The White Nun in Rattlebone

George Bellis The White Nun in Rattlebone Editor's note: Writer Maxine Clair's collection of interrelated stories titled Rattlebone, published in 1 994, won the Friends ofAmerican Literature Fiction Award, the Literary Award for Fiction from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, and the Chicago Tribune's HeartlandAward. Clair teaches writing at George Washington University inWashington, D.C. In the summer of 1947, suspended between third and fourth grades in Rattlebone, a black ghetto in Kansas City, Kansas, Irene Wilson and her friends, Janey, Cece, Deb,Wanda, andWanda's mongoloid brother, Puddin, play a sidewalk game called "lemonade." The girls are nine to eleven; Puddin, though 1 6, is mentally younger than the girls because he cannot talk or dress himselfproperly. The game they are playing is a performance competition in which the children sing, dance, play an instrument, or do something athletic, and the one who does her thing best is the winner. The game begins with a simple ritual. One girl steps forward and the others come together to form a chorus. Each side speaks alternate lines: LOGOS 3:2 SPRING 2ooo 32 LOGOS Here I come. Where you from? New Orleans. What's your trade? Lemonade. Get to work and show us something. (24) Wanda is about to show her splits when a car drives up and the girls see a tall white woman step out. She wears the headwrap and habit ofsome unnamed congregation ofnuns. It is a strange event for them, for the only white people the girls ever see in their town are the milkman, the insurance man, the owner ofDoll's Market, where they shop, and Mr. Heltzberg, the piano teacher. This is the opening scene of a story, "Lemonade," second in a volume of eleven stories that Maxine Clair published under the title, Rattlebone, in 1994. Irene Wilson is the narrator. Clair describes Irene's growing-up during the years 1946—19 c6. Though each story is complete, indeed, a work of art in itself, the eleven taken as a whole make up a traditional education novel or bildungsroman. A selective awareness of events occurring in the real world is a common feature of this, of most novels, in fact. For example, Tom Jones puts its hero briefly into the English army in 1 74^ to fight the Jacobites under the leadership of Charles Stuart, the "Young Pretender " to the English throne. The Reform Bill of 1832 prompts a significant portion ofthe action in Middlemarch. Portrait oftheArtist as a Young Man presents "The Cause" as a voice calling for Stephen Dedalus's allegiance. Similarly, each story in Rattlebone casually introduces a contemporary event or situation into Irene's expanding circle ofawareness. In "Lemonade," the situation is a doctrinal conflict between American Protestants and Catholics, and the event is the series of apparitions at Fatima in Portugal. Sister Joan "told us a story of the time several Portuguese children saw Mary in a vision while they watched THE WHITE NUN IN RATTLEBONE their sheep" (27). There were actually six appearances, which occurred on the 1 3th ofthe month from May to October, 1 9 1 7, but were not made much of in America until after World War II. Still, ifall "Lemonade" did was present the religious conflict and mention Fatima, it might not attract many readers. What makes it interesting is the art by which Clair uses the conflict to develop three stories at the same time. On one level "Lemonade" is a story defined by die title. All of its characters engage literally or figuratively in a performance competition. At this level, the children play their version ofthe game until a winner emerges. On a second level, the conflict between Protestant and Catholic is staged as an adult game of "lemonade" in which the Protestant view prevails. On a third level, Irene is enough enamored with the story to make the telling of"Lemonade"reenact the main events ofMary's appearance at Fatima. Looking at the game first, we have noted that Puddin is playing "lemonade"with the five girls when the story opens. The problem is he cannot do anything. The girls are patient with him and...