The Queen of Peace Room

Chapter 3 Sunday, 7 A.M.

25 SUNDAY, 7 A.M. I wash, dress, and say a quick prayer at my make-shift altar. I didn’t sleep under the blankets, so I don’t have to make my bed. This is a bonus time-wise. We meet in the upper meadow and meditate as we face each of the four directions. Then hold hands as we face the centre and one another. These women are all ages, all kinds, and all kind. A woman reads the poetry of Rumi, “There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” Clouds shift and everything turns momentarily to shades of rose and mauve. This meadow is a balm. A painting too large for any canvas . Women sit on the grass, in silence. Each person’s mind is focused inward, so there is space, peace. A tree with crooked branches stretches into the morning air. This tree doesn’t care if anyone thinks it’s beautiful. It breathes anyway. One branch juts precariously, not crowded together with the others, connected but with space, unable to grow without space. Tiny leaves fall to the ground, like soft feathers that cover the heart area of a bird. Each woman leaves the meadow slowly, each at her own pace. After a brief mass in the chapel, we walk to the dining room. I bypass the scrambled eggs and bacon and eat home fries and melon instead. As much as I want, of both. There’s also cereal, muffins, and juice. My eyes are bigger than my stomach. And they remember too much. The year we ate canned corned beef from Australia. The years of nothing. 3 “Just say you’ve eaten,” is what my mother would say. “Just say you’ve eaten.” So with a potato or egg or something, there was always something, we’d wait for my father to come home, put his coat away, and his plastic overshoes, his rubbers if it was raining or muddy. We called them rubbers. It had nothing to do with safe sex or the plague, which was to strike the later part of the century. He’d place his rubbers on carefully folded newspapers, roll his shirt sleeves above his elbows, remove his gold watch with the expansion band, and place it on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. The window overlooked a rock garden and a row of dahlias that my mother had planted. He’d lather his hands and arms, rinse, dry, and sit at the table. Then he’d make the sign of the cross over himself. He did this before and after every meal. Settle into his aluminum chair. And my mother would serve him a meal of meat. Fish if it was Friday. And vegetables. And a salad, usually cucumber with the green peel on the outside of the white, sliced tomatoes with little specks of black pepper sprinkled on top, and lettuce or celery with the delicate leaves still attached to the heart pieces of the stalk. Sometimes black olives. And always a plate of bread and butter . And he would look at me, sitting rigid in my chair, dangerously close to the edge, ready to go into flight, and he’d say, “Where’s your supper?” And I’d say, “I’ve already eaten. I’ve already eaten.” And my mother would sit at her end of the table, silently holding a lit cigarette and my father would begin to eat his meal. A big meal. On Sundays we all ate the same. There was no way around this on Sundays. Harp music on the radio. Pat Boone, “April Love.” Inside the skin is self. Outside is non-self. Where I began, and where others, by their actions, were telling me I began, was vague. Sexual, physical , and emotional abuses are violations of personal boundaries. Problems arise when boundaries are not respected. The years without food were the years of furniture against doors. High bureaus and heavy stuffed chairs pushed tight into place. Blinds pulled down, curtains pulled tight with safety pins, and my mother huddled in a state beyond fear in one corner of the bedroom she’d locked us all in, with a tin pot in case we needed to do that. My baby sister, two young cousins, and me. Four small children there to protect her against invisible demons. Maybe something had terrified her in the past and lingered. When my father was working as a travelling salesman, our house was...