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"An abundance of Guineveres," Sister Fran said, clicking her tongue, which we took as acknowledgment that Gwen's arrival was no coincidence but a miracle indeed. That morning at breakfast, over stewed prunes and dry toast, we sat together, the four of us, now with Gwen, complete.
Of The Guineveres, Gwen was the prettiest, and she understood this as fact, not opinion. Someday she hoped to become an actress. She clipped out photos of beautiful people from the only magazines she could find in the library, and she tacked them to her bunk, staring at the images while she sat up in bed brushing her hair—exactly one hundred strokes every night before Lights Out.
It was Gwen, herself longing to wear lipstick, who taught us to stain our lips with the beets we were served for dinner or the berries we picked out of the fruit salad. It was Gwen who instructed us to stuff our bras with tissues, not by wadding but by folding so as not to create lumps. It was Gwen who demonstrated how to do toe touches to slenderize our middles or how to perform the pencil test that we all passed, except Win, or how to roll up the tops of our gray uniform skirts so we didn't look old-fashioned. It was Gwen who showed us how to steal butter from the dinner table—"It's borrowing," she explained, as she tucked a pat into the cuff of her sleeve—so that we could later massage it into our hair and skin made brittle by the dry air of the convent. She dedicated herself devoutly to grooming.
And it was Gwen who, after living at the convent for less than a year, devised our hollow-floated plan to leave it.
"We're running away," she had said. She was reclining on one of the plaid couches in the Rec Room, propped up on pillows like Cleopatra awaiting hand-fed grapes. "And I know just how to do it." She smiled with one corner of her mouth, for dramatic effect, the way she sometimes did. The rest of us sat on the hard ground beside her and leaned in to listen.
She had gotten the idea from a movie she'd once seen back home, in her Unholy Life. In it, a giant cake was wheeled into a party at a mansion—an executive's house—and a chorus girl popped out of it, her arms raised in a V. Gwen soon demonstrated the scene for us, jumping up from behind one of the couches and putting her arms toward the ceiling as Father James sometimes did during mass. In the movie, everyone gazed upon the beautiful woman as she burst through the cardboard cake, including the man who would eventually fall in love with her. This was Gwen's favorite part, the marveled, amorous expression on the man's face.
We worked on our float for weeks, every evening in the courtyard, right after dinner until Lights Out. Win, whose grandfather had taught her to use tools, built the frame for us, a wooden base supporting chicken wire that we all helped bend into shape: a giant hand offering the victory sign. It was a universal symbol, The Guineveres agreed, and only one finger away from the other universal symbol we wished to offer the convent upon our departure. We painstakingly covered the frame with yellow tissue paper, twisting each piece around the wire and flaying it out at the ends until the frame was completely covered and our fingers numbed. The end product looked primitive, at best; the oversized fingers were set too vertically together to look much like a victory sign.
"Victory?" Sister Fran had questioned when she came to assess our creation. "A rather secular theme, don't you think?"
"The victory of our souls," one of us said. After all, she reminded us daily about the battle between good and evil that raged inside our young bodies.
"This won't do." As parade master, Sister Fran made it her earnest duty to ensure every float met a particular standard. The prior year, some girls weren't allowed to enter their Holy Chalice because she said it looked too similar to a martini glass. "Quality, like cleanliness, is a sign of godliness, girls," Sister Fran muttered as she circled our float. Her nose was an equilateral triangle, and she tapped the tip of it while thinking. A few tedious moments of contemplation passed, and then she spoke again. "Ah, a hand of benediction. Yes, yes. A hand of benediction."
Excerpted from The Guineveres by Sarah Domet. Copyright © 2016 by Sarah Domet. Excerpted by permission of Flatiron Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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