“She don’t say,” Queenie said, making her way back to the kitchen. “Just thought you’d want to know.”
Fannie jumped up from the table. Ibby could hear her dialing the phone in the hall.
Queenie came back into the room to refill Fannie’s coffee cup.
“Why’d you go and bring that up?” Ibby whispered to her.
“She got to know sooner or later,” Queenie said.
“Later would have been better,” Ibby said.
“No time for later around this house,” Queenie said.
“Who’s she calling?” Ibby said. “I hope it’s not Vidrine.”
“Oh.” Queenie sat back on her heels. “Never thought about that.”
When Fannie came back into the room, she was smiling.
Queenie said to Ibby, low enough so Fannie couldn’t hear, “Couldn’t have been Vidrine. Not the way she’s grinning.”
“It’s all settled,” Fannie said.
“What you going on about, Miss Fannie?” Queenie asked. “What’s all settled?”
“I just enrolled Ibby at Our Lady of the Celestial Realm Catholic School for Girls. She starts in a couple of weeks.”
Ibby fell back against her chair.
Queenie shook her head. “Miss Ibby gone be a Catholic schoolgirl. Now, ain’t that something.”
Part Two
1968
Chapter Twenty-Two
Most of the girls at Our Lady of the Celestial Realm had known each other since preschool and were from good Catholic families, a phrase that tumbled from their lips like one long word, good-Catholic-families. There were few exceptions. In Ibby’s sophomore class of twenty-five girls, there was only one non-Catholic—Ibby Bell. As far as Ibby could tell, the only reason she’d been accepted at Our Lady of the Celestial Realm was because Fannie knew the head nun, Sister Gertrude, although Fannie never would explain the connection. That was four years ago.
Today was the last day of school, and the girls were lined up like dominoes, in identical uniforms of green plaid skirts and white poplin blouses with initials monogrammed on their collars, as they made their way toward the chapel for the final prayer service. Ibby kept her head down in an effort to avoid being noticed by Sister Gertrude, who was trudging up and down the line like a drill sergeant, her rubber-soled shoes squeaking against the waxed-wood floor. Close to six feet tall, with piercing green eyes and thin lips that were forever pursed, Sister Gertrude could scare away the devil himself.
“Girls, girls, quiet!” she huffed.
The sound of Sister Gertrude’s booming voice was usually enough to make the girls stand at attention, but not today, with only an hour before school let out for the summer. Our Lady of the Celestial Realm wasn’t air-conditioned, and the open windows along the hallway leading into the chapel offered no respite, serving only to let in the stifling May heat and a few hungry flies. The girls were getting punchy and restless.
“Silence! If I have to say it again, detentions for each and every one of you.”
Ibby held her breath as Sister Gertrude stopped beside her and tapped a ruler against her habit. The nun put out her hand to the girl in line in front of Ibby.
“Janice Jumonville, spit out that gum.”
The startled schoolgirl leaned over and let a gob of pink bubblegum drop into Sister Gertrude’s open palm. Sister Gertrude slipped the gum into the pocket of her habit and moved on. Ibby wondered how many wads of chewing gum she had in there, collecting lint.
The girl behind Ibby pushed her.
“Stop that, Annabelle,” Ibby said. “You’re going to get me in trouble.”
Puberty had not been kind to Annabelle. Her unruly red hair had taken on a brassy tone, the gap in her front teeth had grown wider, and her freckles had multiplied and run together, making her look like she had some sort of skin disorder. Even so, she still carried herself as if the whole world owed her a favor.
Annabelle pushed Ibby again, this time harder, and the yearbook Ibby had been holding fell to the floor with a thud. As Ibby bent down to pick it up, her eye caught the small wooden plaque over the chapel door:
THE GOLDEN RULE
Do unto others
As you would have them
Do unto you.
She wanted to point the sign out to Annabelle, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Annabelle would be forever stuck on the second line—Do unto others.
Sister Gertrude must have been watching the antics because she came over and yanked Annabelle out of line and marched her down to her office at the end of the hall without so much as a word.
“Serves her right,” Marcelle whispered when Sister Gertrude was out of earshot.
Ibby hated chapel because she was relegated to sitting in the back while all her classmates lined up in the aisle to take communion, something Ibby wasn’t allowed to do because she wasn’t Catholic. After four years of enduring this, it still made her feel like an outcast.