Chapter 33
God wishes to punish me for having loved myself too well… What I suffer will no doubt help my salvation…
The pecan trees in Charleston were beginning to give up their bounty.
Joseph could already taste the pralines.
He’d promised to help Henry harvest his family’s tree.
But as Joseph approached his parents’ house, he saw his sister wrench open their gate and flee inside as though someone were pursuing her.
Puzzled, he peered down the sidewalk, but he saw only Tessa.
She was running herself. When she stopped, she caught the gate for support. It was ajar, yet Tessa stared forlornly through the slats, as if she would be refused admittance. Unshed tears shimmered in her eyes. “Oh Ellie…” She glanced to Joseph. “If I’d known…”
“What happened?”
“We were visiting invalids this morning. I chose the last call: a widow named Mrs. Gordon. I knew she was dying, but…” Tessa shuddered.
“Mrs. Gordon has cancer of the breast. Her nurse was changing her dressings.” Tessa closed her eyes.
“I don’t blame Hélène for fleeing. I could hardly breathe myself.
” She looked back over her shoulder. “But I must return. I must make our apologies.”
“Permit me to walk you—”
“Thank you, Father, but ’tis only on the corner of Queen Street. Then I will meet Hannah and return home.”
Reluctantly, Joseph watched Tessa disappear. He closed the gate and found Hélène at the back of the garden. She knelt before their statue of the Blessed Virgin, in the shadow of their pecan tree.
Henry’s basket lay forgotten beneath the branches. “Are you sure you don’t want me to find your father?” he asked Hélène.
She nodded fiercely, though her cheeks were stained with tears. She did not raise her eyes from her clasped hands.
Henry saw Joseph and left them alone.
Joseph knelt beside his sister. He knew how difficult this past year had been for her.
Their father and his friend Dr. Mortimer had experimented with both internal remedies and external applications, but the tumor in her breast continued to grow: from the size of a pea to the size of a sparrow’s egg.
The growth did not pain her—though uncertainty caused a distress all its own. “Tessa told me about Mrs. Gordon.”
His sister’s breaths became even more ragged. “The smell, Joseph! Like she was already—like she was rotting alive! Her chest is this oozing black mass… That’s going to happen to me.”
“You know Father won’t let it progress that far. The moment he believes surgery to be the wisest course—”
Hélène looked up at him miserably. “I begged Dr. Mortimer to tell me the truth. He admitted that even if they take my breast and scrape away all the cancer they can see, it almost always grows back—worse than before, like some kind of Hydra.”
“But we don’t know it is cancer, Ellie.”
“I do know. I can feel it. You can’t understand what it’s like, Joseph, to have a part of your own body betray you.”
Actually, he had a very good idea how that felt. “Has there been a change?”
She nodded and lowered her gaze again. “There are two now—a second tumor growing beside the first.”
Joseph caught his breath. “Does Father know?”
“He said we should still watch and wait, that it isn’t proof of malignancy…but I could see how worried he was.” Desperately Hélène met his eyes. “Will you pray for me, Joseph? Right now?”
“Of course.” He pleaded for her in words he had spoken so many times, over his sister, Tessa, and other parishioners, that he no longer needed his Ritual. “Réspice, Dómine, fáulum tuam in infirmitáte…”
“Amen,” Hélène echoed. “Will you tell me what it means?”
The prayer sounded strange in English. “I said:
Consider, O Lord, Thy faithful one, suffering from bodily affliction, and refresh the life which Thou hast created; that being bettered by chastisement, she may ever be conscious of Thy healing which saved her.”
“‘Being bettered by chastisement…’” his sister echoed.
She averted her eyes again. “I remember what you said when I first told you: that God gave me this cancer for a reason. Mama told me the same thing. ‘You must examine your behavior,’ she said, ‘and determine what you have done to displease God. Perhaps, if you repent, He will spare you.’ At first, I didn’t want to believe either of you.
But the more I think about it…and seeing Mrs. Gordon today… Have you heard the rumors about her?”
He had.
“If it’s true for her…” Hélène wiped fresh tears from her eyes. “Do you know how rare it is for a young woman to suffer from cancer of the breast?”
Joseph nodded. Privately, he had wondered if their mixed ancestry might be responsible.
“Mrs. Gordon, the case histories in Papa’s books, the other patients Dr. Mortimer has treated—they are twice my age! There was only one other woman less than forty years old—and she was a prostitute!”
“Ellie. Your sins are hardly equivalent—”
She shook her head to silence him. “I never told you how I discovered the first tumor.” Hélène covered her face with her hands.
“Waiting to be with Liam was driving me mad…lying in bed at night, I would imagine he was there with me, and sometimes I would— Papa says it is better that I caught it early; but I keep wondering: ‘Was the tumor there because I touched myself?’ I am trying to correct my sins, to be less wanton and less gluttonous.”
Joseph had noticed she’d lost weight. He’d thought it was because of the regimen Dr. Mortimer had recommended.
Hélène dropped her hands. “But it is too late to correct my greatest sin—the sin I committed against Tessa.”
Joseph frowned.
“I claim to be her friend, but when it mattered most, I betrayed her. When Tessa told me Edward had proposed, I encouraged her to accept him! I was envious! I was dazzled by Edward’s wealth and his station—I knew what that connection would mean for Liam.
I was so blinded by my own love—lust—that I couldn’t see Tessa felt nothing for Edward.
If I questioned it at all, I told myself: ‘Everybody loves differently. I may be shameless, but Tessa is shy.’ If I had been a true friend to her, Tessa would never have married Edward.
She would never have lost her children.”
“But—”
“If Tessa had married a man she loved, a man who truly loved her—their children would have lived. My selfishness is the cause of all that suffering.” Hélène fisted a hand against her diseased breast. “You and Mama are right. I deserve this.”
“Did Father or Dr. Mortimer also tell you that cancer of the breast is more common in religious women? That some people actually call it ‘the nun’s disease’?”
“Dr. Mortimer said it’s more common in women who don’t have children,” his sister acknowledged. “But I want children! We are trying, Liam and I!”
Joseph reached out to cradle Hélène’s face in his hands.
“I cannot imagine that Our Lord should need to punish so many holy women who have already dedicated their lives to Him. We all must search our decisions for how best to please God; and if this disease has made you follow Him more faithfully, then I am glad of it. But I do not think He scourges us so neatly. Here on Earth, the wickedest people rarely suffer the most. God has blessed you by sending you these tumors, Ellie. He is allowing you to endure your Purgatory not after death, when you would cry out alone, but here in life, while you are surrounded by people who love you.” Joseph did his best to smile.
“Perhaps that is what God intends for Tessa, too.”
Still he wondered what transgressions Tessa could have committed to require such suffering. Her sins were not carnal; at least he knew that.