“That would be something.”
“I have a younger sister named Mary,” Oona offered. “Truly. Her name is Mary.”
Deirdre giggled again. “You never told me that.”
“Does that mean if she wanted to be a sister, she would be Sister Mary Mary?” Mercy surmised, causing both Deirdre and Oona to laugh.
“My parents were never worried that one of their daughters would join an order of Catholic nuns,” Oona said, “considering they are Protestants.”
“What does that mean?” Mercy asked.
“It means that Oona grew up rich in a country that hates and persecutes Catholics,” Deirdre said.
“I don’t understand. Why would people hate you?”
“I don’t understand it either,” Oona said. “One group of people hating another because of the way they choose to live their lives and worship God. Catholics were left without rights. No property—no voice in their country. No education for their women. No hope for their future. I’m thinking it has to cause tears in heaven for sure.”
“Does that mean that your Protestant family hates you now, Oona?” Mercy asked.
Mercy barely heard Oona’s covered whimper in the dark. Then came Deirdre’s apologetic voice over Mercy’s unguarded question.
“She didn’t mean anything, Oona,” she said. “She doesn’t know any …”
“No, I don’t believe they hate me,” Oona said quietly. “I was quite young when I told them God had called me to serve. Children want to be all sorts of things when they grow up, and I don’t think they took my quest to become a nun any more seriously than my brother telling them he would be a great knight and slay dragons.”
“Ah. Dragons. Giant fire-breathing beasts that can tear you limb from limb,” Mercy said.
Mercy could hear the smile in Oona’s voice when she answered. “My brother did not grow up to become a knight and slay dragons.”
“But you grew up to become a nun,” Mercy observed.
“They tried to convince me otherwise. Year after year of arguments, but it didn’t matter. I knew God wanted me, and that was more important—even more important than my parents. Finally, my da and I made an agreement. I would spend one year after school contemplating my future, and then at the end of that time, if I still felt the call in my heart, I would join the church.”
“Was it hard—to say good-bye?”
“So hard,” Oona whispered. “My ma and da, two brothers and sister, Mary, took me round to all my relations for a final farewell. We knew by then that I would be joining the Little Sisters of Hope here in America.”
“Ireland is a long ways off?”
“Another world,” Deirdre said wistfully. “Across water wider than you can even imagine.”
“My family brought me all the way to the little seaside town where I was to board a ship for the journey,” Oona recounted. “We arrived the night before, and there was a dance. A lovely band played waltz after waltz, and I danced with my da round and round in a barn that had been made to look like a fairyland. My green silk skirt twirled about my ankles and my da looked so handsome and my ma wiped tears away when she thought I didn’t see. We danced until they put the fiddle away and the candles went out, and my da put a kiss on my cheek and told me he couldn’t be there the next day when I traded my silk for the black skirt of the postulant.”
“And then she met me at the ship,” Deirdre said, “with enough family there to tell both of us farewell.”
Oona laughed softly. “True enough.”
“Your family was happy to have you leave, Deirdre?” Mercy asked.
“I am the oldest of thirteen brothers and sisters. From the time I was a wee girl, I knew I was supposed to become a nun. ’Twas my ma’s dream for me. In Ireland, the best a little girl can hope for is to marry a farmer who has a big enough plot for potatoes to keep his family alive.”
“So being a nun is better than being a wife of a potato farmer?”
Deirdre hesitated. “I almost married a potato farmer.”
Mercy heard Oona’s surprised intake of breath. “You never told me that before,” Oona whispered.
“Patrick O’Leary.” Deirdre breathed his name into the dark. “Handsomest man in the county, but as poor as he was charming. My ma said ’twas like looking in a mirror of the past and seein’ my da standing there. Handsome and charming got her a house filled with hungry children and a husband who worked from sunup to sundown and a life that never changed for the better.”
“Patrick O’Leary never had a chance, did he?” Oona asked.
