Back in the Habit

by Alice Loweecey

  “The Postulants created them,” Sister Theresa said, spreading mayonnaise on a slice of wheat bread. “Sister Arnulf’s been helping them with the papier-mâché and the painting all month.”

  “Syster Georgia, vill du ha skinka eller kalkon?” Sister Winifred indicated the tray of cold cuts.

  Sister Georgia held out one half of a roll over the ham side of the tray. “Skinka, tack,” she said and took the already-used knife out of the mustard jar.

  “I feel positively rebellious, violating the sanctity of the kitchen at this hour,” Sister Winifred said.

  Giulia beelined—decorously—for Sister Winifred. “I wonder if I can ask you a favor. I don’t know a word of Swedish, and I’d really like to talk to Sister Arnulf about something.”

  Sister Winifred swallowed a bite of her turkey on wheat. “Of course, but it can wait till tomorrow morning, I’m sure.”

  “I’d really—”

  “Because, to be honest, I can barely put together a coherent English sentence right now.” She smiled.

  “Could you at least ask her—”

  “Tomorrow morning, after prayers.”

  Giulia forced a polite smile. “Of course. Thank you. If you’re all right here, I’m going to head upstairs.”

  “Oh, yes, we’re fine. Thank you for all your help. We’ll be sure to thank Sister Bartholomew when we see her tomorrow—that is, today.”

  Giulia looked at the clock on the stove. “Happy Saint Francis Day.”

  “That’s right, it is.” She translated Giulia’s sentence for the three Sisters, who chorused it back to her.

  “If you need something else, I’m in room 323.”

  “Oh, no. I’m sure we’ll be fine. Thank you.”

  Giulia headed back through the gloomy refectory, moving cautiously between the tables so she wouldn’t bump any and topple the centerpieces. The front hall was lit only by two dimmed wall sconces now. Chairs and lamps assumed strange shapes in the half-light. The newel post at the foot of the stairs reared its wooden pineapple top like a snake.

  Speaking of snakes, Fabian’s rooms are a short walk through the doors to the back hall. I think waking Fabian up to give her a piece of my mind is an excellent way to end this day.

  She got all the way to the double doors before knowledge gleaned from years of watching murder mysteries kicked in.

  Never tell the Bad Guys that you’re onto them unless several armed cops are standing next to you at the time. I can’t barge into Fabian’s tastefully redecorated bedroom and announce that I Know All. If she and Father Ray have a well-planned scheme for supplying these dealers, they must have a well-planned cover-up, just in case.

  Twenty-six

  “Do you ever obey even the simplest rule, Regina?” Sister Mary Stephen’s words hissed at Giulia.

  Giulia jerked to a stop just outside her room. Her nemesis leaned against her own doorway, an open book of devotions in her hands.

  “What rule do you think I’m breaking?”

  “Wandering around at all hours. Gabbing with new arrivals long after proper Sisters are in bed. And shall I mention how much time you’re spending with Sister Bartholomew? We were taught about the subtle danger of the Particular Friend.” Her smile conveyed anything but concern.

  Giulia covered the distance between them in measured steps. Would everyone on the floor wake up if I slapped that smarmy expression off her scrawny face?

  “Stephen, you must be exhausted. How do you watch over every move I make and keep up with your own responsibilities as well?”

  “I care about the reputation of our group. You obviously don’t.” The volume of the hiss decreased.

  “Oh, please. The only reputation you ever cared about was Sister Mary Stephen’s and how it could be parlayed into more power.” Giulia kept her own whisper low.

  “Don’t give me that ‘I’m so superior’ look. It may intimidate your students, but they didn’t suffer through Formation with you.”

  Giulia laughed once and bit her lip before another laugh burst out. “Was I the cross you had to bear?”

  “God, you’re arrogant. Is that why you flout the rules?”

  “Spare me. For all you know I could’ve been in the chapel saying a late Compline.”

  Mary Stephen snorted.

  “What’s your real problem with me?” Giulia fought to keep her voice low. “It can’t be your manufactured rivalry from the Novitiate. We haven’t seen each other in six years. Nobody holds a grudge that long.”

