by Mark Salzman
She crossed the room and stood in profile against the blinds, her silhouette all clean lines and angles.
“On Christmas morning I was sure I would find a boat ticket under the tree, but instead I received an Italian language primer. I was heartbroken, but my mother forced me to give it a try and I ended up taking lessons from a tutor. I finally did get to go to Italy, years later, and had experiences there I could never have had without being able to speak the language."
She turned to face the class.
“From my childish point of view, the book seemed a disappointing gift. From where I stand now, I see that it was a wise, loving choice. What can this teach us about suffering, do you think?"
A fly on the windowsill suddenly came to life, spinning on its back and buzzing loudly. None of the students raised their hands to answer the question.
“I’ll change the question slightly. We are told that God only allows to happen to us what is for our own good, but what about when bad things happen? How could that possibly be for our good?"
The fly bounced across the edge of the sill and fell into a heating vent, and the buzzing stopped.
“I can’t answer those questions for you,” Sister Priscilla finally said, looking right at Helen. “No human person can. But we can all think about this: compared to the One who created the universe, we are all children. Just because we cannot understand what happens to us doesn’t mean that God doesn’t.”
A knock at her cell door.
“Praised be Jesus Christ.”
“Come in.”
Sister Teresa opened the door, but stayed outside. “When someone says, ’Praised be Jesus Christ,’ you must answer, ’May He be forever praised.’ That is how we greet each other.” She smiled, then asked, “How does the dress feel?”
“A little tight, but I can let it out. I brought a sewing kit.”
“Don’t let it out too much; today is the first day of the Fast of the Order, which lasts until Easter. We all start losing weight now.”
The cloister bell rang twice.
“That’s for you. Follow me to the garden, Sister.”
Helen blushed, and Sister Teresa seemed to read her thoughts. “In the beginning, we all feel a bit like impostors in our capes and veils and being called ’Sister.’ But don’t worry about it—just act like you think a nun should when you’re not sure what to do, and you’ll find that through grace and love, you become one.”
The eighteen Sisters of the Carmel of St. Joseph stood waiting in a half-circle in the garden, with two novices in white veils at one end and Mother Mary Joseph at the other. One by one, they welcomed the new arrival to Carmel and wished her much joy.
A nun who appeared to be in her late thirties introduced herself as Sister Elizabeth, then presented Helen with a copy of The Interior Castle, Saint Teresa of Avila’s spiritual masterpiece. Sister Christine, a nun about the same age, leaned in and stage-whispered, “She’s giving it to you so someone will finally tell her what’s in it.”
Sister Elizabeth shooed her away. “Do we have to let the new girl see what we’re like so soon? ”
A middle-aged nun with the bluest eyes Helen had ever seen handed her a bouquet of wildflowers and said, “Welcome to God’s hidden garden. I am Sister Emmanuel.”
“She’s our infirmarian,” Sister Elizabeth explained, “and I’m the refectorian. She’s very good at her job, which I take credit for, because I’m so bad at mine. I give her plenty of cases to learn from.”
“That’s not true!” Sister Emmanuel protested. “Only that one time, really.” Several of the nuns laughed out loud when they heard this, leading one of them to warn, “If we don’t pipe down, the neighbors might call the police.”
“Our neighbors are the police,” Sister Elizabeth reminded her, pointing in the direction of the Academy, and the laughter got even louder.
The only nun who did not seem affected by all of the levity was a tall woman who prayed the rosary as she waited in the reception line. When it came her turn to greet the new Sister, she introduced herself as Sister Anne and said, “May you find the strength to do God’s will and to leave your own preferences behind,” making it sound like an admonishment rather than a blessing.
An elderly, nearly blind Sister took the new postulant’s hands into her own, squeezed them gently, and smiled, then passed her to Mother Mary Joseph without a word. The peace in the old woman’s face, Helen thought, was as eloquent as any speech.
With the introductions completed, the prioress announced, “Today is the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. Earlier this morning we prayed, ’In the cross we are victorious, through the cross we shall reign, by the cross all evil is destroyed.’
“As peaceful as our life may seem here, we are not here to escape the cross. We are here to bear it out of love for Our Lord. Our whole lives are a reaching out to the One who died on the cross for us. The miracle of it is, we only feel the weight of the cross when we try to get out from under it. If we bear it gratefully, we find that it carries us. We wish our new Sister much joy.”
At the sound of another bell, the nuns folded their hands under their sleeves and lowered their gazes. Their faces went neutral, as if they had all become invisible to one another, then they drifted away, leaving Sister Helen and her novice mistress alone in the garden. “It’s manual labor period now,” Sister Teresa whispered. “You’ll be working in the kitchen today. Once again, follow me.”
On their way they passed by the sacristy, where Sister Anne, the nun who had been so serious earlier, was already laying out the priest’s vestments for ironing. She seemed unaware that she was being watched.
