Waiting to Believe

by Sandra Bloom

  Sister Mary Boniface was waiting as Kacey approached the gym for afternoon rehearsal. Kacey smiled in greeting, but then saw the drama instructor’s brows knit into a deep frown. “You’re to go directly to Mother Mary Bernard.”

  “Before rehearsal? Everyone’s waiting for me.” Even as she spoke, Kacey realized how foolish it was to question a command.

  “Go directly,” Boniface replied in a low growl.

  “Yes, Sister! Right away, Sister!” Kacey clasped her script to her chest, her fingers tightening on it in apprehension. She hurried down the hall to her superior’s office, a destination she knew all too well. Her stomach churned as she entered the office.

  Mother Mary Bernard was seated behind her oversized desk. Kacey entered, trying for a small smile. “You wanted to see me, Mother Mary Bernard?”

  The old nun stood but did not offer Kacey a chair. The omission was significant. Kacey could feel and hear her heart beat in her ears.

  “This belongs to you, I believe.” Mother Mary Bernard held a crumpled piece of paper in the hand she extended to Kacey. Even from across the desk, Kacey recognized the Xs penciled in at various points within a box drawn on the paper. She could make out the scribbled names beside each X.

  Mary Bernard pulled her hand back and smoothed the paper between her fingers. “Tom. Tim. Phil,” she read tonelessly.

  Kacey instantly understood her indiscretion.

  “You refer to our sisters as ‘Tom,’ ‘Tim,’ ‘Phil’? You’ve given them nicknames? By whose authority do you take these sacrilegious liberties, Sister Mary Laurence? I, myself, have never known this to happen in all my years here.” Her fingers flew to her chest as she made a sweeping sign of the cross. She laid the paper on her desk.

  “I’m so sorry, Mother Mary Bernard. Not nicknames. It was like shorthand! I meant no disrespect.”

  “Ah, but you did disrespect your sisters!” She leaned forward across the wide desk, picking up the paper once again and waving it in front of Kacey’s face. “Did you not?”

  Kacey lurched backward. Her voice was ragged. “Mother, I’m truly sorry! It was just a note I scribbled for myself during rehearsal to help me with staging. Like a cue card. It showed me where everyone should stand during a crowd scene. I didn’t mean for anyone to see it!”

  Mary Bernard sat back down. “Oh, I’m certain you didn’t, but do you think that lessens the offense?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Kacey admitted. “I used poor judgment. I see that now.”

  Silence. Kacey waited. Mary Bernard tore the paper into small pieces. “You will honor the sanctity of our calling at all times, Sister. You will never again refer to any of our sisters by anything but their full community names.”

  “Yes, Mother Mary Bernard.”

  But the simmering old nun was not finished. “To think that I should have to give such an order to one of our own! I am of a mind to cancel the play!”

  Kacey could not withhold a gasp.

  “But I’ve decided that would only serve to punish the others who have worked hard on it. And those who look forward to seeing it.”

  “Thank you, Mother,” Kacey murmured.

  “Oh, do not thank me. I am not doing it for you. I think you would do well to spend the remainder of this week’s recreation time pondering the significance of your act.” The superior leaned back in her chair, her eyes boring into Kacey.

  She’s enjoying this! Kacey thought.

  “You are willful, Sister Mary Laurence. It does not bode well for you. I urge you to devote yourself to prayer and penitence so you may make your way without stumbling.” She waved a bony finger at Kacey in a gesture of dismissal. “Go in peace,” she said with little charity in her voice.

  Kacey retreated, shaken. She anguished over Bernard’s assessment of her. Willful? Was it true?

  What she did not ponder was her indiscretion. She could not draw up any feeling of guilt. Tom. Tim. Phil. Where’s the harm?

  “Now what?” Lisa whispered. “You look troubled.” She caught up with Kacey who was hurrying down a deserted hallway.

  “Aww, Lisa, I’m so frustrated. Somehow Bernard got a hold of a note I’d drawn up for myself to position people for the crowd scene.”

