The convent was the exact opposite of all we’d known. We were told when to wake, when to eat, when to pray. The day was allocated into tasks: study, catechisms, sewing, housekeeping. The passing of time marked by the ringing of l’angélus, the prescribed prayers of the Divine Office. “Idle hands,” the nuns repeated endlessly, “are the devil’s workshop.”
Even the days of the week, the weeks of the month, the months of the year were partitioned into what the nuns said were the seasons of the liturgy. Instead of January 15 or March 21 or December 19, it was the twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time or the Monday of the first week of Lent or the Wednesday of the third week of Advent. The afterlife was divided into Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. There were the Twelve Fruits of the Holy Ghost, the Ten Commandments, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Six Holy Days of Obligation, the Four Cardinal Virtues.
We learned about Saint Etienne, a hunchbacked monk whose tomb was in the sanctuary, his stone figure lying in repose on top, more figures of monks carved into the stone canopy. During Mass, I would trace with my eyes the knots and loops in the stained glass windows, the overlapping circles that looked like Cs for Chanel, for my sisters and me forever intertwined. I didn’t want to think of what was in that tomb, the old bones, an empty burlap robe.
“There are ghosts here,” Julia-Berthe would whisper to me, her eyes wide. There were holy ghosts, unholy ghosts, ghosts of every kind making the flames in the votives sway, hiding in corners and narrow passageways, throwing shadows on the walls. Ghosts of our mother, our father, our past.
Sometimes in the mornings while we bathed or in the evenings when we were to say our prayers silently, Julia-Berthe would grab my arm and squeeze. “I have dreams at night, frightening dreams.” But she wouldn’t tell me any more. I wondered if she had the same dream I had, of our mother in a bed with no coverlet, a bloody handkerchief in her hand, bitter cold seeping in through the thin walls. Her eyes closed, her thin body unmoving.
I taught myself to wake in the middle of these dreams, to shake off the image and climb into bed with Gabrielle. She’d let me curl into her as I did when we were young—before Aubazine we’d never had beds of our own—and be comforted by the heat of her body, the rolling rhythm of her breathing, until I fell asleep again.
Then too early in the morning, the sun still not up, the bells would sound. Sister Xavier would burst into the dormitory, clapping her hands and announcing in her too loud voice, “Awake up, my glory! Awake, psaltery and harp!”
After that, the chiding would begin.
“Faster, Ondine, faster. Judgment Day will come and go before you have your shoes on!”
“Hélène, you have much to pray for. Make haste!”
“Antoinette, stop talking to Pierrette and remake your bed. It’s slovenly!”
The nuns of Aubazine gave us shelter. They fed our stomachs. They tried to save our souls, to civilize us by filling our days with order and routine. But they couldn’t fill the empty places in our hearts.
THREE
Days, weeks, months, ordinary times, unordinary times. Routine, soothing at first, grew tiresome. Then one airless morning in July, the year 1898, our third at the convent of the Congrégation de Saint Coeur de Marie, everything changed.
“Mesdemoiselles,” the Mother Superior said as Gabrielle, Julia-Berthe, and I cleaned dishes in the kitchen. “You are wanted in the visiting room.”
Us? We were never wanted in the visiting room. Unless—
My heart shot up to my throat.
Could our father have come to get us at last?
We followed the Mother Superior down the hall. I smoothed my skirt, felt the plaits in my hair, hoping they were neat. I saw Gabrielle reach up to pat hers too. She was the one who’d said all these years he would come back, convincing herself that he’d gone to America to make a fortune and would return once he had.
When at last we reached the visiting room and the nun opened the door, I held my breath, anticipating a man with the grin of a charmer, the hands of a peasant, our father. Instead all I saw was an elderly lady with a kindly expression on her face. She wore carved wooden shoes called sabots, a coarse gray skirt, hempen stockings, and a faded print shirtwaist.
Grandmother Chanel?
“Mémère,” Julia-Berthe said, rushing to embrace the old woman as if she might disappear as unexpectedly as she’d appeared.
I stared at her, more surprised than if it had been Albert.
“You don’t know the peace we’ve had all these years,” Mémère told the Mother Superior, “traveling from market to market knowing our dear granddaughters were in your care. It’s not an easy life out on the road, and now we’re too old for it.” She clucked her tongue as adults did and offered us lemon pastilles.
She and Pépère had taken a small house in Clermont-Ferrand, a village just a short train ride away, and we were invited there for a few days to celebrate le quatorze juillet, the holiday commemorating the storming of the Bastille prison. At last we were getting out of the convent, for a little while, at least.
I didn’t say out loud what I was thinking, what I was sure Gabrielle was thinking too. Maybe our father will be in Clermont-Ferrand. Maybe he’s waiting for us there.
Somewhere deep in the empty places inside of me, where love was supposed to reside, I couldn’t quash that dash of hope, foolish as it was, that Albert would return. Not the old Albert but a new one, who wanted us.
We left, and Mémère ushered us aboard a train. At Clermont-Ferrand, she led us to a crooked house with just one room cluttered with an array of objects to be sold at the local market—flat bicycle tires, moldy boxes, crusty pans. Rows of chipped, mismatched crockery lined the walls near the cookstove. A collection of old, broken dentures, yellowed and gruesome-looking, turned my stomach. It was as if nothing was ever thrown away.
There was so much clutter that at first we didn’t see the girl near the bed. She was about fifteen, the same age as Gabrielle, or maybe sixteen like Julia-Berthe, and she moved toward us with an excitement and warmth we weren’t used to. “Gabrielle?” she said. “Julia-Berthe? Do you remember me? And little Ninette! It’s been so long. One of the fairs, I think, that’s where we met. Look how pretty all three of you are.”
She had the same long neck as Gabrielle, the same fine features and thin, angular frame, but with kinder, gentler edges. She wore convent clothes, like us, but with an ease and poise so that they didn’t seem like convent clothes at all. I noticed Gabrielle tucking loose hair behind her ears. We must have been staring at her dumbly because finally Mémère spoke up.
“You daft girls, this is Adrienne. My youngest daughter. Your father’s sister. Your aunt.”
“Aunt?” Julia-Berthe said. “She’s too young to be our aunt.”