  The tall blonde slapped the devotional shut. The sharp noise echoed off the walls. “Why doesn’t the world mete out favors to the deserving?”

  Giulia raised her eyebrows. “This isn’t the world. It’s the religious life. Different paradigms.”

  “Obviously.” She turned her back on Giulia and stopped just short of slamming her door. Or the piece of her quilted plaid bathrobe stopped her when it snagged on the strike plate.

  Giulia heard a frustrated growl from the other side of the door as a hand freed the material. The door closed all the way this time.

  Their conversation apparently hadn’t disturbed anyone on the floor, since all the other doors remained closed. Giulia opened her own. I know it’s bad when I almost think of this shoebox as a sanctuary.

  The rolled-up habit had moved.

  Giulia closed the door.

  The tiny wastepaper basket was out of place. She pulled out the bottom dresser drawer and removed the Day-Timer. Only her fingerprints marred the dust bunnies.

  “I wonder what Stephen will say to Fabian about the puke-smeared habit? Perhaps a tirade that dovetails with my inappropriate lingerie … oh, no.”

  She opened the top dresser drawer. “Damn you, Stephen. Crap. Sorry, Lord. Didn’t mean to swear. Can I beg indulgence because it’s the second time this week she’s pawed my underwear?”

  Giulia shook out one set of lace-trimmed silky undergarments. “I hate you, Mary Stephen,” she repeated with each snap of the fabric. “I hate Fabian, too, but you bring hate-ability to a new and personal level.”

  The violet tap pants had holes in the seams and the smooth material was riddled with pulls in a pattern resembling the five fingers on a human hand. Ripped lace dangled from the matching bra’s cups. Both underwires had been wrenched into angles and curlicues.

  “Oh, no. I’ve only worn it twice.” She tried to work the kinks out of one wire and it snapped in half. As she untangled her fingers, two long blonde hairs came away with them. She scrunched the set into a misshapen ball and flung it into the back of the drawer. “You thieving, covetous rat. Screw decorum and charity and everything else that’s trying to turn me into a doormat.”

  She yanked open the door and stalked across the hall to Mary Stephen’s room. When she was two steps short of her goal, the elevator gave a muted ding. All of the midnight snackers exited, whispering things Giulia didn’t understand. The new ones smiled at her. Sisters Theresa and Winifred whispered, “Good night.” Sister Arnulf stopped a moment, patted Giulia’s arm, and nodded.

  When they were all closed in their rooms, Giulia looked at Mary Stephen’s door, at her watch, at the door again.

  What good is confronting her at this hour going to do? We’ll just stage another scene like we did in the vestibule. If I were as sneaky as she is, I’d go into her room tomorrow and manhandle her stuff. Her shoulders slumped. But I’m not. I’m one of the good guys, blast it all.

  Adrenaline still pumped through her. She needed to do something, anything to defuse it. She returned to her room, and the first thing her eyes focused on was the habit on the window ledge. She grabbed the bundle, left the narrow window cracked to defuse any lingering odors, and headed to the Novices’ floor. Bart had said she stashed the other two habits in their bathroom. Scrubbing all the habits clean
was exactly the therapy she needed.

  The thin curtains let in enough moonlight to see the shapes of the living room furniture. She tiptoed through the room, giving the couch a wide berth this time. No one appeared, awake or sleepwalking, as she passed the closed bedroom doors. With the lightest of touches, she pushed open the swinging bathroom door a few inches.

  The shaded nightlight illuminated very little. She pushed the door farther and heard a small noise. She waited. Nothing—then the same muffled noise.

  She slid sideways through the opening and held the door as it closed. The light she’d seen wasn’t the nightlight, because that was lying on its side in the middle sink. She followed the feeble, slanting glow to the farthest shower stall. Another sound reached her—short, sharp breaths, then a tiny mew like a kitten.

