The Innocent Years

The Innocent Years.

Annie Parish was a quiet child who stared at the world out of big, blue eyes, hidden behind a pair of glasses that barely clung to the end of her ski-slope, freckle-splattered nose. She wore her dark-blond hair in bunches, tied with regulation blue ribbon. Annie had a lisp.

           It was a Friday, a cool, sunny, spring day, a week before my ninth birthday. The birds were busy calling to each other and flying back and forth among the trees flanking the pathway as I crunched my way along the gravel toward the cloakroom door. The cloakroom was annexed onto the convent, and we were required to don indoor shoes on entering the huge, grey stone building, a cross between a church and someone’s ancestral home.

           I saw Annie right away. She was sitting scrunched tight into a corner. Her face was as white as blackboard chalk. Tears scored her cheeks and her eyes were red and puffy looking.

           ‘Sup, Annie?’ I asked, concerned.

           Annie flinched. Closer too, I saw she was shaking. Sitting down on the bench next to her, I wrapped my arms around her, the force of her tremors earthing themselves in my body. I realized, as I held her, I was shaking too. ‘What’s wrong?’

           Annie kept her eyes on her shoes. She shook her head … kept on shaking it, staring at her shoes. A few tears splashed onto her already damp face. Her right leg had started to jiggle up and down. Her foot tapping against the floor reminding me of a girl I’d seen once in the grip of a seizure, heels drumming a tattoo against the pavement.

           ‘Annie?’ She was making this droning noise, her face all screwed up. Her tears a torrent, dripping off her chin and mingling with wet from her nose.

           I’d heard a toddler lost in the busy market square cry like this once. Annie’s foot was still doing its crazy jig on the mosaic patterned floor. ‘I’ll get Sister Theresa.’

           ‘Noooooo!’

           I didn’t know what else to do, so I just sat there, holding onto her, as if I could stop her falling apart.

           Lessons had started; I was thinking I was going to be in trouble for not going to class.

           From the window I could see the long, grey, gravel path, surrounded by a wealth of lawn, rhododendron bushes and shrubs. In summer, the salmon and rose pink, the soft violet and the fresh, crisp red of the flowers made me think of heaven.

           Time ticked by undisturbed. In our school, we walked, never ran. We were not allowed to raise our voices except in the playground, and then not too much. Prayers were said morning and noon, in fact, more time was given to prayer than to lessons.

           In this atmosphere of hallowed peace, nuns paced regally along dark hallways, hands tucked inside their wide sleeves. Their faces smoothed free of expression, saintly indeed.

           Annie was no longer making those awful, hurting sounds, and her tears were sporadic now. She hugged herself, rocking, eyes now on her knees. Every once in a while her chest would hitch, making her thin shoulders heave. I sat there, rubbing the place between her shoulder blades, looking down at her neatly tied hair.

           The smell of boiled cabbage coming from the dining hall reminded me lunch was a meal best avoided. The food was of the poorest quality and often inedible; boiled potatoes with orange centers, and strawberry jelly served around a nest of human hair.

           Now and then, Annie would scrub the back of her hand across her face. I could see a sore looking strawberry stain all around her mouth; as if she’d been rubbing Marmite into her skin, and her lips were puffy looking. At some point, she got up and disappeared around the corner, where the sinks extended in an immaculate, porcelain line. When she came back, her mouth was raw.

           The second time, I followed. We had this smelly, harsh, carbolic soap, a dark green brick. But it wasn’t that Annie was using. I saw her reach down, to the tiled shelf underneath, and bring out a drum of Vim. She poured a heap of the white powder into the palm of her hand. Turning on the tap she mixed it to a paste before bringing it to her lips and smearing it across her mouth. She used both hands to scrub, rubbing her fingers back and forth, back and forth – hard. And all the time her eyes never left the little square of mirror hanging in the middle of the row.

           I didn’t let her see me. I went and sat down while she was still trying to erase her mouth with a paper towel.

           This time, when she came back, she tucked her face into my shoulder and let out a big breath, as if exhausted. I glanced up once and saw Sister Mary Ignatius passing the doorway but, although she saw us, she just carried on by. That, I thought, was strange. I didn’t know if I should be relieved or anxious she hadn’t stopped. It wasn’t her I wanted. I wanted Sister Theresa.

           Sister Theresa was different. She was young and she was frequently to be seen walking a little too fast down the corridors, her heavy, black skirt swishing just a fraction. Her face was usually smiling, in distinction to the studied blankness of the other nuns, and she would laugh aloud with little persuasion. Often, I spotted compassion in her eyes as some terrified little girl received her punishment for some minor transgression, such as removing her blazer on a boiling summer’s day.

           Sister Theresa played guitar, and sometimes she would sing for us in her light, sweet voice. Listening, I would find myself wondering if she could be happy, living her life surrounded by women who almost never smiled and who looked ready to choke the joy out of life at any moment, if only they could manage to discover some.

           Once a week, when the local priest came to visit, the whole atmosphere of the place lifted – I was too young then to recognize simpering when I saw it. Unfortunately, I would’ve needed to be deaf, dumb and plain stupid to miss the way tempers were always even more fraught than usual once he’d gone cheerily on his way.

           Beside me, Annie got to her feet.

           ‘No!’ I caught hold of her wrist, bones like a little bird. ‘Don’t do that anymore, Annie! Tell me what’s wrong?’

