The Ninth Hour

by Alice McDermott

  Sister Lucy said, “Eat your breakfast.” She turned to the hope chest at the foot of the bed, opened it, and took out new bed linen. There was the brief scent of cedar as the lid closed again—a green scent in the close room. She said to Sally, “That chamber pot needs emptying,” and indicated with her chin the wooden commode beside the bed.

  But Mrs. Costello took Sally’s wrist to keep her there. “They wrapped the rags too tightly, the women did. Those biddies. My toes turned black. My husband had to carry me to the hospital in the milk cart.”

  Infected by the woman’s indignation, Sally asked, glancing at Sister Lucy, who was paying no heed, “Didn’t anyone call the Sisters?”

  And Mrs. Costello shook her head. “They did not,” she said.

  “Someone should have called the Sisters,” Sally told her.

  Sister Lucy spun on them both. “The chamber pot,” she said to Sally. And to Mrs. Costello, “Put your thoughts elsewhere, Mrs. Costello. Eat your breakfast and say your prayers.”

  The nun returned to making up the bed, and Sally and Mrs. Costello exchanged a look that briefly allied them against her. Then Mrs. Costello let go of Sally’s wrist and lifted her tea. “This girl should know what happened to me,” she said to Sister Lucy, and blew gently over the cup. “Shame on you, Sister. You should have told her. How that dog came after me in the yard.”

  Sister Lucy shook out the fresh sheet, let it billow over the thin mattress.

  “And whose yard was it?” she asked. “Was it your own yard?”

  Mrs. Costello waved her hand. “I don’t know whose yard it was,” she said.

  Sister Lucy was smoothing down the sheet, leaning over the bed and spreading her arms like a swimmer. “Then you should have minded your own business,” she said. And then she said to Sally, “The chamber pot. Emptied and cleaned, if you please.”

  Sally held her breath as she lifted the porcelain bowl from the seat. She averted her eyes from the yellow liquid and the strings of clotted blood. She emptied the bowl into the toilet and pulled the chain, then washed the thing out in the bathroom sink, uncertain if she should use the clean towel on the bathroom roll or find something else. She carried the wet bowl into the kitchen, thinking to dry it with the towels Mrs. Costello had used in her bath, but they, as well as the bed sheets and the nightgown, were already bundled neatly into a canvas bag, ready to be carried to the convent laundry. The kitchen restored to order. She waved the bowl in the air and carried it back to the bedroom still wet, hoping Sister Lucy wouldn’t see.

  When Mrs. Costello had finished her breakfast, the tray removed, the dishes washed and dried and put away, Sister Lucy sent Sally through the three rooms with a dust mop and a broom, while she once more brought the woman to the commode and changed her cloth. And then placed a glass of milk and a plate of bread with butter and sugar on the tea tray, within the woman’s reach.

  From the bare living room, Sally heard Sister Lucy say, “One of the Sisters will be back to give you your lunch today. Mr. Costello has some business in the city. He left a note. He’ll be home by dinnertime.”

  There was a silence, and then, slowly, Sally could hear that the woman was crying again. “I’m frightened when he’s gone,” she said, weeping. “I’m afraid when I’m alone.” She cried gently for a while, childish and heartbroken. And then, suddenly, her voice snapped back into peevishness. “Do you hear me, Sister?” she called out. “I said I’m afraid.”

  “There’s nothing to fear, Mrs. Costello,” Sister Lucy said coolly. “Say your prayers to pass the time.”

  And then there was a thump, as of something dropped or thrown. “I have a pain,” Mrs. Costello cried out. “Do you hear me?”

  Sister Lucy’s voice broke like thunder. “Behave yourself, woman,” she said. “We’ll have no more of that.” And then, hissing it: “Say your prayers. Thank God for the life He’s given you. Thank Him for your good husband. You’ll get no other.”

  There was a fraught silence. Into it, Sister Lucy muttered, “You might have broken this lamp.”

  When Mrs. Costello spoke again, her voice was subdued, conspiratorial. “Look at this bun, Sister,” she said. “It’s a rat’s nest. Take it out, won’t you? Before you go.”

  From the living room where she stood, Sally could hear the hairpins going back into the dish.

  She walked into the kitchen to put away the dustpan and the broom. Her own eyes were smarting with what she knew were foolish tears.

