The Opposite of Hallelujah

by Anna Jarzab

The first two weeks of school passed largely without incident, at least as far as school was concerned. My favorite parts of every day were the classes I had with Pawel. My friends teased me mercilessly about liking him, but as long as they kept their mouths shut about it when he was in earshot, I didn’t care. I liked how he didn’t take things too seriously; I liked his well-timed jokes and generous smiles, his seemingly boundless energy, like that of a golden retriever puppy. He sort of looked like one, too, with his shaggy blond hair. The best part was that he seemed to like me back, at least a little. Every time I saw Derek in the hallway or the lunch line, I thought of Pawel and it didn’t matter as much.

  When it came to my family, though, it was a whole different story. Hannah was sleeping all day most days, and she practically had to be pried out of her room with a crowbar at dinnertime. That was my mother’s job. Every night as I set the table and Dad scooped out portions of whatever we were eating onto four plates (I had to be reminded more than once to grab an extra setting), Mom went upstairs and knocked softly on Hannah’s door. Dad and I busied ourselves with our respective tasks, but we were as silent as possible, each straining to hear what came next.

  “Hannie?” she would call out when Hannah inevitably didn’t answer. “It’s time for dinner, sweetheart. Please come down and eat with us.”

  Then Hannah would say something, probably a version of “I’m not hungry” or “Eat without me,” but Mom wasn’t having it. Hannah was thin as it was; Mom was not letting her get away with not eating at least one square meal a day. It already killed her that she couldn’t be home all the time to make sure that her twenty-seven-year-old daughter fed herself properly. Of course, nobody actually said these things out loud; I had to glean them for myself.

  “I know you’re not hungry, Hannah, but you’ve got to eat something or you’ll starve,” Mom would say next. “We have dinner as a family, that’s always been the rule and you know it.” This, Hannah would ignore. Finally, Mom would open the door, or if Hannah had locked it, she would threaten to have my dad take it off its hinges, which usually got Hannah’s attention.

  Once we were all good and settled around the kitchen table, we’d eat as my parents grilled me about my day. Nobody asked what Hannah had done, and she only occasionally ventured a question herself, preferring instead just to sit there, sullen and withdrawn. After Mom and Dad were out of stuff to ask me about school, they would trade work stories while Hannah and I tuned them out. I would eat, and she would push her food around until Mom or Dad looked her way; then she would lift a measly bite to her mouth and chew on it absently, as if deep in thought. All in all, it was weird, and it kept happening, day after day after day.

  Sometimes I would try to get a good look at Hannah out of the corner of my eye, to guess what she was thinking as she rearranged her peas, but most of the time I avoided thinking about it. Every once in a while, I would attempt to imagine her the way she was at the convent. I’d done a little research on the Sisters of Grace; I knew her order still wore the habit, long and black, with a headpiece that covered all their hair, but other than mentally dressing her up like a paper doll, I could never quite picture it. I wondered how much she had changed since coming home. I figured they’d probably let her get away with not eating very much—she hadn’t gotten that thin by accident—but I highly doubted they had let her sleep till three in the afternoon and sulk around aimlessly, doing nothing and going nowhere.

  Every so often, I would get a good look at her and think, What happened to you? But I never would’ve asked. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know the answer.

  As soon as I saw the unfamiliar car in the driveway, I knew something was up. My parents both should’ve been at work. I opened the front door tentatively, as if I might be triggering an explosive.

  “Hello?” I called out, cautiously stepping over the threshold. “Anybody home?”

  “In here, Caro,” my dad shouted, a little too eagerly, from the family room. I dropped my bag onto the bottom stair and went looking for him.

  Dad was perched awkwardly on the leather recliner, right across from my old nemesis, Father Bob. The embarrassment of having to go talk to him after lying about Hannah to my classmates flared up like a rash. Was it possible that he was here about that? I wanted to run from the room, and from the looks of it, so did Dad.

