Read Online The Dance Boots by Linda L Grover - Free Book Online Page A

hung outside the dining hall created a rustle of dresses and heads turning and whispers, the sound of doves in wind.
    The matron clapped twice. “Put your things away.” The girls gathered thimbles, needles, thread, and scissors into small cardboard sewing boxes that they placed on a shelf. “Line up.” They formed a queue, shortest to tallest, by the door. “March.” The smallest girl opened the door and held it as the girls filed out. Each said, “Thank you, Miss” as she left. Then the small girl closed the door and joined the line.
    â€œYou did very well, Marguerite. They were following your directions, I think.” The matron held several stockings up into the light from the window. “There will always be mending for them to do, of course, but some of the girls, if they show a knack for sewing and get something done, can start cutting out summer-weight dresses for the little ones soon.”
    â€œHave they learned to follow a pattern, Matron?”
    â€œSome have; the others will have to learn. Please call me Julia—among the female staff we use first names. With the men we don’t, of course.”
    â€œOf course.”
    She would have to call Andre “Mr. Robineau.”
    â€œShall we walk to the dining hall? We use the cook’s lavatory to wash before meals.” She looked curious. “Is Harrod anything like the Catholic mission school?” she asked, wondering if it was true that the young woman, newly hired to help sew and care for the younger children, had been taught by the religious sisters to speak French and make lace.
    â€œIt was smaller, and there were only girls, no boys. And the teachers were Sisters.” Sister Cecile might at that very moment be grasping a little girl’s arm and leading her to the front doors of the classroom building to kneel on the wooden stairs, on a white navy bean. She might be scolding the little girl, as she had Maggie, lispingthrough a fine spray of spit, “This is what happens to girls who talk like savages. Next time you’ll remember English.” Her fingers and thumb might leave light blue-gray prints on the little girl’s upper arm, four small circles on the underside, one larger on the outside, that the little girl might press with an index finger as she examined them before putting on her nightgown, just before prayers, feeling and controlling the faint ghost of pain and remembering the grasp of Sister Cecile’s strong and holy fingers.
    â€œDid you enjoy your studies?”
    â€œYes, I did, but I enjoyed sewing the most.” Her sister, Henen, had been the better student, and the Sisters’ favorite; if she had been white, she might have become a Sister herself. Henen stood up straight, kept her fingernails clean, and enunciated carefully, copying Sister Jean Baptiste—‘Mar-geh-reet. Hell-en. Par-don me. Good mor-ning.” She read aloud without stumbling. Her mathematics problems were solved correctly and written neatly. Her lacemaking was exquisite. Her handwriting samples, disciplined Palmer Method arabesques and curlicues that matched the lace she made, were exhibited on the wall for the Indian agent to see when he visited the school. So delicate and refined was her touch that she was excused from kitchen work to assist Sister Therese with the preparation of the communion hosts before they were consecrated. At morning Mass she knelt without fidgeting while she prayed; at the altar railing she concentrated on the gift of the Eucharist with beseeching eyes, which closed in prayer as the priest placed the host on her tongue.
    â€œWhy can’t you be more like Helen?” Sister Cecile asked the girls, nearly every day. The girls looked away from the paragon in sympathy; it was mortifying to Henen, of course.
    They were, actually, more like Henen than Sister Cecile knew; or, Henen was more like them than Sister Cecile knew: before being sent to the mission