  Giulia pushed aside the shower curtain. Sister Bart sat on the tiled floor with her miniature flashlight next to her, its light bouncing off the shining wall tiles. She’d bunched up her red-and-white striped nightgown way above her knees. Rows of narrow scabs and scars covered her left thigh, like the pattern a woodpecker’s beak makes on a tree. She looked up at Giulia, a razor blade in her left hand, a thin trail of blood dripping from it onto five new slices in her leg. The cuts dribbled narrow stripes of blood, making Bart look like a splatterpunk candy cane.

  Twenty-seven

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” Even in her shock, Giulia kept her voice to a whisper.

  “Sister Regina, I, I …”

  Giulia shifted into teacher gear. She’d handled students who cut. First step: deal with the blood. She dropped the rolled-up habit, dashed into the nearest stall, and yanked a yard of toilet paper off the roll. A moment later she was on her knees next to Sister Bart, pressing the wadded tissue to the stack of five cuts. She eyeballed the rows of scabs next to the tissue and the rows of scars next to them.

  “I don’t see any redness or swelling on these scabs.” Giulia’s voice echoed a trifle and she lowered it further. “What are you cleaning them with?”

  Sister Bart kept her eyes on the floor opposite Giulia.“Peroxide, then water, then Neosporin and bandages.”

  “I’m glad you’re not as stupid as you look.” Giulia checked the bleeding. “Almost stopped. Nice, shallow cuts. What did you do, find a website called ‘Self-Mutilation for Dummies’?” She pushed the tissues hard against Sister Bart’s leg. “Where are your supplies?”

  “They’re behind the dirty habits.”

  Giulia felt the heat from Bart’s blush even if the light was too dim to see it for certain. She shoved the ball of habits aside. An extra-large Costco-brand box of tampons nestled in the corner. She almost approved of the good camouflage, but rescinded it when she realized it just meant Bart planned her cutting episodes well.

  The box held a bottle of peroxide, a smaller box of bandages, two tubes of Neosporin, and a two-thirds-full package of double-edged safety razor blades. It frightened her.

  Giulia whispered over her shoulder, “What do you do, use a new razor every time?”

  “Well, yes. I don’t want to get the new cuts infected.”

  “At least you have some sense.” She went and yanked off more toilet paper before swabbing the cuts with peroxide.

  “Ouch—not so hard,” Bart hissed.

  “Not the right kind of pain? Too bad.” Giulia made another trip, this time to the sinks. She returned with wet toilet paper. She wiped the slits clean and dabbed Neosporin on them. “Oh, look. Two bandages exactly cover them. Of course that means you measured this out all nice and precise. Don’t expect me to admire your planning.” She repacked the tampon box. “Can you walk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then put Pandora’s box away and meet me back here in ten seconds.”

  Giulia washed all traces of peroxide off her hands. As she gathered up all three stinking bundles, the door opened and Sister Bart poked her head in.

  Giulia shoved a habit lump at her. “Let’s go. I don’t care how late it is, you and I are washing these tonight.”

  “But, Sister—”

  Giulia stood nose-to-chin with her—Giulia’s nose, Bart’s chin. “Sister, you will obey me without question, or I will wake Sister Gretchen and rip the bottom of your nightgown off right in front of her.”

  Bart gulped and muttered, “Yes, Sister.”

  Giulia glanced at the back doors: locked. Rather than risk rattling a chain against metal fire doors at this hour, she headed back to the living room and the front stairs. Bart followed.

  Giulia’s shoes made only faint taps on the carpet. Bart’s bare feet, nothing. The silent, dark Motherhouse seemed even bigger and darker than usual to Giulia this time through it. The hum of the refrigerators in the kitchen sounded almost welcoming. She slowly turned the doorknob to the entrance of the cellars, remembering how the door squeaked earlier that day.

  She pushed in the switch, and the bare bulbs lit the stairs and enough of the hallway to get them to the laundry room.

  Sister Bart, still behind her, turned the switch to the hanging fluorescents in that room. “Man, those are bright.”

  Giulia ignored that. “Is there something other than the industrial-strength powder detergent?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “If we’re stuck, we’re stuck.” She went straight to the hopper sink in the corner and turned on the cold water. The ever-present bar of Fels-Naptha soap sat on the ledge.

