by Mark Salzman
The window curtains billowed. Sister Anne entered the infirmary with a bucket in one hand and a mop in the other, getting right to work without even nodding a greeting. Sister Anne was a declared Soul of Penance, someone who felt a special calling to make reparations on behalf of those either unwilling or unable to do it for themselves. She rarely spoke about the mystical life of Carmel, feeling that it was presumptuous to expect God to grant supernatural favors. Obedience to the monastic rule, she believed, was the only sure means of pleasing God. Anything beyond that was a matter of grace, and for God only to decide.
The muscles in her forearms quivered as she put the weight of her upper body into each stroke of the mop. Unable to sit still while the seventy-eight-year-old nun cleaned the floor, Sister John approached. “Please, let me help you, Sister. I can—”
The interruption was crisp. “You can help by getting more rest. Your health is important to God, even if it’s not important to you.”
Sister John knew better than to try to argue. She fed the rest of the pie to Sister Teresa, then combed the elderly nun’s snowy hair. “You look nice today, Sister.”
A look of confusion. “You’re not my sister.” Sister Teresa looked down at her nightgown and started picking at it.
Someday this will be me. Will I be ready?
Sister John looked out toward the garden, where Sister Miriam had just fastened one corner of a sheet to the line with a clothespin and was about to pin the other when the bell rang for Sext. Taking the principle of obedience to an extreme, the novice let the unfastened corner drop to the ground and immediately began walking to choir.
Sister John thought of the regimentation of bells and periods in school, the sense of being shoved from one place to another, of being kept quiet and under control, of being broken like horses. Here in the monastery, she and the others submitted willingly to a regimentation far stricter, but with entirely different results.
We free ourselves for God. Here, we are liberated from the tyranny of the self.
SEPTEMBER 8
Birth of Mary
Before leaving the monastery to hear the results of her tests, Sister John lit a votive candle in memory of Saint Gertrude, a Benedictine mystic who spent nearly as much of her cloistered life in the infirmary as in choir. When God asked Saint Gertrude if she wished for better physical health, she answered: I desire nothing but Thy holy will . By suffering in union with the crucified Christ, she turned the ravages of illness into the ravishment of surrender, and became both more human and more holy.
This time, when Sister John reached the hospital and took her seat in the examination room, she felt ready. The pieces of equipment around her posed no threat. They were no different from spoons or fountain pens or lawn rakes. The sounds of the hospital no longer seemed dissonant; her ears had merely needed time to awaken to God’s rich counterpoint.
Dr. Sheppard stepped in, greeted her, then opened her file across his knees. As he turned the pages, a pamphlet slid out of the file and onto the floor. The cover showed two healthy-looking people smiling at each other. Under that image, Sister John saw the title: Living with Epilepsy.
She felt the blood rush out of her face and limbs toward her heart, protecting it from the sudden chill. Sister John had come prepared to hear bad news about her health, but not about the state of her soul. She knew quite well that one of the first questions asked of anyone wishing to become a cloistered nun was, “Have you ever been treated for mental illness or epilepsy?” If the answer was yes to either, the candidate was automatically rejected. Epilepsy was particularly feared because of its reputation for producing compelling—but false—visions. Doctors and clergy alike had referred to the disease for centuries as “holy madness.”
Please, God, take anything, take my life
The doctor picked the brochure up without comment, and put it back into the file. “The results of your tests are back,” he said, “and while it might not sound like good news, I think you’ll see that it’s not so bad, either.”
but don’t take Yourself away from me, don’t tell me I haven’t known You at all
“The EEG showed that you have an epileptic disorder, but so far the seizure activity is localized in the temporal-lobe area of the brain. That’s good—it’s kept you from having any grand-mal attacks, the kind that spread across the brain and cause convulsions. Temporal-lobe seizures tend to be more psychological.”
I waited for so long, Lord
“The symptoms vary, which is why it’s difficult to diagnose without the tests. Some patients experience their seizures as attacks of nostalgia or déjà vu, while others find that their senses are heightened. I had one patient who became convinced that she could ’read’ people’s moods by their smell alone. Unfortunately, she found this ability so thrilling she couldn’t resist sniffing whoever happened to be around her, and she worked as a museum guard. That’s one of the characteristics of the disorder, by the way—becoming so drawn into the altered world created by the disorder that one loses interest in everything else.”
He delivered this information in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone, as if talking about a third person who was not in the room.
“But now the good news. The CT scan found what’s causing the seizures, and we can do something about it. You have a small meningioma—about the size of a raisin—just above your right ear. It’s in an excellent position for removal, just under the skull. I’ve consulted with a surgeon about it, and he said they should be able to peel it right off. It’ll be a very clean procedure, very straightforward. If we take care of it now, while the seizures are still localized, your prognosis for complete recovery is excellent.”
Even with the doctor sitting with his knees almost touching hers, she felt more alone than she ever had in her cell. Still, she knew that the real test of faith came when one faced a situation for which there was no human answer.
