The Resistance Girl. Jina Bacarr

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      I park the motorcar outside the gate and find Sister Vincent in the chapel, praying. In a pew. First row. On her knees. Her back is to me as my high heels echo on the stone floor, announcing my arrival. She continues mumbling in a voice as soft as a celestial cloud. As if she knows I’m coming and she’s asking God to give her strength.

      I stop.

      She turns. Smiles at me. She looks as calm and serene as she always does. A vibrant joy in her grey eyes shines through the glass of her spectacles with such intensity I wonder if the lenses will crack. The fine lines around her mouth have deepened. I like to think that’s because she smiles a lot, not because she worries about me.

      ‘Sylvie, ma petite, I’m blessed to see you,’ she says without breaking eye contact with me, which does nothing to dim my focused determination in my soul to say what’s on my mind. Now. Without a fancy prelude. I can’t wait any longer.

      ‘Who was my mother, Sister Vincent?’ I don’t kneel down in the pew, but remain standing. ‘I want the truth.’

      She doesn’t back away. Her eyes pierce my heart. Their greyness turns dark. Very dark.

      ‘She was a prostitute from Paris…’ she begins without making excuses, remaining on her knees as if doing penance for keeping her silence. I see her twisting her beads, gripping the wooden orbs, rubbing her sweat on them till they shine. ‘A beautiful woman dying of consumption when she brought you here.’

      ‘A tragic heroine, n’est-ce pas?’ I snicker. ‘It sounds like a scene from one of my films. How do I know that’s the truth?’ I can’t stop looking at her, disbelieving what I’m hearing. I admire her courage to look me in the eye. I’m still reeling from knowing the fanciful story she told me as a child. How my mother was a wild and beautiful aristocrat who had a secret affair with a roguish stable hand. How she was forced to give me up lest harm come to me from her enemies. How she died in a suspicious fire rather than reveal my whereabouts. She made it sound so fascinating, I wanted to believe it.

      ‘Because I would never tell a falsehood in front of Him.’

      Her eyes drift upward toward the crucifix with Jesus Christ hanging above the altar. An eerie pause grips me, as if I expect a bolt of thunder to shake the rafters to disavow her words. A pungent scent of leftover incense mixes with the coriander of my perfume spiking from the heat of my body and fills my nostrils.

      Still, I wait.

      When nothing happens, the nun heaves out a sigh and rustles her black woolen skirts, then continues.

      ‘I beg you to understand, ma petite. I made up the story because I didn’t want to hurt you. Didn’t want you to carry the stigma of being the illegitimate daughter of a prostitute upon your shoulders.’ She stands and holds my hands in hers, hands with aging, wrinkled skin, veins popping, but the deep sadness in her grey eyes behind the wire rim spectacles doesn’t move me.

      ‘I can’t believe you lied to me about my mother, Sister Vincent. How you concocted a tale that would make a young girl’s heart swell with such romantic notions she’d cling to them like they were sacred prayers.’ I make it clear how angry I am with her, this dutiful creature who was the only good thing about my childhood and now I find that was a lie, too. She didn’t trust me enough to let me handle the truth. I could have, couldn’t I?

       You’re not doing such a good a job now, are you?

      ‘I made a fool out of myself with that phony story all these years,’ I continue, raising my voice and not caring if God disapproves. He knows what I’ve done and I’m living my punishment. What more can He do to me? ‘Emil knows the truth and I’m more under his control than ever. I have no choice but to do his bidding if I don’t want to end up in the gutter because I will never return here. I’m done… done with you… done with your pious teachings. Lies, all lies. I’ll never believe in you or hold anything you say sacred again.’

      ‘Please, mon enfant, I beg you to forgive me—’

      ‘Forgive you? I don’t know if I ever can.’

      Bitter words that prick my brain to rethink what I’ve said, but I’ve gone too far. I’ve set myself up for a painful isolation from the one person in my life always there for me. Yes, I’m not thinking straight… I do that a lot these days. But I don’t need Sister Vincent’s preaching to me about my ‘habits’. It’s better this way.

      Then, without turning back even when I hear a loud sob behind me and the swish of holy skirts slumping to the stone floor, I race back to Paris, anger and frustration pumping through me. Adrenaline surges through my veins and primes my juices like a glass of Pernod. I need to be with someone, someone to hold me, tell me what I want to hear. That I’m wanted… loved. My sensual urges are on fire, burning like an eternal flame.

      There’s no turning back and no one to stop me.

      I head up the cobbled Rue Norvins toward a familiar apartment with red velvet walls and a big, soft four poster bed at the top of Montmartre, a place where I can forget how lonely I am. No lies… no promises. Just sex with a beautiful man who doesn’t care who my mother was.