  “Does any place besides prisons and convents use this stuff anymore?” Giulia unrolled the first habit—hers—and winced at the stench. “Even when my younger brother spent a summer worshipping the porcelain and I helped him hide it from Mom and Dad, it didn’t reek like this.”

  “It’s the stroganoff. She told me that sour cream upsets her stomach.” Sister Bart hovered at Giulia’s side, her hands twitching on the counter.

  Giulia attacked the crusted vomit with the block of soap. “Despite what I said in the Double Shot earlier, I don’t understand you three.”

  The hands froze. “About what?”

  She banged the soap on the habit against the bottom of the sink. “What do you think? Bridget let it kill her. Vivian’s going to fall down a flight of stairs or choke to death. You’re going to slip one night and sever an artery.” A small sound—of protest?—reached Giulia’s ears over the splashing water. “Don’t squeak at me.” She wrung out the habit and snatched the slip. “Why in the name of all the saints is Sister Gretchen allowing this?”

  “Um, well, she doesn’t know.”

  Giulia lifted the slip up to the light, then scrubbed the hem again.

  Bart fidgeted.

  Giulia wrung out the slip the way her grandmother had twisted the heads off chickens on the farm. Sister Bart handed her the veil. Giulia tossed the slip aside and ran the stiffened black cloth under the water.

  “Why. Not?” Her teeth hurt when she closed her mouth again. She forcibly stopped herself from clenching them this time.

  Bart whispered, “Sister Fabian said—”

  “Sister Fabian can rot in Hell for all I care!” Giulia stopped, inhaled, and lowered her voice to a near-whisper. “Strike that. Sister Fabian most likely is going to rot in Hell.” She pounded the soap on a stubborn food-wine-bile splotch. “And don’t. Tell me. To leave. Judgment. To God.” The stain lost that battle. Giulia held out her hand, and Bart gave her the next veil.

  “We don’t talk about it with each other, either.”

  Giulia slammed the soap, splashing both of them. “You didn’t think this situation was important enough to break the unwritten rule of ‘Keep it between yourself and your Confessor?’ ”

  “Our Confessor is Father Ray.”

  The drain sucked in the edge of the veil, making it float on a thin layer of soapy water. Giulia dragged it o
ut and beat its lower half with the soap, even though it had escaped Vivian’s mess.

  “I forgot. Sorry.” The veil landed on top of the other wet clothes, and she inspected Vivian’s habit. “How’s your leg?”

  Bart shied away. “It’s okay. I, um, know my limit.”

  Giulia stopped scrubbing and just stood there, hands wrinkling in the water. Then she started to laugh. She was too exhausted to raise her voice above the sound of the water. She stopped laughing after several seconds, but didn’t trust herself to look at Bart for a full minute.

  “Shut up,” Bart hissed. “It’s not funny.”

  Giulia looked at her red, angry face. “It is. You’re slicing yourself like some medieval doctor who believes bleeding the patient will release the evil humours. Or are you afraid to admit the truth to yourself, that the pain you can control is a cheap disguise for the pain you can’t?”

  Silence. Bart blinked. As though her eyelids possessed an On switch, tears poured down her cheeks. Giulia dropped the soap and the habit and put her arms around the sobbing Novice. Neither spoke for a while. When the sobs turned to shuddering breaths and sniffles, Giulia released her.

  “Here.” She took a tissue from her pocket and looked around for more. “Be right back.”

  When she returned from the bathroom, several lengths of toilet paper in her hand, Bart had wrung out the last habit and started on the veil. Giulia finished it and the slip while Bart blew her nose.

  “Why are you cutting, Bart?”

  A longer silence. “Bridget killed herself. I have to be what everyone expects all day, every day, no matter what. Some nights I can’t make myself too tired to think.”

  “Are you this bright and helpful and energetic every day?”

  “Are you asking if I act exactly the same way now as I did before the day our spiritual leaders turned us into their drug mules?” Bart shrugged. “Yes. Because everyone knows me as ‘Bart Who’s Always Ready to Help,’ it’s easy to hide things from the rest of the Community. It got harder when Vivian turned into ‘Extreme Weepy Vivian Who’s Keeping the Tissue Companies in Business.’”