He sifted through the file and removed some papers, including the pamphlet that had fallen out earlier. “These materials answer most of the questions patients have when they are first diagnosed. If there’s anything you don’t understand, or if you just want to talk more about it, feel free to call me anytime. I just want to repeat that the news is positive. Once we’ve removed that tumor, I predict you’ll be as good as new.”
She stared down at her hands. The artificial light of the hospital made her wedding band look dull.
God made me as I am. Each of us is given a unique cross to bear, each situation in life a personal call to become holy. He would not have taken me on this journey for nothing.
1969
The Call
SEPTEMBER 14
Triumph of the Cross
The driver carried her suitcase to the door, then refused to let her pay him for the ride. “My treat,” he said, looking up at the wall surrounding the convent. “You may need the money for the fare back if you change your mind."
“I won’t change my mind,” Helen said.
He shook his head. “Good luck, then.”
As the cab pulled away, she took one last look at a world that seemed committed to destroying itself, then turned her back on it.
I’m ready.
The bell in the campanile tower rang three times. When the last note died away, a voice called from the other side of the door:
“What do you ask?”
Helen called back, “To love God with all my heart.”
The door opened slowly. A nun whose veil covered her face beckoned Helen inside.
She took a deep breath and stepped through, saying to herself as she crossed the border between worlds,
There’s no turning back. The person I was no longer exists.
The veiled nun leaned forward and whispered, “Don’t forget your things, dear.” Helen had to step back outside to get her suitcase.
Once she was inside for good, the nun closed and bolted the door
, handed her a crucifix, and delivered the prioress’s blessing for new arrivals: Passio Christi, conforta me. Helen knelt down to kiss the crucifix, then hung it around her neck.
At last the nun pulled her veil back. “I am Mother Mary Joseph.” To Helen’s disappointment, the prioress looked like a woman she knew in Ohio who organized 4-H bake sales. The resemblance faded when the prioress smiled, however; her eyes were as clear and peaceful as a dove’s. “Welcome to Carmel, Sister Helen. May you find God here.”
Sister Helen. Her new name in religion would come after a year’s service to God, but for now, just to be referred to as “Sister” felt like a radical transformation.
Mother Mary Joseph led her to the choir, where they knelt together before the Blessed Sacrament. “Take a few minutes to let God know what is in your heart right now,” she whispered.
Please, God, let me know You.
After that, the prioress led her into the whitewashed corridor facing the garden. “We prayed that you would join us, Sister. Now that you have become a part of our community, remember to pray for us. Pray that we all remember we are here for one reason only: to please God.”
A second nun appeared in the hallway and bowed to the new arrival.
“I am Sister Teresa, your novice mistress. I wish you God’s peace.” She picked up Helen’s suitcase and said, “Follow me, please.”
She led Helen up a short flight of stairs to the dormitory, where she paused in front of a closed door. “This cell is your crucible, the pillar of cloud where God spoke to Moses. It must never become just another room.” She opened the door.
The room contained a bed, a cross, a chair, and a desk.
“Nothing but God,” Sister Teresa whispered.
Her postulant’s outfit—a simple brown dress, cape, and short veil—was laid out on the bed. Sister Teresa handed her the suitcase. “A nun’s cell is for her and God alone. No other Sister may enter it without permission. I’ll come back in an hour to take you to the garden for your reception ceremony. The others are all looking forward to meeting you.”
Helen stepped into her cell, and the door closed behind her. It took her only a few minutes to change into the brown dress and cape. She put her old clothes into her suitcase and slid it under the bed, out of sight.
My crucible.
She had never heard silence like it; she had expected the sound of fullness, but it sounded like absolute nothingness instead.
Nothing but God.
After only a few minutes of sitting in the chair, she became restless. She thought of lying down on the bed to relax, but immediately chastised herself.
I didn’t come all this way to be comfortable, I came here to work.
Now it begins: I will think only of God.
She faced the white wall and tried to meditate, but saw mirages in the stucco: ridges, swirls, pools, plains. Torsos, hands, eyes. Shapes that defied interpretation, yet filled her with apprehension.
She closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind of all that was not God, but found that it was like trying to empty an ocean: where do you put the water?
They had magic pockets.
It seemed that the nuns at St. Ina’s Catholic School could produce anything from the folds of their ample garments: keys, pencils, tissues, chalk, erasers, prayer books, gold stars with adhesive on the back, and even treats for children who had been especially good. Their habits were like houses; Helen imagined that they slept standing up in church, their hands tucked in their sleeves and their veils billowing out like tents.
The nuns taught the children that there were as many ways to love God as there were Christian souls, but vocations to the religious life were especially pleasing to the Lord. By the second grade, every girl had asked God for the grace of a vocation to become a nun, and every boy had announced a calling to the priesthood. One had even turned his basement into a seminary and used old beach towels for practice vestments.
