Visible Signs

Chapter 2

Chapter 2S

he turns the heater off and the radio on. When the oldies station hammers out the staccato beat of Walk On By, she sings along, belting it out the way she and Connie used to, clutching their hairbrushes as mikes. She tips her head back to shout, “Foolish pride!” and nearly hits the deer bounding into the road. Braking hard, she fishtails on an icy patch, sending her pulse rocketing. Don’t brake on ice. Steer slowly. Use the gas to pull out of a skid. Danny Farrell taught her, making her practice on the icy lip along the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The deer pricks up her ears and bolts into the woods. Jude relaxes her grip on the steering wheel and moves her foot to the gas pedal. Danny Farrell. She wonders if he’s still in Canada, as fierce and funny as he was at nineteen, and if he still thinks about her. By the time her heartbeat slows to normal, she’s at the monastery entrance, safely home. Beneath the weathered ‘Monastery of the Holy Name’ sign is a new one:

RETREAT THIS WEEKEND

The Changing Role of Women in the Church

Making her way through the parlor crowded with women Jude avoids Sister Immaculata’s steady gaze and heads for the registration table where Sister Catherine John is taking payments and handing out room assignments. “Sorry I’m late.”

“Where on earth have you been?” Catherine John’s chubby cheeks are flushed, but she looks more relieved than annoyed.

“Where do you want me, cash or carry?”

“Carry.” She nods toward a woman shivering in a stylish but flimsy wrap. “You can start with that one.”

The woman reminds her of Connie. A bit younger, early twenties maybe, and her features are coarser, but her hair is a similar shade of blond, and she’s slight like Connie used to be before the children. She sometimes wonders how she would fare in Connie’s shoes. Jude had done her share of caretaking but it had been—except for those few weeks with her father, which totally exhausted her—for a grown woman who could speak for herself.

Jude remembers how terrified she felt holding Anna, eight weeks old on her baptism day, the wobble and weight of the child, her heavy head and fragile body, the translucent skin. This trusting creature wanting nothing of her but needing everything she had to give. Jude cradled her with trembling arms, her chest flooding with such a fierce joy she could hardly breathe.

“Oh no, thank you, Sister,” the woman says when Jude picks up her suitcase, even though Jude’s practically twice her size.

“I’m Sister Jude, and you are . . . ”

“Kathleen.”

She escorts Kathleen to the guest wing and leads her down a dim corridor, their footsteps echoing against the vaulted ceiling. “This one’s yours,” she says, opening the tall, narrow door. “They’re called cells but we don’t lock the doors. Honest.”

Kathleen doesn’t crack a smile. She drags her suitcase over the threshold and stands there, waiting for Jude to leave.

“Dinner’s at six in the main building. Vespers are at five-fifteen in the chapel across the courtyard. Come if you like.”

“Okay. Thanks. Sister.”

The door closes as soon as Jude turns her back. She shakes her head. After nearly a decade, she can’t get used to being regarded as some kind of wholesome freak. Just wait, though. She’ll bet anything that Kathleen will be the one to ask how they get along without s*x.

To be fair, there was a time Jude used to pity these women, who had so little time for prayer and reflection. Over the years, she has come to envy them: Peace Corps volunteers back from El Salvador and Nicaragua, wives and mothers who marched in Selma and Washington, women starting their own businesses or daycare co-ops in the Bronx. “Weary pilgrims,” Sister Immaculata calls them. They call the nuns “The Lord’s Handmaidens.” Servants of God; troubled souls. From the inside looking out, Jude fails to see the difference.

Taking her place next to Immaculata at dinner Jude whispers, “It couldn’t wait.”

“You’ll do them no favors if you neglect your obligations here.”

“But I didn’t, I—”

“You left without permission.”

“No one was around.”

“If it wasn’t for your father,” Immaculata sighs.

Jude feels the heat flooding her capillaries, reddening her skin. She shouldn’t have disclosed her father’s final wishes. He wouldn’t have approved. “If it wasn’t for my father, I couldn’t help Tomás.”

Immaculata rests a tiny hand on Jude’s arm. “I’m not judging him, just saying that the Lord works in mysterious ways.”

“He does. And if I’m not mistaken, I just found out what the money’s for.”