Mercy heard the soft rustle of the pillowcase under Deirdre’s head as she shook it in the dark. “He may as well of been the Devil himself, according to my ma. She wanted me to have an education—see the world. Have more out of life than worrying about how to feed hungry babies and wondering when the next potato famine will happen.”
“But I thought God had to call you to be a nun,” Mercy said.
“He did,” Deirdre said quickly. “He did. I just didn’t hear it as clearly as Oona.”
“Maybe that’s because He told your ma first, and then He told you,” Mercy offered.
Deirdre didn’t answer right away. Mercy heard the soft clearing of her throat and then the sound of her shifting on the cot. “Maybe.”
Chapter Six
Four weeks, two days, and five needlepoint lessons is how long I have been with the Little Sisters of Hope. I have learned many things since my arrival. I confess I’m worried I may go to sleep, then wake up with my new memories as gone as my old ones, and I don’t think I could stand that. So I will continue to write things down in this book just as Doc Abe told me to—so I can always remember.
Someone is stealing jams and sweets from the larder behind the kitchen. Sometimes I catch the sisters watching me. I heard Sister Constance tell Sister Ruth that things started to disappear just after a certain someone arrived. I think they may believe that I am the certain someone.
The orphans’ house is almost ready, but there are still no beds. Mother Helena says, “God meets the needs of those who trust Him completely.” She’s not worried. She says the beds will arrive when God wants them to arrive.
I despise sewing. All of it—even the needlepoint they keep trying to teach me.
Horses have their own language. Lucky talks to me, and the sisters let me take care of him. He is the one thing I love.
Mother Helena gave me beads like all the sisters wear. It is called a rosary. There are prayers that go with each bead, and honestly, I can’t remember them all. Oona and Deirdre said someday I’ll be able to say all the prayers like they do, but I’m not so sure. Sometimes when I touch each bead, I’m thinking of other things instead of talking to God. I’m thinking how good the rooms smell when Sister Sarah bakes bread. How Mother Helena looks like she’s stern and angry sometimes but then her face cracks in a smile and she is beautiful. How weeding the garden with my hands in the hot dirt makes me lonely for something.
I have three dresses Sister Gertrude made for me. The sisters all looked so relieved when I started wearing them—but I feel like an impostor. I am ashamed to admit I felt more at home in my old clothes than I do in my new dresses. I miss the scratchy wool of the shirt and the comfort of those trousers. Is there something wrong with me?
Several nuns swarmed over the orphans’ large room with a level of activity that Mercy found exhausting. It was midmorning, and they had been at the work of painting the walls since just after sunrise.
Mercy, in a pale-blue dress, stood out in the room filled with sisters in their black and white. She dipped her brush into the last of the paint in her bucket.
“How do you know that orphans will be coming?” Mercy asked.
“God has told me,” Mother Helena answered.
“In actual words?”
The other sisters st
opped painting and looked at Mother Helena as she answered. “Yes.”
“Out loud and talking like we are right now?” Mercy persisted.
“No, Mercy. Not like this. It’s a different way of talking. It’s communicating in prayer.”
“So in a prayer—you heard God’s voice.”
“That’s right,” Mother Helena said, dipping her brush into a bucket of paint.
“But He didn’t say when? He didn’t say today or tomorrow or next Friday?”
“He said there will be a need and we are to meet it,” Mother Helena answered. “I take it on faith that if we don’t dillydally, neither will the orphans.”
She looked at the sisters, who had stopped painting to listen to the exchange, and raised an eyebrow. “Is everyone’s paint bucket empty?”
“No, Mother,” chorused the nuns, who went back to painting. Mercy stood with her brush dripping over the floor.
“But what if they come and we aren’t ready?” Mercy asked. “What if God sends them early and there are no beds and the room still smells like paint and there isn’t enough food for everyone? What if …”
“God’s timing is always perfect,” Mother Helena said.
“But …”
“Have you used up all your paint, Mercy?” Mother Helena asked.
