Read Online Black Apple by Joan Crate - Free Book Online

pass through her entire body. Perhaps an animal had come into the school and been caught by Brother Abraham, a small animal trapped and possibly injured, dangerous even. She should get up. She should hurry down the hall and find out just what was taking place. The cries continued, terrible, rising and falling. She sat unmoving in her chair, chilled to the marrow of her bones.
    She should get up, but she felt poorly. She had a great deal of paperwork to take care of. She simply didn’t have the strength. Nor the motivation. The problem would very likely resolve itself.
      *  *  *  
    Rose Marie lay on her bed, a lump of raw meat. A hammer pounded the left side of her skull just above her eye. Beds scraped across the floor, their springs crying out like small birds. From the high northwest windows, light pulsed, broke apart, and dropped on her, small punches blackening her eyes and jamming her down a dark hole. She fell.
      *  *  *  
    Light blasted her awake. She heard the moan of an animal caught in Papa’s trap.
    O Sacred Heart of Jesus, filled with infinite love, broken by our ingratitude, and pierced by our sins , a nun prayed by her bed. She didn’t recognize the voice. When she opened her eyes, she saw it was that new nun, the one who always disappeared again, the one she saw backwards.
    She drifted in and out of sleep, and the nun faded and returned, her voice a thread carried by air currents. Take every faculty of our souls and bodies. The prayer wafted her to a nest of hides she sank into, at home, home at last and not hurting.
      *  *  *  
    Mother Grace floated above. Her papery hand blurred as it reached and touched her forehead. The hammer came down again, slamming her eye shut. Mother Grace and Sister Cilla made her sit up and, oh, pulled off her school dress.
    “No, it hurts!”
    “Sinopaki,” Mama whispered.
    Then that trapped animal again, a little fox moaning until the sky pushed down and stubbed her out.
      *  *  *  
    Taki’s face was next to hers. “Assa, assa!”
    “Get away from her, Anne,” Sister Margaret ordered.
    Other girls passed by her bed, staring with oh my eyes.
      *  *  *  
    Her skull cracked under a weight, and water seeped in. Taki had placed something cold and wet over her eye.
    “Rosie, please don’t make that sound.”
    “Is she all right?” Sister Cilla asked, long fingers crossing her flat chest.
    Taki pulled a scratchy blanket up to her chin.
    “Don’t. It hurts,” she murmured.
    “You talked, Rosie. Sister Cilla, she talked!”
      *  *  *  
    Mother Grace came with a flashlight and stroked her aching hair. “How could she do this to you? Such a bright girl, she always says. Stubborn, but nevertheless—”
      *  *  *  
    The dorm was dark, full of sleeping girls, but someone, something, was stirring. It pulled at her, wanting her to look up, to see.
    Once, at home, when she was supposed to be asleep, she had felt the same need to open her eyes and peer out of her nest of skins. Mama was sewing in a circle of lamplight as she always did the nights Papa was away in the bush. A fire flickered from the mouth of the stove, lighting Mama and the rising-falling waves of her breasts and baby-belly, the glinting needle poking down and pulling up through the cloth—a warm sleepy song. She was about to settle back in her bed when she noticed something pouring through the air like thin milk, oh, just like the spirits she had seen flowing from birds caught in Mama’s snares, or the spurt of four-leggeds escaping Papa’s traps of steel and pain, leaving their bodies behind.
    Heart drumming, she watched milk curdle into arms and legs. Not forming an animal or a bird but the shape of a lady. She looked over at Mama, who hadn’t even noticed.
    She wanted to call, Mama, watch out , but the lady-shape was filling with colour. A dress—red, blue, and yellow, gathered at the waist with a brass-studded belt that glittered crazily in