One Sunday morning Marlene’s prayers are validated. As the contractions rip through her, rip her open, she curses the baby, curses God, curses her best friend, Hedda, who is on the floor cradling Marlene’s head to protect it from crashing against the bottoms of the pews. Marlene’s blasphemy paralyzes the priest in his pulpit who suddenly can no longer distinguish between St. Margaret Girls four decades ago and all St. Margaret Girls since, including Girls in the pews below him. New faces young faces and yet the same. But the Sisters are distinctive, young when he was young, old now that he is old. One of them he has loved. Loves still. He has given Sister Hildegunde no indication; but she understands he’s devoted to her and that he’ll hear her confession any time, night or day. Not that he has occasion to be alone with her at night. Sister Hildegunde only comes to his confessional in the mornings after Mass, arrives with two Sisters who genuflect and file into a pew to wait for each other while one whispers sins to him.
“Let’s get you down from the pulpit.” A hand around the priest’s wrist.
Instinctively he covers it with his hand—finally oh—covers Sister Hildegunde’s slender hand and the black hem of her sleeve worn at the edge, the vow of poverty, of austerity. Sister Hildegunde tugs him from the pulpit, one step two steps down to the next plank before descending to the lower plank.
“Careful now,” Sister Hildegunde whispers.
“Thank you,” he whispers back.
“One step two steps down.”
Sister Hildegunde is old. He is old. Except she looks young because the wimple conceals her neck. Nuns have that advantage. While his neck betrays his aging. Creases and folds. But that’s changing because he’s discovered how to intermix youthfulness and penance. At home, after morning prayers, he remains on his knees, tilts his head back as far as he can, and opens his mouth wide to stretch the skin on his throat; he holds that pose until it’s torture and then enhances his suffering by stretching his lower lip across his upper lip in the direction of his nostrils.
“Now we are both old, Sister Hildegunde.”
“I’m Sister Elinor.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
Dizzy, he is dizzy. Oh— “You are not Sister Hildegunde?”
“I’m not.” Sister Elinor steadies him. “It’s too late to move Marlene to the infirmary. She waited too long.”
“Marlene cannot do that here,” he objects.
But Marlene does. Such disruption—curses and tears and hiccups and a whirlpool of Sisters who hustle Girls and parishioners from the chapel—out now out—but not enough Sisters to shield the priest who has never seen a crotch, a bloody crotch, a bloody baby. Whenever he administers last rites to dying mothers, he protects his modesty and sits by the head of the bed.
This Girl isn’t even on a bed. This Girl sprawls on the floor of the church with her legs spread and proclaims: “My son’s name is Jesus.” Then crosses herself.
Sacrilege. The priest has never heard of a person named Jesus. And this Jesus is so scrawny and gray-skinned that the priest must christen him right away—naked as he’s born.
Sister Franziska grabs Baby Jesus from the priest, holds him upside down by his feet, and whacks his rump.
“Don’t hurt him,” Marlene wails.
When Sister slaps him again it comes to Marlene that her true calling is to be a nun. “Such an offering to God,” she cries, elated. “Such an offering to all you Sisters—”
Sister Franziska lays Baby Jesus on the altar and opens her wide mouth across his face to find a gossamer thread of breath.
Marlene’s teeth shatter and she tries to sit up, but Sister Hildegunde guides her back down.
“My Baby Jesus and I will live with you at the St. Margaret Home.”
Sister Hildegunde and another Sister spread cold wet sheets around Marlene. “She is burning up.”
“You—” Marlene wails, “you would reject the Heilige Jungfrau if she stood here with Baby Jesus in her arms.”
“We’re trying to save both of you.”
In the dark dormitory the girls huddle around Hedda and wail with her. But then one steps away. Another. They stomp their bare feet, hard, pound their soles into the floor, and howl as they dance sideways in a circle. When Hedda tries to join in, she teeters and they all link arms to steady her. Faster now, their dance. Like a drum beat in the chapel below, where the Sisters pray over the bodies of Marlene and Baby Jesus. Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. When the Sisters arrived on Nordstrand they were young. Now they are old, while the girls remain young, forever replaced by new girls who play pranks and die and dance and squabble over who is the best nun. Some adore Sister Franziska, compassionate and accomplished; others swear Sister Elinor is the best, light-hearted and generous.
First dawn and Sister Ida shakes Lotte awake.
“What? What is it?”
“It’s Hedda! Sister Franziska says for you to deliver the baby.”