“Sacristan is the most demanding assignment,” Sister Teresa explained when they had turned the corner into the refectory. “She must be willing to work like Martha, who toiled so that Mary could worship at the Lord’s feet. It takes a special sort of person to do that job well. Sister Anne does it extremely well.”
Sensing a fracture in the compliment, Helen confided in Sister Teresa, “I felt like she was looking right through me. As if she didn’t expect me to last very long here.”
Sister Teresa laughed. “Then just think of the satisfaction you’ll have when you prove her wrong.”
When they reached the kitchen, Sister Teresa showed her where the utensils were kept, explained how the community shared the burden of preparing food and washing the dishes, then led her to a butcher-block table piled high with vegetables. “You wash and cut those, and I’ll start preparing the stock for the soup.” She handed Helen a knife, and pointed to a colander hanging over the sink.
The colander reminded Helen of the night her grandfather died. At the time, his death had seemed to lead her away from God, but now it struck her with the force of revelation that the very opposite was true. Sister Priscilla had been right:
God knows what he’s doing, even when we don’t.
“Helen, come quick. It’s about to start."
“I’ll be there in a second."
“Hurry, or you’ll miss it.”
Her grandmother spent most of her days and nights lying in bed watching television now. She seemed to have aged ten years in the months since the funeral.
“Here it is!"
It was Christmas Eve, and the Apollo 8 astronauts were about to broadcast live pictures as they orbited the moon. Helen came upstairs and watched from the doorway. The bluish light from the set made the bedroom look like a grotto carved out of an iceberg.
“Don’t you want me to open the curtains, Grandma?"
“Then I can’t see the picture, it’s too glary. Look!"
The screen got fuzzy for a moment, then sharpened to reveal an airless, colorless, scarred world. When the astronauts pointed their camera up, away from the lunar horizon and toward the earth, they abandoned their usual technical language in favor of poetry, taking turns reading from
the first ten chapters of Genesis. The last astronaut to read signed off with the words, “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you—all of you on the good earth."
When the broadcast ended, Helen followed the stairs to her old room and found herself staring at the uneven ceiling again. The good earth? From a distance, maybe. Up close it didn’t look so great.
That night she dreamt of visiting the moon as an astronaut and finding Sister Priscilla already there, knocking chalk out of her erasers. “What are you doing here?” she asked the nun, whose habit apparently doubled as a space suit.
“Showing God what I’m capable of,” Sister Priscilla answered, whacking the erasers together until she disappeared in a cloud of moon dust.
When Helen woke up, it was still dark out. Venus, the morning star, shone right outside her window like a beacon, reminding her that it was Christmas. Her dream about Sister Priscilla made her wish she could see her former teacher again. She hadn’t visited the school since graduating earlier that year, and had not gone to church since then, either. Helen remembered that the Sisters at St. Ina’s always met in chapel for Mass at six in the morning. Would they be there even on Christmas?
She looked at Venus again, and the urge to visit the nun got stronger. Perhaps it was nostalgia for a time, before death broke up what little family she had left, when she believed that a personal, loving God watched over us all, or maybe it was just an excuse to get out of the house. Sears was closed for the holidays, so she would not be going to work. Her only plans for the day were to do laundry and cook dinner.
She got dressed and drove the five miles to the school, but then froze at the sight of the crucifix mounted over the door to the chapel.
There it is, she thought, the symbol we’re supposed to cherish above all others. The most innocent man in the world, nailed to a cross to die.
She watched from the car as parishioners, bundled up against the cold, stamped the snow out of their shoes and filed into the chapel. A bell rang six times to mark the hour. She either had to go in or go home.
It was peaceful in the car. No sermons, no military-themed hymns, no gory images. On the other hand, if she didn’t believe in any of it anymore, what was there to be afraid of? She had come to see Sister Priscilla, not wrestle with Catholicism. Couldn’t she just watch the service as if it were a scene in a movie?
She hurried in before she could change her mind. The chapel was nearly full, with the nuns in their starched habits spread out among the more colorfully dressed parishioners. Helen found a seat in the back and tried to figure out which of the draped shoulders belonged to Sister Priscilla. Her eyes were drawn to one figure whose back looked straighter than the others’; when the congregation stood for the priest’s entrance, Helen glimpsed the nun’s face, and her guess was confirmed. Sister Priscilla had to have attended thousands of services by then, yet she looked as attentive as a convert waiting to be baptized.
On the wall next to Sister Priscilla hung one of the Stations of the Cross, a wooden sculpture depicting Christ’s body being lowered into his mother’s arms. Helen tried not to look at it.
Pretend it’s just a movie, she reminded herself, but even as a movie the story was too distressing to ignore. God cast in the role of offended parent who had to be flattered and mollified, man as the ungrateful child who spoiled the world for everyone and everything by having once chosen curiosity over obedience. It was a choice that could hardly have come as a surprise to his omniscient Father, who gave the man curiosity and free will in the first place.
It’s a mean story, Helen fumed. An absentee father who demands that his children put him at the center of their lives and beg for his return. Sister Priscilla didn’t think it was mean, apparently. She was so in love with God that she had married him, even though she would not see his face, hear his voice, or feel his embrace for as long as she lived. One of us, Helen thought, is flying blind.
