Original illustrations by Bruno Traven
The girl stood in the rain, not ten feet from me. Her face and arms were raised to heaven. Her eyes were closed, her wide mouth drawn back in a self-satisfied grin.
Watching from behind the latticed classroom window, I envied her joy but was appalled at her recklessness. Sure, it was fun to walk through a downpour on school grounds. It was madness to do it naked.
She was beautiful, though, even if she was crazy. Her body was compact and athletic, with short, muscular legs and round tits that would have fit neatly in the palm of my hand. The spattering raindrops raised the nipples to sharp brown points, then rolled down her stomach to be soaked up by the sponge-like spot of hair below.
Her china-doll skin had just one disturbing blemish – a chain of green and purple bruises across her throat. The sisters never tired of telling us that every baby, pure as it might seem, is born with the stain of original sin on its soul. This girl could have been the avatar of that cruel doctrine.
I didn’t recognize her. I was new to Calvary Academy, and I didn’t know the girls in the upper classes. She had the same round face as me, the same short, dark hair and thick brows. (I’d always hated mine, but on her, they seemed proud and expressive.) We could have been sisters, which made it all the more puzzling I didn’t know her. You’d think somebody would have pointed out the resemblance.
But why was she nude? I could guess, certainly. Tearing off her uniform was an act of defiance in the oppressive atmosphere at Calvary, a sprawling, faux-Tudor monastery in the mountains of central Pennsylvania where, every morning, we prayed to the plaster Jesus crucified over the blackboard. The classrooms were dark with oak beams and mahogany desks and smelled perpetually of oil soap. The only bright colors I remember belonged to the Savior on the cross, whose wounds were dabbed with scarlet, and the little flags mounted in the corners to either side of Him – on the left, the red, white, and blue of the greatest country in the world; on the right, the yellow and white of the one true faith.
So, to stand outside in the nude, exposed to the elements on a warm November day – I could only imagine how liberating that felt. But why? Why take the risk? If the nuns saw her, they’d kick her out of school. If the girls did, they’d never let her live it down.
I pounded on the glass. “Hey!” I called. “Stop that! Hey! Get inside!” She must have heard me, but it made no difference. If anything, she sank further into herself, hugging her shoulders, then massaging the rainwater into her boobs, and finally, reaching down to touch herself there.
I tried to open the window. The latch came up, but the casement wouldn’t budge. It was swollen shut. I pounded one last time. “Hey! Hey!”
“Who are you yelling at?”
“Nobody!” I spun around, and the word was out of my mouth before I realized how ridiculous it sounded.
“It doesn’t sound like nobody to me,” said Sister Margaret Paul. She stepped calmly through the doorway and across the room.
Sister Margaret was the youngest member of the faculty, and the most sweet-tempered. She overlooked a lot of silliness and misbehavior, but even she would have to report an act of public nudity. The girl outside was dead.
Sister brushed past me and looked out the window, first to one side, then to the other. Her expression didn’t change.
“Well, you weren’t lying,” she said. “There’s no one out there.”
I turned to the window again. The quad was empty. Somehow, the naked girl had managed to duck into the cloisters that enclosed it on three sides. But it was a long run in any direction. To disappear so fast, she must’ve run like the wind.
“She was standing right there,” I said.
“Who was?”
“A girl. She didn’t have any … raincoat on. I was worried she’d catch cold.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” I insisted, more to prove I wasn’t hallucinating than to get the girl in trouble. “Right there –”
“That’s the Blessed Mother,” Sister said.
I felt like a fool. In the spot where the girl had been standing was the old porcelain statue of Mary, blessing a birdbath with outstretched arms. She hardly looked human anymore. Years of exposure had worn her face to a ghostly blur.
“Are you all right?” Sister Margaret asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re shaking,” she said. “Come here.”
She took my hand, gently, and drew me into her arms. It was a soft, comforting gesture, but it only dredged up the sense of isolation I’d been trying to keep buried. I was so lonely I could have cried. I would have, too, if Sister hadn’t spoken first.
“I know it’s hard at a new school,” she said. “Especially being away from home. It’s my first year here, too.”
“Didn’t you go here?” I asked.
“I meant my first year as a teacher. It’s strange. I was taught by most of the other sisters here, and I still can’t think of myself as their equal. I always get the feeling they’re judging me.”
I raised my head and looked at her closely. She had a thin face, light blue eyes and clear, pale skin that seemed to glow in the dull light from the windows. In those days, the church reforms were just getting into gear, and sisters’ habits were no longer the mobile prisons they’d been when I was small. The midi-skirt revealed a bit of leg, the pleated front accented the swell of her bosom, and the veil provided a glimpse of hair above the ears.
