Nodding off during Lectio Divina over a boring treatise on the freedom that poverty brings, Pip caught herself and her head snapped up. Sister Nicola—though Pip still found herself thinking of her as Sophia—sniggered and rolled her eyes.
Pip had expected their two novice years to be basically more of what their postulant year had been—lots of manual work, some study, daily prayer—but it was a lot more reading and study in preparation for their vows. If the postulant year was boot camp, Pip wrote to Sister Ruth, the Novitiate feels like we’ve been assigned to some intensive training program. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one to think of it like that.
“This stage of religious life,” lectured Sister Francis Marie, their novice mistress, more than once, “is like monastic college. Your simple vows, should you make it that far, will be your midterm exams. Your final vows will be your final exams.”
To that end, Mother Felicita gave them weekly talks on topics ranging from the abbey’s founding in 1820 by a group of Scottish nuns escaping persecution by the British to the nuns’ sacred obligation to be obedient in all things handed down by the Vatican.
Mother Felicita had always been a remote, infrequent presence to the postulants, so it was interesting to see her closer up. Pip was surprised to see that she wasn’t as old as they’d thought; she guessed her to be late sixties.
“And she’s already been abbess almost ten years,” they whispered. “She could still be abbess twenty years from now.”
Their Latin lessons continued under the tutelage of Sister Stephen, who was now challenging them to converse in Latin. Pip had started writing her letters to Josie in Latin.
This feels like homework, Josie complained in response, but she always answered, sometimes in Latin herself.
Pip’s homesickness was lessened these days, eased by the news that her father was feeling better, back at work with Garrett. The bakery was taking off, and the mill was busier than ever.
The newness of the routine and the habit and all the things they were studying meant that Pip sailed through the next few months with hardly any recollection of anything beyond her small circle of the other novices.
So immersed was she for those months in her new world—in me, she would recall later—that she barely noticed the abbey had also accepted six new postulants. She saw them, of course, moving about in a group.
“Were we that sheepish?” she asked one afternoon during Recreation.
“Yes,” Sister Alban said emphatically. “You were. We all are. When you’re the only ones not in habits, you feel like there’s always a spotlight on you. Everyone else seems to know one another, and you only know the other postulants. Let’s say hi.”
She led the way to where the postulants stood near the stone wall, which provided some protection from the cool early summer breeze. The postulants saw them coming and whispered among themselves. One peeked over the shoulder of another and met Pip’s eye. Mesmerized, Pip stumbled, tripping over a stone in the path, so that she had to reach out and grab Sister Fabian’s arm to catch her balance.
“Sorry,” she muttered, but watching where she walked gave her an excuse to keep her eyes lowered.
Sister Alban began the introductions of all the novices. The six postulants shyly returned the courtesy, but Pip’s attention was centered on the one, Jacqueline Rebideau. While the others spoke, she had time to take in Jacqueline’s laughing eyes, as brilliantly blue as the sky overhead, the sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks, the deep auburn hair visible around the edges of her short veil.
When she turned those eyes on Pip and smiled, it was as if the others simply faded away. A nudge of an elbow brought them all back into focus.
“Hmmm?”
“Don’t mind her,” Sister Alban joked. “She still thinks she’s Patricia, forgets her religious name.”
Pip felt herself blush as the others laughed.
Sister Isadore pointed. “Carol asked where you’re from.”
“Uh, Rochester. You?”
Pip refused to allow herself to glance in Jacqueline’s direction again as they chatted, but she was relieved when the bell rang for None and they all filed toward the Chapel. As she stood in her stall, holding her prayer book, she was keenly aware that Jacqueline was in the row behind her.
Suddenly, Jacqueline was everywhere—in the library during Lectio Divina, down the table a few seats in the refectory at meals, and it seemed to Pip that every time she happened to glance in her direction, Jacqueline was just turning away from having been watching her.
She’s been here for months. How did I not notice her before now?
But she saw how in July when the juniors were asked to help Sister Michael pick the first batch of peas and lettuce and green beans. With over twenty of them, Sister Michael randomly sorted them into fours and sent them off to various sections of the garden, leaving them in Sister Alban’s charge.
“I’ve got hay to cut.” Pip noticed the grease and dirt ground into Sister Michael’s rough hands. “Pray we don’t get no rain this week. In a few days, hay’ll be dry enough to bale, and I’ll need you again.”
For the first time, Jacqueline and another of the postulants—Pip couldn’t remember her name at first—were paired with her and sent to the peas. Carrying rattan baskets, they worked their way along the plants, picking the pods.
Pip tried to think of something to say, but she needn’t have worried. The other postulant—Marge, she reminded Pip—was a talkative sort.
“I’m from Albany,” she jabbered. “One of eight. My dad’s big in the Knights of Columbus. They’re pretty happy I have a vocation. It’s one out of the house, anyways.”
“What about you?” Jacqueline asked, standing for a moment to stretch her back. She scratched at an itchy place on her nose. “You’re from Rochester, right?”
