Embracing Darkness

by Christopher D. Roe

  “Oh?” Father Poole answered, not knowing how to respond.

  “Indeed,” she continued, rather sternly. “I was sitting in the armchair in the parlor.”

  Father Poole grimaced, chagrined by his clumsy oversight. Sister Ignatius took note of this and quickly changed her demeanor, widening her eyes and offering a slight grin.

  “No harm done,” she said.

  The priest quickly realized that she must have seen him on the floor. He rolled his eyes and fluttered his eyelids a bit at the very thought. As his uneasiness grew, she continued gazing at him, her piercing blue eyes again narrowed as if she were suspicious of him.

  “Well, you see,” Poole answered nervously, I…”

  “You like the rug?” Sister Ignatius inquired, almost as if trying to save Father Poole from further embarrassment. “It is impressive, is it not? We’re not sure where it came from. It has been here ever since Father Carroll’s arrival in 1894.” She turned to face it as she folded her arms across her breast. “It was hell to get it in here. That damn table is so heavy. We had to move it to lay the rug properly. And as you can tell by where its enormous legs meet the floor, this table is crushing the crap out of it.”

  Father Poole wasn’t paying much attention to the nun’s complaints about the table and its irrevocable damage to the rug. He was too taken aback by her choice of vocabulary. “‘Hell’ and ‘damn’ are certainly not words a sister of Christ should be using,” he thought as the two of them continued staring at the rug.

  “Yes, it is remarkable,” he added, “as is the table. I say, is it solid oak?”

  “That table is a piece of shit!” Sister Ignatius interjected, seemingly angrier at Father Poole’s comment than at the table itself.

  Stunned, the young priest tried to change the subject: “I-I… th-the, uhm… Y-you know this… .”

  She leaned forward slightly and showed him her ear. “Either you are a carbon copy of our former head priest, seeing as how you seem to vocalize your views, or… .” Father Poole shrank at the thought of what opinionated remark would follow that “or.”

  She continued, “You are so famished after your arrival that you haven’t the energy to organize your thoughts clearly. Come! I will take you to the other side of this door. It’s the kitchen. I’ll introduce you to the cook. She’s a fragile creature with a heart of gold. She likes the doors closed when she cooks. It keeps the smoke out of the rest of the house. And as long as we’re doing introductions… .” She paused.

  Father Poole assumed she had done so that he might introduce himself. “Yes, of course, Sister. I am Father Phineas Poo… .”

  Sister Ignatius interrupted again. “You are Father Phineas Poole. You have been a priest for five years. You come to us from St. Luke’s over in Exeter, where you were the youngest of twelve priests. With no room for vertical mobility, you were offered the job by Manchester, and you grabbed it. I believe that is all I need to know for now. The rest can wait. I am Sister Mary Ignatius of the Sisters of the Humble Shepherd. No doubt you’ve heard all about me from Father Carroll.”

  Father Poole joked that he had heard more about her, which wasn’t very much, than of the Sisters of the Humble Shepherd. He was going to ask where her order originated, but she continued before he could get out the question.

  “I am the head and only sister at St. Andrew’s and your subordinate. You may dictate to me anything you wish, and I will do my level best to fulfill any and all obligations you expect me to carry out. I am not blind to the fact that most, if not all, priests run things differently. Naturally, with the exception of holding church services, feel free to charge me with duties you yourself would be unable to perform. I am confident that groundskeeper Hobbs, Mrs. Keats, and I will see to your needs as well as to the needs of St. Andrew’s.”

  Father Poole was surprised to hear the word “groundskeeper.” No longer would he have to worry about how he was going to find the time to trim the lawn, paint the church, and prune the bushes and shrubs. At the same time it worried him that no one had prepared him to take over St. Andrew’s, as neither Manchester nor Father Carroll had provided much orientation.

  Aside from this concern, Father Poole recognized that at least now he had a name to go with the cook. A revelation occurred to him that this situation might not be as awful as at first it had appeared. He reflected on this first encounter with Sister Ignatius and assumed that Father Carroll’s secrecy about what she would be like probably had to do with her unorthodox tongue.

