“When confronted with temptations of impurity, Saint Benedict threw off his habit and cast himself into a bush of thorns and nettles.”
“Saint Bernard of Clairvaux plunged into an icy river in the depths of winter.”
“Saint Francis of Assisi rolled unclothed in the snow until he nearly froze to death.”
“Do you think it worked?” Julia-Berthe asked Gabrielle and me one afternoon during recreation a few weeks after the incident. She held out her Saint Francis prayer card, the one with the birds flocking around him that she always carried in her pocket. “Do you think the cold snow cleansed him of his impure thoughts?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Gabrielle said. “The saints aren’t real. They’re stories the church made up to scare us.”
“Of course the saints are real,” Julia-Berthe said. “They’re in a book.”
I wasn’t sure if they were real or not, but I worried for Julia-Berthe. Another month passed and she still peered out the window whenever she could, always toward the gate. But an old one-armed man with a long gray beard had come and fixed it. It didn’t clang anymore.
TEN
I should have known when the sky turned gray. When the air went still and the clouds sank low and heavy over the mountaintops, the first flakes falling, thicker and thicker until the outside world was covered over in white like a sacrament.
But I was warm and dry in class, sure this was just another snowstorm, contemplating the math problem on the blackboard as Pierrette was called up to solve it. On her way, she glanced outside and shrieked. We all ran to the window, even Sister Xavier, who gasped and ordered us back to our desks. “Put your heads down and pray,” she said as she flew out the door, her headpiece fluttering like a pair of wings.
We didn’t go back to our seats. Instead, we stared at the spectacle of Julia-Berthe, naked and rolling in a drift of snow, her skin so pale she was almost invisible. Nuns rushed out of the building, frosty air coming from their lips in puffs as they tried to get her up, the wind rippling along their skirts.
My heart throbbed in my chest like a pincushion stuck with a thousand sharp-pointed pins.
“What is she doing?” the other girls whispered, not seeing what I saw: Saint Francis. Rolling unclothed in the snow. She was trying to cleanse herself of impure temptation, of her desire for the old blacksmith’s son.
Sister Xavier lifted Julia-Berthe in her arms and carried her toward the door, the nuns’ black wool shawls piled on top of her. How long had she been out there?
I ran downstairs to the infirmary, but the doors were closed. Gabrielle was already there, and we clung together without a word.
“She’s going to be all right,” Sister Bernadette told us when they finally let us in. Julia-Berthe was asleep, and I knelt down by her bed and held her hand to feel her pulse, watching her body beneath the blankets for the slow rise of her chest.
Oh, Julia-Berthe. If only wounds and sorrows could be driven away in the freshly fallen snow. If only the longing for love could be numbed by the cold and ice, I would go out there with you.
* * *
When the nuns told us a few weeks later that Mémère was on her way to the convent, I wasn’t surprised. After her stay in the infirmary, Julia-Berthe had snuck out three more times. She was found wandering in town, searching for the blacksmith’s son until someone brought her back.
She couldn’t stay in Aubazine.
I overheard the Mother Superior and Sister Xavier talking outside the linen closet one afternoon while I was inside folding pillowcases.
“It’s best for Julia-Berthe to be around family,” the Mother Superior said in a low voice. “Their grandparents have moved to Moulins, and Julia-Berthe can go stay with them. But as for Gabrielle and Antoinette, have you spoken to the Mother Abbess?”
“Yes,” Sister Xavier said as if to reassure her. “They’ll be under strict supervision at all times. She’s assured me that their virtue will be secure.”
“And the doors?” The Mother Superior sounded unconvinced.
“Kept locked at all times. They’ll be permitted to leave the premises only for Mass and other pious purposes.”
“But the soldiers’ barracks,” the Mother Superior said.
“On the other side of town. Far from the Pensionnat.”
I dropped the pillowcase.
Barracks.
Pensionnat.
I couldn’t wait to tell Gabrielle. We were going to Moulins, to the Pensionnat Notre Dame. We were going to be with Adrienne.
New Silhouettes
Moulins 1900-1906
ELEVEN
“Ninette,” Adrienne whispered, leaning in behind me as I took a seat in the dining room our first day at the Pensionnat Notre Dame. “You’re in the wrong place. That’s where the payantes sit.”
The payantes, Adrienne explained, were the rich girls. The girls from paying families. We were the nécessiteuses. The charity cases. At the Pensionnat, I quickly learned, everyone had a place. Ours was at the bottom.
“Look how they eat,” Gabrielle said, scowling at their table across the room. “Like pigs at the trough.”
“And that one,” she went on. “Her skin is like the Massif Central, the Puy de Dôme right there on her chin. And yet she’s sure she’s better than us.”
“And there.” She nodded toward a dark-haired girl on the end closest to us. “Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you don’t have to bathe. I can smell her from here.”
We charity cases had different tables, different dormitories, different classrooms, different uniforms. We all wore black shirtwaists and skirts, but whereas the payantes’ were new and crisp, the fabrics smooth and expensive, ours were ill-fitting and had a thin oily sheen from wear, hand-me-downs faded from too much washing. We wore aprons over them because while the payantes practiced piano or fancy needlework upstairs, we were downstairs, mopping floors or scrubbing pots. We all wore pèlerines, little capes around our shoulders like flower petals, the payantes’ made of luxuriant garnet cashmere, ours black wool, rough and knobby, as if the payantes were the roses, and we were the weeds.
In Aubazine, we knew we were poor, but everyone was. We didn’t think about it constantly. Here, we were reminded of our lowly station every breathing moment.
Even at high Mass, we nécessiteuses had our place.
At the cathedral, the payantes paraded first into the prestigious center section with the rest of the congregation, while we tokens of Catholic charity were shuffled off to the side, squirming beneath the soaring vaults and pointed arches, among the sculptures and gargoyles and colorful stained glass that Gabrielle called gauche, so different from the austere simplicity of Aubazine. The canonesses, dress sleeves buttoned onto their habit bodices, joined the payantes as if they were their rich old aunts, and maybe they were. Only one elderly canoness, Sister Ermentrud, sat with us as a monitor, drawing, evidently, the short stick.