Looking for Jane (13)
Maggie drifts off, but Evelyn’s mind is too occupied to sleep now. It won’t be long before their day begins. Just as the one before, they’ll attend prayer in the parlour room, then eat breakfast in the dining room. One-third of the girls cook breakfast for the whole household each morning, assisted by a couple of the nuns. After breakfast will be knitting, sewing, and other dull tasks, then lunch, prepared by another third of the girls. Their afternoons are dedicated to cleaning and chores. Dinner is cooked by the remaining third of the inmates. After dinner there’s time for Bible study or other reading from the miserable collection of books on the parlour shelf before bed at ten o’clock sharp. Every moment of every day is scheduled down to the minute.
Evelyn casts her brown eyes up at the white ceiling with its dark rings of water stains, then around the room at the other girls, who are still sleeping. At the end of each bed is a small dresser for their things, but no mirror or other vanities. Those are not permitted in their dormitories or the communal bathroom. Sister Teresa tells them they should be focusing their energy and attentions inward—on growing their babies—and outward—praying on the misdeeds that landed them each in this lamentable predicament. Though she knows how each girl became pregnant from their intake meeting, the Watchdog still treats them as though they have all chosen to sin, that they are the seductive mistresses of their own misfortunes and should consider themselves lucky the Church has allowed them houseroom during their pregnancies.
And despite the rule against it, most of the girls do talk to one another about how they got pregnant. After all, there isn’t much else to talk about.
Fifteen-year-old Louise in the bed across from Evelyn became pregnant by her brother’s friend, who was seven years her senior and full of pretty promises that evaporated the moment she said the word “pregnant.” And Anne, asleep over by the window, resorted to selling her own body out of financial desperation when her husband abandoned her and deserted to British Columbia with his secretary.
A couple of weeks ago, Maggie confided in Evelyn that she herself had suggested to her parents that she go visit her aunt in Scotland for the duration of her pregnancy, and give the baby up for adoption there. She told Evelyn she had figured it might be easier to put a continent between her and any temptation to find the child later on, but her mother had declined without explanation. Maggie didn’t tell Evelyn exactly how her pregnancy came to be, but Evelyn has her suspicions.
Evelyn hasn’t talked about her own pregnancy to anyone but Maggie. She told her the truth: that she wasn’t even aware she was pregnant when Leo had the heart attack. A ticking time bomb, the doctors had said in hushed tones as Evelyn crumpled into the wooden chair in the hospital waiting room. Just a defect lying in wait. Bad luck, they muttered.
Evelyn buried her fiancé in a state of numb grief, tossed a bouquet of white roses onto his lowered coffin instead of carrying them with her down the aisle at their wedding. She hadn’t even considered what might be next for her when she realized she’d missed her courses that month. She was still wearing her black mourning dress, floating on a wave of heartache that led her straight to St. Agnes’s front door with no resistance.
She should have protested, refused, she thinks now. But then, where would that have left her? Living on the street with a baby? Good girls aren’t supposed to get pregnant out of wedlock, but if you do, you “do the right thing for everyone”—a phrase she heard her mother recite at least a dozen times—and you give up your baby. It’s as simple as that.
But it certainly doesn’t feel like the right thing for Evelyn; this baby is all she has left of Leo. She wishes she could keep it, but her parents won’t allow it. They made that much clear to her when they arranged for her to come to St. Agnes’s in the first place. At no point did anyone ever ask Evelyn what she wanted. This baby is growing inside her, but she has no say in its fate. Is she even allowed to call herself a mother?
The single tear that has been quivering at the corner of her eye falls hot against her cold cheek and is quickly absorbed into the thin pillow. Evelyn takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly, trying to expel the dark thoughts into the cold air of the dormitory, but they hover over her and Maggie, entwined together on the narrow bed. She can’t escape them. They’re part of the punishment, the penance the girls pay in this secluded cell in a forgotten corner of the city. There are no dreams here, there is no light. The darkness will linger. For some, only months. For others, years. And others still will never see the light again.
These girls are fallen. And they will all pay for their redemption.
CHAPTER 5 Angela
JANUARY 2017
Standing at the door of her apartment, Angela catches a whiff of garlic and onions, the scent dancing with the muted sounds of soft jazz. Tina has already started on dinner. As usual, minced garlic gets tossed into a frying pan before they’ve even decided what they’ll be having, and Angela knows Tina will have a glass of wine waiting for her on the side table in the living room. Smiling, Angela turns her key in the lock and pushes open the door.
Their apartment is a good size for downtown Toronto: one master and two other tiny bedrooms, a larger open space that doubles as living room and dining room, a galley kitchen, and a windowless bathroom. Their only storage is the entryway closet, the telephone-booth-sized bedroom closets, and whatever they can manage to shove underneath the beds and the bathroom sink. Tina has lived here for twelve years, and Angela for six, so they’ve had plenty of time to make it their own. Their walls are painted in bright, bold colours—teals, reds, yellows, and greens—a haven to hibernate in during the bleak winter months when everything from the streetscape to clothing to the cloudy sky above is shrouded in a hopeless shade of grey. Multicoloured rugs soften their footfalls on the creaky parquet floor, and cast-iron candle sconces warm the rooms with a soft glow.