charlotte racioppo

     Sister Petrice says I’m too distractible. Sister Constance says I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached. Sister Gwendolyn says I’m to sort through the donations because only by confronting temptation might we master it.
     Sister Frederica says she has a stick stuck up her you-know-where.      She gives me the key to the cellarium and a blessing,
          In her footsteps,
     etc., 
          Lady guide you, 
     etc., 
     the key is a heavy thing like an anchor in my pocket. Thunk goes the door, click goes the lock. I like when the monastery talks back.
     The village brings us donations every week. I don’t know how they still have any things left. The cellarium spills over with sacks of grain for the granary, thread for darning, pouches of coins for who-knows-what when only laypeople and demons have use for commerce. Maybe Sister Paulette will melt them down. I put things into piles like Sister Orla taught me,
     All things in their time,
     All things in their place,
     even the Lady knows spring cleaning. I rest on the grain. Tie knots in the thread.
     Salvation in order; devils in disarray.

 

     The Lady was distractible too. She didn’t find the City until she got lost. She didn’t speak the Word until she dreamt language. Sister Jocaste says I’m begging for a fall but I’ve never begged once, not even when my parents gave me to the monastery as a birthday present and I was nine and I cried and cried and cried.
     I heave out an old chest and flick open the latches, tck tck. Bolts of raw linen, gardening tools. Someone’s given us their children’s things – doll, whistle, mask.
     The mask’s lacquer wears down to the wood. Chipped paint in Solstice colors. I haven’t been to a proper festival since I was nine.
     I slip it on.

 

     Mina! 
     The village square, flower crowns on children’s heads as they jump rope, a fiddler on a balcony, Sister Frederica takes my arm and spins me around.
     “Sister?”
     Dance with me!

     

     I pull the mask down and tumble into the sacks of grain, back into the cellarium. The music’s gone.
     “Hello?” I say.
     This is not how the monastery talks. I’m not sure which pile the mask is supposed to join.

 

     Home, color, sound. The fiddler is playing my favorite reel and I can smell sticky buns, Sister Petrice doles them out from a streetside stall. Every sense sings.
     A young man is wearing a mask with eyes like Sister Gwendolyn’s, a smile like the Lady’s. He approaches me and extends his hands: an open palm. A jumping rope.
     “I have no money,” I say.
     Don’t you?, he says.
     The fiddler strikes up another reel.

 

     I fish around in my pocket.
     I find the cellarium key.

     I can’t feel the mask and then I can’t remember it. The man bows and walks off. I have never felt this light, joyous, free.
     Thwip thwip thwip goes the rope.

 

     Thunk goes the cellarium door. 
     Click goes the lock.