Contrition

by Maura Weiler

  Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands:

  Sing forth the honour of His name:

  Make His praise glorious…

  And I began to cry. Not silent tears, but noisy, aching sobs. The sisters continued their prayer, completely unruffled. Not unsympathetic, I could tell, but comfortable with my suffering.

  …All the earth shall worship Thee,

  And shall sing unto Thee;

  They shall sing to Thy name.

  My face grew wet and my nose began to run. Sister Dominica produced a tissue from somewhere in the folds of her habit and handed it to me without missing a beat in the chant. Someone behind me put a soothing hand on my shoulder. The gestures made me sob even harder. I was grateful for, if not a little puzzled by, their calm response to my outburst.

  The five or six people seated in the public section of the chapel seemed much less comfortable with the situation. Through bleary eyes, I saw the visitors craning their necks trying to spot who was crying. It didn’t bother me. I had done the same thing myself even when there wasn’t such a spectacle being made. Now it wasn’t the sisters, but the gawkers who struck me as a curiosity. I felt safe as I floated in the sea of gray habits. Safe and conflicted.

  • • •

  I made sure to be the last in line in the refectory so as not to accidentally take someone’s seat. The three long dining tables formed a U-shape, chairs on the outside only, enabling all the sisters to face one another. A huge picture window occupied the area where a fourth table might have completed the square. A private garden bloomed beyond the glass.

  Three open chairs remained after most of the nuns seated themselves. One belonged to Sister Catherine and one to Sister Dominica, who each carried curry-scented bowls of stew to their fellow nuns. The third presumably belonged to me, but which one was it? Mother Benedicta waved and pointed to the empty seat beside her. I slunk down into it and tried to make myself as small as possible.

  After my display in chapel, I was embarrassed to be there at all and wished I could go back to my cell. I wasn’t hungry for the simple chickpea stew, bread, and cloister-grown orange that constituted my supper. Mother Benedicta asked me to stand so she could formally introduce me to the community.

  “I’m sure you’ve all noticed the new face among us. Let’s keep Dorie and her potential vocation in our prayers and do our best to be holy examples of the monastic rule during her visit.” Mother gestured that I could sit down again.

  I sank into my chair, afraid to return the gazes of the women around me. When I did look up, there were no reprimanding glances, only open smiles. It was as if my chapel outburst had never happened.

  The only person who didn’t acknowledge me was Catherine. She remained intent on serving the stew. I was glad, as I wasn’t sure I could look my twin in the eye without confessing my plans to introduce her and her paintings to a public she didn’t want to meet.

  I considered getting up, telling all the nuns my motive for coming, and then leaving before I had to deal with the reaction to such a revelation. Instead I picked up my spoon and tried the stew as Sister Carmella read aloud from the writings of Thomas Merton.

  Looking beyond the faces, the tables, and the window for the first time since entering the room, I saw one of Catherine’s best works hanging on the wall across from me.

  At about three-and-a-half by four feet, this depiction of The Last Supper was the largest of all of Catherine’s paintings I’d encountered. At the head of the table, Jesus raised His right hand over His disciples in that gesture of blessing so ubiquitous in Catherine’s paintings that it had begun to make me self-conscious. I tucked my right hand under the table. It hadn’t occurred to me to hide my deformity from anyone until I’d arrived at the cloister. Now I didn’t want the fact that my physical handicap matched Catherine’s trademark gesture to alert the other nuns to the connection between us.

  The Last Supper’s colors were beyond gorgeous—Jesus’ robe was the silver-white green of a Russian olive tree, the table the rich copper of sandstone, St. Peter’s beard the glossy black of a river in moonlight. I stifled a smirk when I noticed that some of the features of the disciples on the canvas were stylized versions of the faces belonging to the nuns seated around the table. Mother Benedicta’s gray eyes, Sister Carmella’s dusky skin, and Sister Teresa’s thin lips characterized St. John, St. Thomas, and St. James, respectively.

  More arresting than the colors, the flawless composition, or even the familiar features were the expressions of the disciples themselves. The emotions captured on their faces ranged from terror, pity, and disgust to ardor, resolve, and rapture.

