She looked down and she could see his penis pushing up his pants.
“It grows and gets hard anytime I think about doing these types of things to you.”
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SISTER ELO?SE NOTICED that they were whispering. She hurried into the chapel and went into the coatroom through its back door. She sat on the couch in the room and listened through the transom to what Pierrot and Rose were saying on the other side of the wall. There was an opening of some sort in every wall for this purpose: no one could have any privacy.
Pierrot wasn’t actually whispering when he put his mouth up to Rose’s ear. All he had done was lower the register of his voice to make it huskier. It was almost like his words had taken their clothes off. And so Sister Elo?se heard each of them.
She was so angry. It was so vulgar. He didn’t want to have anything to do with her physically yet pretended that he was a pure child wanting an innocent and holy union. And now here was Pierrot with the vocabulary of the Marquis de Sade, as sophisticated and well versed as Casanova.
She was filled with a terrible and uncontrollable rage. But, as always, her rage was not directed toward Pierrot. She was filled with loathing toward Rose, who was really only the passive listener. Rose hadn’t even been able to respond. It was as if Rose were being offered a box of chocolate-covered cherries to eat. It was as if Rose were going to receive everything Sister Elo?se had ever talked herself out of wanting.
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ON THE OTHER SIDE of the wall Rose stood up quickly, frightened by Pierrot’s words. Or it wasn’t exactly that she was afraid of them, but they made her feel like doing odd things. It was as though her body had a mind of its own. She wanted to strip naked. She wanted him to call her Mrs. Pierrot.
Rose needed to reflect upon these strange knee-jerk reactions before acting on them. The new sensations and desires she was feeling were delightful and confusing all at once. So she jumped up and darted off. She had just entered the dormitory and was leaning against the wall when Sister Elo?se came for her.
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SISTER ELO?SE hated Rose’s face too. It was so calm and blank, open to everything. It was a face that all sorts of people fell madly in love with. She always wanted to take that face like it was a piece of wet clay and mold it into a different expression, one that was bitter and filled with rage and discontent. But no matter what she did to Rose, Rose always looked up at her afterward with that same unscathed face.
Elo?se stopped herself from doing anything to Rose at that moment. She thought she would kill the girl if she didn’t walk away. She hurried off down the stairs.
Rose looked after Elo?se. She had never understood the Sister.
? ? ?
ROSE WAS MOPPING THE FLOOR in the vestibule by the front entrance of the orphanage. The tiles at the bottom of the flight of stairs were brown and white. There was a yellow stained-glass window with an image of a lamb that the light shone through. It shone on Rose as she assiduously mopped up the area, for it was where the most footprints seemed to gather, like they were fish in a net.
Sister Elo?se was waiting and waiting for Rose to make some sort of mistake, to perpetrate an infraction. It usually didn’t take very long. You only had to observe a child for several minutes before they made some sort of ridiculous mistake. What on earth was as flawed and imperfect as a child? She needed Rose to make a mistake not only to justify to the other children the punishment she was going to rain down upon Rose, but to justify it to herself.
Rose found the sunlight intoxicating. It made her sleepy. It made her dreamy. It blinded her to the physical world around her. The mop in the bucket made the sound of a pig rooting for truffles. She flopped it onto the floor. Rose began thinking of the words Pierrot had said to her. She couldn’t help it. She then, for a short moment, took the mop in her hands and began to dance with it while washing the floor. She began to fantasize about dancing with Pierrot, his arms around her waist and his fingers secretly reaching down to her behind.