Use Me

by Elissa Schappell

  Mother Saint Agnes stepped out of the formation and introduced herself with a curt nod and a handshake worthy of a Teamster. Happily, she wrested my bag out of my hands. We entered the building and, taking the stairs at a clip, she led me up two flights of steps to the top floor of the convent. The guest rooms were there, far away from the mysterious quarters where the nuns bathed and slept.

  I’d hoped for a drafty stone room with a cold slate floor that would make my knees ache, a hulking crucifix looming over me as it strained on a tenuous-looking wire, and lots of gilt icons depicting saints and martyrs ecstatic on skewers and burning at stakes. Instead, my pale blue guest bedroom was carpeted with beige shag and filled with light from a bay window that overlooked the water. The walls were adorned solely with a large carved sandalwood rosary and an oil painting of Christ, the romantic, sexy, long-haired rock ’n’ roll savior version, flashing his wounds. I’d hoped for a thinning-hair, gangrenous, suffering Christ, a savior swollen and poisoned by my sins. I was surprised that the nuns preferred the handsome Jesus. Didn’t that conjure erotic musings that might prove distressing? Or was he hanging there to remind us pilgrims that we were base, celibate in neither flesh nor spirit? Months ago, I might have been subtly turned on by the Jim Morrison Christ—guiltily getting my jeans down around my ankles in two seconds flat, and collapsing in a self-pleasuring stupor on the bed—but not now. Certainly not now.

  It was clear that I would need the spiritual guidance of the Sisters of Saint Genevieve. Especially Sister Corrina, the nun with the blackened fingernails. She must be the most devout. She would be one to blow in God’s ear for me.

  That evening, along with two other guests, I was invited to attend Vespers in the convent’s pleasantly dark and narrow white marble chapel. This church, with its holy reek of incense and burnt wax, its hard mahogany pews with unpadded kneelers, and its forbidding cistern of holy water, lent my suffering focus.

  The church of my childhood was a stark cream-and-stone colonial-era church, always a little too cold, but bright with sunlight, like we had nothing to hide. Its high, vaulted ceilings and brass Williamsburg chandeliers, white-shuttered windows exposing blue, green, and yellow stained-glass windows glorifying the disciples, discreet cream-colored cross, and freshly cut white lilies on either side of the pulpit, made it seem as optimistic and unmysterious as a nursery.

  Ringing the convent’s chapel were ornate stained-glass windows depicting the Annunciation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection in shades of ruby, sapphire, and purple, the bright sunlight casting brilliant kaleidoscopic birthmarks onto the bodies of the parishioners. I kneeled and said my Hail Marys. Still I felt empty, impoverished. I wished I knew more prayers. As I got off my knees and slid back into the pew, bright red lesions of light dappled my arm and a diffuse purple glow bled across my chest and belly. I scooted down the pew toward the stained-glass windows to see if I could attract fractals of gold and green, but all the colors vanished, replaced solely by a tight wavering blue dot on the back of my left hand.

  The sisters, led by Mother Saint Agnes, padded in and took seats at the front of the church, then, in unison, got down on their knees and began to pray. I craned to see Sister Corrina, but her head was bowed, her face obscured by the veil. I lost interest once the priest, silver-haired and beatific as an oatmeal salesman, appeared in his purple-and-gold robes. He trundled up into the pulpit and towered over the lectern. In a deep and resonant baritone he began to recite the Mass, half in Latin, half in Italian. I felt myself relax into the pew.

  I felt certain that God was listening.

  After the service, Mother Saint Agnes herded me into a bright wood-paneled dining room. Instead of eating with the sisters, as I had hoped, I would take all my meals with two other pilgrims, plump middle-aged women in dark blue pantsuits and white pointy-toed sneakers who worked as librarians at an all-girls college. Hanging around both of their necks like skeleton keys were matching oversize sterling silver crucifixes.

  “Hello,” I said, sliding into the seat across from them.

  The women both greeted me with pleasant nods, but spoke not at all.

  “So,” I said. Again they smiled. They’d obviously taken a vow of silence for their visit, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was floundering.