  “So?”

  “I didn’t write out full names. Just abbreviated. You know, Tom, Tim.”

  Lisa made a face. “Oh, Kacey,” she murmured. “Capital offense.”

  “So I found out! What I don’t know is how she got the paper in the first place. I threw it in the gym wastebasket at the end of rehearsal.”

  “Wait a minute!” Lisa exclaimed. “I saw someone digging in there just as we were leaving! I thought it was strange for someone to be taking something out of the wastebasket!”

  Kacey’s eyes widened. “Who was it?”

  “I just got a glimpse walking past.”

  “But you didn’t see who it was?”

  “No! No, of course not! We all look alike!”

  Kacey’s stomach tightened. Oh, yes. We do indeed all look alike . . .

  In the end, the play went well. And in the process, Kacey gleaned new insights into herself. She liked what she discovered. Acting had been fun in high school, but now she had stepped into a leadership role, going beyond acting. She had a broader appreciation of her own talents.

  No bouquet was thrust at her after the final curtain, but the gymnasium filled with energetic applause from the black-clad audience of one hundred. And for Kacey, the director, there was great pleasure in seeing Mother Mary Bernard smiling enthusiastically, clapping with more fervor than Kacey would have thought her capable.

  The spring afternoon was perfect, but Kacey was restless. She sat studying at a library table overlooking the convent’s burgeoning back garden. The cardinals whistled back and forth to one another. The sun, through an open window, penetrated her heavy habit with its welcome heat.

  But peace would not come. Kacey’s mind and heart were miles away. This afternoon, Bridget was graduating from high school. The formal invitation had arrived a month earlier, accompanied by a hurried note in Bridget’s careless scrawl.

  Hi, K.

  I know you can’t come, but I wanted you to get an invite, anyway. Don’t think I’m not still mad at you for not being here with us, ’cuz I am. Probably always will be. I’m having a pretty big party. I’ve planned it myself. Where are you when I need you!!!

  I’m narrowing my college choices. Applied to only 2: Purdue and St. Mary’s in South Bend. Keep your fingers crossed or whatever you nuns do for good luck!

  Love ya, B

  A small alarm went off. Purdue and St. Mary’s. Both in Indiana. Why? Greg. Kacey flushed at the thought. It didn’t seem possible, and yet . . . Don’t borrow trouble!

  32

  Kacey was registered for the last classes of spring semester—among them, one she had been waiting two years to take. “In this class, Sisters, there will be no syllabus, no textbook. You will be the resource we’ll draw upon as we explore the ‘Moral Issues of the Twentieth Century.’”

  The kindly nun was thin but not haggard, as Kacey thought so many of the older nuns were. Rather than hiding her hands in the folds of her habit sleeves, Mary Leo reached out with them, encompassing her students in an imaginary embrace.

  “It’s my honor to open you to the world of critical thinking, and it’s my prayer that when you leave this class, you will look at human nature, with all its complexities, in a more discerning and challenging way.”

  Kacey’s excitement was nearly palpable. The stately nun walked to the blackboard, chalk in hand. “As a class,” she continued, “we’ll select the ten moral issues we’ll examine during this semester. So, let’s begin. Who will suggest the first?”

  Kacey’s hand cut through the air. “War!” she shouted.

  Others followed, overlapping in their ea
gerness to be heard.

  “Birth control!”

  “Poverty!”

  “Nuclear nonproliferation!”

  “Racism!”

  “The Holocaust!”

  The cascading litany went on until there were eighteen issues listed in the nun’s precise handwriting. A feeling of well being swept over Kacey. This is what I’m here for!

  The hour ended too quickly. The list had been winnowed to thirteen. Still too many.

  Now came the frustrating part—not being able to continue the discussion on the bus ride back to the convent.

  Though television, radio, and newspapers remained off-limits to the novices, word of the outside world still filtered in, sometimes through references in letters from home. And sometimes through the class discussions that fed Kacey’s mind and spirit.