           Annie’s face folded. She started making that weird, droning noise again. Her feet were stamping up and down, fast, knees lifting high off the ground, like a majorette. Fast.

           ‘I’m going to find Sister Theresa.’

           Annie screamed. That sound made me want to run away. Annie must’ve seen it because the noise cut off and her teeth fastened onto the side of her hand.

           I knew I needed help.

           Annie must’ve known it too. ‘Don’t leave me,’ she said, and she reached up, wrapping her arms around my neck; pushing her wet face against mine. Crowding into me like a whipped puppy. ‘Reverend Mother said I can’t come to school anymore,’ she whispered into my ear. ‘She said I’m a dirty girl and I don’t belong in God’s school.’

           Annie stepped away from me, sitting back down on the wooden, slatted bench. ‘My mummy's coming to get me soon.’

           I couldn’t imagine Annie doing anything so wrong it would merit expulsion. ‘Why?’

           For a long, slow second Annie was silent, then. ‘Because I let the boy kiss me.’

           I almost laughed. Then my eyes fixed on Annie’s raw, chapped mouth, a scarlet slash against the white of her face. I looked into her watery eyes. ‘Didn’t you want him to?’

           Annie was leaking tears again. ‘It’s m-m-my fault.’ A bubble emerged out of one side of her nose. ‘I didn’t want to look stupid. So I smiled.’

           We sat side by side for another little while, silent except for the soft sounds of muted sobbing. And I think now I was glad for the silence. Glad Annie had stopped telling me.

           ‘I wish Hillary had come. If Hillary had come, it would never have happened.’

           Hillary was the girl Annie usually walked to school with.

           ‘We waited and waited. But she didn’t come. Mum started to put on her coat.’ Annie shot me a look that begged me to understand. ‘Mum’s got bad legs, so I said I’d be all right.’

           I knew the road Annie walked to school; quiet stretches, bordered by high, stone walls and higher trees beyond. Sheltering behind the trees, big houses set well back.

           ‘He looked nice.’ Annie’s voice was hurt, bewildered. ‘He smiled and he said, ‘Hello,’ and I knew I shouldn’t talk to strangers. But he was nice, and I didn’t want to look stupid, so I smiled and said hello.’ Annie gulped back sobs.

           ‘He started walking with me, and I didn’t like that. But I kept thinking it would be all right.’ Annie stopped talking and concentrated all her attention on crying. I grabbed her and held her. Over and over, I stroked her hair. I could feel the warmth, almost feverish, of her scalp, and I kept saying, ‘Sssh. It’s all right. It’s all right.’ I think, maybe, I was trying to reassure myself as much as Annie.

            ‘He held me against the wall,’ she said. Now it was as if she couldn’t stop talking. ‘And he … he … it was all wet and hot and it made my teeth hurt the inside of my lips and he stuck his tongue in my mouth … It made me feel sick!’ She was rubbing her hand over her poor sore lips again.

           Her voice dropped to a dry whisper. ‘He … he … touched me.’ Her eyes flicked to her non-existent breasts. ‘And he … he pushed his hand up my dress and …’

           Annie’s eyes met mine. ‘I wanted to scream,’ she said. ‘I tried … nothing came out.’ Annie let her breath go in a long, shuddery sigh. ‘When he’d run away, I saw some people coming. They asked if I was all right … and I couldn’t tell them, so I said, yes. But I told Reverend Mother and she said to go and wait in the cloakroom.            ‘Then she came and said Mum was coming to collect me, and she said I couldn’t come here anymore. She said girls who were not wholly pure didn’t belong in God’s school.’ Annie was quiet a moment. ‘I’m glad I didn’t tell those people,’ she said.

           Annie didn’t speak again. After a while, her eyelids drooped and her head slumped against my shoulder. Me? I sat there, replaying what Annie had said, over and over, not feeling, not thinking, just hearing the words, seeing the pictures of Annie’s story.

           Mrs. Parish, when she arrived, looked as if she, too, was barely holding back tears. For an instant our eyes met and I could see gratitude in hers.

           ‘Annie,’ spoken softly. Annie jerked herself upright, stiff, eyes wide, staring into her mother’s face, and her misery was thick in my own throat.

           Mrs. Parish gathered her up. Annie’s legs dangled down almost to Mrs. Parish’s ankles, but I could see that didn’t matter.

           I wanted to say something, to help – but I didn’t have the right words, and, as Mrs. Parish turned to go, I saw I was forgotten anyway.

           I sat in the cloakroom for some while after they’d gone, thinking about the time I lay, sick with migraine, for a whole day on one of the hard cloakroom benches, my head pillowed in a friend’s lap. Not so much as an aspirin was provided. Nor could the good sisters manage to organize transport to get me home.

           I remember walking down the grey, gravel pathway at the end of that afternoon; the smell of the rhododendron bushes, sharp and green, with a sweet undertow; the bittersweet smell of new life and old rot. 

           I never saw Annie again.

           Shortly after, I persuaded my father to remove me from the convent. Oh, and the nun, the young, happy one – she left too.

           For a time, after I heard, I believed it must be because she’d learned what Reverend Mother had done to Annie. Some while later I discovered that the priest, Father Allen, had left the priesthood and he and Sister Theresa were living together. I try to be generous when I examine what might have influenced her decision to break away.

           All this time later, though, and I still cross the street to avoid contact with a woman wearing a nun’s habit.