A stiff breeze coming off Lake Michigan makes short work of Nina’s chapel veil. No bigger than a handkerchief when attached to her ratted hair with a single Bobbie pin, it is now a sodden wad swept irretrievably down a storm sewer in gush of dirty snow melt. The nuns at Nina’s school didn’t like her teased blonde bouffant or her black roots and now they will have another reason to yell at her. Nina could skip mass, but then she’d have to skip school too which would only lead to a more wrath from Sister Tecla. No. She digs in her purse, pulls a Kleenex from its cellophane pouch, punctures it with a hair pin and walks into church with it fluttering above her bangs.

She saves her babysitting money and plans her escape. She will live at home while she goes to junior college. She will work weekends. In four years she will be able to pay her way from O’Hare straight to Paris, Venice or maybe Amsterdam. Meanwhile she folds her new chapel veil into quarters, creating an origami butterfly to stick in her cotton candy hair.