  “Well,” I said. “So…”

  The pilgrims averted their eyes, staring into their pink lamb chops, as though trying to spare me further embarrassment.

  Still, even in their silence they seemed to communicate with each other. A raised eyebrow was rewarded with the salt dish, a shrugged shoulder offered the end of a tapioca pudding. Staring at my reflection in the back of my soupspoon, I felt more alone than I had in months. I pressed my palms against my belly, searching for the round moon of the baby’s butt, but even it was ignoring me.

  That night I snuck downstairs and called Billy on the pay phone.

  “Hey, am I ever glad you called. I don’t want you to freak out or anything, but I forgot to pay the phone bill so I’m only getting incoming.”

  “What!”

  “Don’t. It’s taken care of, I hocked some old Miles Davis on vinyl, doubles, don’t worry, nothing good. Nothing valuable.”

  “I can’t believe it,” I said, but of course I could. We’d been without phone and lights before. Still. “We’re going to have a baby, Billy. Are you planning to just run down to St. Marks Place and sell records every time we need diapers?”

  “Relax. I took care of it,” he said, sounding defensive. “And, you’ll be happy to know, I’ve got a lead on some soul-numbing studio work—it’s incidental music for a soap opera. Aren’t you proud?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I miss you.” I did. Now that he was far away and couldn’t get his hands on me, I missed him.

  “Are you okay, baby?” he said. “You sound lonely. I could be there in no time. You just say the word…. That’s it, I’m going to drive up there and rescue you. If I leave now we can—”

  “No. I need to be here. Alone.”

  “Oh, come on. You just said you missed me.” He sounded hurt. “How’s Dad? Tell him I got a job, would you?”

  “Billy, I have to go.”

  “Wait, wait, not yet. I can’t help it, I keep imagining you in that little black dress thing, you know…What are you wearing right now?”

  “Billy.” I laughed.

  “Are you wearing a bra?”

  “I can’t believe you. I’m at a convent and you want to talk dirty?”

  “And the problem is? I just miss you like crazy.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Sweet dreams,” I said, and hung up. Although I could still hear his voice coming through the receiver, I cut him off.

  What was I thinking, having a baby? Even if I loved this baby. Billy and I couldn’t possibly have a baby. Then I thought of my father, my father holding my baby, that baby wrapping its hand around his finger, and things made sense.

  The next morning, after Matins, despite the heat and the oppressive humidity and my sore, swollen feet, I strolled the convent grounds, hoping that Mother Saint Agnes—or, better still, Sister Corrina—might approach me and, while attempting not to stare at my pregnant bulge, inquire into the nature of the spiritual crisis that had brought me to the convent. I watched the sisters working in the vegetable garden, bent over in the garden pitching zucchinis as big as small dogs onto the grass, but didn’t dare approach. In truth, I didn’t like seeing the sisters outside the convent walls. Earlier I’d watched Mother Saint Agnes and a few other nuns pile into a big blue station wagon and drive off into town. I imagined them with windows rolled down and veils blowing, singing along with some Christian rock station. I wanted them inside, under glass, in diligent pursuit of salvation, not groceries and feminine-hygiene products.

  I ventured down to the water. A peeling white boathouse filled with rubber rafts and rust-stippled beach chairs, long out of use, perched on the narrow, rocky beach. Off the dock was
a rickety metal ladder, corroded badly at the joints, leading down into the water. For half a second, standing there on the dock, sweat dribbling down my spine and under my breasts, I wished I’d packed my bathing suit, but despite what my father suggested, I was here to pray, not swim. I would not swim, if only to demonstrate to God, and my father, that I meant business.

  Instead I lumbered back up the steep hill to the convent and collapsed into a chaise set up under a maple tree. Sleepy from the heat, I was content to meditate on the grassy hillock that rose up behind the convent, obscuring all but a thin blue slip of the Sound licking the shoreline. Off to the side, Mother Saint Agnes was prowling around the perimeter of the convent, gardening. Every few feet she’d stop and frown and examine the rosebushes and dahlias, her lips moving as if she were praying or perhaps cursing the plague that was destroying her plants. Then she’d draw her veils up tight over her mouth and nose like a desperado, cross herself, and spray the bushes with an old-fashioned tin bug mister. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered what Billy was doing, if he missed falling asleep with his hand on my stomach. I thought about how it seemed a trick the way the baby was drawn to his touch like a moth, as if even in utero it knew its father.