Sister Margaret was a straw-blonde. I’d always thought she was pretty, but now she seemed beautiful. Maybe it was the way the light fell, or maybe her open, sympathetic gaze.
She smiled when she caught me staring.
“So we’re in the same boat,” she said. She kissed me, chastely, on the forehead. “Feel better?”
“Yes, Sister.”
“You can call me Margaret when we’re alone.”
“I like Sister better,” I said. “It makes me feel … I don’t know …”
“Safe?”
“Yes, Sister.”
“Beloved?”
“Yes, Sister.”
She kissed me again, unchastely, on the mouth. I gave myself over to it, pressing against her. Her tongue slipped through my open lips. Her hand went up the back of my thigh and through the leg-hole of my panties. She took a firm hold of my ass.
I tipped my head back, offering myself. Sister feasted on my neck, licking and gnawing from the collar to the jawbone. The shock of pleasure took my breath away, and soon another unfamiliar sensation, warm and liquid, began to well up in the one place it was a sin even to think about.
I was a kid. I had only the vaguest notions about kissing and touching, and none at all about the love that was possible between a woman and a girl. Sister’s mouth and fingers sparked the first glimmer of understanding. I wanted to know more. To know everything.
“Yes, there, oh!” I said, trying to sound grown up.
She circled my ear with her tongue, raising gooseflesh down to my waist, but after a few delirious moments, she got hold of herself. She let go of my ass, stepped back, straightened my blazer.
“We should get to the hall before we’re missed,” she said.
“Not yet.” I jammed my lips on hers and rolled my tongue into her mouth.
Other girls talked about kissing boys like this, but I couldn’t imagine it would ever be so good with a boy. Sister was stunned, I think, at my eagerness, but my feelings were suddenly fuller and more urgent than the little schoolgirl crush I’d been dragging around like a toy duck on a string.
I was thinking about the girl on the quad, how free and fearless she was, and how much I wanted to be like her for Sister Margaret, when the wind kicked up outside. Three violent gusts battered the windows, and suddenly, a cold spray stung my face. Sister and I sprang apart.
The casement I’d been pulling on had blown open on its own. The rain was pouring in.
“Well!” Sister said lightly. “Someone evidently disapproves.”
She handed me a tissue from her sleeve and, while I wiped off, went to shut the window.
“Oh no,” she said.
“What?”
“Look.”
I came and stood behind her. Outside, on the grass, the Blessed Virgin lay broken into pieces.
♰
After fifty years, I remember every moment of joy and terror that followed those first kisses.
It began with a dream. I was standing in a church, wearing nothing but my blue blazer and knee socks. I clutched at the lapels, pulled the hem down, trying to cover my nakedness and thinking, they can’t see me like this, but the vent in the back wouldn’t close, and I could feel a cold draft on my butt.
Then I was standing at the altar. Sister was next to me in a silver wedding gown. The naked girl was in front of us, except she wasn’t naked. She was wearing a golden chasuble and a glittery silver stole. I thought she looked pregnant under the vestments, and the bruises on her neck were black and knotted.
I asked, “Can a girl be a priest?” She only made the sign of the cross, blessing Sister and me.
Sister kissed my neck, the way she had in the classroom. The girl-priest took my jacket off and held it up in front of a crowd that suddenly filled the pews. “Holy family,” she said. I remembered the verse, For my garments they cast lots, and I thought, I’m the sacrifice.
Sister began to massage my breasts while somebody, somewhere, repeated I will never betray you. My heart was racing, and it went on racing when I opened my eyes and felt the presence on top of me.
Before I could make a sound, a hand was clamped over my mouth.
“Shh,” a voice said. “It’s only me. Shh.”
I could hear my heartbeat now, and it nearly drowned out the inner voice telling me I was in the dorm, in my bed, and the shadow above me belonged to Sister Margaret. When I was sufficiently calm, Sister took her hand away and kissed me for real. I didn’t object. I didn’t question. I merely returned the kiss, willingly, as she rubbed my body through my nightgown.
“Darling, I couldn’t stay away,” she whispered after a while. “I wanted you so badly. Don’t be afraid.”
“I’m not,” I said.
“I want to suck your tits and lick your asshole and eat your baby pussy. God, I want to make you come so fucking hard …”
She murmured her obscenities directly into my ear. I’d never heard anyone talk such filth, let alone a quiet young nun charged with my Christian upbringing.