  It was 1965, and the conflict in Vietnam was being described as a “war.” Kacey knew this because she had been assigned the job of ironing habits and veils in the laundry room. The senior nuns living in the far wing of the convent had access to the daily Minneapolis paper. Afterward, the paper was laid beneath the ironing board to protect the habits from dirt and dust on the floor. Fortunately for Kacey, no one had noticed that the practice gave the ironer access to information about the outside world.

  Once certain no one else was in the vast basement, Kacey dropped to her knees, quickly searching for the front page with its portentous news.

  Early in the year, she had read the bold headline: “President Johnson sends 3,500 marines to South Vietnam,” and she recalled the ominous tone in her father’s voice when he’d heard the death of the first US serviceman announced in the evening news. The serviceman was described as a “military adviser,” but Kenneth had spoken the word, war. That was in 1961.

  Four years later, the US troop levels now reached 185,000—no end in sight.

  War. A moral issue of the twentieth century. Throughout the year as Kacey ironed the habits, she learned of other wars going on in the country. Though she knew little about him, she understood the significance of a headline in February ’65: “Malcolm X assassinated.” The black Muslim minister, advocate of black pride and black power, had been gunned down on the first day of National Brotherhood Week.

  Later she read of the Bloody Sunday March. In Alabama, six hundred Blacks marched from Selma to Montgomery on behalf of voting rights. They were blocked, but they would not be stopped. They marched again and then again, until finally—25,000 strong—they reached their destination. Months later, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

  She read of the first SDS march against the war. Students for a Democratic Society taking on Washington, DC, with their dissent. Again, 25,000 strong.

  Kacey saw it all unfold, under her feet, her fingers often stained with printer’s ink, which she washed off before reentering the closed world upstairs.

  Fighting. Marching. Young people her age. She thought of them as she went about ironing, weeding the garden, praying the rosary, studying in the sun-dappled library, playing whist. She thought about them as she went to her classes on “Human Values and the Arts” and “Philosophy in Literature.” All so civilized.

  Is this what I should be doing? She hung one more ironed habit on the clothes line, trying to remember why she had chosen this calling. Was it really a calling? She wasn’t sure. She only knew she wanted “to do good.” That was what she had told her father that night in the barn three years ago.

  The Hound of Heaven had been chasing her, of that she was certain. But now she often wondered if she had run in the right direction. She tried to think of these preparatory years as “boot camp.” This isn’t what you were called for. This is just the price you pay in order to do what you’re supposed to do with your life. Do good. Do good. The words became a mantra.

  33

  Kacey was awake before the bell sounded. Today was the day. Profession of temporary vows. The church would be filled, and most importantly, her family would be there. The black veil would finally be placed on her head! She wanted to rejoice, to feel exuberance at what the day held for her.

  Instead, fear and doubt gripped her. I’m not ready. I’m not ready! With an unsteady hand, she reached for her prayer book lying on the bedside table.

  “Stay with us, Lord Jesus Christ, guide us on our way to your Kingdom . . .” At the end of the prayer, Kacey rose from her bed. Time to get ready.

  As she looked down the single line waiting to enter the sanctuary, Kacey thought of Rhonda, who had left. Will the rest of us make it to the finish line?

  She heard the wheezing of the reeds in the old organ before the first notes of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis filled the air. She felt a shiver at the beauty of it. As she stepped forward, sweat beaded around her wimple. Now the small procession made its way through the double doors and down the aisle to the front of the church. Eyes downcast. Hands clasped within the folds of their sleeves.

  A solemn Archbishop Corcoran O’Riley waited for them on the first step of the altar. “Out of God’s deepest mercy . . . a new dawn!” He proclaimed in a voice ringing with power and authority.

  The mass began. Kacey’s lips mouthed the responses. Her mind, though, searched the congregation. Where was her family? Had they all come? Was her mother all right?

  Time to go forward. The novices moved silently into position, prostrating themselves on the stone floor, side by side, arms outstretched in supplication. More words. More music. Kacey’s stomach lurched. She was lightheaded as she rose from the floor.