  The following afternoon, I took refuge on the library sofa. Again Mother Saint Agnes was outside studying the ragged chew holes and brown scale that was attacking her bushes, but this time she wasn’t treating her plants. Instead, a six-pack dangled from her fingers, and every few feet she’d crouch down and pour some beer into the grass. Or that’s what it looked like.

  Instead of investigating, I lounged drowsily on the lumpy velvet sofa paging through a gilt-edged tome of saints, too lazy to get up and turn on the light even though the afternoon sun was projecting ominous leaf shapes on the library wall, murderous sword grass and gaping Venus’s-flytraps, killers in a botanical horror film. I tried to focus on the saints, the martyrs. I feared that since I’d arrived at the convent three days ago, instead of seeking communion with God in the hopes of saving my father or, at the very least, of understanding why my family was being punished, I was sliding into a kind of surreal stupor, the days flowing into an ocean of sleep. Yes, I prayed, but nothing was changing for the better.

  Hope was like poison in my veins. The previous morning I’d stolen five minutes on the sisters’ ancient black telephone, only to learn from my mother that my father’s white cells were diminishing. As far as she could tell, all he’d eaten in days was Pepperidge Farm cookies and red wine. He refused to drink the canned vitamin shake the doctor recommended.

  “He said, ‘It tastes like shit. It’s for old folks, stroke victims, vegetables.’” My mother laughed uncomfortably. I could hear his voice under hers.

  When I asked her to put him on the phone, he’d refused to speak to me.

  “It’s the radiation treatments, they’re making him a little deaf,” my mother tried to explain, but I wondered if it wasn’t something else. I twisted a lock of hair tight around my swollen pinky. I was growing, every pink and blushing inch of me trumpeted the promise of life, and still I was losing him. I didn’t even want this baby.

  I was so absorbed in self-pity that I didn’t hear anyone enter the library. It wasn’t until Sister Corrina’s long, dark, oval face appeared above me, hovering against the forest of shadows, that I realized I was being watched. She leaned down and, covering my hand with her own, tilted the book so she could read the title. She was younger than I’d first thought; she was much younger, maybe eighteen, just a girl.

  “Hi,” I said sheepishly, struggling to sit upright. I felt vulnerable, not to mention unattractive, sprawled on my back, pinned down, as it were, by the weight of the baby. “I’m searching for names.”

  She nodded, watching with polite curiosity as I attempted to maneuver my body into an upright position. I was surprised at how rough her hand was, how I could smell her perspiration, mingled with dirt from the garden in the weave of her gray habit. I crossed my arms against my balloonish breasts.

  “May I?” she asked, flopping down on the sofa beside me before I could answer, the overly soft cushions tipping her body toward mine in a slightly suggestive manner she seemed oblivious to.

  “It’s nice to have someone to speak English with,” she said.

  “Good,” I said, staring at her blackened fingernails; one of them looked loose enough to tear off with your teeth.

  “I learned as a girl,” she said with evident pride, “before I joined the order.”

  “Really?”

  “I was only twelve. I knew nothing, but I was called.” She sighed.

  As she flipped through the book, she caught me staring at her dirty elbows and hands, and blushed.

  “I’ve been in the garden,” she explained, “cutting flowers, weeding, but mostly looking for the beetles. I like bugs—it’s silly, no?”

  “Silly? No, it’s not silly,” I said. I thought of my father’s explanation of why he didn’t attend Sunday services. “God listens in the garden as well as in the pew.”

  “Sometimes,” Sister Corrina said, “in the beds, working, I make myself forget I’m looking for them, and then I get the shock, the surprise of them. You understand?” she asked, her brown cheeks flushed scarlet. “I like the little scare of seeing them, you know?”