“You’re so bad!” I said.
“And I’ll never betray you.”
Those words froze my blood, but Sister went on kissing and touching me until I’d half-forgotten them. In the dim light from the window, I saw a kerchief on her head – a sleep substitute for her veil, I guessed – and her shoulders felt smooth and solid through a thin cotton robe. The kerchief stayed in place, but the robe quickly disappeared. I ran my hands greedily down her bare back and over the smooth, full globes of her ass. My heart was racing again, but no longer with fear.
Sister reached under my gown. What she found amused her no end.
“Wearing panties to bed?” she teased me. “You’re such a baby.” With a chuckle she pulled them down and off. A moment later, she’d hiked up my gown. A sudden, clammy wind blew across my bare breasts, even though the window was closed. I crossed my arms over them.
“No, don’t be shy,” Sister said, pulling at my wrists. She worked my gown out from under my back and over my face, cast it away, then pulled the covers over us and took me in her arms.
“God has given us no greater gift than our own bodies,” she said. “One flesh. Can you feel it?”
“Yes…”
“Touch my breasts.”
We kissed, long and deeply, as our hands roved. The warm, liquid feeling returned. I threw a leg over hers, clamping myself on her thigh.
“Oh, is that what you want?” Sister said. She rolled me away and plunged two fingers into my cunt.
“Little whore,” she said. “Your pussy’s so wet. You want me to fuck your little pussy? Hm? Is that what you want?”
I grunted in response.
“What was that? Tell me. Beg me to fuck your little pussy.”
But with her fingers pumping my cunt, and her foul words pouring into my ear, all I could manage was a spluttering eff sound.
“You like it when I fuck your pussy? Does it feel good?” Sister said. “Come for me. Let me hear you come.”
She stretched my nipple between her lips, then drew my breast fully into her mouth, and that sent me over. It was a true baptism – my initiation into the love of women and the power of orgasm. A flood of grace burst from heaven, filling my heart and leaving an indelible imprint on my soul.
The image of the naked girl in the rain flashed through my mind. At that moment, Sister stilled her hand.
“What was that?” she said.
“Aw, don’t stop!”
“Listen…”
I heard it then – a girl’s tittering laugh, followed by an explosion of footsteps that raced past my bedroom door.
“Who’s running around at this hour?” Sister said.
I expected a commotion. The sisters slept downstairs. I was sure Mother Adalbert would hear the noise and launch a raid, dragging us all into the corridor and demanding we give up the culprit.
If that happened, we both knew, we were ruined. Sister would be discovered in my room, in the middle of the night, for no reason we could explain. We lay there on edge, our eyes on the door, Sister with her fingers motionless in my cunt. I squeezed down on them. I was frightened, yes, but it still felt good.
The girl laughed again, except it wasn’t a laugh. It was an ecstatic cry I wouldn’t have recognized before Sister snuck into my room. Now, after my second baptism, I knew it at once. The girl was orgasming, every bit as hard as I had.
“No,” Sister said. “Don’t.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “They’ll find her, not us.”
“No,” she said. “She can’t… It’s not…”
“What?”
The cries drew closer, as though the girl was masturbating as she strode along the corridor. Finally, mercifully, they stopped, just as they reached my door. Sister and I lay still, like statues on a tomb, waiting in agony for the next sound, which, I hoped, would be the footsteps going away.
The silence was broken by a soft moaning. I could make out a few words, like “little whore” and “fuck your little pussy” – the same words Sister had said to me. They were muffled by the door at first, but gradually grew more and more distinct. In time, they seemed to be coming from inside the room itself.
The faint, milky patch of light on the door condensed before our eyes, acquiring dimension, and, at last, a human shape. It was the girl from the quad, still naked, still hideously bruised, shining softly, as though lit from within, and fingering her pussy.
“I’m coming!” she wailed, clear as a bell. “Fucking God, I’m coming so hard!”
“No!” Sister wailed in return. “Leave her alone! She’s innocent!”
“Shh!” I said, trying to silence them both. The girl – oh, hell, I might as well call her the ghost – emitted an orgasmic shriek before dissolving into the woodwork.
“Paula,” Sister said, as though I wasn’t there.
“You saw her too, right?” I said. “Who was it? Sister?”
“Oh, my Paula, I’m so sorry.”
She covered her face and wept.
