The Smell of Other People's Hou - Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock Page 0,41

bumps along until we reach the river. She stops the engine and we sit watching the muddy water roll past. I’m sniffling and wondering how she knew this secret spot was here when, as if reading my mind, she says, “Your gran and I used to come here all the time.”

She points through the trees and I can see the brick outline of the convent. I wonder if she means they somehow got here by crossing the river from the other side. That would be pretty adventurous, and I wonder what else I don’t know about who Gran once was.

Sister Josephine’s wimple and habit make it seem as if she is looking through a curtained window, straight ahead so I can’t see her face. I realize she’s not staring at the river; she’s looking into the past.

“I was nineteen. Your gran was probably sixteen. I was trying to decide if I had a calling, and she was trying desperately to get out of here. Sister Agnes warned me that she was a bad influence, but Marguerite was so funny and charismatic, it was hard not to want to be around her.”

I would never use any of those words to describe Gran.

“She’d lived her whole life here. Her mother died. Her father couldn’t take care of her. Or maybe he just wouldn’t. She was only three when he left her with the abbess. I don’t think your gran ever got over that feeling of being abandoned, even though the abbess took a shine to her like you wouldn’t believe.”

I think about Gran taking in me and Lily after Dad died. I never thought about how hard that must have been for someone her age—a five-year-old and a brand-new baby.

Sister Josephine swivels her white neck to look at me, a huge smile on her face. “Oh, the abbess loved your gran like she was her own child—always called her their precious gift from God.” She chuckles. “Sister Agnes, as I’m sure you’ve realized, has never understood their relationship. We’re just human, but people think we aren’t going to feel normal emotions once we get professed. Jealousy, anger, sorrow. When your gran left in the middle of the night without saying good-bye, even the abbess couldn’t pretend that her heart wasn’t a tiny bit broken.”

Ironically, Gran reminds me more of Sister Agnes than the abbess.

“But she must have kept in touch; otherwise, how did I get here?” I ask.

“She did, oh she did. But it was mostly in times of need. I think that’s part of what bothers Sister Agnes so much. When your mother got ill—after your father died—your gran asked Mother Superior if there was a place that would take her in so she didn’t have to be put in a home. She wasn’t right in the head after that.”

Sister Josephine looks like maybe she’s said too much; her face turns pink against the white of her wimple. “Oh, Ruth, I’m so sorry about your father.”

“I’m starting to forget him,” I tell her. “And my mother.”

“It’s like that sometimes, isn’t it? Your family seems to have some kind of snowball effect going on,” she says sadly.

“That’s one way of saying it,” I tell her, blowing my nose into one of the tissues. “Instead of a curse, I mean; a snowball effect sounds almost nice.”

I think about the pink Sno Ball that boy was eating back at the mercantile and the way his brother was looking at him. What is their story? I know I should care more about my own family, but our story will always be old and tired and badly written. If I had the energy, I would try to rewrite it. Perhaps Lily will be the one to do that.

But even if I am following in the footsteps of my mother and my grandmother, there’s still a part of me that believes I deserve better. I would give anything for someone to look at me the way Oscar looked at his brother, covered in a pink Hostess Sno Ball. I almost tell Sister Josephine right there on the bank of the river why I broke down back at the mercantile, but it seems silly. How do you find words to describe that much emptiness?

“Aren’t you going to open your package? It’s the first mail you’ve received,” says Sister Josephine.

I look at the loopy handwriting and realize it’s from Selma. Good old Selma, writing to me when I didn’t even say good-bye to her. I slowly unwrap it and