After reading from the Gospel, the priest dedicated his Christmas homily to the astronauts and asked the congregation to pray for their safe return.
“The good earth,” the priest quoted. “That’s how the astronauts described the view from out there. The good earth isn’t a place, though. It’s a state of mind. It’s how the earth looks if you try to see it from God’s perspective.
“Most of the time, we place ourselves at the center of the world, and expect it all to revolve around us. The view can look pretty bleak from there.” His eyes met Helen’s. “On the other hand, if we put God at the center of everything, the view changes completely."
Helen felt like a bird that had just flown into a pane of glass, and her thoughts tumbled in the confusion. Instead of feeling trapped in a theater showing a bad movie, she saw herself as the projector.
Could it be that I’m the one who has it wrong?
She felt a touch on her shoulder. “Is that Helen Nye I see?"
Mass was over. Sister Priscilla stood in the row behind her, her cheek painted with light from one of the stained-glass windows. She was dazzling to look at, a votive candle come to life. “Merry Christmas, Helen."
Helen distrusted her feelings. For all she knew, this sense of inversion would fade as soon as she got outside, where reality waited for her. “Something happened during Mass, Sister."
“Something good or bad?"
“I don’t know. Strange."
“Maybe it’s because you’re here. Holy Family’s your regular church, isn’t it?"
“Yes. But I woke up this morning and felt like I should come here. I don’t know why."
Sister Priscilla paused to examine Helen’s face, then she smiled. “He’s after you.”
At the end of her first day at Carmel, humbled by the depth of the Great Silence, Sister Helen went into her cell, undressed, and crawled under the serge sheets. They itched against her skin.
The day had gone smoothly. In choir, she had not lost her place or made any noise during page turns, and she managed to sing in tune. She could sense the others’ approval even without looking at them; one tone-deaf nun could turn communal praise into a daily scourging.
Now she stared up at the ceiling, pleased to see that it was not slanted like the ceiling of her old bedroom. All of the lines in the room were ordered, symmetrical, even. She had no regrets about leaving the world of her childhood behind, but wondered what sort of cross God had in mind for her in this one. Would it be boredom? Loneliness? Fear? She’d read A Nun’s Story; she knew that religious life wasn’t for everyone. The silence and austerity could drive a woman to despair. Sometimes even those with genuine vocations failed God’s test.
When I see my cross, will I run from it?
The sound of a wooden clapper drove a wedge through the silence. Before the echo had died away, Mother Mary Joseph delivered the retiring sentence for the evening, chosen from the next day’s liturgy:
Will your wonders be known in the dark
or your justice in the land of oblivion?
Sister Helen lay awake in the perfect stillness for hours. The mystery of God both drew and frightened her.
1982
The Desert
JULY 16
Our Lady
of Mount Carmel
The sun turned the choir into a furnace.
Thirteen foreheads glistened; damp fingers stuck to the pages of breviaries. The brown Carmelite habit was designed to keep nuns alive during the harsh European winters, but in Los Angeles in July, it made each day a rehearsal for death.
Lord, hear my prayer;
let my cry come to You.
Do not hide Your face from me
now that I am in distress.
Thirteen years had passed since Sister John came to Carmel, and now her heart felt squeezed dry. God thirsted, but she had nothing to offer. The Gregorian melodies, sung without harmony,
sounded like dirges. Her arms ached, her back felt sore, and she was hungry. Each Hour in choir was a desert to be crossed on her knees. Mirages of peace shimmered and beckoned, only to recede as her spirit approached. There was no shade, no shelter, no water.
For my days vanish like smoke;
my bones burn away as in a furnace.
I am withered, dried up like grass,
too wasted to eat my food.
Her first six years as a nun had passed quickly. A contemplative had to relearn nearly everything, from how to walk, to how to eat, to how to think. She had to master hundreds of rituals and traditions until they became second nature, orient herself to the liturgical calendar, and train herself to read, pray, and even remember with her heart as opposed to her mind. She went to bed every night exhausted and woke up every morning hungry, which taught her to place less emphasis on comfort. The rigorous daily schedule, which seemed to allow for no personal freedom, taught her to measure freedom differently. In religious life, everything was turned either upside down or inside out: to gain, one had to lose everything first. The only path to victory was through surrender. To become full, one had to become empty.
She named herself John of the Cross after the Spanish mystic and poet who, along with Saint Teresa of Avila, had dedicated himself to the spiritual reform of the Carmelite order. Denounced, imprisoned, beaten, and even excommunicated for his efforts, he never lost faith in the insights the Holy Spirit gave him. During his incarceration in Toledo, he wrote several lyric poems, including The Dark Night, which described the soul’s crucifying but purifying journey away from self and toward God. As Sister John of the Cross, she hoped that when she faced her own dark night of the soul, she would, like her patron saint, find the strength to choose faith over despair.
