The Divine Economy of Salvation (21 page)

Mr. M. stood at the door, waving and calling to the girls as they approached the cafeteria. He was boisterous and energetic in his delight, laughing and teasing the girls as they arrived with presents for Rachel in their arms. He wore a three-piece blue suit, but tonight the formal dress didn't belong to the same world as his banking. Here in the makeshift party of our dreams, he was like the ringmaster of a circus, elegant and in control. The smell of his familiar musk cologne permeated the air around him.

Even the nuns were impressed. I noticed Sister Aline staring at the stars in the dimmed light with a reverence generally reserved for Bella. Sister Marguerite was gathering the girls together into groups, handing out the name tags Mr. M. said his wife had made for the party. He had requested a list of all the girls in the school, and the tags were cut out of yellow cardboard into stars to match the decorations, the names printed in blue ink. Safety pins were used to pin them on our chests. Mother Superior, walking around the perimeter and between the tables, inspected the table settings: the paper plates and napkins with “Happy Birthday” on them and a smiley-faced clown, the matching paper cups, the party favours—little whistles and horns, long paper tongues that rolled out and made bleating
noises—and the pretty pink and yellow carnations that were centre-pieces on each table. Every detail was ordered, perfected. Between Mr. M.'s vision and the nuns' work, what I would have believed impossible had been accomplished. An aura of joy and wonder surrounded us.

“You're going to spoil them, Mr. M.,” Mother Superior remarked after taking it all in. “I'm not sure we should have agreed to all this.”

“Oh, Reverend Mother, it's only once in a girl's life she turns fifteen.” Mr. M. could have mentioned he'd paid for the party, but he didn't. “You all did a wonderful job here,” he said instead.

“I suppose,” she replied distantly, as if remembering something, maybe making concessions for the fact she had been fifteen once with dreams of her own. The deep furrow across her brow relaxed, and she picked up one of the decorative cups, admiring it. “It is amazing all the things you can buy nowadays, isn't it?”

She then turned her attentions to the staff, who were working on our dinner: fried chicken legs and potato salad with vegetables, and white bread rolls with butter. Plastic cutlery was being laid out on the tables as we waited for everyone. The aroma of chicken wafted around me, seeping down through the vents circulating air from the kitchen in the back, the fans chortling.

Rachel wore a bright orange dress of tightly knit wool and black shoes with a slight heel. She showed off to Caroline and me how well she could walk in them, although she teetered every five steps or so. Her father even allowed her to wear a light-orange lipstick, but not so much as to offend the tastes of the nuns. A thin leather belt encircled
her waist, and the cuffs of her sleeves were a darker brownish-orange. Her hair was in a ponytail held up with a black barrette. Two blonde curls wove around her ears. On Francine, the orange would have made her freckles all the more visible and startling, but on Rachel, the dress brought out the sunny shade of her hair, the wildness of her green eyes, and the whiteness of her skin. Caroline and I could only admit that she was as beautiful as the decorations.

“You look like a movie star,” Caroline teased.

“The good girl or the bad girl?” Rachel inquired.

“I guess we'll find out soon enough. Did you invite any of your boyfriends here tonight?”

Boys, of course, were not invited and Caroline knew this. Other girls were crowding around us now, fawning over Rachel's dress and shoes, giddy with excitement. We all began to talk quickly about how much we liked the decorations and how wonderful the food smelled. Most of the girls, like me, wore dresses to the party, but a few day girls did not have clothes at school besides their uniforms and wore them in default. Their outfits hampered the fantasy of being away from the school, but didn't destroy it. Francine, in a pastel pink dress, was the last of The Sisterhood to arrive. Her mother had sent some homemade chocolate chip cookies, which Francine had kept hidden in her room. She held the tray out in front of her like a badge of honour as we walked over to greet her. Rachel was thrilled.

“Let the games begin!” announced Mr. M. to the hall. A couple of the nuns turned, unaccustomed to hearing a strong male voice that wasn't a priest's. He instructed all the girls to group
together according to their grades. Those not involved in a game could sit and chat, snack on cookies, or help themselves to some orange punch from a large bowl on a table at the entrance of the cafeteria, slices of fresh lemon and orange peels floating on the orange-red water.

