices muffled. Bella is clear, her voice piercing the air like a swift bird flying through an open window in winter. She sings with confidence, as if the church were empty, her own heart fixed on a spot beyond this time.

Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the World
Have Mercy on us

The song is a round, but all the voices are Bella's. She is her own chorus, the notes sombre and haunting, the pubescent girl growing older as each new voice enters the chant. I am alone in the confessional, gazing at her through the screen that should house the priest. “The Lord be praised,” I whisper, but there is no man there to receive me, only Bella's lungs filling with air and exhaling her song.

Lamb of God, You take away the sins of the World
Have Mercy on us

As she nears the end of the hymn, her many voices slowing, steadily softer in tone, the white ghosts behind her lower themselves onto their knees. Bella screams, her hands against her stomach. Blood appears and she looks down at them with her dark eyes as if her fingers have sinned against her, their tips like foreign objects in her sight, bloody wet flowers sprouting from the nails, pricking her flesh. I try to open the door to the confessional to help, but it is locked. I can hear the trampling of footsteps towards the doors. “Why are you leaving her there?” I yell, pounding the weight of my body against the wood, the small compartment filling with smoke, the screen sizzling. “She's burning! She's burning!”

I wake to the deep rumble of thunder breaking in the winter sky outside. Wet snow against my window in the darkness like tiny hands. I am parched, my throat sore and scratchy, the air in the room dry. A flash of lightning, and the silver candle holder on the dresser is momentarily illuminated as if standing in judgement. I put on my housecoat, turn my back on my accuser, and decide to fetch a glass of water from upstairs.

The hallway on the first floor, unlike mine of grey stone, is plaster. There is a washroom in the basement, a single toilet and basin, but no shower. I walk between the white painted walls, lined with wooden engravings of palms and crosses, and pause by Sister Josie's door. Sister Josie and Sister Sarah, both in their fifties, comprise a convent of two. They are virtually inseparable: take their meals together and say their prayers in unison. It is fairly common knowledge that in the night one might make her way into the room
of the other, stay until morning. Mother Superior has never mentioned anything to me directly, but every once in a while, if Father B. has been by, the women make an effort not to sit together at Mass or gaze at each other over bent heads in prayer. I have come by their rooms often in the night, pressed my ear quietly against their doors, my heart pounding, in order to hear them. Though I have never heard a single noise except snoring, I imagine what they might be doing, Sister Josie's uncovered head perhaps caressed by Sister Sarah's smooth round hands. Sarah's modest bosom upon Sister Josie's swollen one, their bodies exploring, attaching to the other like roots. I have never heard two women making love. I have never heard a man and a woman making love, for that matter. Except once, with Rachel, when I was invited to come and watch.

Rachel picked me and Caroline, who had just sneaked us cigarettes because the delivery boy liked her, to watch her have sex with Patrick. Francine wasn't allowed to come because Rachel thought she wouldn't be able to keep it a secret. But I knew Francine was the most likely to stay silent in such a situation, so I thought her exclusion had to do with Rachel impressing us. Francine was so devoted to Rachel that she never needed any more reasons to be in awe of her. So was I, but Rachel might not have known the extent of my loyalty.

Patrick went to the boys' school nearby and was in the grade ahead of ours. He was lanky and tall but had learned to swagger when he walked, which made him seem tougher, a bit dangerous. He parted his hair in the middle and blow-dried the sides so that they flared out, and he smirked often, his continual banter contagious.
His hair was brown with a hint of blond on the sides, and he told us he shaved twice a day. Rachel met Patrick in the washroom one night at the movie theatre. He had left his seat and gone to hide in the bathroom stall nearest the door. Apparently oblivious, Rachel sat herself down in the next stall and lifted her skirt. When she went to reach for toilet paper, his pink lips inched underneath the barrier. Noticing his hand supporting his weight, she crushed it with her boot. He screamed, and startled by the voice of a boy, she pulled up her stockings and whipped open the door. He stopped her by holding her arms back in a twist, begging her not to tell on him. “Then act like a man, not like a boy,” Rachel told him, a line straight out of the spy movie we were watching, spoken by a red-headed dancer in an expensive bar. “If you want to see something up close, then we'll talk.” Surprised, he let her go and she ran back to her seat beside us. “He smelled like the aftershave in the department store,” she said and giggled. “I would have let him have me right there, but I didn't want to look like a tramp.” At least that's how Rachel told it, looking behind her every few seconds to see if he was watching—her face, even in the darkness, flushed.