Pip noticed she left a smear of dirt. “Yes. My family owns a flour mill. I worked there for a while, until… I came here.” She shifted her basket. “What about you?”
“I’m an orphan. Born and raised in an orphanage in Montréal.”
That explained the trace of an accent in Jacqueline’s speech. “You were never adopted?”
Jacqueline shrugged. “I don’t think the nuns tried too hard to adopt out the girls. We were more useful as workers and then, they could try to keep us in their order.”
“But she got away when she was just fifteen,” Marge said. “Got herself hired as a nanny, didn’t you, Jacquie?”
Jacqueline smiled. “A wealthy couple needed someone to watch their children. They came to St. Perpetua’s to look for someone. I was lucky enough to be chosen. They brought me to Albany, where he had business.”
“That’s how we met,” Marge said. “They went to our church, Our Lady of Fatima, and I saw Jacquie taking care of these four kids.”
“And now you’re in a convent again?” Pip asked. “Why didn’t you stay with the nuns at the orphanage?”
Jacqueline bent over the row of peas. “I want to serve God. I don’t want to spend my life caring for children.”
Something in her voice stirred Pip’s pity. “Were they cruel?”
Jacqueline didn’t answer immediately as she shifted her basket farther down the row. “They had almost two hundred children to care for. They weren’t cruel, just overwhelmed.”
There was so much more Pip wanted to know about Jacqueline’s past, but Marge chattered like a squirrel until the bell rang. When they picked up their baskets to carry them in, Jacqueline turned and met Pip’s gaze.
Hours later, lying in her cell that night, Pip was still thinking about Jacqueline’s eyes.
After that day, it seemed more often than not, Jacqueline and Pip were in the same group any time the postulants and novices were working together. Pip had no idea if it was random, or if Jacqueline was perhaps manipulating how they were divided, but she found herself looking forward to those times. Of course, conversation wasn’t always possible, such as when they had to toss bales of hay onto the wagon. There was barely enough breath to stay upright, with none left for talking, even if they hadn’t had to holler over the rumble of St. Jude, the abbey’s ancient tractor.
Still, there were other times, when quiet conversations helped to pass the time as they cleaned, or peeled and cored apples to make apple butter, or worked in the enclosure garden.
“My story isn’t so different from hundreds of others,” Jacqueline offered one morning as they swept the piles of leaves that always managed to swirl and gather in the cloistered walk that bordered part of the garden. “I was born in 1943. I was told my mother was twenty, so only a little older than I am now. I imagine her sweetheart was going off to war; after he was gone, she found herself pregnant, maybe alone or in trouble with her family. She didn’t want to raise a baby in disgrace, or perhaps her family threatened to disown her if she didn’t give me up.”
“You’re so philosophical about it,” Pip said.
Jacqueline laughed. “What good would it do to be angry or disappointed? I was lucky enough to be raised in a place where I had food, clothes, a bed. Plenty don’t have that much.”
Pip studied her. “I admire you. I’m not sure I wouldn’t feel resentful in your place.”
“What about your family? Tell me about them.”
“I’m not sure what to say.”
“Your given name is Patricia? After your father?”
“Yes,” Pip said. “To my family, I was Pip. The only time I was Patricia was when I was in trouble, which, come to think of it, was quite often.”
They laughed, and she found herself entertaining the others with tales of Maggie and Felicia chasing her and Garrett and Josie around as they grew up, her mother arguing with her about everything, her dad trusting her to start the bakery.
“Your father let you do that all on your own?” Jacqueline asked.
“Well, I had help.” Pip blushed furiously at the memory of Toni. Funny, I haven’t thought about her in ages.
“You had all that and gave it up to enter?”
At the wistfulness in Jacqueline’s voice, Pip stopped. “I guess it doesn’t matter where we come from, does it? If you hear that call…”
She felt something and glanced around to find Sister Beatrice standing in the shadows, her face inscrutable. Bending to her task, she resumed sweeping, refusing to look up again.
But most of the novices’ time was still taken up with reading and studying and preparing for their vows. Poverty, chastity, obedience—those words were drilled into their heads until Pip sometimes thought she could scream. She wondered, looking around at the others, if they were all virgins. How do we give up something we’ve never known? But of course, she couldn’t ask that out loud. Still, it seemed Sister Francis Marie must have read her mind, because the next week, she began lecturing them on the blessedness of giving the Lord an unblemished gift.
“Coming to the Lord as… spoiled goods,” she said delicately, “is tantamount to offering someone a basket of apples while you have selfishly taken bites out of half of them.”
Sister Fabian looked bewildered. “What’s wrong with apples?”
Pip stifled the sudden urge to laugh while Sister Nicola leaned over to her cousin to whisper.
“Oh.” Sister Fabian blushed.
Sister Francis Marie looked most uncomfortable. “We, of course, have accepted girls who have…”
“Brought half an apple?” suggested Sister Alban helpfully, somehow keeping a straight face.
“Exactly.” Sister Francis Marie looked relieved not to have to explain further. “And we would never ask. That is between you and your confessor.”
