by Mark Salzman
Without looking up from his note-taking, the doctor asked, “Do you keep a journal?”
“I do write every day, yes. Mostly poetry.” She resisted the temptation to tell him she’d had a book published.
“Do you fill notebooks quickly?”
This question took her by surprise, even more than the one about altered consciousness. “I suppose I do. Is that bad?”
“Not necessarily—it’s a standard question.” He took an envelope-sized form out of a drawer and began filling it in, then pulled a pink copy out from under the top sheet. “Migraine is still a likely explanation for your symptoms, but there are a few other possibilities I’d like to rule out before we start discussing ways to manage the pain.” He handed her the pink sheet. “On your way out, give this to the nurse at the station where you checked in. I’ve written you up for an EEG and a CT scan. They’re painless, safe tests, and the nurse can schedule them for the same day. As soon as I’ve gotten the results, I’ll call you and we’ll go from there.”
Sister John looked at the cutaway model of the brain and decided not to ask about the other possibilities.
God is as present in illness as He is in health—maybe even more so. All that matters is that we accept what is offered, and trust in Him completely.
When the doctor stood up to leave, she forced a smile. “Peace be with you, Doctor.” She was so used to the exchange of blessings that when he answered with only, “Have a great day,” she felt the absence. She could no longer remember what it felt like to live apart from God, to act without an awareness of God.
How blessed I am to know that God is real. What a gift, to know that God’s love never fails.
AUGUST 31
Twelfth Sunday
in Ordinary Time
Desert poppies opened toward the sun.
A glimmer just outside the scriptorium window caught Sister John’s attention. A dewdrop caught in a spider’s web flashed like a prism.
We hang suspended in His love.
Ink glistened on paper, following the tip of her pen, then sank flat.
When one heart moves, the whole web trembles.
Her tests had been scheduled for the following week. Until then, she could only wait and pray that whatever the results were, she would still be allowed to go to the Vatican in October. She had begun a novena to Saint Thérèse asking for help, and already the saint had given her a favorable sign: a dream in which she saw herself dressed in white, lying on a white bed in a white room. Since white was the liturgical color for both Christmas and Easter, she interpreted the dream to mean that a cycle would soon be completed.
The weaver stays hidden.
She stopped writing, sensing that she was being watched. Torn for a moment between worlds; it hurt to lift her eyes. Sister Miriam stood in the doorway, holding a breakfast tray. “Mother Emmanuel said you hadn’t taken any breakfast,” she blurted, embarrassed to have been caught staring. “She asked me to bring something to you.”
The novice had toasted a muffin and spread it with butter and homemade kumquat jam, prepared a cup of coffee, and even tucked a jasmine blossom into the napkin holder.
When Sister John thanked her for the kindness, the novice bowed in response, as if to say: I do this for God.
“Will you join me, Sister Miriam?”
She looked flustered. “I’ve already eaten, thank you.”
“Stay for a few minutes anyway. I’d like to know how you’re doing.”
The white veil bobbed dutifully. Sister John put the jasmine blossom on a sheet of vellum and tucked the napkin under her chin. “I remember feeling excited about making first vows,” she said, “but also nervous. The professed Sisters all seemed so complete to me, whereas I still felt like something that had been pulled out of the oven early.”
Sister Miriam kept her eyes on the table. “I’m grateful to God for the opportunity. I hope I can become worthy of the honor.”
“You already are, Sister.”
Sister Miriam glanced up at Sister John. The manner was submissive, but the look in the eyes was not. “May I ask a personal question?”
“Of course.”
“How did your family feel about your vocation?”
Sister John couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked her that. It didn’t seem like a personal question at all; her former life seemed so far away that answering it was like talking about someone else.
“I was raised by my grandparents. My grandfather had gone to God by the time I entered, and my grandmother was already quite ill. When I told her my decision, she asked if monasteries had washing machines. I think that might have been our only conversation about it.”
The novice had a way of appearing both peaceful and uncomfortable at the same time. True serenity looks spontaneous, but Sister Miriam’s looked intentional.
“My parents don’t think I belong here,” she said.
“Still?”
The novice shook her head. “I’m worried that it’s going to be even worse when they see me in the habit.”
“Are they coming out for your ceremony?”
Sister Miriam ran her fingers over a piece of vellum on her side of the Ark. “No, but they’re coming next week. To try to talk me out of it.”
“I’m so sorry … If you’ll give me their names, I’ll put them on my prayer list right away.”
Sister Miriam wrote the names on a slip of paper, then stood up. “If there is any other way that I can be of service to you, please don’t hesitate to ask. Praised be Jesus Christ.”
“May He be forever praised.”
Sister Miriam bowed, then faded from the room.
All of us will be tested in faith, again and again.