♰
Seven years ago, when I was your age (the story came out, haltingly, as we held each other in the dark), she was two years ahead of me, and we fell in love. I didn’t call it love, not that kind of love, not then. I didn’t know the word for it, that there was a word for it. I just wanted to be with her, everywhere, all the time. Then one night, we were alone in the library. She was tutoring me with math. It was so silly, so innocent. I was looking down at the problem – I can still see the equation, x cubed, y squared, plus – she said, “You’ll get it,” and she kissed me on the head. And I kissed her on the cheek. And she kissed me on the mouth. We never did solve the problem.
That night, she came to my room. We undressed each other and gave ourselves. Her fingers inside me. Her tongue on my clitoris. I loved coming. I loved making her come, when she taught me how. It wasn’t sin. I didn’t think of it even as sex, because there was no boy. It was a gift from the Lord that made us happy but kept us pure.
We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Stealing kisses, feeling each other up under our skirts, squeezing each other under our bras. Then every night in my room, or in hers … this very room, your room. The sweetest of all was the night we made love on the quad, naked, on the grass, in the moonlight, under the gaze of the Blessed Mother. She looked down at us. She loved us.
We thought we were careful, but how could we be? Always together, always touching, giggling furtively. Someone told, or Mother Adalbert overheard the gossip, or she saw something. We could feel her watching us. She was there, always, in the corridors, in the dining hall, in the dorms, narrowing her eyes, looking for proof. And we gave it to her.
In the library, again, back among the books, Paula put her hand down the front of my panties. Just a quick feel. “We should stop,” Paula said. And I said no. It felt too good, and I was so close, and Mother Adalbert came around the corner. “What is going on?” she said, but she already knew. She marched us to her office and demanded to know everything. She called us unnatural. She called us perverts. The interrogation went on and on. We were going to be expelled, our parents would be called, and she would have to tell them why, unless we renounced our sin.
And I betrayed the girl I loved. She made me, I said. I was crying. I said I never wanted to. I told her to stop, but she wouldn’t.
So, is she the pervert? Mother Adalbert said.
And I said yes, she’s the pervert. I looked Paula right in the eye, and I said, you make me sick. But she never said a word.
Mother Adalbert passed judgment. Paula would have to leave school. I could stay, but I would be watched, carefully, until I proved to Mother’s satisfaction I hadn’t been infected.
They locked her in her room, away from the good girls, until her parents could come and get her. And that night, she tied her blanket to the leg of her bed, and a sheet to the blanket, and she hanged herself out this very window. We all saw her, early in the morning, dangling one floor above the ground. And she was naked. It was like a message. This is who I am. This is who we all are.
When I saw you, you looked so much like her I thought she’d come back. I had another chance. I could love again, and if we were caught, I would take the blame for you. The way she took it for me. But this … vision … she’s telling me no. I can never love anyone else …
“Sister, it’s all right,” I whispered.
“I was a coward.”
“You were a kid. You were scared. And you don’t know why she did it. She might have anyway.”
“But if I had stood with her–”
“Shh.”
“If I had stood up and said Yes, I love her. It’s not perverted. It’s beautiful. Judge not!”
“Shh.”
I held her damp face to my breasts. She went on murmuring, begging forgiveness, as everything – her voice, the drumming of the rain, my own breathing – got fainter and farther away.
♰
I was awakened by a pounding on my door and the rattling of keys. It was a gray dawn, and I found myself alone, but I scarcely had time to thank God for it, to think how wise of Sister Margaret to steal away during the night, before Mother Adalbert burst into the room and tore the coverlet from my body.
“Come on, Miss,” she said. “I need you to get outside.”
Startled and confused, I made no move to get up.
“Now,” she said. She pulled me out of bed by my hair.
“Where are your clothes?” she said. “Never mind. Wear this for now.” She slapped the coverlet against my chest. Girls in their night things had gathered outside my doorway, and they watched me wrap myself in chenille while Mother Adalbert, gripping the top of my head, kept me facing in their direction. When I was minimally decent, with only my bare legs showing, she shoved me into their midst.
“Clear a path!” a voice commanded. We scattered just as two big men in blue jackets hurried past us into my room. They were carrying satchels and wheeling along a stretcher on a gleaming metal frame.
We never saw men at Calvary, and for the moment, the girls were more interested in them than the fact I’d been hauled out of bed with nothing on.
The men didn’t notice me, either. They went straight to my window, keeping their backs to us. The girls craned their necks, or stood on tiptoe, hoping for a glimpse of what they were up to, but Mother Adalbert interposed herself.
“All of you, get back in your rooms,” she said. She tried to sound threatening, but she was much too shaken to speak with her usual authority. “Keep your doors closed. I don’t want to see hide nor hair of any one of you until these men have done their job.”