Helen collected holy cards, made her own reliquaries, and marveled at the lives of the saints, especially those who had managed to keep the faith as they were being torn to pieces, boiled, or burned. During actual church services and Sunday school, however, her mind wandered. The miracle of God’s presence in everyday life simply could not compete with the stupendous events of the past—until she met Sister Priscilla.
While Helen was in the seventh grade, one of the Sisters vanished. One day Sister Beatrice was teaching music and English and American history; the next day she was gone. No explanation for her disappearance was offered to the students, and any mention of her name was met with blank stares, as if she had never existed. Her replacement, Sister Priscilla, showed up a week later.
At first Helen disliked the new teacher. She assigned more homework than the other nuns, and in her gym class she actually made the girls exercise rather than letting them play hopscotch or jump rope. One day she instructed the girls to run once around the school to warm up. As soon as Helen and her classmates rounded the first corner of the building, the teasing began.
“Look at the way she runs!"
“Watch out—if she falls on you, you’re dead!"
Helen stopped running and walked the rest of the way. She pretended to ignore the way Eleanor Peters imitated her by splaying her feet and waddling, but as soon as the others were out of sight, she tried forcing her thighs closer together. It only made her fatty’s gait worse. When she rounded the last bend and appeared from behind the building, Sister Priscilla looked agitated.
“Why did you stop running, Miss Nye?"
“I’m no good at it."
A few of the girls snickered, but Sister Priscilla cut them down with a look. “You think it’s funny? None of you are good at it, either."
Helen’s face burned. The new teacher was only making matters worse.
Sister Priscilla removed her glasses and let them hang around her neck from a chain. “None of us is good at anything without God’s help. And God only helps those who make an effort. Do you want God’s help, Miss Nye?"
Helen looked down at her shoes. Dew had soaked them through, and the toes were streaked with grass stains. She wished there was some way to escape, somewhere to escape to, someone to become.
“Yes Sister."
“I want you to run around the school again, this time by yourself. This time I want you to show God what you’re capable of."
Completely humiliated in front of the others, she jogged off, rounded the corner, then collapsed against the damp brick wall. She cried herself out, then started walking again. It didn’t matter now; she was going to be yelled at, no matter what she did. The schoolyard sloped off toward a marsh grown thick with cattails. She watched a blackbird fly straight into the reeds without touching any of them, an onyx needle threading an ocher loom.
If I could fly like that bird, she thought, I’d poke everybody’s eyes out and get away with it.
Guilt over this evil thought rose up and knocked her loose. She went into a flat-footed, arm-flailing sprint. Her shoes slapped the ground and the soles of her feet ached, but she kept it up past the kindergarteners’ swing set, past the monkey bars, around the chapel, and down the hill on the other side of the school. Her lungs felt as if they would tear open. All of the strength drained out of her chubby legs and she thought she might topple forward, face-first into the grass. She knew she looked ridiculous as she came around the last corner, but was too frenzied by now to care. She came to a floppy halt in front of Sister Priscilla, gasped for breath, then dropped to her knees and threw up.
Sister Priscilla helped her to a stoop near the door to the school auditorium and rubbed her shoulders. “My goodness! You’ve got to pace yourself, don’t you know that?"
Helen felt too dizzy to speak.
The nun said nothing for a long time. “I underestimated you, Miss Nye. I won’t make that mistake again."
She pulled a t
issue out of the pocket in her sleeve so that Helen could wipe her mouth.
“I may need a student to help me with certain extra duties—a monitor, someone I know I can count on to do her best. Would you be interested?"
Helen nodded. She felt encouraged, but at the same time wondered why it was that grownups, who were usually so averse to foolishness in children, sometimes turned around and treated it like a virtue.
Sister Priscilla soon became Helen’s model for a fully realized human being; in fact, she seemed superhuman. While most nuns looked like museum guards in their habits, protecting something that had been vital long ago, Sister Priscilla looked like vitality itself. On her, the veil spoke of mastery rather than sacrifice, of living mystery rather than dead tradition. When she looked at Helen, Helen felt as if a powerful light had been trained on her—the sort of light a jeweler might use while cutting and polishing a diamond.
Time seemed at Sister Priscilla’s disposal. While Helen experienced time as the measurement of waiting—waiting for her mother to return, waiting for her life to begin—for Sister Priscilla, all the waiting seemed to be over. The main event was under way; time was a measurement of action.
And her actions were all beautiful. She turned even the most ordinary tasks, like pulling maps down or emptying the pencil sharpener, into sacraments. On the other hand, she could talk about faith in a way that made it sound like common sense. She made divine things seem human, and human things seem divine.
“When I was thirteen,” Sister Priscilla told the class after their weekly atomic bomb drill, “my parents asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I said that I wanted to go to Italy. In Sunday school we had just learned about the Christian martyrs, and more than anything in the world, I wanted to see the Colosseum where they had died. It was childish curiosity, but I was persistent. For months I pestered them about it, just to show them I was serious. In the process, I became interested in much more than just the Colosseum."