We played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and plastic horseshoes, and the top three winners of each game were presented with clip-on earrings or a fake moonstone or a bag of jellybeans and lollipops.

“It's absurd!” Rachel said to me as we drank punch, waiting our turn to play. “You'd think I was turning five, not fifteen!” But the truth of the matter was we loved it. Rachel loved it too. There was a glorious freedom in playing the games of childhood we knew we'd probably never play again. And Mr. M. supplied us with the pleasures of both worlds. The presents weren't toys or plastic bubble pipes, but things young women did enjoy. Rachel spun around with the blindfold on her head and laughed so hard she could barely stand, her father trying to steady her in the direction of the donkey. We ate cookies and stuffed our faces with candy. Caroline showed us her bright blue tongue after winning a bunch of blue jellybeans in a guess-the-number-in-the-jar game. I won a pink bracelet bobbing for apples, the wet hair on my forehead plastered to my skin from dunking. Mother Superior and Sister Marguerite joined us in a boiled-egg-on-a-spoon race, and when they finished last, unable to manoeuvre properly in their constrictive habits, Mr. M. rallied us to cheer their valiant effort. The few girls who hadn't been wearing the paper hats handed to them at the door, upset at the possibility of messing their hair, were found sporting them before
dinner was served. Our bellies ached, our jaws hurt, and we couldn't wait to eat more.

The kitchen staff and the nuns presented the trays of food. Instead of waiting in line, on this night we were being served. We asked the staff to pile the potato salad as high as they could. I ate four drumsticks. Caroline beat us all by eating six. Gluttony had no power to shame us that day. We licked the grease and crumbs off our fingers and asked for more. Francine's fork didn't touch the table until she'd finished eating everything on her plate. Caroline talked with her mouth full, and Rachel disgusted us by pouring punch over her potatoes and eating them. The nuns and Mr. M. ate at a separate table. He told them knock-knock jokes and complimented them on how well they'd done raising all these young ladies of tomorrow. Although by dinner some of the streamers were falling and a couple of the balloons had burst, the darling illusion remained intact.

When the ice cream cake Rachel had requested, three layers high and the length of a small window, was brought out with all of its candles alight, a darker underbelly was revealed.

“Make a wish, Rachel,” Mr. M. said.

Rachel closed her eyes and concentrated for what seemed like an unduly long time, then puckered her lips to meet the candles. She left two burning, which Mr. M. and I blew out, already clapping along with the others. Some girls crowded around the table to watch and were slicing the air with their hands to indicate the size of the piece they wanted. The icing was pink and
blue, spelling out “Rachel” across the top of the cake. While Mr. M. clapped furiously, Mother Superior approached from behind, tapping him on the shoulder, an apologetic and confused expression on her face.

“Mr. M.,” she stated as confidentially as she could amidst all the people. “Your wife has arrived.”

“My wife?”

Rachel looked up from her cake, knife in hand, about to take the first cut. Her father had his brand-new camera poised to capture the event. He handed the camera to Sister Aline, who had no idea how to use it and so asked Esperanza to take the picture. She managed to press the button as Rachel's eyes shut. The flash lit up the table while Esperanza glanced over in Mr. M.'s direction. She appeared uncomfortable, unsure of where she now belonged in the party. And Mr. M. didn't offer any indication of how he was going to handle the situation. Esperanza kept taking pictures, Rachel holding up her knife in a mock gesture of action. Mr M. adjusted the knot of his red-and-white striped tie, a gesture he performed while in thought or when taken off guard. He smoothed his other hand over his hair and began to follow Mother Superior. For once, she was leading him.

“I just don't have enough money for her cab,” Mother Superior apologized. “As you know, we do our banking on Mondays.”

“That's fine. Fine,” Mr. M. replied, although his voice betrayed a touch of anger, directed towards the stairs he was about to climb to reach the entrance lobby of the school, the cafeteria being on the ground floor.

Esperanza took another couple of pictures as Rachel cut the cake and handed slices to Sister Aline, who accepted them on paper plates. Rachel seemed grateful the party wasn't halted and she directed Esperanza on how to adjust the focus for a broader picture of the room. I, however, felt anxious. I wanted Mr. M. to be the leader of the party at all times. And only the girls ought to have been there. Not Esperanza. I hoped that once Mr. M. returned, Sister Aline would ask her to leave. Notwithstanding, I helped Esperanza by distributing the plates, starting at the back of the cafeteria, then making my way to the front. Francine also helped, her body shaking from sugar intake.

