Free Leaning, Leaning Over Water by Frances Itani Page B

Pitou.’“
    Grand-mère laughed with delight.
    “That’s good,” said Mimi. “If you keep saying the same things over and over, your big auntie won’t know the difference.”
    When we went upstairs, Mimi’s Tante Florence was at the Singer, pumping the pedal. She was feeding a long panel of material that looked like crêpe under the bobbing needle. The day after the King had died, one of Lyd’s classmates had carried in a picture of him, framed and edged in the same kind of black crepe. Lyd had a picture in her Royal scrapbook of the Princess at the door of a plane. She was in deep mourning, the caption said. Even before she’d returned to England, the world had known that she was already Queen.
    “I’m making a black dress for Tante Noelle,” Tante Florence told Mimi. She turned to me. “Noelle is our one sister who can’t sew worth a damn. She heard a rumour that the Pope is sick, and she wants to be ready. He’s seventy-eight this year,” she said, and she crossed herself.
    Mimi and I sat on a hope chest and cross-clapped our hands.
One’s joy
Two’s grief
Three’s a wedding
Four’s death!
    On my way home I walked the long way and headed through the village and up into the woods. I was careful not to trespass on the priest’s property beside the church. The two-storey Catholic school was beside it, a black fire escape spidering up the side. Set back into the woods was the convent, which Iskirted and came at from behind. I scuffed my feet along the main path, where I knew the Sisters walked, and I kept watch. I was completely hidden by trees.
    I knew that I would have to look for twigs and branches spread over a larger cache. I scanned every bit of dirt around and between trees and then I left the path and searched and searched but could find no sign that anything had been disturbed. There were no tiny mounds, no splinters of wood from hastily nailed-together boxes, nothing that I could tell of attempts to disguise the patterns of earth. I was both disappointed and relieved but told myself that I might come back to look, another time. I left the shade and shadow of the woods, being careful not to be seen from the convent windows, and I walked slowly home.
    When I sat down for supper, Mother brought a platter of pickerel and another of French fries to the table. She always made the fries at the last minute so they’d be fresh, and now she scooped a sieveful out of the hot oil and dumped them onto the brown paper she’d layered on the oven door. She threw in another handful of potatoes and the oil flared up and sizzled and spattered. This was my favourite meal.
    “Where did you and Mimi go?” said Mother.
    “Nowhere,” I said.
    We bowed our heads and Mother perched on the edge of her chair so she could get up again to check the fries. Father intoned from the head of the table:
Be present at our table Lord
Be here and everywhere adored
These creatures bless and grant that we
May feast in paradise with Thee.
    “Amen,” we all said together.
    I opened my eyes. Mother passed the ketchup to the end of the table and Father thumped the bottom of the bottle with his palm. A splurt of red blurped out onto his plate. Lyd and I exchanged looks.
    “Jennifer,” her lips mouthed.
    Eddie picked up the bottle and he thumped it too. I thought of how he would never be a part of what Lyd and I would have to go through.
    Lyd looked at the red blob on Eddie’s plate and made a face. I tried not to laugh. I was still mad at Father for forcing me to get rid of the rosary.
    “Blood”“ I said to myself. Lyd is waiting for blood to come out of her and after it happens to her it’s going to happen to me. We’ll be forced to wear lumpy pads between our legs like the ones in the box in the bathroom cupboard, and everything will be a huge mess. A red mess, I thought. Siren Red.
    I looked at Mother and I knew then that there were things she knew that she had never told us. Dark, I thought. The Moor. Mother knew about