Everyone seemed too embarrassed to look at one another after Sister Francis Marie dismissed them.
“Why do I have a hankering for apples now?” Sister Isadore asked, sending them all into a fit of giggles.
But that prompt about confessing nagged at Pip. Growing up, she’d dutifully gone to confession each week, telling old Father Thomas the same litany of venial sins—“I disobeyed my mother three times, and fought with my brother twice”—whereupon he gave her the same rote penance, “Say five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys and pray for the grace to avoid such temptation. Remember that small sins lead to larger ones.”
Pip counted herself lucky that she’d never had to choose whether or how to confess a really serious sin—until Toni. That kiss and the way it had made her feel, she knew the Church would consider a sin, but she had never been able to make herself confess it.
Now, with all the talk about purity and chastity and celibacy, that memory niggled at her. Only it wasn’t all the lecturing. Part of what brought that memory back was the way Pip felt when she thought about Jacqueline. In choir, Pip had begun keeping an ear tuned for Jacqueline’s voice—clear and strong, always on pitch. Sometimes, her head turned just a little, she listened and forgot to sing. Her eyes automatically searched for Jacqueline in the common room or out in the garden at Recreation.
Just yesterday, outside on a blustery day, with a hint of autumn bite in the chill wind, she’d scanned the enclosure while she was walking with Sister Alban. When she found Jacqueline over by a rose trellis with two other postulants, it was to see Jacqueline’s eyes already locked on her. For that moment, they connected across the garden, and Jacqueline’s gaze was like a caress. When Pip wrenched herself away, her heart was thrumming in a way that she knew she should confess… but I don’t want to.
“Sister Theodora?”
Pip jumped, bringing her crashing into the present, where the community was gathered for the weekly Chapter of Faults—a different kind of confession. Here, five of them were called each week to kneel before Mother Felicita and the entire community to confess any transgressions against the rules or another sister. She rose and came around to Mother Felicita’s chair, where she knelt, her mind churning furiously.
“Two days ago, I loitered in the library when the bell rang because I wanted to finish what I was reading,” she said. “And I had uncharitable thoughts toward Sister Michael when she asked me to put all the rakes away.”
“For this next week,” Mother Felicita said, “you will spend Recreation in the Chapel, where you will pray for greater discipline in obedience to the rules and to the senior nuns.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Pip slunk back to her stall.
But the next day, kneeling all alone in the Chapel to do her penance, she couldn’t help thinking how pointless this was. If I were the one setting the penances, I’d set ones that actually mean something.
Still, she did make a greater effort to obey more immediately. It was frustrating to be in the middle of a task when a bell rang, to abandon it as soon as it could feasibly be done, “cheerfully,” Sister Francis Marie reminded them again and again. “It’s not enough to grudgingly do what is expected of us, we must do it cheerfully.”
So Pip reminded herself when she and the other juniors were asked to prune the roses and other bushes in the enclosure garden. It was a cold, gray day, hinting at the winter on its way.
“Not those,” she corrected Sister Fabian, who was about to cut back some of the hydrangeas. “These bloom on old growth. The blooms were pruned earlier in the summer just after the they died off. See these? These are buds for next year. If you prune these back now, they won’t flower for at least a season.”
She showed her a neighboring plant. “This type of hydrangea can be cut all the way back at this time of year, now that they’ve gone dormant.”
“How do you know this?” Sister Fabian asked, looking totally bewildered. “We never had gardens like this in the Bronx.”
“I guess I absorbed more than I realized from my mother and her garden club friends.”
Pip busied herself pruning back the roses, much trickier to tackle. The abbey’s roses would have been the envy of the gardening club, its ancient bushes, warmed and protected by the stone walls surrounding the garden, producing fragrant old-style roses by the dozen all through the summer and well into the autumn.
“Do you need help?”
Pip jumped at the sudden nearness of Jacqueline and immediately yelped as her startled reflex drove a large thorn deep into her palm. Cursing under her breath, she gingerly withdrew her hand.
“I’m so sorry,” Jacqueline said, kneeling beside her. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“I just didn’t see you there,” Pip said. She gritted her teeth and grasped the thorn.
“Let me.” Jacqueline took Pip’s hand and pried the thorn out as gently as she could. Large drops of blood immediately welled up.
Pip knelt, her hand cradled in Jacqueline’s as she carefully wrapped a clean gardening rag around Pip’s hand.
“Thank you.” Pip’s heart hammered at Jacqueline’s nearness.
When Jacqueline raised her eyes to Pip’s it seemed everything else disappeared.
“You all right?”
They jumped apart as Sister Alban came over, a shovel in her hand, her eyes moving curiously from Jacqueline to Pip.
“Yes.” Pip tugged the rag a little more tightly around her palm. “Just snagged myself on a thorn.”
Jacqueline pushed to her feet and went to the other side of the garden. Pip bent back to her task, and as she worked on the rosebush, she noticed that the prick of the thorn wasn’t what she felt. It was the remaining tingle from Jacqueline’s touch.