  “Um …” I didn’t know what to say. You couldn’t just look a priest in the eye and demand to know why he was in your house, sipping tea from the Grumpy mug your mom brought back for you from a conference in Orlando. You also couldn’t laugh, even though the image of a priest holding a mug with the crankiest of the Seven Dwarfs on it seemed pretty funny to you.

  “You remember Father Bob?” Dad gestured to our guest, as if, by chance, I hadn’t noticed him sitting there.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. I struggled to find my manners. “How are you, Father?”

  “Very well, thank you, Caro,” he told me. “And how about yourself?”

  “Can’t complain,” I said. I took a stab at it. “Are you here for Hannah?”

  “I was,” he said. “Your mother asked me to drop by. But I don’t think Hannah wants to see me.”

  “Mom’s upstairs with her,” Dad informed me. “I should probably go check to make sure everything is all right. Why don’t you keep Father Bob company while I go find out what’s taking them so long?”

  “I don’t—” I started to protest, but Dad was already out of his chair and flying past me.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “Please, Father, make yourself comfortable.”

  A veteran of sixteen years of Catholic education, my father found the clergy sort of unnerving up close. He said it was for the same reason he froze up that one time he and his friends snuck backstage after a Stones concert and happened to come face to face with Keith Richards. Some people, he said, you’re only meant to see from a distance; otherwise you start questioning the natural order of things. Really, I think he got into a lot of trouble as a kid and had bad memories of pre–Vatican II corporal punishment.

  With pretty much no other option, I reluctantly sank into the chair Dad had vacated. Tongue-tied and anxious, I kneaded my hands in my lap. An irrational part of me was afraid I’d just start blurting inappropriate things. I might not have been the most religious girl around, but even I didn’t want to offend a priest.

  “So you came to see Hannah?” I asked after a long pause. I knew the answer, of course—I’d asked that question five seconds ago—but we needed to talk about something. Or I did. Father Bob looked content to sit there in silence. Hannah was like that, too. Did it come with the job?

  “I did,” he said. “I know the transition from the religious life can be difficult, and I wanted to see if there was anything she needed.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That’s nice of you.”

  He smiled. I squinted at Father Bob. He wasn’t a young man, but he wasn’t old, either. He wasn’t handsome, but he wasn’t ugly. He was just … a priest, I guess. He looked normal. I don’t know what I was expecting, and it wasn’t like I’d never been in a room with Father Bob before. I was starting to understand what my dad meant about people you’re not supposed to see up close. I hadn’t been to church in a while, but in my head a priest was a guy in a fancy robe pacing the floor in front of the altar, giving a sermon—performing, basically. Sitting this close, in my own family room, was like, I don’t know, pulling back the curtain and discovering that the Wizard of Oz was just a man like all other men. It felt like cheating. It felt like finding out how the trick was done.

  “Leaving a convent like the Sisters of Grace isn’t easy,” Father Bob told me. “And Hannah is very young.”

  “Not that young,” I pointed out. “She’s almost thirty.”

  He laughed. “You’ll feel differently when you’re her age, I think.”

  “Probably,” I said, although I couldn’t imagine ever being that old.

  “How do you think Hannah’s adjusting?” he as
ked. He gave me a pointed look, and I could tell he was curious about what I thought. I wondered how much my parents had told him about Hannah, whether they’d told him how thin she was and how she slept in twelve-hour stretches. Did he know about all that? And even if he did, was there anything he could do about it?

  “It’s only been a couple of weeks,” I reminded him, sidestepping the question like I had something to hide.

  “I know,” he said. “Still, I’d like to hear what you think.”

  “She seems quiet,” I said cagily, not sure how much was too much to reveal. “Kind of nervous and sad.”

  He nodded. “That’s to be expected. Permanently separating from a religious order is not unlike getting divorced, or having a close friend or family member pass away. There is grief involved, sometimes profound grief.”