Mercy looked into her bucket and nodded. “Yes.”
“There are some rags in a basket in the larder,” Mother Helena said. “Why don’t you go and get them so we might clean up the spatters on the floor.”
Carrying an oil lamp for light, Mercy slipped into the larder behind the large kitchen. She had been inside the place only one other time—when Oona had shown it to her shortly after her arrival. The coolness of the room was an instant pleasure, and she thought how nice it would be if they could all fit inside and take their meals there instead of in the warm kitchen.
She found another lamp and lit it and took a moment to look around. Shelves held glass jars filled with jams, jellies, vegetables, and other kitchen staples. There were bags of coffee beans, containers of lard, and sacks of potatoes stacked in neat rows. Oona had explained that during the war, several of the local families in St. Louis had been generous to a fault with foodstuffs for the nuns. But true to form, Mother Helena had given most of the food away to soldiers passing through town, to prisoners they went to visit, to any young mother looking to feed her hungry family. The nuns were praying for a bountiful harvest from the garden so they would have plenty of food for all the orphans once they arrived.
Mercy held the lamp up as she made her way across the floor. She paused in front of a full-length cheval glass tucked into a corner between two bushels of potatoes. The sight of her own face still took her by surprise, and she took a moment to study her image. Her brown hair had grown since the last time she’d seen herself. The longer it got, the more she noticed the waves that seemed to appear of their own accord. In the heat of summer, her curls stuck to her cheeks and seemed more annoying than anything else, but the sisters assured her that her hair was quite beautiful. She wiggled her eyebrows at herself, then raised one brow the way she’d seen Mother Helena do on occasion. She looked both serious and ridiculous and laughed as she turned to look at her blue dress from all angles. She remembered doing the same thing after she’d first arrived and Oona had taken her into the larder to see her reflection.
“Is this the customary place to keep a mirror?” she’d asked Oona. “Doc keeps his mirror on the wall in the clinic. It seems more useful that way.”
“We consider vanity to be a sin,” Oona answered with the Irish lilt in her voice that made everything sound pleasant. “’Tis why we keep the lookin’ glass in here. In case of an emergency.”
Mercy laughed. “What kind of emergency?”
“Let’s say you’ve got a nasty bit of somethin’ in your eye and everyone is busy with their chores or they’re prayin’ or just in the contemplative time of the morn. You can slip in here and take care of your eye yourself.”
“Has that ever happened to you?”
Oona looked sheepish. “Once or twice,” she admitted. “But not because I feel the need to stare at my reflection. God made me a plain woman, and I’m glad for it. It’s just that sometimes, when I’m missin’ my family back home, I come in here and look in the glass. I see their faces in mine, and it makes me a wee bit less homesick.”
Mercy didn’t see any faces but her own. She turned from the mirror and spotted the basket of rags. As she started to lift the basket, something on the floor beside it caught her eye. Her clothes! Her clothes. The brown shirt and green pants were lying on top of a heap of rags as if they were waiting to be burned with the rubbish. She remembered Mother Helena saying they would put the clothes away for her. Away in the larder with the rest of the rags is what she meant! The thought was quick and bitter, and Mercy felt a stab of anger that someone had so easily discarded one of the only things she had of her past. She plucked the clothes from the floor.
With her back to the mirror, Mercy dropped her dress to the floor and stepped out of the puddle of blue fabric. She drew her pants up over her slim hips and fastened them. They were snug—but they fit. She shrugged into the shirt and buttoned it over her cotton camisole. When the scratchy wool material settled itself against her skin, she felt inexplicably complete.
Mercy slowly turned to face the mirror. She looked at her reflection—this new reflection in her proper clothes—and willed her mind to find something familiar about the image. But after several seconds of studying herself, the only thing that seemed familiar was her disappointment in her own ability to remember. Her dress still lay in a heap on the larder floor. The blue fabric was so much lighter, prettier, infinitely more feminine than the brown wool of the shirt she had on—so why was she so drawn to these clothes? She shook herself from her pondering and started to unbutton the shirt just as she heard someone coming. Mercy blew out both lamps and ducked around to the back side of the shelves in the dark room.