  “Uh,” Father Poole began. “Don’t you think that perhaps you should first show me the sanctuary and altar?”

  Still with her back to him, Sister Ignatius muttered, “Do you think it’s necessary right this minute?”

  Not expecting this sort of answer from someone who should have been as pious as he, Father Poole continued, “I… Don’t you think I should take a quick tour of the sanctuary? After all, isn’t that why I’m here?”

  The Sister’s manner seemed to turn somewhat hostile after so trivial a question. “Well, Father. Today is Wednesday. Besides, once you’ve been in one church… .” She paused, assuming that Father Poole knew how she was going to finish the sentence. “You can visit it tomorrow on your own. You then won’t have me hanging around and harassing you.” Without more ado she walked past the priest and yanked open the door. “Now,” she said flatly, “you’ll meet Mrs. Keats.”

  As she led the priest into the kitchen, a sudden smell of boiling meat hit him. In front of them stood a short, middle-aged woman of about 300 pounds with black hair tied up tightly in a large bun. Her pudgy fingers were kneading dough on the center table, with her head down, as she gave all her concentration to the task at hand.

  “Father Poole,” Sister Ignatius began in a low monotone. “This is Mrs. Keats. She is the full-time cook at St. Andrew’s. You can say anything you want to her so long as you speak loudly. She’ll make all her answers known to you in her own way, but never expect a single word to leave her lips. She’s a mute, but please don’t treat her as an invalid.”

  “She’s a mute?” Father Poole repeated, feeling sorry for the woman.

  “Yes. She’s been that way ever since… .” Sister Ignatius stopped. She perceived that Father Poole had not been listening, but rather giving all his undivided attention to Mrs. Keats as thick beads of sweat dripped from her forehead onto the thick lenses of her glasses and from there onto her hands, which were half immersed in the dough. Next to her Father Poole spotted the ominous cymbal suspended from the ceiling by a rope. On the table next to it was a rolling pin that she substituted for a hammer. The priest noted that the woman had not once looked up since they arrived, had no idea anyone else was in the kitchen with her, and had no knowledge that she was currently the focal point of discussion. He crouched down a bit and waved his hand in an attempt to get her attention, but given her bad vision she took no notice of either of them.

  “What happened to the poor woman?” Father Poole inquired.

  “Her husband happened to her,” Sister Ignatius said, devoid of emotion.

  “I don’t understand,” he replied. “Was she abused in some way?”

  “How detailed would you like it, Father? I can speak in generalities or be as explicit as you like.”

  For a reason unknown to Father Poole, Sister Ignatius’s voice sounded even more menacing than before, as if he were to blame for the damage done to Mrs. Keats. “Tell me what you can,” he answered.

  “Mr. Keats beat her every day of their marriage,” she replied. “After I’m done telling you everything, don’t ask me how I know what I know. That’ll be my business if you don’t mind.”

  Father Poole continued observing Mrs. Keats and agreed to respect Sister Ignatius’s wishes.

  She began to give him an account of what the cook had endured. “He slapped, punched, kicked, and cut
her,” Sister Ignatius began. “He used to hit her on the side of her head once a day just to ‘make sure she was still breathing,’ as he would put it.” She inhaled deeply and went on. “He was big on playing cruel pranks on her at the beginning: putting molasses in her good shoes, spiking her lemonade with castor oil. Oh, the things he did to her! Once during a town picnic it suddenly started to rain. He blamed her for forgetting the umbrella at home and told her that, if she ever did something so stupid again, he was going to pull out as many of her pubic hairs as he could.

  Father Poole gasped, yet as he recovered from the shocking beginning of Sister Ignatius’s story, Phineas realized that she’d either invented the story herself or saw it first hand, as he could never fathom anyone telling a nun such a story.

  She continued as coolly as she had begun. “It’s a good thing for Mrs. Keats that I was able to overhear some of the ladies who come to Mass on Sunday. I sit in the pew behind them. Mrs. Foster and Mrs. Honigmann were two rocks of reliability when it came to spilling the beans, but they had no idea I was listening. Mrs. Honigmann only knows what she knows because her husband is the town doctor. He’d have firsthand knowledge of Mrs. Keats’s injuries. Naturally there is no such thing as patient confidentiality in this town.”