  I’d never thought of it that way before. Maybe it was naive of me, or plain inconsiderate, but I had kind of thought it would be like dropping out of college—which Hannah had also done.

  “Believe me,” he said. “It can be very trying, and not only for the ex-religious, but for the people who love them, as well. How are you finding it?”

  I shrugged. “Okay. It’s weird.”

  “I can imagine,” he said with genuine sympathy. “You and Hannah are far apart in age, I remember.”

  “Eleven years,” I said.

  “And she’s been away a long time,” he said. “Almost a decade. She must seem like something of a stranger to you.”

  “Totally,” I said. “I feel bad about that, but it’s like, what are my options? We didn’t grow up together. Before she came home, I hadn’t seen her at all in three years.” Wow, three years. When I said it out loud, it sounded like eons, but the time had gone so fast, years popping like soap bubbles, there one minute and gone the next, that I’d never stopped to consider how strange it was that it hadn’t felt long to me, that I hadn’t been keeping count.

  “There was visitation at the convent, though,” he said.

  “That place gives me the creeps,” I said with a dramatic shudder.

  “I’m not such a big fan of it myself,” he told me. “It’s very … austere. I imagine it must be hard to live there, if you’re not the sort of person who’s suited for that life.”

  “Are all convents like hers?” I asked.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “And don’t get me wrong, I’m not speaking ill of the Sisters of Grace. They’re wonderful women, very spiritual and devout. But the active orders are more in line with my own personal vocation.”

  “What do you mean, ‘active orders’?”

  “Active orders are more about community outreach and charitable work,” Father Bob explained. “They teach in schools and run shelters and food banks, a whole variety of things, depending on the order. But the Sisters of Grace are a contemplative order. Do you know what that is? Did anyone ever explain that to you?”

  “I think maybe you did,” I told him. “But I probably wasn’t listening.” He laughed again. I seemed to amuse him. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended.

  “You were young,” he said. “And I was boring, I’m sure.”

  “I’m not biting,” I warned him.

  “Fair enough. A contemplative order of nuns is one that’s devoted mostly to constant prayer and adoration,” Father Bob said.

  “Adoration of what?”

  “God,” he said, spreading his hands in what I took to be the polite, priestly gesture for duh.

  “Right,” I said. Duh.

  “The enclosure—and by that I mean the retreat from worldly life—is meant to preserve the peace necessary for such rigorous contemplation,” Father Bob said. “It isn’t easy to pray without ceasing when you’re constantly being distracted by the outside world.”

  “So what you’re saying is that some nuns go out and help people and try to make the world a better place, and other nuns just lock the door and shut it out so that they can talk to God all day?” I grimaced. “Seems a little unfair to me.”

  “You have to understand,” Father Bob said, “the Sisters of Grace—all contemplative religious, in fact—believe that by making prayer the focus of their entire lives, they are making the world a better place. The power of prayer is a documented phenomenon; it can cure the sick. They’re not just talking to God, either. They’re focusing their entire force of being on improving the lives of people around the globe. It’s a pretty tall order.”

  “I guess,” I said, though I wasn’t convinced. You couldn’t prove prayer had anything to do with making the world a better place, and the idea that it could cure illness seemed like a bunch of voodoo magic to me, something that probably had more to do with the power of suggestion than it did with God.

  “It’s not easy,” Father Bob insisted. “That life is very demanding. It requires an extremely strong and dedicated will, and an almost complete obliteration of the ego. Can you imagine how hard it is to never think of yourself above others ever again?”

  “Are you saying Hannah wasn’t strong enough?” I asked. I was peeved on Hannah’s behalf. She’d wanted to be a Sister of Grace so badly that she’d sacrificed her youth and her family to do it.

  “It appears that the contemplative life didn’t bring out Hannah’s best self,” Father Bob said. “It didn’t fulfill her in the way it should have if it was her true, lifelong vocation. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  I looked up sharply at Father Bob. This, I realized, was why he had come. He wanted her to know she wasn’t a failure for leaving the Sisters of Grace. I started to wish Hannah had been willing to talk to him. She probably needed to hear that.

