Marie-Helene Bertino - Safe as Houses

The rest of the sisters exchange worried glances.

“This is not good,” says Charlene. Then “Trampled Under Foot” blares out of the speakers and she yells, “Get the Led out!” The sisters of Saint Joseph hold their beers and wag their bodies around the dance floor.

Sister Charlene takes my arm. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”

“No one would believe me. Also, I have no friends.”

She nods. We drink.

“The rainbow-sticker thing,” I say. “Is it necessary?”

Her shoulders pulse with the music. “The bookmarks?”

“It bums the kids out when they don’t get the rainbow sticker.”

“That’s part of life, Ruby.”

“I know it’s part of life, but they’re five. They have their whole lives to be disappointed. Maybe they don’t need a lottery enacted every Sunday.”

“It’s not a lottery; it’s a way of making a decision.”

“Well now, Sister, it’s a lottery.”

Sister Mary is playing an air-drum solo. Her technique is chaste, virginal. “Lookin’ good, Mary!” Charlene yells, then to me says, “Agree to disagree.” She holds out her beer and we clink. “You’re here now, so you might as well dance.”

The sisters play every Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and ELO song the jukebox holds. I crochet in and out of them. Heaven exists, maybe. I drink to it, to the bar, these women, and this night. I drink to the tomato plants. I drink to Christopher. I drink to all the ships at sea.

They seem to have an inside joke about “Houses of the Holy,” a joke I am trying to shoehorn myself into when the door opens and a group of men trudge in. One of them careens into Sister Charlene, who pulls her skirt away and says excuse me as he passes.

Same man gets to the bar and knocks Sister Helena with his elbow. The beer she holds splashes onto her habit and face. The man turns back to his buddies at the bar.

“Hey!” I call. “You spilled beer on Sister Helena.”

He turns around, his face blank. “What happened?”

Sister Helena dabs her nose with a napkin. “Ruby, it was an accident.”

I am having trouble keeping my balance. I lean on Sister Mary. “You spilled a beer on a nun,” I yell. “A nun!”

He stares blandly in her direction. “Sorry.”

“Are you the patron saint of dickheads? Say you’re sorry and mean it.”

When he looks up to see who is yelling at him, his face takes on a look of bemusement. “I did.”

The sisters of Saint Joseph close ranks against, unbelievably, me. Sister Charlene gets between me and the man, whose look of bemusement is fading into something more volatile, which delights me. There are only two things I know how to do: encourage plants to produce tomatoes as bright as the sun and fight. I paw the ground like a bull. I rev up.

“Calm down,” he says. Then, thinking about it, adds, “Bitch.”

I charge. The sisters of Saint Joseph spring into action. They rush me joyously, a line of wide receivers shouldering a tackling dummy. I am knocked ineloquent against the floor.

“You bitches are crazy,” I cry to the tin ceiling. “You crazy bitches are crazy!”

I try to get up. My drunk blooms. My head wants to stay down. The sisters pull me to my feet. They hang me like a wet T-shirt on a clothesline made out of the shoulders of Charlene and Mary. “Our apologies,” one of them says.

“Is she a nun?” the man says.

Sister Mary says, “Dear God no.”

They carry me out of the bar. Sister Helena walks in front, conducting us like an orchestra. “Don’t let her head loll around like that,” she says. “Hitch your hip against her thigh, Mary. Pin her hand to your shoulder, Charlene.”

Slowly, with Helena conducting, we make our way down the road to the convent.

They pause halfway to rest. I ignore Sisters Charlene and Mary, who rub their dancing hips in pain.

“Quit exaggerating.” I take a seat on a tree stump. The tree stump is swaying. Or I am swaying. “I’m no bigger than a minute. No bigger than a cricket. No bigger than a very small thing.”

A voice says, “Give her to me.”

It is the brusque, masculine tone of Sister Georgia. I am struck by otherworldly fear.

“Don’t give me to her! She’ll crush me!” My legs pedal uselessly against the ground. Sister Georgia takes me into her arms.

“Go easy on me!” I say. “I’m not a kielbasa!”

The voice says, “Quiet.”

In the arms of Sister Georgia, I am surprised to find a soft place. The fat that hangs like half Hula-Hoops below her arms stabilizes me on both sides. Her dress holds a sweet smell, and through its coarse fiber I hear her flapping heart. She hauls me easily down the road.

“Did you learn how to carry someone like this in prison?” I say.

She makes her tsk ing sound. On every other occasion this fills me with worry and regret, but when you are tired enough, anything sounds like a lullaby. Crickets hum in the bushes we pass. “Those crickets are the same size as me.” I drift off against her soft bosom. My eyes are closed, but I know there is a moon. “I miss Clive,” I tell her metronome heart.

Then Sister Georgia says — so quietly I am unable to know with certainty if it is her voice I hear or the forest sounds we pass that can be linked to neither animal nor bug—“I miss Germany.”

When we reach the gate of the convent, she hands me back to Charlene and Mary. I watch as she thunders into the night bigly, as round as the moon that persists above her, until they are indistinguishable — the moon and my vestige of safe transport.

I am yanked through the opened gate. The courtyard fills with the shushings of women struggling under the weight of a drunk. I am that drunk but am too drunk to feel bad about it. My inebriation is ebullient, wide enough for everyone. I forget about Sister Georgia because I have come up with a brilliant idea.

“Let’s do bell kicks.” I throw out my left leg and wag it. What I succeed in doing is not a bell kick, but the effect is pleasing to me. I request the attention of Sister Helena.

“Admire my kick.” I do it again.

Helena’s mouth is knotted.

“You’re not even looking.”

Scuffling at the basement door. Which sister has the keys buried in her vestment and who should hold me while they look?

“Flip a coin!” I demand.

Finally we get in.

The sisters of Saint Joseph carry me down the stairs to my room. They arrange their shoes into a perfect line by my door. I hurl my boots on top. They carry me to bed. I am certain they have asked me to list every commercial tagline I know, so I, supine, call out to heaven:

Cardinal Bank. Named after a bird because Birds. Know. Money .

Kiwi Air. If you can beat these prices, start your own damn airline!

I hear rustling by the foot of the bed as the sisters root through my drawers. Then into my vision intrudes the head of Sister Charlene.

“Where are your pajamas, Ruby?”

“You’re not Sister Helena,” I inform her.

“No, dear. I’m Charlene. We want to get you into your pajamas.”

I say, “Put Sister Helena on the phone!”

After what feels like a year, Sister Helena appears with a towel wrapped around her head.

“Thank god.” I lean forward, attempting to make a private space where we can gossip. “There are all these people pretending to be you.” I hoist my head in the direction of the doorway, where the blurry form of Sister Charlene leans in the shadows.

Sister Helena looks disappointed. “You’ve had a lot to drink.”

I have the rationale of whiskey. “You’ve had a lot to drink.”

She gives me an aspirin and I sit up to take it. Immediately I feel it dissolve and fill my insides, making every atom in my body quake.