A circle of light from a lamp floated into the larder. The woman carrying it, Sister Agnes, was cast in a small glow as she headed purposefully toward the shelves that Mercy was tucked behind. Sister Agnes was humming softly—a happy, catchy little tune that put a half smile on her face. Mercy already knew it was too late for her to say anything, so she practically held her breath and hoped that the sister would be quick about her errand and go on her way. Sister Agnes stopped in front of the shelf that held the jellies and jams and all things sweet and moved things around until she finally withdrew one particular jar. As Mercy watched, the nun pulled a spoon from the long sleeve of her habit. Popping the lid of the jar, she dipped in her spoon and moaned in ecstasy with the first taste. Lip-smacking, satisfied sounds followed as she made short work of the contents.
“Maybe just one more wee bite of … something,” Sister Agnes muttered, raising her lamp. The light wandered over bags of beans and baskets of potatoes, but they didn’t make Agnes pause. She kept shoving things from one side to another. Finally, Mercy saw her smile broadly. “’Twas a good year for raspberries, as I recall.” She stretched out a hand toward a small jar right in front of Mercy’s face, but then seemed to slip. Agnes caught herself with a hand to the shelf and looked down, then her face dipped out of Mercy’s view. When she stood back up, Mercy could see she held a swath of fabric in her arms. Sister Agnes put her lamp down on the shelf at the same time Mercy leaned in from her hiding place to get a better look at the sister’s find. Mercy realized her mistake too late. The eyes behind the shelf met the eyes in front of the shelf, and Agnes screamed so loudly it echoed off the larder wall. The nun spun on her heels and ran.
By the time Mercy came to stand at the threshold between the larder and the kitchen, Agnes was already surrounded by concerned nuns. A few of them were consoling her even as they tried to get to the bottom of what had frightened her.
Agnes clutched blue fab
ric to her bosom and tried to put her fright into words. “An eye … hiding … watching … a sneaky, dreadful demon!” She shuddered.
Mother Helena sailed into the kitchen with Oona and Deirdre on her heels. All three of them were paint splattered. Mother Helena still held her brush in her hand when she crossed to Agnes.
“What’s all this, then?” she asked.
“Something in the larder near scared the life out of her,” Sister Ruth said.
“What was it, then?”
Mercy stepped all the way through the threshold. “It was me.”
All eyes turned on her as she stood barefoot in her shirt and trousers. The sisters parted to give Agnes a better view of her demon in the dark.
“You?” Sister Agnes asked. “That was you hiding in the dark?”
“I didn’t mean to be hiding,” Mercy stammered. “I just didn’t want anyone to see me.”
“Then that would be hiding, Mercy,” Mother Helena said.
“Yes, Mercy.” Agnes sniffed. “That would be hiding.”
“Jelly, jams, marmalade—sugar cubes—have gone missing in recent weeks, Mercy. What were you doing in the larder?” Sister Ruth demanded.
“Mother sent me to find some rags,” Mercy said, though she looked at Sister Agnes.
Mother Helena nodded. “That’s true. Though I was starting to wonder if you’d lost your way back.”
Ruth turned to Agnes. “What were you doing in there, Sister?”
Agnes’s gaze flew around the room, but before she could answer the question, Sister Margaret pointed a finger at Mercy.
“I have a better question. Mercy, why are you dressed in those dreadful clothes?”
Mercy felt every eye upon her, and she took a step back—away from their accusing stares. “I found them, and I put them on. I would have changed back, but Sister Agnes has my dress.”
Agnes looked down at the fabric she held against her chest as if she had never seen it before in her life. “Oh. Um.” She thrust the dress out toward Mercy. “Here.”
Traces of Mercy Page 5