Sister Angelica’s canaries began singing from their cage under the eaves. They were like flowers made of sound, a perfect accompaniment to the visual splendor of the garden. But the cage—it reminded Sister John of her years of emptiness, when she felt trapped in the cloister. And even before that, of the Saturday mornings when her grandfather used to drive her out to the poultry farm in Steubenville to get fresh eggs.
The cages at the farm were stacked in rows, four high and thirty down, over long pits overflowing with excrement. All this in a corrugated metal warehouse that felt like a refrigerator in winter and an oven in summer. The cages were so small the chickens couldn’t stand up, and since they were never released for exercise, their nails grew long and curved around the bars underneath them.
Between the overpowering smell and the sight of all that miserable confinement, Helen preferred to wait outside in the dirt lot next to the warehouse. She searched for dirt bombs—clods of dry earth, suitable for throwing—and sent them whistling against the cinderblock foundation of the shed. These exploded with a satisfying noise and cloud of dust, and left a cone of red dirt at the point of impact.
She would daydream about sneaking into the warehouse at night and releasing the chickens, then visiting their colony years later and finding that she had become a legend over the course of several avian generations. In these daydreams she did not reveal herself as the savior from the distant past, but asked questions about the Great Escape, and thrilled to hear the chickens describe her as a radiant goddess.
Her grandfather stopped to fill his truck at the Sinclair station and buy a bag of potato chips. The attendant, an old bachelor with a turkey neck, whistled out of key as he turned the crank to the gas pump.
When the truck got rolling again, the bleached concrete highway turned into a gray river, and the stain from all the spilled oil and exhaust in the center of the lane turned into a dark serpent just under the surface. Her grandfather wouldn’t turn on the radio because all the local stations carried evangelist revivals on Sunday, and he couldn’t abide their shouting and the way they faced their congregations during services, turning their backs on God. He didn’t talk as
he drove, either. The sound of the engine and of the tires singing over the pavement seemed to hypnotize him.
She noticed he was not slowing down for the exit at Johnson’s silo. When they drove right past it, Helen’s heart raced. Part of her knew that he had just gotten distracted, but another part fantasized that they were setting off to find her mother.
He realized his mistake after only a few seconds, eased over onto the shoulder, and made a U-turn.
“What’s the matter with you?” he asked when he saw she was crying.
“I’m sick of going to that egg place. It stinks there."
He looked puzzled. Rows of young corn whizzed by on one side of the road, and newly plowed fields stretched off to the horizon on the other. He rolled down the window and the smell of manure rushed into the car.
“It stinks everywhere, honey. Just tell yourself it’s sweet. And if that doesn’t work, you can always breathe through your mouth.”
SEPTEMBER 3
Gregory the Great,
Pope and Doctor
The odor of disinfectant mortified Sister John’s sense of smell. A scheduling nurse had instructed her to sleep less than four hours the night before her tests. As she wandered through the hospital on her way to the testing area, she felt like a bird that had flown into a giant factory and couldn’t find its way out. She tried following the signs on the wall, but eventually had to ask a policeman for directions. His arms were folded across his chest, with his fists tucked under the biceps to make them look bigger. His gun looked like a steel wasp, the bullets deadly larvae. When he pointed their location out on a photocopied map, Sister John noticed that he kept his thumbs tucked out of sight. When he crossed his arms again, she caught a glimpse of one, and saw that the nail and cuticle were badly chewed. He suddenly looked like a boy dressed up as a policeman.
Even with the delay of getting lost in the hospital, she checked in at the EEG room an hour early. She sat down in the waiting room and stayed awake with the help of the rosary, but when she’d finished the cycle, her mind wandered. She drifted in the present, knowing that she was in a hospital, but it seemed like a dollhouse version of a hospital, and she felt like a dollhouse version of a patient. It was like a dream.
“We’re ready for you now, Sister.”
The nurse-technician, a small woman with shiny, jet-black hair, wearing a crisply starched uniform, led her into the testing room. “If you’ll take off your veil and lie down on that bed, I’ll set up the equipment for you.”
“What does it do?” Sister John asked.
“It measures the electrical activity in your brain. Don’t worry, you can’t feel anything at all. All we want you to do is try to relax and fall asleep.” When Sister John took off her veil, the nurse saw that her head was shaved and said, “Perfect! Makes my job much easier. How long have you been a nun now?”
“Almost thirty years.”
“Long time! I went to Catholic school in Manila.” She laughed as she said this. “Those nuns were strict! One got mad at me for winning a cha-cha contest and made me stand bent over, holding my ankles, until I fell down.” She tapped the side of her head with her finger. “That lady had problems, I think.” After a final check of the equipment, the technician turned off the lights in the room.
“Just try to sleep. I’ll wake you up when it’s done.”
Sister John closed her eyes and imagined confronting this overzealous nun in the Chapter of Faults, where the habit symbolized obedience rather than authority, and where even a Superior could be criticized for her human failings. Remembering that the technician had asked her to try to sleep, however, she let go of her anger and began praying the rosary again. She coordinated her breathing with the phrases, an exercise she had learned as a postulant to calm her mind, and barely reached the second Joyful Mystery before nodding off.