  When she returned to the living room, she could hear Sister Lucy saying, “I would defer to your husband’s good judgment. He’ll be back for dinner, as always.” And then she was walking out of the bedroom, rolling down her sleeves. There was a brush of brown blood on her apron. When she saw Sally, she paused abruptly, as if she’d forgotten her, and then her expression changed again. For a moment she looked at the girl with narrowed eyes, as if she recognized in her a liar or a thief. And then, slowly, a purple hue rose into the nun’s stony face. She ducked her head, slipped off her apron, folded it into her bag, and then reached for her cloak. She told Sally to go fetch the bag of laundry.

  As they were about to leave, Mrs. Costello called out again. “I’m afraid,” she said. “Please don’t leave me.”

  “Say your prayers,” Sister Lucy called back.

  “I’m in pain,” Mrs. Costello said, but with diminished insistence.

  “You’re fine,” Sister Lucy said, closing the door, locking it with her key.

  “I’m afraid,” Mrs. Costello called again.

  Following Sister Lucy down the stairs, Sally asked, “Will she be all right?”

  Sister said, without turning, “Of course.”

  Faintly, she could hear Mrs. Costello’s voice still complaining. “Is it her leg that’s hurting her? The short one?”

  “That’s an imaginary pain,” Sister Lucy said. “It isn’t real.”

  Sally said, “But if she feels it.”

  Sister Lucy said, “She wants company, is all. She doesn’t like to be alone.”

  “Maybe we should stay.”

  They had reached the vestibule. Sister Lucy was sailing out the door.

  Without turning, she said, “There are others with greater need.”

  Out on the sidewalk, in the bustling light, Sally paused. She was aware of her white nurse’s veil, the glances of passersby. Sister Lucy was forging ahead. Sally had to call “Sister” twice to get her to turn. Sister Lucy stood for a moment with her satchel in one hand, a man’s watch on a black strap in the other. She thrust out her jaw, a formidable jaw above her white wimple. A question, an impatient one, crossed her masculine face. Slowly, Sally walked to meet her. She would speak up.

  Two women passing said, “Good morning, Sisters.” A man touched his hat. “Sisters.” Sister Lucy nodded to the greetings.

  “The poor woman,” Sally said. “An imaginary pain is still a pain, isn’t it, Sister?”

  Sister Lucy said, “Don’t be proud,” with the swiftness of a slap.

  She raised her crooked hand. “Suffering,” she said, “does not disguise a true nature. It only lays it bare.” Inside her bonnet, her eyes were narrowed. “Any woman who wants an excuse to take to her bed will surely find one.” She paused. She seemed to consider whether she should continue, and then, with the slightest shrug, continued, leaning so close to Sally that the starched edge of her bonnet nearly touched the girl’s cheek. “There are women who marry with no idea of what marriage entails,” she said. “Some of them suffer for it. Babies coming every year. Others impose the suffering on their men.” She stepped back as if to see if Sally understood. “If the dog that bit her had been drowned as a pup, still Mrs. Costello would have found an excuse. There’s a young woman on Baltic with a withered arm and six children.” She raised her eyebrows, which were flecked with gray. “A woman doesn’t need two feet to give her husband a child,” she said.

  Then Sister Lucy turned on her heel, stashing the watch into her pocket. “I’m going in
here,” she said, indicating another row house, another chipped stoop and battered door. “I’ll be with Mrs. Gremelli in the front room. She needs her dressing changed. Catch up with me there.”

  Sally stood for a moment, all uncertain. Sister Lucy clucked her tongue and turned her gnarled finger to the laundry bag in the girl’s hand.

  “Take those soiled bedclothes to your mother,” she said with exasperated patience. “Then hurry back.” Adding, as the girl turned away, “And keep your eyes off yourself if you possibly can.”

  * * *

  THIS MUCH BECAME CLEAR TO SALLY over the course of the next week: Sister Lucy lived with a small, tight knot of fury at the center of her chest.

  It had formed itself—a fist clenching—when her mother died of peritonitis, caused by a burst appendix.

  Sister Illuminata, Sally learned, was not the only one tempted to tell stories of her time in the world.

