Contrition

by Maura Weiler

  “Well, of course I’d do it, but we’re different that way. It depends on what you expect to...” Graciela looked at the sky for a moment before continuing. “Mira. You do what you have to do to get what you need from Catherine, but come back the minute you compromise her trust more than you’re willing to.”

  “As long as you get pictures and a signed commitment first,” Trish interjected.

  Graciela threw Trish a dirty look as I started the car. I heard them bickering as they waved. Silence may not be such a bad thing after all.

  • • •

  The silence became ear-splitting when my radio reception predictably gave out halfway through the drive up to Big Sur. Questions I didn’t want to answer popped and bounced through my brain like balls in a bingo tumbler.

  I tried to figure out why I was so obsessed with getting the story, even if it meant taking advantage of my sister. Just because I wanted Catherine to get the attention she deserved didn’t mean she wanted that attention. What was I really after? Vicarious fame? Acknowledgment from Catherine or my fellow journalists? Love? From whom? Maybe I thought a breakthrough story about a biological family member would somehow justify my existence, or at least serve as a consolation prize for losing that family before I knew I had it. If so, I wasn’t sure it was worth the price.

  I kept pushing the radio buttons to see if there was any reception to be had. At that point I would have listened to anything to drown out the doubts swirling around my brain. I considered singing, but the only songs I thought of were church hymns I’d learned in school, and they felt a bit too appropriate. I left the radio on static just to have some noise.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Some quick ground rules for your visit,” Mother Benedicta said as soon as I had settled into a parlor chair that afternoon. “We designed the aspirancy program to help you determine whether you wish to enter our novitiate. You are not here to make friends, nor are you to openly disregard, question, or disrupt our way of life in any way while you’re with us. Understood?”

  I nodded.

  “Excellent. Typically, a sister may communicate with her friends and family once a month. Since you will be here for only two weeks, phone calls, letters, and visitors are prohibited during your stay.”

  I nodded again, trying not to cringe.

  “Those are the caveats for all aspirants.” Mother sighed and touched the cross around her neck. “I’ve recently learned that you are a journalist by profession, so you get an extra one.”

  I fiddled with a loose thread on my skirt and waited.

  “I need you to promise that you won’t publish anything about what you see here. We have nothing to hide, but superfluous publicity goes against the spirit of our mission. You are here as a potential member of our community, not as a journalist.”

  “I understand,” I said, hoping I could eventually change her mind. Looking down, I realized I had pulled the hem out of my skirt. The ragged edge hung down like a war-torn flag. “I appreciate your trust.”

  “Make sure you earn it.”

  The wailing siren of a passing emergency vehicle rose up from the highway below as I tucked my tattered hemline back in place. The phrase “no-win situation” sprang to mind. Now I had two sisters to convince that Catherine’s art should be shared with the public. Short of that, I’d have to keep my promise to Mother Benedicta and somehow persuade Phil that I should be able to keep my job despite refusing to deliver the article. That seemed somewhat possible, if not probable.

  I hadn’t promised her not to write anything, I told myself, just not to publish. I couldn’t. Writing was as demanding as any addiction. Even if I made a conscious effort not to do it, I would ultimately find myself compiling the story regardless. Maybe getting Catherine’s permission to publish it would enable me to obtain Mother’s blessing as well. Maybe not. All I could do was write the best article I was capable of and hope both the sisters and Phil would all agree that it should appear in print. I still would have preferred that Phil reject the idea so I could sell the piece to a more legitimate paper, but now that he had made my job contingent upon delivering the article, I resigned myself to running it in The Comet.

  “Now that we’re clear on that, I can stop being the taskmaster and welcome you to our community.” The laugh lines that framed Mother Benedicta’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. “It’s nice to have you here, Dorie.”

  “Thank you. I’m looking forward to my stay.”

  “Our life centers on ora et labora—prayer and work. We devote half the day to manual labor as a visible expression of our life of poverty. I think you’ll find it very meditative.”