  “You like bugs?” I asked. “You mean like butterflies?” I remembered now the fleeting glimpse I’d caught of her that first day behind the hedge, the flash of the veil, the glint of her net.

  “The butterflies, the worms, but the beetles, mostly, the blue and green and black ones, the ones that walk like jewels on legs. The big black ones like armor with large snapping jaws. The moths with wings that look like the eyes of owls, even the ants, the red ones, that bite. I love them all.”

  “Really?” It seemed so absurd.

  “The others think it’s silly, or a terrible thing. They crush them under their heels, or flush them down the sink, or—”

  “That’s awful,” I said, though I too found few things more satisfying than the crack of a cockroach under a rolled-up newspaper. I was the killer in the family. Billy was squeamish and too softhearted; even flies he would shoo out the window.

  Corrina nodded vigorously. “I catch them, and I gas them, and I pin them down to the boards,” she said proudly, then clarified, lest I think her simply murderous. “Just the rare or beautiful ones, ones that look like walking sticks and leaves, or ones with bright wings patterned like snakeskin…” She fumbled for a word, then shrugged. “The others I enjoy. Like a scientist. I like to watch them work, they are so busy. There are no lazy insects.”

  “You’re not afraid of getting stung or bitten, or…”

  “The ants sometimes, a little. No bees, though. I leave the bees to the Trappists—the monks love honey. It should be a sin.” She trapped a girlish laugh against her lips with her hand.

  “It’s a passion,” I said, then blushed. I couldn’t recall ever saying that word out loud before.

  “Saint Dominic says, ‘He who governs his passions is master of his world. Command them or be enslaved by them,’” she said, folding her hands in her lap.

  “I see.” This wasn’t exactly how I imagined my interaction with the nuns would be. My head felt so wobbly, I feared it could be pinched off like a dead flower. My whole body hummed and buzzed disconcertingly. I coughed.

  “Boy or girl?” she asked, leaning closer to me.

  “I have no idea.” Which was true. I gave little thought to its sex, although in my dreams it was a girl. A girl. A girl like me, worthy of sacrifice.

  “So,” she said, in the way people do when they have run out of conversation, but still cling to the idea that connection might be possible.

  “So.” Looking at me in a way that suggested I was to tell her something. Confess something. Before I could speak, she bent her face down close to my belly, resting her ear on my navel, then placed her hand on my lower abdomen. She closed her eyes as though she was listening for the baby, t
he sound of waves, or a babbling infant song. I couldn’t breathe, my heart was afraid even to beat.

  “It’s a girl, I think,” she said finally, and raised her head, but left her hand on my stomach for a moment longer. “Healthy little girl,” she said, still gazing at my stomach, transfixed, as if the miracle of birth were in some way more incredible than the miracle of faith.

  “I have to go,” she said, hopping up off the couch suddenly. The book of saints crashed to the floor, landing in a split. Her cheeks were flushed. “I’ve been forbidden…” she started to say. “Mother Saint Agnes is looking for me,” she said, hastily arranging her veil, grinning like an adored but often chastised child. “She’s a bloodhound.”

  A sharp report of footsteps echoed in the outer hallway, and the vestibule was suddenly illuminated as if by a searchlight. Sister Corrina bowed slightly to me, then, under her breath, whispered, “If you like, I can show you the bugs.”

  I coughed, covering my mouth with two hands, hoping to mask my goofy smile, the blush burning my cheeks.

  During Vespers I couldn’t help staring at Sister Corrina. I didn’t want to be distracted from my prayers, and she, having obviously been scolded by the Mother Superior, never once glanced my way, but still I couldn’t stop myself from guiltily sneaking glances at her. I tried to force myself to focus on the pilgrims, the purity of their silvery-white hair, the gentle dusting of dandruff on their shoulders, their mouths slightly agape, ready to digest God’s word.

  I tried to concentrate on my father and Billy. What was Billy doing? Was he in the studio? Was he lying on the 1950s sofa he’d gotten off the street last week, listening to Bird and Coltrane? Was he playing his guitar at the kitchen table? Was he thinking of me, missing me, or just the baby?