  Sister Lucy’s mother had died of peritonitis brought on by a burst appendix when Sister Lucy was seven years old. Appendicitis, Sister Lucy said, is indicated by a terrible pain in the lower right abdomen, fever, vomiting. She told Sally: Waste no time getting the doctor in.

  Sister Lucy said the appendix itself is useless. They were waiting for the trolley together. Sister Lucy did not believe in wasted time. “Why God put it there is a mystery,” Sister Lucy said.

  The peritoneum, Sister Lucy said, is a membrane that covers the organs in the abdomen like a piece of fine silk. “Our Creator is fanciful, perhaps,” Sister Lucy said, not amused.

  For three days Sister Lucy, seven years old, had run, sleepless and terrified, between the kitchen and the sickroom, bearing the wide bowl, empty and then filled, filled and then empty. Filled with a bitter fluid that grew thinner and darker as the days progressed, that smelled of salty bile, and then of blood. The terrible retching. The blackening of her mother’s skin.

  It is a loss like no other, Sister Lucy said.

  She said, Life itself is a bleak prospect to a motherless child.

  She was seven years old.

  In these matters, Sister Lucy said again—“Are you listening to me?”—when there’s pain in the abdomen, fever, vomiting, never hesitate getting the doctor in. “Sister St. Saviour, God rest her soul—your namesake”—Sister Lucy said—“knew how to put the fear of God into any physician who was dismissive of the poor.” They were negotiating the reeking hallways of another tenement house. “I’ll give her credit for that much,” Sister Lucy said unhappily, a little breathless.

  Sister Lucy said her older brothers had already left home when her mother died. Her father was a county tax commissioner who had given them all a comfortable life. A good man, but a serious, withholding man, a man of his times. He brought his mother from Germany to raise his only daughter. Sister Lucy said she was a smart girl in school but mostly silent at home after her mother’s death: a clenched fist.

  Her German grandmother told young Sister Lucy that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a tax collector to avoid the torments of hell. But it could be done, if she prayed for her father’s soul.

  “So that’s what I set out to do,” Sister Lucy said. “Save my father’s soul. All of seven years old.”

  A rare smile disrupted that straight tight line that was Sister Lucy’s mouth. The two were on a bench in the park, sharing the bread-and-butter sandwiches Sister Lucy had brought from the convent.

  She and her grandmother visited nearly every church in Chicago, determined to save her father’s soul. She knelt patiently beside the old woman. She prayed patiently at those cold altar rails, hour after hour, until her knees grew numb. In the gloom, the gaslight and candlelight, her eyes drifted to the holy scenes and statues behind the altar or over her head. Her eyes grew keen.

  As a child, Sister Lucy said, she came to know the beige hills behind the mount called Golgotha as if she had walked them herself. She knew the tufts of weeds in the far distance, the shape of a small enclave of tombs farther still. She knew the feel of the yellow skull at the base of the cross as if she had run her own fingers over its dome; knew the flavor of the dust that covered the ground beneath the horny feet of the centurion. She saw the pallor that engulfed the world the moment Our Lord took His last breath.

  Kneeling beside her pious grandmother, young Sister Lucy studied, too, Mary’s assumption into heaven, not merely blue sky and upturned eyes and hands, but the certain fold of cloth at her girded waist, the delicate toe touching a cloud, the brown and gold of a seraphim’s curl.

  She knew the streets depicted in the Stations of the Cross—uneven paving stones and dark archways—the way the women Jesus greeted touched one another’s shoulders as they wept.

  Kneeling beside her grandmother in churches all over the city, knees and feet grown numb, hands and face grown cold, young Sister Lucy entered so fully into these holy pictures (she knew the sharpness of the steel that pierced the Virgin’s heart, the velvet flesh of the Savior’s throat) that afterward, after she and the old woman left the church and went on with what had to be done, she found herself impatient to return. She found herself annoyed by any ordinary hour, angry to be detained by the petty things that concerned the world. She felt whoever stood before her stood in the way of what she most wanted to see: those places where the essential moments were unfolding, where time and eternity were doing battle, where the terrible death gave way—the stone moved from the mouth of the tomb—and breath returned, flesh grew warm again.

  “However,” Sister Lucy said: those keen eyes that had brought her so vividly into the life of Christ could not be averted at will. When she returned to the streets after her hours of prayer, she saw with the same intensity the raw heel of a shoeless child, the pallor of a consumptive. She saw how the skim of filth, which was despair, which was hopelessness, fell like soot on the lives of the poor.

