The Plague of Doves - Louise Erdrich [24]
There was no place for me to look but at my teacher. But when I lifted my eyes, this time, Sister Mary Anita was not looking at me. She had turned her face away, her rough cheek blotched as if it bore a slap, her gaze hooded and set low. Sister walked to the window, back turned against me, against the class, and as the laughter started, uncomfortable and groaning at first, then shriller, fuller, becoming its own animal, I felt an unrecoverable tenderness boil up and rise around my ears. Inwardly, I begged Mary Anita to turn and stop the noise. But Sister did not. She let it wash across us both without mercy. I lost sight of her unspeakable profile as she looked out into the yard. Bathed in brilliant light, her face went blank as a sheet of paper, as the sky, featureless as all things which enter heaven.
Holy Track
ALTHOUGH SHE TREATED me with neutral interest from then on and did not punish me, I was grieved by Sister Mary Anita’s disregard. I wrote letters, tore them up, and at last, as there was no other course of action, I collected facts, and I studied Sister Mary Anita. In a fit of longing, I retrieved papers she had written on and thrown away. Her sloping hand was absolutely uniform. You could put her capital letters one on the other, hold the pages up to the light, and see no variation in the size or ornamentation. Yet her handwriting wasn’t strictly Palmer script, but very much her own invention.
One startling day I learned that she was allergic to chocolate and broke out in hives. The red welts across her face gave her a warrior’s intensity. She never scratched, but they must have tormented her. Even so, sometimes she could not resist chocolate and was known to take a piece of candy or cake at a wedding, saying, “Darn the consequences!” even though for a nun “darn” was considered a swear.
Unlike the other nuns who taught at the school, and came from a mother house in Kentucky, Sister Mary Anita had grown up near the reservation, on a farm between Hoopdance and Pluto. She told this to us in the middle of our history class. None of the other children thought that unusual, but I perceived it as some sign. At home, I spoke of her constantly, and one day my mother gave me a long look.
“Sister Mary Anita this, Sister Mary Anita that. You sure talk about Sister Mary Anita a lot. What’s her full name anyway?”
I turned aside but muttered, “Sister Mary Anita Buckendorf.” I stole a look back at my mother, but she raised her eyebrows and glanced at my father. He gave no sign that he found the name of significance, but continued to paste stamps into his stamp album. He had inherited these polished leather albums and was adding slowly to some arcane arrangement which had originally been assembled by Uncle Octave, the one who had died tragically, for love. When attending to his albums, my father’s absorption was so complete that he was unreachable. Mooshum was sitting at the table playing rummy with Joseph. He caught the name though, and said, “Buckendorf!” He tried to keep on playing, but Joseph jogged his arm to make him quit. My mother went outside to hang the wet laundry on the line, in spite of the storm brewing. I’d caught the same