Sisters of Sorrow (11 page)

“I am not a coward. It’s just that I don’t know what to do. We are on an island, there’s nowhere to go.” Anna pulled the half-eaten potato out of her pocket.

Donny reluctantly sat down again, a few feet from Anna. “Where were you planning on going when you got out?”

“Here, I guess,” she said. “I didn’t know where I was going. I just needed to get out. Joseph gave me a key and told me how to escape. He said to come here and he’d keep me safe. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what he is.”

“Well you know now, don’t you?” Donny said. “That home can’t be as bad as being down here. Maybe them nuns are crazy and mean, but at least they fed you, right? At least they aren’t gonna eat you…or chop you up for spare parts.”

“It’s bad, Donny.”

“If it’s that bad, I ain’t gonna leave Maybelle there.”

“Donny, we are stuck in this trap. The only way out is…” Anna nodded toward the opening of the cistern. “You said yourself that you’re too scared to go down there.”

“I didn’t say I was ‘scared.’ Besides, that was before you told me ‘bout Maybelle needing rescued.” Donny looked down at his hands. “I might not be so scared if I had someone to go with me.”

Anna leaned her head back against the wall, looking up toward the broken floorboards.

“You got out of there, Anna,” he persisted. “If you got out, you can help me get Maybelle out.”

“It’s not that simple, Donny. Everything has changed. I don’t know how things are there, now that I left.”

“What do you mean?”

Anna sighed. She handed Donny the potato. “Eat this.”

Donny looked at the potato but did not take it.

“Donny, if you want to help Maybelle, you need to eat.”

He slid across the floor to the wall beside Anna. He accepted the spud and took a bite.

“I escaped by blowing up the factory. Exploded it to smithereens.”

Donny choked and spit chunks of half-chewed potato across the dismal basement. “You blew it up?”

“It was kind of an accident…I mean, I didn’t really know…” But that was a lie.

You knew it would explode. You knew people would die.
The other Anna said in her head
. I thought we decided to stop lying, especially about murder.

“I blew up the boiler,” she tried again, “Joseph told me to. I thought he was helping me. I think some of the nuns may have died, maybe a lot of them.”

Donny chomped into the spud, staring at her wide-eyed. Around the mash in his mouth he asked, “How many of ‘em did you get?”

“Donny! I didn’t want to
get
any of them. I just couldn’t stay there any longer. I had to get out. And…” She wiped savagely at the tears on her mud-caked cheeks. “I thought I was a murderer. I thought I had murdered Ephraim – and momma, too – so it didn’t matter if I killed some evil sisters. But I didn’t kill Little E, I never did,” she sniffed, “so I wasn’t a murderer after all, but now I am. And all my girls are probably going to die because nobody is going to feed them because of what
I
did, and I think I knew that too when I did it, but I just couldn’t stay any longer.”

Anna buried her face in her hands and sobbed. Her shoulders bounced up and down as she lowered her head between her knees. “I couldn’t stay. I didn’t want to leave them like that…but I couldn’t do it…I couldn’t stay. I killed the sisters and that’s going to kill everybody.”

Her sobs and gibbering echoed around the small room until the basement reverberated with the sounds of her grief. The torment and anguish of the last five years, pent up behind wall after wall of self-preservation and robotic obedience, poured out of her like puss from an infected wound. Donny, looking as mortified as if he were seeing and attempting to tend to such a wound, awkwardly patted her shoulder.

Anna wept on, barely noticing him. When the patting didn’t work, Donny slid up against her and wrapped his arm over her shoulder, making shushing sounds. Other than holding his hand earlier, it was the first time a boy had touched her since her father had handed her over to Abbess McCain, five years ago.

Under any other circumstances she would have pulled away, half embarrassed, half disgusted. But here, in the waterlogged basement, so completely disconnected from familiar experience, Donny’s touch imparted an odd, profound comfort. For five years, Anna had starved – starved of food, starved of hope, starved of comfort. However taboo it may have been, Anna leaned into Donny’s one-armed hug, crying into her hands until she slept.

