1955
It’s a bright September morning, and the sun is spilling inside the classroom through the open windows. Elodie is on the carpet, coloring. She uses the broken crayons that Sister Tata keeps in an old maple syrup can for the younger students. Elodie doesn’t use coloring books, which are boring. Instead, she likes to draw pictures of families. She always draws herself standing next to her mother, holding her hand and smiling, with as many brothers and sisters as space on the page or time will allow before Sister Tata rings the bell for lessons.
The mother in her drawings always has blond hair, like hers. Elodie isn’t sure why her mother left her with the nuns when she was born, but she’s confident there must be a good reason. Whenever she asks the sisters why she lives at the orphanage, they tell her, “Because you were born in sin and nobody else wants you.” Sometimes they say, “Because you were born in Scandal.”
Elodie has no idea what any of it means, or where Scandal is, but she’s sure her mother will come back for her eventually and she’ll be reunited with her brothers and sisters. She likes to name them all in her head—Claude, Lucien and Lucienne (the twins), Linda, Lorraine, Jeanne. At the top of her pictures, she writes MA FAMILLE. Sister Tata—whose real name is Alberta—taught her how to write the letters, and now they march across the top of every one of her drawings. Sister Tata says it’s a miracle Elodie can sit still long enough to draw her families. One time she drew a family with seventeen kids.
Her best friend, Claire, doesn’t color with her; she prefers to look at picture books. Claire is six, and she almost knows how to read. They’ve grown up together at Saint-Sulpice, and if Claire is still here when her mother comes to take her home, she’s going to ask if Claire can come, too.
For now, Elodie is happy enough here, even though the nuns and the people who come to visit call it the Home for Unwanted Girls. Elodie doesn’t feel especially unwanted. Her nickname is Elo, and even Mère Blanche calls her that. She shares a room with twenty other girls, all of them motherless just like her. There used to be only ten or twelve girls to a room—never more than that—but recently they’ve begun to cram in as many as two dozen. There are many, many rules at Saint-Sulpice, but Elodie finds ways to maneuver around them. The sisters tell her she has a rambunctious nature, and she’s had her fair share of punishments for talking back—having to miss supper, losing outdoor privileges, or getting her knuckles hit with the ruler. But she likes school, and soon she’ll learn how to read, and on her birthday she got a doll, which was donated by one of the families in Cowansville. She named her Poupée.
On this day, a knock at the door disrupts their usual routine. Sister Tata claps her hands to get everyone’s attention. “At your desks,” she says sternly.
“But I’m not finished,” Elodie says, not budging from the carpet.
“At your desk now.”
Sister’s tone is enough to get Elodie up on her feet and back to her desk. Sister opens the door and a man enters the classroom. Unusual, Elodie thinks, looking over at Claire. The man is wearing a grey suit and hat, which he takes off and sets down on Sister’s desk. He has a moustache and a glum expression. Elodie decides she doesn’t like him.
“This is Dr. Duceppe,” Sister announces. “He’s going to ask you each some questions. Just answer as best you can. You will be called outside the class when it’s your turn. In the meantime, you’re to remain at your desks, eyes in front and backs straight, working on your lessons. No fidgeting, please.”
Elodie raises her hand and also blurts her question before she’s called on. “What sort of questions?” she wants to know.
“You’ll find out when it’s your turn.”
With that, Sister Tata calls on the first girl. Elodie watches her make her way to the front of the class and follow the moustached man outside. The door closes. Elodie is beside herself with anticipation.
She has a hard time concentrating on writing her letters. She’s supposed to copy the letter A from one end of the page to the other, but it’s boring and hard to keep the A’s neatly between the two lines. She can hardly wait for her turn with the doctor.
Finally, it comes. She jumps up from her desk and makes her way out of the class, where the doctor is waiting for her. She follows him down the hall to Mère Blanche’s office, neither of them uttering a word.
“Sit down, please,” Dr. Duceppe instructs, closing the door behind him.
Elodie sits in the chair facing the desk. The doctor sits across from her, in Mère Blanche’s chair. She can see notes on his clipboard. Elodie: 3–6–50. There are some other words too, which she doesn’t know how to read.
“Do you know what this is?” he asks her, holding up a square brown object that has a texture like the ball the boys play sports with outside.
She reaches out to touch it and discovers that it unfolds. Inside, there are rectangular pieces of paper with numbers on them. She shrugs. “No, monsieur.”
He takes the thing back from her and scribbles something on the paper. “It’s a wallet,” he mutters.
“For what?”
He raises his eyes to meet hers without lifting his head. “For carrying your money,” he says.
