Whatever romantic notions Pip might have had about life in the abbey were quickly dispelled. It’s more like my brother’s stories of boot camp, she wrote to Sister Ruth. To her family, though, she wrote vague letters about how happy she was. If she admitted to them how homesick, how unhappy she truly was… after all my insistence on doing this. She couldn’t bring herself to admit her mother had been right, that she didn’t belong at St. Bridget’s.
It wasn’t all bad, though. The other nine postulants were, for the most part, nice girls. But having to share a dormitory, with only curtains around their beds for privacy, was hard. Pip had never realized how much she treasured the sanctuary of her own bedroom until she didn’t have one. And mirrors! Without the benefit of a mirror, she had the darndest time getting her short white veil in place. Her hair, though not curly, was so thick and wavy that it was proving a challenge to keep it tucked under the veil.
The tepid water from the one tap they shared to fill jugs for washing was quickly depleted, leaving only water cold enough to make her teeth chatter. She longed for a hot bath, but she couldn’t complain after listening to some of the other girls’ stories.
“We all had to share the same water, one tubful, every Saturday,” said Maria, a girl from a large Italian family in the Bronx. “Mama tried to keep it warm by adding pots of hot water from the stove, but by the time the last of us got in, it was freezing.”
“And hard to get clean,” chimed in her cousin, Sophia.
Their family couldn’t be prouder that two of their girls were going to be nuns, “but I don’t think the boys are so happy,” joked Maria about her six brothers. “My mother says one of them has to be a priest. I think they’re going to draw straws.”
From the time they were awakened at four-thirty until the last bell chimed, signaling lights out at nine p.m., the postulants’ days were regimented: eight so-called hours of prayer—even if some were only fifteen minutes long—that were the framework of each day, with a work period each morning and afternoon. The postulants had classes—the history of the abbey’s founding and some Church history, both of which were taught by Sister Benedicta, who brooked no nonsense. Pip guessed her to be in her mid-thirties and privately thought she would have made a good warden.
But most of their class time was spent learning Latin. Pip, like most of the others, had learned enough growing up to parrot the responses during Mass, without really understanding any of it. Her high school Latin had improved upon that a bit, but nothing like what we have to know now, she wrote to Josie. We have to actually talk to one another in Latin!
Their teacher was a brilliant young nun, Sister Stephen. Pip suspected she could have been a college professor had she not entered religious life. Sister Stephen was a small woman, her sharp hazel eyes seeming to see everything at once, but “there’s nothing small about her brain,” Pip grumbled after one grueling lesson in which Sister Stephen had challenged them with a quote from Plato.
“Excellence is not a gift,” she read, “But a skill that takes practice. We do not act ‘rightly’ because we are ‘excellent’, in fact, we achieve ‘excellence’ by acting ‘rightly’.”
Lowering her book, she’d scanned the group. “This from a man who lived hundreds of years before Christ. And yet, his writings could stand alongside most Christian philosophers. He also wrote, ‘If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.’ Can you name any Christian philosopher who puts women on equal footing with men? This is why we demand so much from you.”
Pip had tilted her head to read the spine of Sister Stephen’s text. “Are you… are you reading that in Greek?”
She was certain Sister Stephen was hiding a smile as she turned away.
“Patricia, ask me that in Latin, and we can discuss it.”
Life wasn’t all work and classes and prayer. They had a Recreation period daily, but “you would be wise to use this time for edifying activities,” said Sister Veronica, their postulant mistress who was shepherding them through this first trying year.
“Don’t let them fool you,” teased Sister Alban, one of the first-year novices. “The postulant year may be trying, but the novice years aren’t any better.” She tugged impatiently at the white veil she could never get on straight.
“Don’t scare them,” said Sister Hilda, a second-year novice.
They were all wandering the enclosure garden, which was just beginning to come to life. Plants were heavy with buds, ready to burst into bloom. Many of the nuns were avid gardeners and took quiet pride in the beauty of the garden. Spare cuttings were brought in to decorate the Chapel or the common room, “but we must always avoid excess,” Sister Veronica warned them repeatedly.
Pip had to admit, when color and texture were introduced in dribs and drabs, she noticed them far more than she had when her mother’s garden club had insisted everything must be bigger and more elaborate.