  “I’m sure I will,” I said, believing it.

  “I’m assigning you to the kitchen. Tomorrow you may arrive at eight, but after that you’re to report for duty at four a.m. to start the baking before Lauds.”

  My face fell before I could catch it. The early hour was fine, but the word “kitchen” quickly extinguished any hopes of enjoying manual labor.

  “I should tell you now that I can’t cook at all,” I said. “I mean not at all. My hand makes it difficult for me to chop things and—”

  “Don’t worry,” Mother reassured me. “Just do your best. Half the sisters here can’t cook either, but we all take turns trying and eat the results gratefully. Eating between meals is frowned upon, but the bakers get an extra cup of coffee to rev them up. Do you drink coffee?”

  “I have a feeling I’m about to start.”

  “No time like the present, provided you leave other vices at the door. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that smoking, drinking, and drugs aren’t permitted here.”

  “I figured,” I answered through gritted teeth. I could hear the Marlboro Man, Glenlivet, and Chester Cheetah calling out to me from the car trunk. I ignored them. If I was going to invade the convent, the least I could do was honor their rules, as hard as that would be. I didn’t want to get kicked out for bad behavior before getting everything I came for, whatever that was.

  “We’re not going to go through your bags, but we strongly encourage you to avoid any creature comforts during your stay. Sharing our way of life as completely as possible is the best way to get a real feel for it, and the only habits we can afford are the ones we wear. That’s it for now.” Mother Benedicta rose to leave. “Sister Teresa will show you around. I’ll see you at Vespers.”

  “Thank you for this opportunity, Mother.”

  “I hope it gives you some clarity.” She padded out of the room on her bare feet.

  I hoped I could deal with the hours, the workload, and my guilty conscience.

  • • •

  Out in the parking lot, a turkey vulture turned lazy circles above the monastery. I opened my trunk while Sister Teresa waited to help me carry my things inside. The nun’s eyes slid over Graciela’s and Trish’s care packages.

  “My friends don’t really understand the nature of perpetual fasting.” I pushed the contraband back out of view.

  “Most people don’t,” Teresa said. “My mother insisted I bring a year’s supply of her homemade cookie dough. It’s probably still in our icebox.”

  “I did bring donations of my own, if that’s all right.” I pulled out some additional art supplies but left the cigarettes, alcohol, and junk food in the trunk where they would be less tempting.

  “We thank you.” Teresa slung the bag of paints and brushes over her shoulder. “But you didn’t have to do that.”

  “I wanted to.” What I wanted was to make sure Catherine had plenty of canvases during my stay. I hitched the fresh canvases under my right arm and dragged my duffel bag with my left hand as Sister Teresa watched with amusement. “I didn’t know what to bring, so I brought everything.”

  “You’ll be surprised at how little you need.”

  The nun led the way back to the garden while the vulture surveyed us from the sky.

  We stowed my things in Sister Teresa’s office. I peered into the adjacent visiting roo
m and saw that the Madonna and Child remained conspicuously absent. I wondered what form it took now that Sister Catherine had reclaimed it.

  “Ready for the sixty-cent tour?” my hostess asked.

  “Just about.” I grabbed a stapler from the desk and clamped the jagged hemline of my skirt back in place.

  “Well, aren’t you resourceful? You’ll fit right in.”

  I felt the weight of the moment as the extern sorted through her keys and unlocked the large door to the cloistered areas. I was about to enter a place few people ever see.

  My mind reeled through realistic and fantastic guesses about what the inside of a cloister should look like. Stone hallways lit by dripping candles that tilted in their cobwebbed sconces? High prison windows casting weak beams of sunlight onto rough, cement floors?

  The hallway inside the cloister looked a lot like the hallway outside the cloister—plain, whitewashed walls decorated with the occasional wooden cross or devotional image. In contrast to the industrial schoolroom linoleum in the public areas, beautiful hand-painted tiles in elaborate patterns covered the floors. I walked slowly and stared at the ground.