She stepped back and shut the door. Seconds later, she reappeared.
“You,” she said. “Put this on.”
She tossed a gray bundle at me. To catch it, I had to let the coverlet fall from my shoulders.
Mother Adalbert gave me her most practiced what’s-this-world-coming-to? headshake before she shut the door again. With the men out of sight for good, my nudity now became the center of attention. The other girls crowded around me.
“Did she do anything to you?”
“Were you asleep the whole time?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
What I meant, though I couldn’t say it, was that I didn’t know anything. I had no idea what anyone was doing or what they were talking about.
“We better go,” somebody said. The girls began to drift away, and no one offered to let me stay with them in their room. I couldn’t blame them. In the middle of all this upset, no one was thinking clearly.
I unraveled the gray bundle and held it in front of me. It was a soft flannel robe. Thoughtful of Mother Adalbert to pick it up and give it to me. I opened it and was turning it about, searching for the sleeve openings, when all at once I understood who the men were and what they were doing at my window.
Because the robe wasn’t mine.
“No,” I said, too quietly to bother the other girls. My second “no” was much louder.
Then I was on the cold floor, curled into a ball on my elbows and knees, sobbing convulsively and holding the precious robe to my face.
♰
The rain had stopped.
From the red-leather chair in Mother Adalbert’s office, I could see through the cloisters and across the quad to the toppled statue of the Virgin. Not far beyond stood the ugly, yellow-brick dormitory annex, presenting, in the upper corner, my own window, from which two young women had chosen to end their mortal lives. The sight meant nothing to me. I’d felt nothing, thought of nothing, since the girls had picked me up and led me away from my door.
A slit appeared in the clouds, and a weak, whitish light settled over the grounds like a benediction. Mother Adalbert came in with my suitcase, which she set at my feet.
“How are you feeling, dear?” she said, for once not playing the stern disciplinarian. “Still don’t feel like talking? That’s understandable. We’ve all had a terrible shock. And you haven’t eaten. Can I bring you something? No? Not even some juice?”
She took my chin between her fingers.
“I doubt you’ll be returning to us,” she said, “so it’s no longer our concern, but I’m wondering what Sister Margaret was doing in your room, and why you were both in the altogether. When you get over this, I suggest you examine your conscience.”
I jerked my face away. Numb as I was, I could still feel hatred, and I hated this woman.
“Your parents will be here this afternoon,” she went on. “You may wait here, away from the other girls. If you need anything … well, if you do–”
And she left. I kept my face turned to the window for I don’t know how long. I didn’t care if I ever spoke, or moved, or thought of anything ever again. That’s how grief works: the little things we do to keep ourselves going – eating, grooming, tidying our rooms – lose all meaning. Indeed, they become a source of guilt. Someone I loved was gone, and here I was adjusting my clothes, as though it made a difference how I looked. I couldn’t remember how I came to be wearing my school uniform that morning. Someone must have dressed me.
I began to wonder, vaguely, if I would ever laugh again, like the girl I heard laughing outside. Wait, I thought. Who’s laughing? Who could think of laughing on a terrible day like this? I must have been hearing things. I listened more intently: there came a giggle, followed by a full-throated laugh and a squeal of joy. There were two voices now. They seemed to be coming from everywhere.
Bitches, I thought.
“Hey!” shouted one of the voices. “Wait up!”
“Can’t catch me!” said the other, closer than the first. Then I saw her. She ran past the window, spun around, and leaned back against the pillar of an archway – dark-haired, thick-browed, and naked. She was shaking with laughter, holding her hands up in a playful show of defending herself, when a young woman swept into her arms.
“Darling!” the girl gasped as the woman devoured her neck. She was naked, too, but for a kerchief atop her straw-blonde hair. I couldn’t see her face, or the bruises on her throat, but I didn’t need to.
They clung fast to one another. Their lips met, and their tongues shimmered in the colorless sunlight. Sister Margaret – or her essence – sank to her knees, kissing Paula’s breasts and belly as she descended. At last, she planted herself where she wanted to be, where she had longed to be for seven years. Her mouth vanished into the spectral wedge of hair.
Paula’s eyes took on the same wild, out-of-body expression I’d seen during the night. She turned her gaze toward me through the diamond-shaped windowpanes. Her lips began to move.
“Oh, God,” they said, silently. “Oh … fuck.”
I couldn’t help but smile.
The End
Things were different on the shuttle, and for the better. For one thing, it was now “our shuttle.” And instead of flying solo with Raya the computer, I was seated alongside Raya, my friend and lover.