“Let’s go see the babies,” Sister Hilda suggested.
The farm kept a dairy herd, and almost every day now, two or three new calves appeared. The cows were gentle, reflecting the care they received from the nuns, who treated them more like pets than livestock. Old Sister Michael was in charge of the farm. She’d been raised on a large farm in Pennsylvania, and was a crackerjack mechanic. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t fix.
A couple of the postulants had been assigned to help milk the cows and make the cheese the abbey sold, but now, with the calves nursing, only a few of the cows needed to be milked until they gave birth. Pip and the others laughed, watching the calves jump and run about on their spindly legs, but she was privately happy not to be working out here.
She had been posted to the kitchen, an ironic choice, given her recent work experience. The abbey’s kitchen was a model of efficiency, and Pip couldn’t help wishing she’d incorporated a few of their ideas when she was setting up the bakery. But her rotation in the kitchen had gotten off to a rocky start.
“Is this a penance?” she’d whispered to Sophia one evening their very first week after entering as she tried to gnaw the abbey’s tough, dry bread served with each meal.
Sophia kicked her under the table, but it was too late. The squat nun seated across from them glared at her before she pushed abruptly to her feet and took her plate and glass to another spot further down the table.
“That was Sister Clotilda,” Sophia whispered back. “The baker.”
When Pip first reported to the nun in charge of the kitchen, Sister Wilhelmina had shown her around the various stations in the kitchen. “With over a hundred sisters to feed three times a day, we must be organized,” she explained. She eyed Pip up and down, her beady eyes red-rimmed, her face shiny with the heat of the stove. “I don’t suppose you have any experience cooking.”
“None,” Pip admitted. “We had a cook.”
Sister Wilhelmina sighed and nodded. “I expected as much. You look too delicate to have done any hard work.”
Offended, Pip blurted, “But I can bake. I’m a good baker, especially bread.”
“Are you now.” Sister Wilhelmina’s gaze flicked to the far side of the kitchen. “Very well, you can help Sister Clotilda with the bread.”
Pip hoped that perhaps Sister Clotilda wouldn’t recognize her or remember their first encounter, but her heart sank when Sister Clotilda’s expression curdled immediately upon seeing them approach.
“Sister,” said Sister Wilhelmina, “this is Patricia, one of the postulants. She will be assisting you.”
Pip could have sworn she saw Sister Wilhelmina’s mouth twitch as she returned to the vat of soup she had simmering on the stove. Sister Clotilda, however, had seemingly decided to pretend Pip wasn’t there. She neither spoke nor acknowledged her in any way. The only sign she’d heard Sister Wilhelmina at all were the sudden patches of scarlet that burned on each cheek. She resumed measuring out cups of flour while Pip stood by, her hands folded as she waited to be told what to do.
But when Sister Clotilda tossed the measured salt on top of the flour and yeast, Pip couldn’t help but hiss in a breath.
“What?”
The word whipped, but Pip refused to flinch. “I’m sorry, Sister, but our—I mean, the woman who taught me to bake, from what she learned from her mother and grandmother, was that you have to keep the salt and yeast separated. Otherwise, it kills the action of the yeast, and the bread won’t rise.” Which explains why I’ve nearly broken my teeth trying to chew yours, but Pip felt it would be wise not to say that aloud.
Sister Clotilda stared at her for a long moment. “Very well.” Her lips compressed indignantly. “If you think you can do better, be my guest.”
Pip opened her mouth to protest that that wasn’t what she wanted, but from her peripheral vision, she became aware that every woman in the kitchen had paused what she was doing, and they were all watching.
“Merde,” she muttered, turning her back. She peeled her cardigan off and rolled up her sleeves.
She hated to waste what was in the bowl, but it was ruined. “There’s no sense in tossing good after what’s gone,” Maggie had said when Pip made the same mistake during her first lesson. “Just start anew.”
So she dumped the flour mixture, ignoring the appalled whispers from around the kitchen. Starting with fresh ingredients, she carefully added the yeast and salt on opposite sides of the bowl. She soon forgot the others, and they all went back to their own work. Sister Clotilda grudgingly edged closer as Pip mixed and kneaded, explaining as she worked, just as she’d done a few months ago for the bakers they’d hired.