  Sister Ignatius stopped for a moment. At first Father Poole assumed that she was beginning to suffer from a guilty conscience, talking in such detail about Mrs. Keats in front of her and to a perfect stranger, but her break was only so that she could think of more details to tell him.

  “When they were first wed,” Sister Ignatius went on, “they quickly consummated the marriage, but it was as if Mr. Keats needed to consummate every night, and she accepted him every night. When she was six months with child he began coming home late every night drunk as could be. One evening he threw her down a flight of stairs, and she lost the child. After that he began raping her at will. Not long after she began to refuse him, but he’d go for her anyway. He’d have his way with her and amuse himself by finding different ways to humiliate her. He used broom handles, sharpened pencils, and a pair of scissors. Once I even heard that he got a telephone receiver halfway up… .”

  She stopped abruptly as Father Poole shrieked in disgust and compassion all at once. The priest slowly regained what little composure he had left. By this time Mrs. Keats had taken notice of the two of them standing there. She nodded her head ever so slightly at Sister Ignatius but didn’t pay much attention to Father Poole.

  “God bless you, my child,” he said to her softly as the plump woman turned her back to them, focusing her attention on the boiled meat atop the stove.

  “Remember, Father,” Sister Ignatius said matter-of-factly. “If you want her to understand you, let her read your lips or simply talk very loud. She’s lost over ninety percent of her hearing. Her husband hated that she’d put too much rosemary on his lamb, so he boxed her ears with the handles of two wooden spoons.”

  Father Poole looked back to the hanging cymbal and said softly, “It’s her way of calling us to eat, isn’t it?”

  Sister Ignatius didn’t answer at first, although her brief pause was pregnant with a thousand silent insults directed entirely at Father Poole.

  “Does she not speak from the sheer trauma of her past?” he asked.

  “Oh, you want me to go on, do you?” Sister Ignatius said sarcastically.

  “You mean there’s more?” Father Poole replied nervously, thinking Who could have survived what I’ve just heard? And yet there was more. “Brain damage, I suppose,” he said at length. “The injury done to her eardrums penetrated… .”

  “No, no, no,” said Sister Ignatius in an annoyed tone. “Nothing like that. This woman had promised to love, honor, and obey that beast. What did he do to her? Beating her wasn’t enough. Breaking her eardrums wasn’t enough. That son-of-a-bitch… .” She paused, looked over at Mrs. Keats, and then leaned toward Father Poole. “He made her eat lye,” she whispered.

  “What was that? Her husband made her what?” The nun grunted at the thought of having to repeat what she had just said.

  “HE-FED-HER-LYE!” she hollered.

  “Lye!” he repeated.

  “Yes, Father,” she replied, sounding calmer now. “Lye. She lost most of her eyesight. Lye blinds you if you ingest it, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know,” Father Poole said. “I see. And this ultimately rendered her incapable of speech?”

  The Sister sucked her teeth and began, “No, Father. You must let me finish the story.”

  “Yes,” the young priest said, needlessly keeping his voice low. “Please finish. I am… uhm. Yes, finish your… uhm… .”

  Sister Ignatius continued, ignoring Father Poole. “Mr. Keats was in fact a very smart man. He knew that feeding lye to his wife might land him in prison, possibly for attempted murder, so to silence her… .” She paused again before letting out a deep sigh. “He cut out her tongue.”

  Father Poole yelled, “HE CUT OUT HER TONGUE? HOW BEASTLY!” Horrified by the brutality of one human being toward another, Phineas placed a hand on his heart and fell back against the wall. “God damn,” Father Poole whispered, but loud enough for Sister Ignatius to hear.

  She walked over to Father Poole and nodded in approval. “The Keats’s were neighbors of this church. Their house lies just beyond. You can see it from the stained-glass windows. Every time Father Carroll, Argyle Hobbs, or I used to hear her cries, we’d run next door. That is, Argyle Hobbs would limp, and I would run. Father Carroll wobbled.”