“I’m not ready.”
“Hedda is ready. Hurry—”
“Hedda isn’t due yet.”
“Well, she is ready.”
“But I’ve never done this alone.”
“Sister Franziska says you know how.” Sister Ida starts crying. “She’s in the chapel praying over Marlene and her baby.”
“Oh God— Both of them?” Now Lotte is crying.
“Yes. Both—” Sister Ida’s voice gives out, and she taps her throat with two fingers. She motions to the bed where Wilhelm lies asleep on his stomach. “I’ll stay with…”
Hands sweaty on the banister, Lotte hastens down the marble stairs.
But in the delivery room something odd happens: her hands become knowledgeable, and her heart grows steady. There’s nothing beyond this sacred work, no fear, no sorrow. Only Hedda. Now. Sacred to be the first to touch Hedda’s newborn, sooner than Lotte touched her own newborns because a midwife held them first. But now Lotte’s hands. Now. And though the streaks on Hedda’s daughter—white and pink—are the same as on Lotte’s newborns, this bringing into life does not tilt her into her own loss as she feared, but calms her, allows her to give something she didn’t know she had.
I can do this?
I can do this again.
“Don’t forget,” Hedda says. “I’m keeping her.”
“I won’t forget.” Lotte lays the infant against Hedda’s breast.
“Is Marlene dead?”
Lotte strokes the Girl’s damp hair. “Yes.”
“Promise you won’t let anyone take my baby.”
“I promise.”
Hedda shivers. “They’ll try to adopt her. Tilli said to Marlene that people will be all nice to you, but once they have your baby, they don’t want you.”
“No one can take her.”
“Tilli said to Marlene that some come from far away with false names and lie about where they live so you can’t find your baby again.”
“Tilli doesn’t know everything. Look at me, Hedda. You did not sign adoption papers. The Sisters and I won’t let anyone take your daughter. We know your decision. We also know you make good plans.”
After confession on Saturdays the Old Women gather for Kaffeeklatsch—coffee und gossip—in each other’s kitchens to compare penances the priest has assigned.
“He usually is fair.”
“Fair enough.”
“A bit pompous.”
“And vain.”
“He does those neck stretches he learned from the sexton.”
“Two vain men.”
“With sagging necks.”
“Sagging everything.”
The Old Women laugh.
“Still, he is generous and will sit with you through your grief, even your rage.”
“He wants to be a good priest.”
“And a good man.”
“But he’s more like a boy.”
“Well-meaning.”
“And naïve. He thinks he knows more about the Sisters than they know about one another.”
“He doesn’t even know that Sister Konstanze and Sister Ida lie with each other at night.”
“Then why do we know?”
“Because we know how to know.”
“So philosophical.”
“Do you think he’s truthful with his own confessor?”
“Not about coveting the bride of Christ.”
“Hoping to break the sixth commandment.”
“I don’t think so. For him it’s more exciting to follow Sister Hildegunde around.”
“Lusting from a distance.”
“Distance because Sister Hildegunde knows how to get away from him.”
“Or send him off with a list of duties.”
“Don’t underestimate chaste obsession. It outlasts other obsessions.”
“Like Maria’s fisherman.”
“You can tell by the purity in his eyes.”
“He never had another woman after Maria jilted him.”
“Some pursued him. Some in this very room.”
The Old Women count on one another to keep confidences. But one may get reckless and take gossip outside their circle, gossip she has no right to. “I thought you’d want to know…” She may even spin stories. Intoxicated by the curiosity of her listeners, she won’t notice when the Old Women exclude her from matters of confidence. This is instinctive, does not need discussion. Easy enough to wish the reckless one a good morning; to share a recipe or news of a grandchild to be born; to sit together embroidering initials on handkerchiefs and knitting mittens linked with crocheted rope, impossible to lose; to construct huge Schultüten—school cones from stiff paper, paint them in bright colors, trim them with ribbons and pictures that reflect each child’s interests; to visit merchants who are glad to contribute gifts for the six-year-olds starting school. To sweeten their first day, the Old Women present each child with a colorful Schultüte as tall as a six-year-old, each different in decor, each filled with hazelnuts and a blackboard; dried apple slices and marbles; raisin bread and a ruler; chalk and initialed handkerchiefs and alphabet blocks. They tell the children how a Schultüte eased their first day of school.
“I still have mine.”
“I still have my grandfather’s Schultüte.”