In the parlor that evening, as Immaculata works a jigsaw puzzle, Jude writes out all the details in a proposal to Mother Superior. “I can do this, Immaculata. And keep it afloat until I can get enough grants and donations to make it self-sustaining. It must be God’s will.”

Immaculata considers a puzzle piece then finds its place. “It has been my experience that we seldom recognize God’s will if it differs from our own.”

“But it’s perfect. It will only be open one day a week to start. Of course, we’ll have to order the groceries and stock the shelves. And write the grants, of course. And notify the—”

“We? You, you mean,” Immaculata says.

Jude flushes. “Everyone can help, there’s plenty to do—”

“That’s hardly the point. We’ve more than enough to do here. You’ll need Catherine John’s help at the very least—”

“I can handle it alone if I have to. I feel it’s what God’s calling me to do.”

Immaculata fixes her with a pointed stare. “Then you won’t be doing it alone, will you?”

Jude slides the proposal under Mother Superior’s door before retiring to her room. Preparing for bed Jude considers Immaculata’s words. She’s right, of course. As brusque and exacting as she can sometimes be, Immaculata has always steered her in the right direction. It was Immaculata who, a few weeks after Jude’s father’s funeral insisted on being chauffeured to the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome where she surprised Jude by treating her to a ride in a biplane. How she loved the thrill of flying in the open cockpit, her veil flapping beneath the old-fashioned leather helmet, the Hudson Valley a green furze scrolling beneath her, pulling her focus back to the earth. She had surfaced for a while.

Until she had to pack up the house. Long days spent sorting out what her father saved, what her mother had left behind, navigating the landscape of her childhood. Her skin prickled at the ghostly remnants: her father’s steel-toed boots on the back porch, as worn down as he was from work on the docks; the antique ivory lace mantilla her uncle brought back from Ireland that her mother wore every Sunday at Mass; her own basketball trophies for All-Star, state champion, MVP, artifacts of her former life, the figures frozen mid-leap, victorious.

The even longer nights when, too exhausted to cook, she’d have a bowl of cereal and lie on the sofa staring at the pale geometry on the walls where pictures used to hang. She had traveled back to the cloister in a fog, leaving some piece of herself behind.

For the first time in months, Jude sleeps through the night, waking the next morning with her heart plump with hope, and her favorite prayer, the first one her mother taught her, on her lips.

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven

Light of sun,

Radiance of moon,

Splendour of Fire . . .

“I’m giving you St. Patrick’s Breastplate,” her mother said, “to keep you safe. To keep you strong.”

I arise today

Through God's strength to pilot me:

God's might to uphold me,

God's wisdom to guide me,

When she was little, she imagined the Breastplate as an invisible coat of armor and couldn’t understand why her mother gave it away, didn’t keep it to protect herself. And with a child’s faith took it as a sign of her mother’s great love, the ultimate sacrifice. Even now that she knows better, it still conjures up her mother’s voice, and comforts her.

Jude matches her stride to Mother Superior’s on their way through the courtyard after Vigils. “Have you read it?”

“I have.”

“And?”

“It bears discussion. Come to my study after Vespers, Jude. We’ll talk then.”

It satisfies her, this pacing of prayer: Vigils, Lauds, Noon, Vespers, Compline, unfailing, reassuring, like God’s love. Today Jude uses each time to ask God’s blessing on Loaves and Fishes, as she’s already christened the food bank.

The women do retreat, hour-by-hour, from the lives they left, she can see it in their faces, in their gait. There doesn’t seem to be an equivalent for her. No way to slip into secular life for an occasional weekend. Sometimes she wonders how she would fare in Connie’s shoes. In her last letter, she mentioned that Vince has been working long hours at Fields, he has a second call back at Circle in the Square; Anna’s grades are excellent, and she’s a big help with Ceci (thank God, this pregnancy’s the worst).

Jude wrote back, including a note for Anna, and a brochure with the upcoming schedule for retreats. Circled the next one. January 6th: Reflection and Renewal for the New Year.

At Vespers, the chapel is full, the monastery no longer forbidding and the nuns less exotic to the retreatants, who are welcome to join them in the chapel. Tonight, some do, Kathleen among them. She waves to Jude from across the aisle.