  The nun laughed a little at her cruelty, and Father Poole immediately ascertained that Carroll and Sister Ignatius liked each other very little if at all.

  “I came here in 1921,” she continued. “By Christmas of the same year we’d had to go next door, due to shrill screams in the darkness, six times. The front door was always ajar, and Mr. Keats always stormed out before we could confront him. But by May of 1922, Mrs. Keats had had enough. One morning we heard screams coming from the Keats’s house, but they weren’t her screams. She’d already come to us just minutes before with a bloodstained knife in her hand. At first Father Carroll thought she’d been cutting tomatoes, but the red stains were darker than any tomato juice.”

  “She killed him!” Father Poole gasped.

  “No,” Sister Ignatius snapped. “Father, you must let me continue! She did not kill him, although I’m sure he wished she had.” The nun grinned and even managed a chortle. “In the end he got exactly what was coming to him.”

  “And what was that, Sister?” Father Poole inquired anxiously.

  “He had robbed her of her eyes, ears, voice, dignity, and self-respect. She robbed him of his jewels. Cut them right off with that old knife! She stood before us with the bloody knife in one hand and her husband’s severed scrotum in the other.”

  Father Poole, his mouth hanging open, crossed himself and muttered, “God Almighty!”

  Sister Ignatius, still relentless, went on. “I believe his screams could have been heard in the town below. Had we not been right next door, she’d have had no place to go. He would have killed her, writhing in his own pain. We saved her from him. Like a faithful child of God, she knew the doors to His house are never closed. Like a true Christian woman she acknowledged the ultimate sacrifice Jesus made for us, saving her from that jackal she once called husband. She is now devoted in her own way to serving the Lord.”

  As Sister Ignatius went over to Mrs. Keats, the crippled woman handed her a plate of food, generously filled, and Father Poole thought, “And serving you as well, isn’t that right, Sister of the Humble Shepherd?”

  SEVEN

  Argyle Hobbs

  Dinner being ready, the three prepared to sit down in the dining room. By now it was dusk, and both Sister Ignatius and Mrs. Keats were making their rounds along the first floor, illuminating the lamps that made for a plea
sant ambiance equal to that of candlelight. Father Poole, not knowing the rectory’s protocol, was seated at the head of the table and waited for the ladies.

  He inspected his setting, which contained boiled meat of some kind, two unpeeled boiled potatoes, string beans, cooked carrots (also unpeeled), and a glass of milk. The latter was not cold, as Father Poole was able to make out by the warm feel of the glass.

  The ladies came back and took their places at the other end of the long table, sitting directly across from one another. As they did so, Father Poole noticed that Mrs. Keats walked with a limp.

  “Why is the dear lady limping?” he asked.

  Sister Ignatius replied coldly, “Ask her yourself. I’d like to start my dinner, if you don’t mind.”

  Father Poole still didn’t know how to gauge the nun. He found her to be boorish and insubordinate, and even though she did remind him that she was his inferior, she didn’t act like it. He ignored her tone once more and waved his hand in the air to get Mrs. Keats’s attention, angering Sister Ignatius.

  “What are you doing, Father?” she hissed.

  His reply sounded angry. “I’m trying to get her attention without having to scream over the dinner table.”

  Sister Ignatius tried to object. “I’ve already told you that she has minimal hearing and that her eyesight is… .” But Father Poole cut her off.

  “Yes, you’ve told me in wonderful detail how much the woman has suffered, but now I’d like to speak to her directly. Do I have your permission?”

  The nun’s left eye twitched twice. She bit her lip hard and picked up the fork she had placed beside her dish seconds earlier. Meanwhile Mrs. Keats piled food into her mouth so fast that she looked as though she were vying for first place in a pie-eating contest.

  “I say, Mrs. Keats,” the priest said in a loud voice, but the woman continued scooping her food like a coalman on a steamship. He tried again, this time even louder. “Mrs. Keats. I was wondering…,” but Mrs. Keats kept on eating.