  Dad came back into the room then, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry, Father,” he said. Father Bob rose from his seat, and so did I. “She just won’t come down.”

  “I understand,” he said. “I can see that Hannah is going through a difficult time. Maybe she needs to sort some things out on her own first. I’m looking forward to meeting her, though, when she’s ready.”

  Dad nodded, although, really, none of us knew what Hannah needed. If leaving the Sisters of Grace was Hannah’s great shame, then this was theirs: they didn’t know how to fix her.

  “My wife would come down, but …” Dad spread his palms the way Father Bob had, but it didn’t mean the same thing; it meant Here are all the things I wish I had the words to explain.

  “I understand,” Father Bob said sympathetically, offering Dad his hand. Dad shook it gratefully, and Father Bob turned to me.

  “It was nice to see you again, Caro,” he said. “If you ever need to talk, you know how to find my office, right?”

  I nodded. He smiled.

  “Good. Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Mitchell,” he said.

  “Evan,” Dad said. “Please.”

  “Evan,” Father Bob repeated.

  When the door closed behind the priest, Dad asked, “What did you two talk about?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing important,” I said.

  I had to fend for myself for dinner, because my parents spent the whole evening after Father Bob left trying to reason with Hannah in hushed tones behind the closed bedroom door. I stood at the bottom of the staircase for a while, until it became obvious I wasn’t going to hear anything. I ended up eating a cold turkey sandwich in front of the television, waiting for someone to come downstairs, but no one did. Eventually I put the dishes in the sink and went to my room.

  Around midnight, there was a knock at my bedroom door.

  “Come in,” I called, shutting my textbook and putting down my pen.

  Hannah stepped into the room uncertainly. She looked like she’d been through hell. Her face was all red and splotchy, and her hair was pulled up into the severest ponytail I’d ever seen. It stretched her skin tight against her bones. She seemed so exhausted, emotionally and physically, that I was surprised to see her standing. “Mom and Dad are asleep. I thought you might be in bed, but the light was on and I figured …”

  I
rubbed my forehead. “What’s up?” I wanted to ask her why she wouldn’t see Father Bob; she had to be more used to priests prying into her business than we were. Or maybe that was it. Maybe she didn’t want to be reminded of the reasons she had left. I could see her side of it, but I was frustrated, too. She’d hidden away in her room like a child, but she wasn’t a child. How long were my parents going to indulge her? Not to mention I felt sort of bad for Father Bob. He’d clearly wanted to do a good thing, to help Hannah in whatever way he could, and she’d refused even to acknowledge it.

  “I was wondering if you’d do me a favor,” Hannah said. There was a pause, during which I was probably supposed to say, “Sure, anything,” but I didn’t. Hannah waited, and when I stayed silent, she continued. “If it’s not too much trouble, I was wondering if you would take me to get my driver’s license.”

  I raised my eyebrows slowly; I don’t know what kind of favor I expected her to ask of me, but that wasn’t it. “You don’t need me to do that,” I said. “Dad can take you, or if he can’t, Mom will.”

  Hannah chewed her lip. “Okay,” she said finally, turning to leave.

  “Wait.” She looked at me expectantly. “Why do you want me to do it?”

  Hannah shrugged. “You don’t have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.”

  “That’s not a reason,” I said.

  “I don’t know. I just think I’d like you to drive me to the DMV.”

  “The DMV is a hell mouth,” I told her.

  “I know.”

  “I spent four hours at the DMV on two separate days just a couple months ago when I got my license. It was awful.” I’d failed my test the first time. I wasn’t proud of it, especially since the Illinois State driver’s test was supposedly one of the easiest in the country, but it was the truth. “I don’t want to do that again.”

  “Okay. I just thought I’d ask.” Hannah gave me another one of her patented weak, sad smiles and left, closing the door firmly but quietly behind her.

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