As soon as they’re done, Jude hurries back to the convent and enters the study on Mother Superior’s sturdy heels.

Mother sits behind her desk and motions her to the opposite chair. “Please.”

Since Mother’s longish nose and narrow mouth give her a perpetually dour appearance, Jude can’t read her mood. The older woman has a well-earned reputation for slow but fair deliberations. In light of the latitude granted by the Second Vatican Council, she’s agreed to authorize whatever changes in habit the convent decides upon. But it’s been eight long years since Vatican II and the Sisters of the Holy Name are still arguing about what to wear.

“What you propose is a noble enterprise, Jude, and a clever way to use your inheritance without violating either your vows or your father’s wishes.”

“Immaculata told you?”

“Only because she’s been worried about you.”

“Then you approve?”

“Of the project, not your involvement.”

“It will not affect my work, Mother, I promise—”

“It already has,” she says, not unkindly. “That is where you were yesterday, with that child?

“But it was an emergency—”

“No doubt. And if you do this, there will be other emergencies.”

“So, what are you saying? I may fund a food bank but not administer it?”

“Why must it be you?”

“It doesn’t, not in the long run, but they need help now; Tomás and his family, and the old man with the baggy pants and that little girl who reminds me of . . . ” Her voice catches and she can’t control her tears.

Mother reaches in her pocket and hands her a handkerchief. “I know you’re passionate about this, Jude, but it is not our mission.”

“I can do both, I know I can.”

“That is not your decision.” Mother’s voice sounds oh so soft and gentle. “What if each of us wanted to do something else? And believe me, we have all felt that way at some point.”

“But something must be done.”

“There are social services—”

“They don’t qualify. And even if they did, it’s still not enough.”

“I’m sorry, Jude. There will always be people in need; you can’t take care of everyone. We can pray for them, entrust them to God’s care. And hope for the best.”

“There’s always hope, Mother. It’s justice that’s scarce.”

Mother stands. “Come, let’s go to dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Get some rest then.”

Jude presses the hankie to the fresh fall of tears. She pauses in the doorway. “What if I can’t let this go?”

“Then you must choose whether or not you wish to remain here.”

“But you’re my family,” she whispers. “This is my home.”

“I do not say this lightly, Sister, but I see no other way.”

After staring at the wedge of moonlight on the ceiling for hours, Jude gives up. Air. She needs air. And sky. She follows the flagstones to the front entrance, nearly slipping on the icy path.

Circling behind the dormitory wing, she sees a light in Kathleen’s room. Just as she predicted, Kathleen finally did ask how they get along without s*x. “Easier than you think,” Jude answered, as she always does. But she had wondered too, at eighteen, still close to the season of Danny Farrell, when promising never to lie skin to naked skin with a man—holding fast, being held—seemed an exquisite sacrifice.

“What about money?” Kathleen wanted to know. The vow of poverty never fazed Jude. She’d watched her father divide his pay among tattered envelopes marked for “Hudson City Savings,” “ConEd,” “Bell Tel.” He’d rattle his loose change into the cloudy crystal vase that used to be filled with flowers when her mother was well. Perhaps his scrimping was his way of denying them the comforts her mother had forfeited long ago, or maybe it was the only way he knew how to care for a child.

No one ever asks about obedience or what it’s like to relinquish your judgment; surrender your will. If they did, she’d tell them it’s the hardest vow of all.

She’d entered the convent happy to forfeit the trappings of a secular life for an abundant spiritual one. A road sometimes arduous, sometimes perplexing but always there. Until now. It no longer feels as if she is giving things up but that they are being taken from her, erasing her past, pre-empting her future. Things she hadn’t realized she wanted.

Jude leaves with what she brought with her. Her simple wardrobe: two skirts, two blouses, two sweaters: one black, one white. Underwear, pajamas. Her winter coat and boots. Except for her prayer books, her Daily Office, she has no personal effects.

It takes her an hour to pack and all day to say goodbye.

She walks the cloister, the monastery grounds, leaving the chapel for last, where she knelt a long time in her usual place, grateful for His guidance, humbled by His grace.

Jude nearly changes her mind at the last minute, enduring Immaculata’s mournful gaze, Catherine John’s false cheer, Mother Superior’s formal farewell, the weight of her decision like a mantle of stone.