  Mary Bernard, mistress of novices, stepped up to usher the fourteen through the side door into the room where two years earlier their heads had been shaved. Now the white veils were removed, replaced by the black, signifying their elevation in rank: juniorate. Now Kacey looked like every other nun she had ever known.

  Mother Mary Agnes, mother general of the community, waited for their return to the altar. She moved down the line, accepting the vows of each one in turn: poverty, chastity, obedience, and service.

  “Yes,” Kacey murmured as the mother general stood before her. “Yes, I proclaim these vows for myself.”

  With eyes squeezed tightly shut, hands folded in fierce commitment, Kacey joined her sisters in the Prayer of St. Bernard:

  How good and sweet it is, Jesus, to dwell in your heart! All my thoughts and affections will I sink in the heart of Jesus, my Lord.

  Yes, Kacey thought.

  The hallway was crowded with tight knots of families encircling the black-veiled young sisters. There were hugs and ripples of soft laughter on all sides. Kacey heard the “woods call,” the ear-piercing three tones she had created years ago as a way to call to her brothers and sisters. Hoo hoo hoo. It had caught on and become their unique way of reaching out to one another in a variety of situations.

  Hoo hoo hoo. For the first time in three years, Kacey heard it again. She swung around, and there they were, waiting for her. Sixteen-year-old Gerald, with his hands to his mouth, had made the call. She ran to him first.

  “You rascal! Don’t you have any sense of propriety?” She laughed as she hugged him.

  “I don’t know if I do or not. What’s propriety mean?” He hugged her back. Bridget and Maureen moved in while Kenneth and Rose waited their turn. Joseph stood by his dad. At fourteen, he was unsure of his place: no longer a boy, but not yet a man.

  Kacey reached for Bridget. “Oh, Bridg, I’m so sorry I couldn’t be there for your graduation!”

  Bridget returned the hug and said only, “No big deal, Kacey.”

  “But I feel so out of touch! I don’t have any idea what your plans are!”

  Before Bridget could respond, Kenneth stepped forward, guiding Rose by her elbow. “When do we get our turn?” Kacey stepped into another embrace, reaching to pull Joseph in.

  “C’mon,” she said. “We’ve all got private
rooms for the afternoon! Let’s talk till there’s nothing more to say!” She led her family down the hallway and into a study off the main corridor. There was a flowered loveseat against one wall and next to it, an end table and lamp. Across the small room was a lumpy Morris chair and a desk with a straight-back chair. It was crowded.

  Rose didn’t take a seat. Instead, she stood before Kacey, holding out a box. “This is for you.”

  Kacey looked at her mother quizzically and lifted the lid without speaking. Folded inside was a full-length black robe, tailored smartly of rich, soft wool. Kacey’s mouth opened in surprise. She jumped to her feet and held it up to her body.

  “I made it,” Rose said softly, her gaze glancing just over Kacey’s shoulder.

  Kacey’s throat tightened. She put the robe to her cheek, tears welling in her eyes. “Oh, Mom. It’s beautiful! It’s wonderful!”

  “I kept it simple,” Rose replied. “Didn’t put any decorations or anything on it, you know. Not even pockets, but it’s lined.” Now she sat down in the morris chair.

  Kacey was overcome. She ran her fingers over the perfectly stitched edges of the lapel. It had been years since Rose had done any sewing, Kacey knew. She remembered the old Singer treadle machine that sat under the window in her parents’ bedroom. It was difficult to visualize the mother she knew working patiently, steadily, on such a project.

  Kacey knelt before her mother then reached up to embrace her. In a voice thick with emotion, she murmured, “Thank you, Mom. Thank you. I’ll treasure this all my life.”

  34

  The sun was breaking through as Kacey left the dining hall after breakfast. She had been assigned to weed the vast convent vegetable garden. Even in her heavy black habit, she loved the opportunity to spend solitary hours under the beating sun, with no one to answer to, no one to tell her what to think.