Twenty-Seven #3
“Go on,” Nathalie says.
Titter looks at Bobby. “You start,” she says.
Bobby scratches the back of his neck. “Okay. My sister and I would like to ask you to call us by our real names.”
Titter stands straighter. “I don’t like being called Titter. It’s a baby name. My real name is Elizabeth.”
Bobby drops his hand, blinks. “And my name is Paul.”
No one says anything at first so Nathalie steps forward again. “Thank you, Elizabeth and Paul. That was very brave.”
From the corner of a bench Lionel claps, and I clap from my blanket, and soon we’re divided, those of us who agree that it’s brave and the others, rolling their eyes or stiffening at being told what to do by children.
The mother of one of Nathalie’s classmates taps me on the shoulder, asks for a word.
“I should tell you. The sisters are concerned about your daughter. She has a defiant streak, they say. I know she’s been through a lot, poor girl—and poor you, with your husband leaving …
But I’d hate to see Nathalie get into worse trouble.
Or pass her ideas on to the other children.
” She squeezes my arm, disappears before I know what to say.
Claire shoots me a questioning look over a pitcher of lemonade.
I shake my head, scan the field, and there’s Nathalie, cross-legged in the grass, braiding Titter’s hair.
Elizabeth’s hair. Strange, how the change of her name puts her into sharper focus.
Elizabeth is talking earnestly, spinning a daisy between two fingers while Nathalie listens.
And then a couple weeks later, Nathalie comes home after school with a bruise across the back of her hand. It’s raised and red along the knuckles. A pain shoots through my own hand upon seeing it. “Sister Bethany’s ruler,” she tells me.
“Why?”
“She wouldn’t answer my questions. She told me to stop asking but nothing she said made sense.”
“I love your curious mind,” I say, taking her hand and studying the bruise. I’m furious, ablaze with it. I go over to Claire’s house the next evening to ask my sisters what to do.
“I need to confront her,” I say.
“Sister Bethany?” Claire asks, incredulous.
I turn to Adele.
“They have their ways of disciplining,” she says, not meeting my eye. “Same as when we were young. But you’d think they’d be a little easier on her.”
“It does make sense that she’d be difficult in school,” Claire says. “Considering everything.”
“They can’t hurt her this way,” I say. “I don’t care if she’s difficult.”
“You never have,” Adele says.
Claire nods. “That’s why you’re so good for her.”
They convince me to wait it out, assure me it will pass. Say maybe it’s necessary. A lesson in how to move through life.
But a month or so later she’s at the sewing machine when I get home from work, hunched and focused, making what look like thin shoulder pads.
“What’s this?” I ask, kissing the top of her head.
“Sister Patricia keeps jabbing me in the shoulder.”
“Why Sister Patricia now?”
“I was distracted. Thinking about Daddy.”
“I’m so sorry, honey.” I take her hand. “Did it leave a mark?” She doesn’t answer. “Can I see?” She shrugs, but unbuttons the top of her shirt and shows me her shoulder. A circular bruise, light blue.
Again, a pain in my own body, seeing it.
“I’ll talk to her,” I say. “This isn’t right.”
“Don’t. I’m taking care of it. I’m going to sew these into my shirts.” The machine’s tension is right again and she steps on the pedal.
“Good idea. But I’ll still call.”
“Ronnie Gonzalez’s mom tried calling and it only made things worse for him.”
The needle dips up and down as Nathalie eases the fabric through. “Do the sisters treat your brother this way, too?” I ask.
“Clément never does anything wrong,” she says.
I worry about Nathalie through work the next day, ask the girls what they would do.
“She’s right,” Janine says. “Nothing good comes from accusing a nun of wrongdoing.” And then she launches into tales of her own Catholic school misadventures.
That evening after work I go to Vons, push my cart past live lobsters in a tank and cellophane-wrapped cakes, and two men turn down an aisle.
Just a glimpse of them, one fair and the other darker.
Felix and James. I abandon my cart at a tower of canned soup, rush to the aisle but they’re gone by the time I’m there.
I weave through the store. Realize that Felix never actually went home.
He didn’t want New Orleans, he just wanted to be rid of us.
All this time as I’ve been worrying about him, wondering if he’s all right, he and James have been together, laughing and making love, reading in bed, grocery shopping on weekday evenings.
Why didn’t he tell me? Now Nathalie’s in trouble and Felix should be with me to figure it out, but he’s left us, abandoned us, and I’m alone and I don’t know what to do.
And there they are up ahead now, checking out at a middle register, and I have to say something, to confront them.
Except the fair man looks up—nothing of James’s kindness, and the darker man’s face is broader than Felix’s, rough with stubble.
I’m aware of myself, breathless under the fluorescent lights, staring at these strangers as though all the pain in my heart is their doing.