“Now, we’ll set that aside to prove,” Pip said, tucking behind her ear a stray lock of hair that had escaped her veil. “Two rises before we shape it into loaves.”
She showed Sister Clotilda Maggie’s trick of covering the bowl with a clean damp linen towel to prevent a skin forming on the dough while it rose and then knocking the risen dough back to knead again for a more even texture.
“Not yet,” she said after they’d formed the loaves and Sister Clotilda opened the oven door. “One more prove before we bake.”
“I never took all these steps,” Sister Clotilda admitted. “Seems like a waste of time.”
“But wait until you taste the results,” Pip promised.
The entire kitchen filled with the aroma of the baking bread. By the time they pulled the golden loaves from the oven, the nuns working there were all sniffing appreciatively.
“Might we not sample it, Sister?” one of the other nuns asked Sister Wilhelmina.
Sister Wilhelmina shrugged. “We probably should test it before foisting it off on the rest of the community.”
Pip held her breath, watching the knife glide through the crunchy crust into the soft interior of the loaf. Sister Wilhelmina cut several slices, passing them around to the others, including Sister Clotilda. Pip couldn’t help smiling at the appreciative murmurs, but when she turned, Sister Clotilda was nowhere to be found.
“Magna opera Domini,” sang Mother Felicita. “Exquisita in omnes voluntates ejus.”
“Confessio et magnificentia opus ejus,” responded the nuns from their choir stalls. “Et justitia ejus manet in saeculum saeculi.”
This, the Divine Office, this was when Pip felt right, when she knew she’d heeded the Lord’s call. All the rest fell away when she was in the Chapel, when she was praying and singing. She didn’t have the best voice, nor the widest range. Her voice fell into a comfortable alto, and she frequently dropped an octave. It was a challenge to follow the seasonal progression through the church year, and Sister Veronica was still teaching them how to mark their prayer books each evening for the next day.
Slowly, as spring blooms faded and summer arrived, the postulants settled into the rhythm of the abbey. All of them, no matter where they were normally assigned to work, were tasked with helping Sister Michael to get the farm’s first cutting of hay baled and safely stored in the barn.
Pip was secretly gratified to be out of the kitchen for a week or more. Her bread had been much appreciated by the entire community, but Sister Clotilda had taken their delight as a personal insult. She hadn’t spoken a word to Pip since the first day and had busied herself elsewhere in the kitchen, leaving the baking to Pip. Not that anyone was complaining.
“Everyone is so happy you’re doing the bread now,” Sister Hilda had confided during Recreation one afternoon.
“Not everyone.” Clara, one of the other postulants, had peered over Pip’s shoulder. Barely moving her lips, she muttered, “Don’t look now, but that nun sitting under the cherry tree, that’s Sister Beatrice. I heard her saying something about you elevating yourself.”
“But I didn’t!” Pip said indignantly.
“Don’t worry about her,” said Sister Alban. “She sees fires everywhere. She’s always after someone.”
Still, it was a relief to get out of the kitchen and away from the drama. Loading the hay bales was sweaty, hard work. Pip and the other postulants envied the novices their full-length habits. Even though they all wore gloves with work sleeves cinched around their arms, bits of hay got under their collars and into their shoes where they itched and chafed. Every evening, sitting on the side of her bed, Pip plucked those prickly pieces of chaff out of her stockings and underclothes.
But eventually, the first cutting was taken care of and the juniors all returned to their assigned duties. In Pip’s absence from the kitchen, others had tried unsuccessfully to take over the bread baking. Determined not to draw attention to herself, Pip had kept her mouth shut, not wishing to criticize, but as soon as she set foot in the kitchen, Sister Wilhelmina was waiting for her.
“You!” She grabbed Pip by the hand and led her to the marble-slabbed counter. “We’ve not had so many grumblings about the food since I can remember. But you won’t be with us forever. You will teach your methods to some of the other sisters. We can’t rely on anyone keeping secrets.”
“But I never—” Pip tried to protest.
From across the kitchen, she caught the triumphant gleam in Sister Clotilda’s eye.
“Just teach these sisters, Patricia.” Sister Wilhelmina pointed to five others who gathered round. “Remember, no one is irreplaceable.”
Grinding her teeth at the injustice of the implication, Pip tied on an apron. “Yes, Sister.”