Origami Girls by Marie-Louise McGuinness
Clare, Anne and Maggie work the mandolin in the laundry, rattle sodden sheets up and down the dull metal ridges to the rhythm of ill-remembered songs from the radio. They hum together until a nun comes in and they lose harmony.
They’ve worked this station for three days and their clothes are heavy and smelling with old water. Their skin itches raw and their teeth chatter in unison. They ask the nuns if they can work in the drying room, to load the clothes horses in hope of relief from the damp, but Sister Benedict says no.
Clare’s father is an alcoholic and that was enough to get her here, to the convent and the laundry. Although her mother wouldn’t keep her at home when the priest came calling, she cares enough to write sad letters and send chocolate she scrimps to buy. Clare never sees the chocolate but the letters spare her the punishment of the fully abandoned laundry girls.
Anne is older than the other two, she gave birth to a boy some months ago whose head was the shape and colour of a duck egg. He died the night he was born but Anne is sure she can still hear him crying down the eerie corridor at night. Her sweetheart left town after they spoke of a wedding but she still believes he will come soon with an engagement ring, and then she will have the redemption of the marriage altar.
Maggie never knew a father, never knew a mother either. She was raised here from a newborn among the holy and unholy, straddling the divide until puberty tipped her to the sinner side, from warm bedtime prayers to the soap and the steam, the loaded backs and empty bellies. She hopes the convent will remember her goodness, will lift her up and iron out her deep-gouged wrinkles. She speaks of visitation, of holy vocation. Anne and Clare roll their eyes but say nothing. They know hope is all that Maggie has.
In the Summer, the girls run from the washing line with their fingers entwined, their backs bent slant above the hip and their vigilant necks straight up. They run curved, like the serpents they are told they are.
They move quick in the thin-toweled shelter to where the grass is long enough to paint their bodies green and then recline on the shit-brown earth scuffed raw from the intimacy of their backs. Then they pray.
They pray to the power deep in the earth, they do not speak to the heavens, for they fear that ear is tipped elsewhere. Instead they ache to be dragged into the scald of Earth’s spitting core and urge gravity to champion their cause, holding their breath until their slowing pulses conjoin. They have five minutes to morph into elephants, heavy enough to sink into the ground.
With their prayers unanswered, they rise in practiced skulk and with bloodless fingers, dust their plain blouses clean. On the walk back to the laundry, they tuck their sharp edges back into themselves so the paper cuts sting only them.
The girls learn this origami in the laundry, they master folding and shaping their paper-thin selves into flowers, rounded petals without tips or stems.
They do not fold themselves pretty, just into camouflage, a common daisy, some bruised purple. Pretty flowers are a level of pride ripe for plucking by hands imprinted yellow with the force of gold rosary beads.