  “Divine, aren’t they?” Sister Teresa whispered now that we were inside the cloister. “The tile magnate who originally built this as his summer home made sure the place showcased his product. They’re chilly on the toes, though. As a barefoot order, we try to touch the earth only on tiptoe as a symbol of our penance and poverty.”

  I leaned down and touched the floor. It was ice cold. I straightened up with a shudder.

  “You can keep your shoes on if you like,” she said. “But I suggest you try going barefoot at least once just to see how it feels.”

  My toes curled inside my footwear at the prospect. “Do you ever wear shoes?”

  “We may wear clogs when we’re working outside or leaving the cloister, but I’m partial to bare feet.”

  “When can you leave the cloister?” I still wondered about eyeglass prescriptions and dental hygiene.

  “As the extern sister, I can leave anytime for errands or what have you.”

  I amused myself with potential “what have yous” silently. A night at the biker bar? A skinny dip in the ocean? Not likely.

  “The cloistered sisters may leave for doctors’ appointments, though often the doctors come here to perform check-ups since there are enough of us to keep them busy all day.”

  “What about voting?”

  “Absentee ballot.”

  “Aha,” I said. “And how do you support yourselves?”

  “Vow of poverty notwithstanding, it takes money to run this place,” the extern said. “I’ll show you where we earn it.”

  Teresa led me through the vegetable gardens to a converted garage on the edge of the cloister campus. Inside, one sister counted clear plastic bags of communion wafers, another packed them into boxes, and a third tracked orders on a computer. I realized what a perfect cover the operation might make. Altar breads made of pressed cocaine came to mind. I shook the thought out of my head and resolved to cut down on action movies.

  “We distribute a total of one point two million hosts a month to four different dioceses,” Teresa said.

  “But we could produce up to two million a week and cut our shipping costs in half if we made them here,” a sharp-eyed nun wearing little, round glasses said without a pause in her typing. The disparity between her centuries-old white wimple, black veil, gray habit, and the state-of-the-art laptop was almost comical. “Whenever a mudslide washes the road out, the shipments don’t arrive from Missouri in time to be sorted. And rates are going up.”

  “Then why don’t you make the hosts here?” I asked.

  “The altar bread ovens are too rich for our blood.” Sister Teresa rubbed her thumb across the tips of her fingers. “There’s one type of oven for white hosts and a different type for wheat. Two ovens mean twice the price.”

  As we continued the tour, I noticed that nearly every nun I saw had the same smooth skin and otherworldly glow that I’d noticed in Sister Teresa, and, if my Eyeglass Theory was a correct gauge of how long a sister had been in the cloister, looked several years younger than she was. Was it the low stress of their carefully scheduled lifestyle, the Holy Spirit infusing their whole beings, or simply the fact that most cloistered nuns don’t spend much time in the sun, that kept them all looking so young? If only they could package and sell that, they’d never have to worry about money again.

  Teresa took me through the main office, where an apple-cheeked nun sorted dozens of the day’s prayer requests as they arrived via post, fax, and email from all over the world, to the laundry and tailor shop, where young Sister Carmella made a show of measuring me for my habit.

  “Size eight. Am I right?” Sister Carmella whipped out a tape measure and ran it from my waist to my ankle.

  “Well, uh...” I stammered, craving a cigarette.

  “She’s only joking,” Sister Teresa assured me. “You can wear your own clothes during your visit.”

  I kept hoping we’d run into Sister Catherine along the way and kept an eye out for her. After we’d been through most of the compound and seen or met what seemed like every sister except my twin, it finally dawned on me that she might be avoiding me.

  Sister Catherine was absent, but her paintings were displayed everywhere we went. My sibling’s work graced the library, infirmary, recreation room, and several offices. Lacking the time to fully appreciate the pictures during the tour, I allowed myself only quick glances as we passed, planning instead to return and savor each canvas later. I did note that every one of Catherine’s paintings included a figure with a hand curled in a blessing gesture that resembled my disability.