  My own emotions ran the gamut as I experienced the power of the painting. I heard Merton’s words without absorbing them, ate my stew without tasting it, and now tried to catch my sister’s eye without success. Whether or not she looked at me, I hoped she sensed my awe at her achievement.

  Finally, Catherine’s ice-blue eyes flicked past my own as she turned to reenter the kitchen. Her glance suggested such fear and dread that I wondered if she already knew my plans. If so, I couldn’t blame her. If I convinced her to let me publish the article I intended to write, it would be at Catherine’s expense.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  On my way to recreation hour, I came across the black and white cat I’d noticed in the garden on previous visits to the cloister. When I bent down to pet her, she arched her back and hissed.

  “Don’t mind Penguin,” Sister Teresa said when she witnessed the exchange from the common-room doorway. “If she weren’t such a good mouser, she’d have lost her status as head house pet long ago.” Teresa turned to the cat. “Mind your manners or I’ll make you go vegetarian like the rest of us.”

  Penguin switched her tail back and forth and stalked off down the hall.

  In the cavernous common room, the previous owner’s legacy extended beyond the tiled floor to include a fireplace large enough to stand in and an elaborately carved, beamed ceiling. The huge room was chilly despite the summer evening, but the cozy chatter of women who only had an hour a day to discuss non-prayer and non-work matters filled the air. The worn, inexpensive furniture included two couches, card tables stacked with every board game invented before 1960, and several reclining chairs that all faced the focal point in the room, a ping-pong table.

  “We’re rather zealous about our ping-pong tournaments, God forgive us,” Sister Teresa said over the hubbub. “Sister Carmella is our reigning champ.”

  The extern pointed out the teenage nun from the tailor shop. Sister Carmella had traded her tape measure for a paddle as she practiced her game with the apple-cheeked nun I’d seen in the mailroom. Several of the older sisters sat crocheting or knitting while Sister Dominica strummed a guitar and Mother Benedicta stoked a small fire.

  I looked around and discovered that Catherine was absent from the gathering. I did notice several easels facing the windows and eagerly strode toward them.

  “Is this where Sister Catherine paints?” I asked.

  Then I saw the still-lifes and pet portraits in progress there and had my answer.

  “No.” Teresa caught up with me. “She received special permission to set up a little studio in an old storage closet. Everyone may use it, but the other sisters who paint prefer the light in here.”

  The nun with the tiny, round glasses who ran the altar bread distribution business set out a Scrabble board on one of the card tables and crooked her finger at me.

  “You game?” she asked.

  “Oh, sure.” I proffered my left hand. “I’m also Dorie.”

  “Sister Scholastica, Scrabble devotee extraordinaire.” The nun shook my hand with a firm grip. “Welcome.”

  Cheers and sighs over the ping-pong pyrotechnics of Sister Carmella and her latest victim rose up behind us. I smugly assumed that my journalistic prowess would make me reigning Scrabble champ inside a week.

  Teresa joined us as Sister Scholastica set the tone on her first Scrabble entry—ips
um. Sister Teresa soon followed up with veni.

  “For a couple of women who don’t talk for most of the day, you two certainly have strong vocabularies,” I said over the smacks and pops of the ping-pong match. “I’m a writer and I’ve never even heard of those words.”

  “Yes, well, here at the convent we play in Latin,” Sister Teresa said with a sly grin. She handed me a dog-eared Latin dictionary.

  “Hope you paid attention in Lauds,” added Sister Scholastica.

  “Sh... I mean, dang,” I said. “Can I say dang?”

  “You can say it, but you can’t use it in Scrabble,” Sister Teresa said. “No slang allowed.”

  “No foreign languages either, last time I checked.” I arched an eyebrow and flipped through the paperback.

  “It’s good incentive for our novice to study her Latin,” Scholastica explained. “So we bent the rules in the service of God.”

  “I see.” I scowled and settled in for my first Scrabble defeat in years.

  “It worked, too.” Sister Dominica seated herself at the last chair at our table. “I’ve been furiously conjugating Latin verbs for months and these two still whup me every time.”