“What about this?” He holds up a picture of some oddly shaped silver things. And then another of a big machine she doesn’t recognize.
“No, monsieur. No, monsieur.”
“Keys,” he says. “Stove.”
“Do you know what the word ‘compare’ means?” he asks her.
“No, monsieur.”
Scribble, scribble. “That’s all,” he says, not even looking at her.
She sits there for a moment, not wanting it to be over. “That’s all?” she repeats.
“You can go back to your class now.”
“I can almost tie my shoelace,” she tells him.
He doesn’t say anything. She goes back to the class. Claire is looking at her expectantly. Elodie shrugs. Nothing more is said about the moustached man for the rest of the day.
The next morning when they get to class after prayers, Sister Tata tells them to go straight to their desks. “But it’s carpet time,” Elodie reminds her.
“There’s no carpet time today,” Sister says, and Elodie is disappointed.
Before long, two more sisters show up in the classroom, followed by Mère Blanche. Elodie looks over at Claire. Something is going on.
“Girls,” Mother says, standing front and center of the room, her hands clasped together, her back straight as a plank. “Today is Change of Vocation Day,” she announces.
The girls begin to twitter. Elodie is excited. Change of Vocation Day! “Is it a holiday?” she cries out, not bothering to raise her hand.
“After today,” Mother continues, “there will be no more school.”
Elodie’s spirits plunge. No more school?
“From now on, the orphanage will be a hospital,” Mother tells them.
Elodie looks over at Sister Tata and notices tears rolling down her cheeks. Her head is lowered, and she won’t make eye contact with Elodie or any of the girls.
“What does that mean?” one of the older girls asks.
“Just as I said,” Mère Blanche responds sharply. “We are now a mental hospital. There’s no more orphanage and no more orphans. From this day forward, you are all mentally retarded.”
Elodie looks around the room. Everyone is dead silent. Some of the older girls are crying. Sister Tata’s shoulders are shaking, her head still lowered, her eyes hidden. “What does it mean, ‘mentally retarded’?” Elodie asks.
“It means you’re mentally deficient,” Mother explains. “Do you understand? You’re mental patients now. This is how we go forward.”
With that, she turns on her heels and leaves the room to its silent shock and heartbreak.
The next morning, three important things happen, all of which give Elodie an anxious feeling of terrible things to come. The first is the banging that wakes her up much earlier than usual. When she looks outside, she sees workers removing all the shutters from the windows and replacing them with black iron bars.
Next, when she goes downstairs to breakfast, she notices that all the sisters are wearing white habits instead of their usual black.
“Why is your dress white?” she asks Sister Joséphine, sitting down to her bowl of gruau d’avoine.
“This is the habit the nurses wear.”
“Since when are you a nurse?”
“Since today.”
The banging outside is deafening, and some of the toddlers are crying and covering their ears. “Why are they putting up bars on the windows?” she asks Sister Joséphine.
“It’s a mental hospital now.”
“But it’s not a prison.”
“It is, in a way.”
Elodie can feel her lower lip begin to quiver. “Will we be locked inside?”
“Yes,” Sister says, not making eye contact. “This is the way it is now, so you must stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Why is this happening?”
“Because you were born in sin.”
Elodie bites her lip. She stares down into her bowl of gruel and concentrates on not crying at the table.
“Do we have lessons today?” Claire asks Sister Joséphine.
Elodie’s head pops up.
“No,” Sister says. “Today we have to get ready for the new patients. Tomorrow you start working.”
“Why?”
“No more school.”
“What new patients?” Elodie wants to know.
“Stop asking so many questions.”
“What kind of work will we have to do?” Claire asks.
“You’ll have to help take care of the other mental patients,” Sister Joséphine responds, and Elodie notices she’s made a point of inserting the word “other”—“other mental patients.”
“We’re not mental patients,” Elodie clarifies.
Sister Joséphine sets down her spoon and stares directly across the table at Elodie. “Yes,” she says, her voice cold, her eyes unflinching. “You are.”
An hour later, while the bars are still going up in the windows, a yellow school bus pulls up in front of the redbrick building that Elodie has always known as home.
“The crazies are here!” someone yells.
The orphans crowd around the windows in the front room with nervous anticipation to watch as their strange new roommates pile out of the bus one by one. The children and nuns let out a collective gasp as the spectacle unfolds before them—old men and women shuffling clumsily up the walk in pajamas, some of them babbling and singing, others in stupefied trances.
“They’re old!” one of the children cries out.
“And scary!”
This is the third disturbing thing to happen this day.
Elodie feels a knot of panic tighten in her chest. She’s old enough and clever enough to understand that life as she knew it is over.