“I didn't know Mrs. M. was going to be here,” she said. “I haven't seen her in two years.” Her words came faster than usual, her tongue sliding in and out of her mouth, trying to catch a smear of purple sugar on her lower lip.

“No?” I placed a few slices of cake on the table for the youngest girls in the school, who instantly started to devour the ice cream before it melted. Allowed to serve the food, like a waitress in a dessert shop, I suddenly felt a smug equality with Esperanza. If she could take the pictures, then I could pass out cake; Mr. M. would be pleased with both of us. Maybe I could even impress Mrs. M. by how well I performed on her daughter's behalf. I was sure Mrs. M. had never met Esperanza, and might dismiss her once she discovered she was hired help and not one of her daughter's friends.

“Well, we don't live on the same street any more.”

“I've never met her,” I said. Francine knew this, of course, but I felt I should say it anyway. I didn't know what else to say.

“Rachel won't like this,” Francine added, turning with me to go back to the head table to retrieve more cake from Sister Aline. The nun was at ease in her motherly role, gasping merrily at the size of the slices, gazing at the top of Rachel's blonde head with pride, while the cafeteria staff stood back politely waiting for instructions. They made an effort to speak mostly in English, in short and blunt phrases they had memorized, but periodically slipped into Chinese when the new words escaped them. The two women behind me were repeating “ice cream cake” to commit the item to memory. Another one was shrugging. “Mrs. M.?” she asked, scanning the room as if the woman would materialize out of thin air.

Mr. M. returned fifteen minutes later with his wife. Most of the girls took little notice, content with their feasting, wearing party hats and blowing occasionally on a whistle or party favour, then bursting into laughter, cake dripping from their mouths. Several of the nuns rose from their table to welcome Mrs. M., who held onto the crook of Mother Superior's arm, not her husband's. Mrs. M. wore a white blouse with a ruffled collar and a tartan skirt of green, blue, and yellow down to her ankles. She shuffled, her left foot dragging behind her, and her free arm moved jaggedly, up and down. Her mouth was crunched into a bow, and a pink lipstick puffed out her lips, a slightly darker pencil stencilled around them. She was not a large woman, but held herself as if she were, dragging her body over to a seat near Rachel. Her big eyes were framed with blue eye shadow and her skin, although sagging around her neck, was tight on her cheeks and around her eyelids. Her hair was brown, which suggested to me for the first time that with age Rachel might lose
the stunning blonde curls of her youth. It also struck me that Mrs. M. was holding in her breath, her posture rehearsed, as if it took all her concentration to walk.

Rachel did no more to acknowledge her mother than hand her a piece of cake, which was refused, Mrs. M.'s hand held against her mouth to indicate she did not want any, a girlish smile breaking through underneath. She marvelled at the balloons and streamers as Sister Marguerite brought her a cup of coffee with milk. She pointed to the colours surrounding her with glee.

When Mrs. M. finally spoke, she slurred. “My daughter's having quite the day,” she said to no one in particular. The nuns agreed, told her a bit about the games that had been played and the girls who had won the prizes. I presented my pink bracelet to Mrs. M., waving my arm like an exotic fan. Mrs. M. smiled admiringly at the token and proceeded to list off the names of the girls, pronouncing each slowly as her eyes flashed around the room.

“Drink your coffee, Louise,” Mr. M. told his wife flatly from where he stood behind her.

Caroline and I were excited to sit with the adults, eating our cake and trying to please Mrs. M. for the simple reason that she was Rachel's mother and we had never met her before. Francine, now also at the table, took a certain pride in the fact that she had. Mrs. M. looked like she had two different hairstyles, one on top brushed flat and another frizzy underneath. I wondered if she was wearing a wig, like my mother did. She appeared ill by the way her face was drawn, the manner in which she walked and spoke, and it occurred to me then that Rachel's mother might be suffering like mine. Tenderness
welled up in me for her, and I wanted to share it with Rachel to show her I understood. But Rachel kept her elbows around her plate, her back arched in the opposite direction of her mother. She sucked in the sides of her cheeks each time her mother spoke.