  “We’re all here to learn humility.” Sister Teresa giggled.

  “I got my share of that in chapel today.” I put my lettered tiles in alphabetical order. “I don’t know what came over me.”

  “The same thing that came over the rest of us—God’s grace.” Sister Teresa set down another Latin word—clamor. “I cried my eyes out the first day.”

  “You did?” I asked.

  Teresa nodded and chose five new Scrabble tiles.

  “So did I.” Scholastica organized her own tiles into a row.

  “Me, too,” Sister Dominica agreed. “I don’t know if it was terror over what I left behind or joy for my life ahead.”

  “For me it was both,” Scholastica said.

  “Heck, I was just thinking about how much I’d miss pork chops.” Sister Teresa’s eyes got glassy. “I still get choked up thinking about pork chops.”

  “Don’t trouble yourself, Dorie.” Sister Scholastica patted my shoulder. “All your tears mean is that you belong here.”

  Scholastica’s assurance was troubling in itself. The idea that I belonged here wasn’t one I wanted to entertain. Instead of assuming that God was calling me into the fold, I preferred to write my tears off as guilt over intruding on a sacred ritual for my own selfish ends.

  “Look who’s decided to join us.” Sister Scholastica peered over the top of her tiny glasses and watched Catherine enter the common room.

  “Doesn’t she usually come?” I asked, following her gaze.

  “Mother lets her paint during study periods and recreation hour,” Teresa said as a tentative Catherine crossed the room toward the easels and art supplies. “She gets along fine with everyone, but she pretty much keeps to herself even when she’s not painting.”

  “I don’t think it’s fair that she gets to do her own thing a lot of the time.” Scholastica frowned. “What’s so wonderful about her painting anyway? We’re here to focus on the community, not the individual.”

  At first I was taken aback to hear harsh words from a nun. Then I remembered mean Sister Agnes back in the fifth grade, who was so skilled at humiliating kids who didn’t turn in their homework that I made sure to never be in that category. In this case, Sister Scholastica’s humanity was a relief, as I imagined living among saints would be exhausting. If nothing else, it was interesting to find someone who didn’t like my sister’s paintings.

  “She more than makes up for her absence here with extra work elsewhere,” Sister Teresa said, jerking her head toward my hand and shooting Sister Scholastica a warning glance when she thought I wasn’t looking.

  I watched a light bulb switch on over Scholastica’s head and wondered if Sister Teresa had guessed my relationship to Catherine. If so, when? Was it when she saw how Catherine reacted to me, or earlier? She may have known it the moment she met me. But how could she really know? Catherine and I didn’t look all that much alike. Did my behavior give it away? I took a deep breath and told myself I was probably overreacting. Even if Teresa did know, she probably wasn’t telling anyone, except maybe Scholastica.

  “That’s true,” Scholastica acknowledged, backpedaling so fast she nearly fell off her metaphorical bike. “She takes double and triple shifts at perpetual adoration...”

  “Paints in the middle of the night...” Dominica added.

  “When does she sleep?” I asked.

  “I don’t believe she does.” Teresa used a stubby pencil to tally the game points on a pad of paper. “I think that’s why she doesn’t talk. She’s too tired after pouring herself into her work, her prayers, and her paintings.”

  “Too tired or too cranky.” Scholastica wrinkled her nose, apparently unable to dampen her disdain for long. “She’s got a temper.”

  “So do you when you haven’t had your coffee,” Teresa said.

  “That I do.” Sister Scholastica sighed. “Now I’ll have to stay and say an extra novena after...what is that third Divine Office called again?”

  “Terce,” I answered without thinking.

  “Get a load of her,” said Sister Teresa.

  “Somebody’s showing off.” Sister Scholastica laughed.

  “I didn’t even know I knew that.” I felt my cheeks burn. “It’s not like I’ve memorized them or anything, but I guess I did read through the schedule today.”

  “Maybe you had some divine help,” suggested Dominica.

  “Reel ’er in, she’s a keeper.” Teresa scored fifteen points on the word dominus.