Late afternoon sun pierced the blackberry vines. Spears of light dappled one basement wall or sparkled off the surface of the water on the floor. A finch perched on the bit of staircase that still dangled from the floor joists, but it flitted away as soon as Anna raised her head. Donny’s arm had slid off of her, but they still rested against each other at their shoulders. His head hung down, with his chin on his chest. The last of the potato had rolled out of his hand and bobbed in the stagnant water.

Anna sat up. Donny startled awake, blushing, and sliding away from her.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “I guess I really upset you.”

Anna smiled. It was a weary, battered smile, but it warmed her inside and seemed to solidify and call to order the jumbled chaos of emotion in her head. “I have to tell you something…”

“If it’s about me putting my arm around you, I juss did that ‘cause you were crying so hard. I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

“No, it’s about your sister…and my sisters.” Anna swallowed, then continued in a deliberate tone. “I have lived at Saint Frances since I was nine years old. I’ll tell you all about it if you like, but the important thing to understand is this, I would rather die right here in this hole than spend another night inside that hell.” She wiped a coagulation of tear-mud and snot off her face. “I will
never
return to that. No matter what.”

Donny’s face hardened and his hands balled into fists, but Anna held up a hand, a wait-a-minute gesture.

“But that’s okay,” she continued. “I
can’t
go back, even if I wanted to. They will kill me the moment they lay eyes on me. So it doesn’t matter, don’t you see? They can’t do any worse than kill me, and I’d die anyway if I stay here.”

“So, then, you
will
help me get Maybelle?”

Anna scoffed, and looked away. “I used to be brave.” She held out her left hand, as if examining her nails. “I had a friend when I first arrived at Saint Frances, Rebecca Fontan. She was the head girl before me. They cut off her little finger, too.” She looked up from her hand to Donny’s green eyes. “Do you want to know why?”

“Probably not,” Donny said.

“Well, you
need
to know, Donny. If you are asking me to return to Saint Frances, you need to understand what you’re asking,” Anna said. “And you need to understand what you are getting yourself into.”

Donny studied his hands, “Tell me.”

“They cut off my finger because I stole a box of books out of Abbess McCain’s office. They claimed that they cut off Rebecca’s finger because, as the head girl, she was responsible for my actions.” Anna stared at Donny, though he still didn’t look at her. “The real reason was just sheer meanness. They cut off her finger because she was my friend.” After a pause she added, “That’s the kind of place you are asking me to return to.”

“It doesn’t make no sense, though,” Donny said. “I mean, they’re
nuns
. I ain’t Catholic or nothin’ but I always thought nuns were s’possed to be good. What’s wrong with ‘em?”

“Not these nuns, Donny. Why’d they send you and Maybelle here? Because nobody wanted you back home, right? Same with me, everybody knew my name, all across the state. I was the little girl who killed her baby brother. After my mother died, none of the homes would take me. Saint Frances is where they dump the kids nobody ever wants to see again.

“It’s also where they dump
nuns
nobody ever wants to see again – the ones that really embarrass the Church. All the sisters of The Saint Frances de Chantal Orphan Asylum have dark secrets. They
are
dark secrets.

“None of them want to be here, but in most cases it was either here or jail, or execution. I know that at least two of the sisters were sent here after they killed someone. They resent the orphans, blame us for their exile, take their anger out on us. And no one checks up on them. Everyone else is happy to forget that any of us exist.”

Donny was looking at her now. His jaw clenched, then jutted, then relaxed. His green eyes widened, as if in sudden understanding, then narrowed as if scheming. His lips pursed, then narrowed. Twice he opened his mouth as if to speak, then closed it again, continuing his contemplation.

When he finally did speak, he said, “So, why’d you steal the books?”

