Shrieks of laughter.
“That’s enough, girls. Now, Kathleen. Sing for us.”
Kathleen is paralysed. Blinking into the darkness of the metal can, she feels sweat trickling under her arms, between her legs.
“You’re a ‘songstress’, aren’t you?” — whack! — the yardstick against the side of the can.
Kathleen is spared the sight of row after row of girls with their hands clamped over their mouths, plugging their noses against hilarity, crossing their legs — “I said sing!”
Only one song presents itself, perversely, to her mind, and she begins, muffled and echoey: “‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen … ’” — hysterical laughter, sister gives them free rein — “‘Across the ocean wild and wide —
“Louder.”
“‘To where your heart has ever been — Since first you were my bonny bride’” — a bare thread of a voice is all that’s available to Kathleen, and it breaks.
“Continue.”
“‘The roses all have left your cheek — I’ve watched them fade away and die — Your voice is sad whene’er you speak. And tears bedim your loving eyes…. ’”
Kathleen is finally crying. Helpless, enraged. What’s worse is that she hates this song — old-fashioned, sickly sweet, nothing to do with her but her name: “‘Oh I will take you back, Kathleen, To where your heart will feel no pain — And when the fields are fresh and green, I’ll take you to your home again.’”
The song finished, Kathleen waits in dread to be dismissed — how can she possibly remove this can from her head in front of everyone? She knows she must, eventually. Some day. She has to go to the loo. She feels as though she’s wet her pants with shame. Surely that’s not possible, surely she would know if she had…. Kathleen realizes that she’s been standing there for some time. And that Sister Saint Monica has resumed the lesson.
“… And what occasioned the putting aside of Saint Augustine’s African concubine?”
“Oh, sister, sister, I know —”
“One at a time, girls.”
Kathleen stands motionless until the bell signals lunch and she hears Sister Saint Monica swish out after the last pupil.
Kathleen has no friends. She has her work and she’s grateful for that because friends are simply not to be had at Holy Angels. Not that Kathleen goes out of her way: “Snob.” Seeing her up there, anonymous, with a green metal garbage can for a head, hiding that conceited face — why do people think she’s so pretty, her hair is horrible, it’s red. That’s all it is. Not “auburn,” not “strawberry blonde,” red. Like a demon, like a floozie. Kathleen’s ordeal at the hands of Sister Saint Monica soothes a lot of badly ruffled feathers.
The truth is, Kathleen has no idea how to go about making a friend. She has been trained to live for that glorious place, the Future. Friends are superfluous. This is reinforced by the tacit understanding that she is not to bring anyone home. Something to do with Mumma. She and Daddy would never say it, but they both know it.
Other girls spend nights at each others’ homes, tucked in together talking till dawn. Kathleen overhears them whispering in the lavatory. She never finds out that Daddy would not let her spend a night at a friend’s house, because she is never invited. James is planning to send her all the way to Italy by herself, but that’s different. That’s Life. The other is Nonsense. And who knows what another girl’s father might get into his head? Kathleen is chaperoned every moment but she does not see it that way. Freedom consists of being insulated from the envy and ignorance of the unimportant people who temporarily surround her.
Now, after five years at Holy Angels, Kathleen would not know a friend if one sank its teeth into her wrist — which is more or less what she expects from the mass of other girls. She skirts them cautiously, as if they were dangerous wild animals loitering about a common watering-hole ready to pounce, you’d never know why or what hit you. She fears them, sharp glinting creatures, and hasn’t a clue what they talk about or how they do it. How they merge into gregarious packs. Kathleen is in fact horribly shy, but no one would ever suspect it — after all, she gets up and sings in front of halls full of people.
What seals Kathleen’s fate, however, is the presence of several Mahmoud cousins at Holy Angels. One of them has even been in her class for the past six years. Though Materia hasn’t wanted the girls to know anything at all about the shame of family exile, and has concocted her story about “the Old Country,” James has told Kathleen the truth: Your mother and I were very young. We eloped. It was wrong, but what was worse was the behaviour of the Mahmouds. Barbaric. They are from a part of the world that hasn’t seen a moment’s peace in hundreds of years, little wonder. You have cousins at Holy Angels. Ignore them. Don’t give them the opportunity to snub you. Carry yourself like you own the place.
The Mahmouds are rich and civic-minded. The Mahmoud girls are popular, each of them a gleaming clear-eyed olive in plaid and perfect English. They have been told that Kathleen is the daughter of the Devil, and have duly accorded her a wide berth. To befriend Kathleen is to offend the Mahmoud girls. You can’t have it both ways.
But is there not one potential friend among the horde, one bookish girl, plain as a rainy Tuesday, or so beautiful as to be unafraid? One who does not travel with the pack, who might come forward as a friend for Kathleen? No. Kathleen’s fortress, her tower of creamy white, is steep and terrible. No one comes in or out. Except for her father, Sister Saint Cecilia and a select few minions necessary to support life. Such as her mother. Such as the buggy driver.
The other girls salve their corrosive envy and allay their fear of Kathleen, the antisocial prodigy, with an invigorating dose of racial hatred:
“She may be peaches and cream but you should see her mother … black as the ace of spades, my dear.”
“You know that sort of thing stays in the blood. Evangeline Campbell’s mother’s cousin knows a girl had a baby in Louisburg? Black as coal, my dear, and the both their families white as snow and blond blond.”
“We should’ve never let the coloureds into this country in the first place.”
“My uncle saw a coloured woman driving a cart with a load of coal, the next morning he was dead.”
“They have a smell, they do.”
“Kathleen Piper belongs in The Coke Ovens!”
And they laugh.
Naturally, this remedy is never indulged when the Mahmoud girls are around. That wouldn’t do, they’re nice girls and rich rich. The brothers of Holy Angels have already begun lining up.
No girlfriend has ever made it up to the tower chamber.
Three Sisters
Frances has discovered a new game: exploring the mysteries of the teenager, Kathleen. Unfortunately, she is too young to know how to investigate thoroughly without leaving a trace.
“Come here, you little brat.”
Frances peeks out from behind Mercedes with a guilty twinkle in her eye, her hands folded innocently behind her back, and enters Kathleen’s boudoir.
“If you come in here again I’ll tell Pete to get after you,” says Kathleen, enthroned at her vanity, where she has just discovered the comb where the brush should be and a candy heart gumming up one of her good lace hankies.
“Who’s Pete?” asks Frances.
“He’s the bodechean and he’s going to drag you to hell!”
Frances laughs. Mercedes’s eyes grow round as saucers and she says, “That’s not nice.”