  “This is our entrance to the chapel.” Teresa opened a door off the main hallway.

  Inside, a middle-aged sister sat in prayer, nodding ever so slightly in acknowledgment as we peered in from the threshold.

  “Our special charism, which you can think of as our particular focus—our flair, if you will—is perpetual adoration of the Eucharist,” Teresa whispered. “We keep a consecrated host on display twenty- four-seven and always have a sister in here keeping it company.”

  My eyes swept across the familiar chapel, now viewed from the other side of the grille. The late-afternoon sun shone behind the monstrance displaying the Eucharist, giving it a visually divine quality in addition to its symbolic one.

  “The chapel used to be the tile magnate’s private theater. These backstage wings account for its cross shape. No doubt the Lord knew what its ultimate purpose would be. Still, we said an awful lot of prayers to make up for whatever bawdiness may have taken place on stage here.”

  “So you converted it in every sense of the word,” I said.

  “We hope so, anyway.” Sister Teresa crossed her fingers.

  At the end of the tour, Sister Teresa and I picked up my bag in the office and headed for my room.

  “The sisters sleep in one big dormitory, but aspirants get their own cells to make sure they have plenty of solitude for reflection.” The extern opened the door to my quarters. “You’ll get to know us well enough without being kept awake by the snorers.”

  I set down my heavy duffel in the small room, happy to have the privacy. The furniture consisted of a dresser, a desk, and a foam pallet on the floor. A picture of the Pope gazed at me from the wall.

  “Our order sleeps on straw mats as part of our vow of poverty, but straw is very pricey around here, if you can believe it. So we opted for these fiberfill pallets instead,” Teresa explained. “I’m off to prepare the chapel. You have some time to settle in before Vespers.”

  After she left, I lay down on my pallet and reflected on what I’d experienced so far. For a place that had seemed so mysterious, there were few surprises on the tour. On one level, the cloister was a collection of buildings, not much different from what any Catholic boarding school fortunate enough to occupy a mansion might look like. Take the crosses and religious icons down and
it could pass as a secular boarding school.

  And yet the cloister was profoundly, inexplicably different. It wasn’t the layout or decor that set it apart. It wasn’t even the silence. It was the intention behind that silence. I sensed peace, joy, and more than a few internal struggles in it. How many women had walked these halls? How had it changed them? How would it change me?

  The bell rang for Vespers. I took off my watch before leaving for chapel but wasn’t ready to give up my shoes.

  For the first time since I’d arrived, I saw Catherine in the hallway. She was without her paint smock as she walked close to the wall and kept her eyes on the ground. Our strides were evenly matched and we soon fell in step. Rather than acknowledge me, she picked up her pace and beat me to the chapel entrance. Clearly I had a long way to go to win her trust. But how had I lost it? Were my intentions that obvious?

  Inside the cloistered area of the chapel, I blessed myself with holy water and bowed before the cross with the reverence the sisters displayed rather than the speed perfected in my childhood trips to church. Catherine headed to what appeared to be her usual place. I scanned the pews and wondered where to go. Sister Teresa was too busy handing out the new missals to notice my confusion, and Mother Benedicta hadn’t arrived yet.

  A few seconds felt like an hour as I stood there awkwardly. I felt a hand on my elbow and turned to see a radiant Melanie Bunye beside me. She now wore the gray habit and white veil of a novice rather than the blue jumper of a postulant.

  “Sister Dominica, I presume?” I whispered.

  The new novice grinned and nodded.

  I followed gratefully as Dominica led me to a seat in the second pew. Several of the nuns nodded in welcome. Touched by their hospitality, I suddenly found myself trembling with guilt. Touring the cloister hadn’t seemed all that invasive. Now I occupied this privileged part of the chapel and prepared to pray with women who had cut themselves off from friends and family but made an exception for me. The women began to chant.