Anna laughed, surprised. “I wanted to read them…” she said, “and because I was angry. One of our little girls died from the cold. Two nights earlier, Rebecca had shown me a hidden ladder into Abbess McCain’s office. We searched the place for extra blankets, or a coat, anything to keep little Norma alive. I found the books – all dime store novels and penny dreadfuls, books Abbess McCain had confiscated from the disgraced nuns upon their arrival – but we didn’t find anything for Norma.

“When she died two nights later,” Anna shrugged, “it was kind of like, revenge, rebellion, I guess. I didn’t want Saint Frances to win every time. I wanted,” Anna paused, “I don’t know what I wanted. But swiping those books made sense, at the time.

“It took Abbess McCain three months to realize I stole them.” Anna laughed again, but with no humor. “I hid them on the book shelf with all the other books, right on the main corridor. I put the skinny ones inside the fat boring books, and the thick books I shelved spine in, so the nuns wouldn’t know what they were.”

Donny chuckled, clearly impressed.

“Those were the best three months of my stay here. Not only did I put one over on the sisters – and all the other kids knew it – but we also got to read some of the wickedest stories in print.”

Donny chuckled again, “Thought you said the nuns had been reading those books.”

“Yeah? I also told you the nuns had dark secrets, right?”

“Who would’a thought,” Donny laughed.

“Anyway, somebody finally caught on,” Anna said. “I admitted, right away, that I had taken the books. I knew they’d figure it out eventually, and I didn’t want anyone else to get in trouble.” Anna’s spirits had lifted a bit, thinking of Rebecca and their little victory, but the happy part of her story was over.

“I already told you what happened next,” she said. There was a sharpness in her voice she hadn’t intended. “They cut off my finger, and then they cut off Rebecca’s, just for spite. Her hand got infected. Two days later, she was delirious with fever. The day after that, she was dead.” Anna sat quiet for a moment.

“I tried not to make any friends after that,” she said, the hard edge in her voice gone now. “I think I just gave up, you know? Saint Frances won. Then, when I saw a chance to escape, I ran and didn’t look back…”

Anna propped her elbows on her knees and put her head in her hands. The broken floorboards above her reflected in the water around her feet. A slight twitch of one toe destroyed the picture.

After a few moments, Donny spoke. “You said, before, that everybody was gonna die ‘cause of what you did. Is that true? Do you think they’ll just kill all the kids out of spite?”

“No, not exactly,” Anna said. “But I blew up the boiler, and the factory. They won’t have any heat. And Abbess McCain won’t feed us if we don’t work. We can’t work if there’s no factory. With no food or heat, they won’t last long.” Anna paused, wringing her hands in her lap. “They already killed one boy, out on the beach.” A shudder gripped her. She bit down hard on the inside of her lip, determined not to start crying again. “I don’t think they meant to kill him. They didn’t mean to kill Rebecca… but she’s still dead.”

Donny gingerly lifted his arm, intending to comfort her as he had before, but Anna pushed it away. She shoved herself to her feet and paced across the basement’s puddled floor, running one hand through her hair.

“I put one over on them
this time
, didn’t I?” Anna said. “A real whopper.”

Donny eyed her, nodding.

“Somehow, they knew it was me. Abbess McCain accused me by name,” Anna said. “She’s got to be mad as the devil. She’s going to want revenge. And if she can’t find me, she’ll take it out on my girls.”

“That’s why we need to get ‘em!” Donny said.

Anna groaned. She dug both hands into her hair. “It’s a
fortress
, Donny! Stone walls, iron bars on all the doors, nuns guarding all the entrances…”

“But you got out,” Donny pleaded. “Anna, I can’t leave Maybelle in that place. I just can’t. There’s gotta be a way. If you blew it up, maybe it’s easier to get in now, especially if you killed a bunch of the nuns.”

Anna winced. She stopped pacing and dropped her hands to her sides. “I didn’t mean to kill them. Please don’t bring it up again.”

“Sorry.”

“There may be someone who could help us, if I can find a way to contact her,” Anna said. She suddenly felt very tired again. “Sister Dolores…”