For the CT scan, she had to change into a white hospital gown and remove even her crucifix and wedding band, symbol of her mystical marriage. When she stepped into the testing room and saw that the walls, floor, and machinery were all white, she was overwhelmed by a sense of having seen it before, of having been in that very room. A nurse helped her lie down on a pallet with her head clamped inside a great white circle. The room even sounded white, smelled white.
She remembered the novena to Saint Thérèse, and the dream. What cycle was being completed here?
I will not struggle against You, no matter where You lead me.
The machine made a clicking noise as the scanner shot beams of radiation through her skull. Each picture would represent a slice, eight millimeters thick, of her brain. She surrendered to it and reminded herself that none of this was an accident. God planned everything down to the smallest details, and everything He did had a positive meaning and coherence.
From all around and within her, His presence shook like thunder, until all other sensation was drowned out.
Perfect affirmation, perfect understanding, perfect silence: Your love, dear God, in full voice.
SEPTEMBER 4
Twelfth Thursday
in Ordinary Time
Toward the end of summer, families of deer began wandering down to the cloister from the parched hills, attracted by the scent of the garden. Unable to get into the enclosure, they had to settle for the ivy growing on the outer walls.
Sister John listened to them from her darkened cell. Every so often a doe would call to its fawns with a plaintive murmur; their footfalls answered her.
As the deer longs for running streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God.
Forbidden to write at night, she could only watch as the poetry of liturgy merged with the poetry of memory, flowing past but leaving no trace.
Heat rose from the pavement at night. The trees sighed overhead.
She rounded a bend, out of range of the last streetlight. She saw her breath in the moonlight, pausing at the foot of her driveway. She could see into the brightly lit house, but was herself invisible. This is what spies must feel like, she thought.
Usually, at this time of the evening, her grandfather would be reading the paper in the living room. She guessed he was in the shed, fixing something. After a few minutes of staring into the empty house, the darkness spooked her and drove her inside. She threw her jacket on the sofa and announced her return, but got no response. She walked into the kitchen and her body went rigid. String beans scattered all over the floor, an overturned colander, and a scrawled note on the kitchen table.
Hushed voices, too-long hugs, the cheerless confetti of flowers and sympathy cards.
The sound of high heels on wood floors. Cars parked all the way to the end of the driveway and out into the street. Casserole pots and lasagna trays, the smell of perfume.
The drapes at the funeral parlor were slightly frayed where they brushed against the carpet. Her grandfather’s hands were folded in front of him, but when she looked closely, she saw they weren’t actually resting against his body. They hovered slightly above, spoiling the illusion. How peaceful can you be when you’re stiff? During the slow-motion car ride from the church to the cemetery, her grandmother—who had barely spoken for days—looked at Helen’s long brown hair, reached out to stroke it, then said, “You’ve got much nicer hair than your mother. Hers always looked so stringy.”
The call finally came, two weeks later. It was the first time Helen had heard her mother’s voice in ten years. She was obviously drunk, and offered no apology for missing the funeral. Their conversation faltered, each trying to avoid being the first to say anything of substance. “How’s Grandma taking it?” she finally asked.
Helen wanted to yell at her, to hurt her in some way, but she did not. “Not very well. You want to talk to her?"
A pause. “Yes."
Helen called upstairs, “It’s my mother on the phone. She says she just got the letter."
The old woman c
ame downstairs, walked into the kitchen, took the phone from Helen, and hung it up without a word.
Helen stayed in the kitchen for a long time, trying not to stare at the phone. Her mother never called back.
SEPTEMBER 5
Twelfth Friday
in Ordinary Time
“Did you say ’fire’?” Sister Teresa asked. The invalid nun stared straight ahead, her cheeks sunken.
“No, Sister, I asked if you wanted any more pie.”
“Who’s going to die?”
“No one’s going to die. Everything’s fine, and you’re having dinner now. Here—have another bite.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Sister John of the Cross. And look who this is.” Sister John pointed to one of the photographs on the bureau, placed there in hopes of stimulating the elderly woman’s memory. The picture was taken on Sister Teresa’s twenty-first birthday, just before she entered Carmel.
“Can you tell me who it is?”
Sister Teresa showed no sign of recognizing herself, but the crisis had been averted. “Can I go home now?”
“This is home, Sister. We’re in the Carmel of St. Joseph. God is all around us.”
Sister Teresa frowned. “I don’t want any caramel, I want to go home.”
The sounds of conversation drifted in through the infirmary window. Sister John looked out and saw Sister Elizabeth and Sister Christine chatting near the fountain, tossing pieces of bread into the fountain for the birds. Reflected sunlight and crosshatched shadows danced across Saint Joseph’s robes.