  I shrugged and looked away, almost sorry to learn how much I liked and respected these women. I thought about how disillusioned they’d be once they learned the hidden agenda behind my visit. Sister Scholastica would no doubt have some choice words on that topic. I watched Catherine leave the room with a fistful of my donated brushes, glad at least to see her take the gifts she had once rejected.

  The bell rang for Compline, the seventh and final prayer of the Divine Office. Carmella and her opponent stopped their ping-pong match mid-point as all the sisters rose and filed out of the room. I started to put the Scrabble game back in its box, happy to clear away my miserable performance before suffering official defeat.

  “Leave it.” Sister Teresa’s keys rattled as she stood up. “We drop everything for the bells.”

  “Besides,” Sister Scholastica said. “We’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow.”

  Chagrined, I complied and followed the women to the chapel.

  Since the monastery closed to the public at 5:30 every evening, I’d never attended the 7:30 Compline service before. I was alternately curious about the content and focused on avoiding more chapel tears. Taking my seat in the pew, I tried to ignore the article that was writing itself in my head.

  Compline turned out to be unnervingly appropriate. Each sister examined her conscience and asked forgiveness for the day’s offenses before retiring for the night. As the sisters sang the Salve Regina, I realized my crimes were too numerous to count, much less make amends for.

  When Mother Benedicta sprinkled everyone with holy water in remembrance of baptism, I had a feeling my own sins wouldn’t be washed away unless I came clean with the prioress about my motive for coming to the monastery. The more time I spent at the cloister, the less comfortable I became with my purpose there. I started to wonder what exactly my purpose was.

  I walked to my cell surrounded by the silence and scribbled in my notebook until the bells rang for lights out. I counted the chimes—nine o’clock. I hadn’t gone to bed before midnight since age twelve but snapped out the light to honor the rhythms of the community.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  By 9:30, I had paced my cell several dozen times. By 10:30, I was chain-smoking the one pack of cigarettes I’d brought to taper off with. In an effort to avoid the telltale stench, I stood in my bra and panties with my
hair tied up under a bandanna and blew the smoke out the small window. I wished I’d thought to buy an e-cigarette rather than fool myself into believing I could quit. Then I noticed the picture of the Pope watching me.

  “Go ahead and judge if you must, but you shouldn’t be looking at a woman in her underwear, either.” I took the photo from the wall and laid him face down on the desk.

  My stomach rumbled. I thought about the Hershey bars in the trunk of my car. Only the impossibility of unlocking the massive front gate stopped me from sneaking out to the parking lot to get them. I lit the last cigarette and eyed my duffel bag. After smoking the cigarette down to the filter, I threw away the bandanna, pulled on a clean pajama top, and dug through the rest of my clothes in search of the bottoms.

  I heard something sloshing inside the bag as I pulled out the other half of my sleepwear and put it on. Settling my hand around a solid object amid the jeans and sweaters, I found myself clutching a fifth of bourbon that I hadn’t packed. The attached note read:

  Thought you might need this.

  Cheers, Matt

  How right he was. It wasn’t a chocolate bar or even a booze I liked, but it would do. I pinned the bottle to my chest with my right fist and unscrewed the cap with my left. The scent of black licorice unfurled into the air. Raising the bottle in salute to Matt six hours away, I took a manly swig. It tasted like burnt chestnuts, scorched my throat, and made me cough. My sinuses cleared immediately. One more swallow on an empty stomach and I was downright tipsy.

  But I wasn’t tired. I was sleepless, hungry, drunk, and I missed Matt. I appreciated his gesture knowing how he felt about my trip. I wished I could call him.

  Instead, I looked for the only other distraction I could think of. I dug around in my bag again until I located the camera I’d borrowed from Rod. I adjusted it per his coaching and reviewed the lighting tips he’d given me. I planned to photograph all of Catherine’s paintings before circumstances or my emerging conscience prevented it. Slipping on my shoes, I opened the door silently but hadn’t gone five steps before the noisy clacking of my stacked loafers against the tiled floor forced me to turn back. I kicked off the offending footwear and went out again, barefoot after all.