The Eliot Girls by Krista Bridge Page B

coming from behind her, that she was the subject of mockery—perhaps there was something in her hair, or she had mispronounced a word when called on by a teacher, or she had offended in some way far more abstract and therefore beyond the bounds of correction.
    On a rainy Monday morning, the first in October, Audrey half-ran across the quad and took her seat in the chapel. As she squeezed the droplets of water from the ends of her hair, all the talk around her was of the second period math quiz, the first test of the year. Most of the girls claimed to be certain they would fail and were desperately quizzing each other in the hopes of gleaning some key piece of last-minute information. A girl named Vanessa Blair had been brought to the verge of weeping by her faith in her own inadequacy. The girls sitting on either side of her put their arms around her and murmured assurance, but she was inconsolable.
    Audrey was trying to ignore all of it. She knew she would do abominably on the test—there was no doubt, no encouraging margin of uncertainty. Every week, she fell further behind. All she wanted now was quiet. The chapel was her favourite part of the school. Although its uses were mainly secular—the Anglican prayers and hymns during assembly were ceremonial flourishes rather than expressions of religious feeling—it resembled a miniature Gothic church and felt to her like the most sacred place she had ever been. During assembly, she was as relaxed as she ever got at Eliot. She was free, finally, to be just a spectator. Observation had never struck her as a particularly debasing activity until recently. Everywhere the class went, she watched from the fringes, feeling like a salivating voyeur peering into a bedroom window. In chapel, though, nothing was expected of her. There were no conversations she should be having, no answers she should know. It was the only place where she was able to recapture her old reverence for Eliot, the memory of the magic it had once held.
    When the chapel was nearly full, everyone seated, there were some moments of waiting during which something seemed to be happening offstage, and then the person who bounded out was not Ms. McAllister, but Ms. Massie-Turnbull. For some minutes she fussed with the microphone until finally, unable to adjust it adequately, she withdrew to the darkened side of the chapel, then reappeared carrying a stool, which she clambered onto and kneeled atop, finally at the microphone’s height. Ruth had told Audrey that Ms. Massie-Turnbull had been a gifted jazz singer in her youth, a story that summoned a vixenish sophisticate difficult to reconcile with the woman who perched before the assembly now, so tiny she might have been mistaken from behind for a child, dressed in a pink sweater emblazoned with a needlepoint white cat, one of whose button eyes dangled from a loose thread.
    Ms. Massie-Turnbull now clasped her hands in delight and embarked on her yearly explanation of the morning music program. She was so happy to see everyone, she said. When she looked at the Eliot girls, she couldn’t help seeing not just their faces, but the multitude of beautiful voices. Summertime was lovely but left her at a bit of a loose end. Being a choir mistress with no choir to direct, she submitted, was a bit like being a prime minister without a country, a policeman without criminals, a chauffeur with no passengers, forced to drive the limo around and around in aimless circles in a parking lot. A single voice was all well and good—she hoped they had kept their voices exercised during the humid summer months—but a choir? A choir was a testament to unity and individualism, to formality and collaboration. True fellowship was found through the process of harmonizing, the soprano melody (“But we don’t let them get all the glory,” she laughed) strengthened by the complementary alto.
    As everyone knew, she continued, a key part of the school’s