  She saw what needed to be done. Saw that God expected her to do it.

  Sister Lucy told Sally that she would have preferred the silence and the beauty of a contemplative’s life.

  She said her heart clenched at what God asked of her. But she did not refuse.

  Sister Lucy held Mrs. Gremelli’s swollen, shapeless leg in the palm of her hand. “Edema,” she told Sally, “when there is an accumulation of fluid like this,” and pressed a gentle thumb into the flesh. “See how the impression holds. Too much water.”

  The leg was mottled with sores, some of them seeping. Kneeling before the old lady, Sister Lucy peered carefully at each lesion. “From the Latin,” Sister Lucy said, “laesio, injury.” Mrs. Gremelli was a small, heavy woman who smiled toothlessly at Sally and the nun, her hands folded complacently over her mounded belly in its black dress. She had little English, and the small room where she lived was crowded with two beds, a couch, a small table and chair, an avalanche of boxes and newspapers. There was a table shrine with a statue of the Blessed Mother in one corner, squat votive candles crowded around it. There was the odor of garlic and garbage and candle wax. The son who lived with her was at work all day.

  Sister Lucy cleaned the woman’s awful flesh with exquisite gentleness and then wrapped it in the fresh bandages that Sister Illuminata and her mother had rolled.

  She pulled a clean black stocking up over Mrs. Gremelli’s neatly bandaged leg, up over the old, loose flesh of her thigh. She carefully straightened her skirt. Rising from her knees, Sister Lucy placed her hand on the woman’s head. Mrs. Gremelli, toothless, eyes clouded with cataracts, looked up at the nun, lifting her spotted arms into the air in gratitude and supplication. Mary at her assumption.

  Leaving Mrs. Costello’s apartment on another morning, the woman crying softly behind them, Sister Lucy said, A woman’s life is a blood sacrifice. This was, she reminded Sally, our inheritance from Eve.

  Although, Sister Lucy said, poverty and men made a bad situation—to be born female—worse still.

  Sister Lucy paused on the sidewalk, Sally at her heels, to exchange a word
with a pretty young woman who had greeted them warmly. Within minutes, the nun discovered that the girl was newly landed and looking for work. Sister wrote down the name and address of one of the women in the Ladies Auxiliary—a wealthy lady looking for domestic help. A good and safe job, Sister Lucy told Sally as they walked on, something to keep the girl from a premature marriage.

  Going up the stairs of another tenement, they met a pregnant woman coming down with two small children before her and an infant riding her big belly. Sister Lucy stopped to look at the children. She clucked her tongue and circled her pinky over the bald patches on their scalps, the round red rash on the baby in its mother’s arms. “Ringworm,” she told Sally. “Tinea is the proper term. Latin for a growing worm.” Sally felt herself shudder at the phrase. She looked at the inflamed flesh, the missing hair, and then looked away. “I like to use a paste of vinegar and salt,” Sister Lucy was saying. “Sister Jeanne adds a straw from the Christmas manger. Which is nonsense.” And then she said, reluctantly, “Although she does quite well with it.”

  Sister Lucy took down the woman’s apartment number and promised that one of the nursing Sisters would be in to see her. “We’ll fix that,” she said.

  And then she turned her attention to the mother herself, whose dress was slick with dirt and oil, whose hair was pinned up haphazardly under a grimy hat. “Is your husband good to you?” Sister Lucy asked.

  Sister Lucy told Sally that a good husband was a blessing—a good husband who went to work every day and didn’t drink away his salary or lose it at the racetrack, didn’t beat his children or treat his wife like a slave—but a rare blessing at best.

  She said, Even a good man will wear his wife thin. She said, Even a good wife might transform herself into a witch or a lush or, worse, an infant or an invalid, in order to keep her very good husband out of her bed.

  Sister Lucy waited for Sally’s blush to fade—they were having another lunch, this time in the newly cleaned kitchen of the old widower Sister Lucy had just fed and bathed—before she added that some women, wealthy women as well as poor, chose the pretense of illness or delicacy, even madness, over the rough and tumble, the blood and strife, the mortal risks, of a married woman’s life.