Keeping Faith by Cindy Bradford (serial 48)
Chapter 17 Part IV
Cindy Bradford
“Well, first the Reverend Mother would not allow me to take any close up facial shots of the nuns. Every photo had to be almost a silhouette. The results were wonderful, but it made me really nervous going in because I was worried that I would not be able to fulfill my assignment for the magazine. Once I finished with the photos, I was so glad that had been a requirement. I would never have done that on my own, and I think it was the turning point of the entire work.
“The convent has a simple, but comfortable building for guests. The surroundings are beautiful and even the main meal provided. But it was so… I don’t know how to explain it.”
She paused, “Empty, is the word, maybe. All of those women certainly didn’t feel that way. Many have been there thirty and some up to forty years and will be there until they die. But to me, the silence was deafening. The stillness and starkness of the place just filled me with utter loneliness. I felt so much for those women. Again, they didn’t complain. It was I who had these feelings, but seeing them rise at five o’clock every morning and meditating, praying and doing manual labor alternately until 8:15 at night just seemed so lonely, so unfulfilling.”
“Many of the women have college degrees and some have held positions of authority, but have given it up to go there. It is their choice; I suppose, their calling, but it is so removed from everything we grow up thinking we will do in our adulthood, unless, I guess, one grows up Catholic. You know more about that, so maybe it is not unusual at all?”
After thinking a minute, Patrick responded, “The tunnel is so narrow that you don’t allow yourself to think about the outside world and traditional expectations, if you grow up thinking that is your calling in life. You block it out, thinking you are being so unselfish and so right about your decision that sometimes you end up hurting yourself or someone else sometimes.”
“Did that happen to you, Patrick?”
“Oh, I thought about it more than you will ever know, but I thought about it as I said with no added dimension. You’ve probably read about the guilt trips the nuns give kids in Catholic school. Well, I think we live with that guilt so much, we sometimes guilt ourselves into choices. But, I guess it is different for everyone. Go ahead; you were talking about the schedule and so forth.”
“I don’t really know, Patrick, I just felt sorry for some of the women, especially one of them, a woman named Ann. They just seemed to be missing so much, the touch of a hand, the warmth of a hug, the pleasure of a tickle, or the peacefulness of knowing you share a special bond with another human being. Maybe, all women don’t need these things, maybe they have so much more and I am the loser, but I just know I couldn’t live that way. If they feel a yearning for more, they didn’t express it to me, except Ann. I think admitting it would have been a sin for many of them, a sin some would have trouble living with.
“Actually, the Reverend Mother didn’t want to participate in this project at all, but she wants to build a school, and Henry promised her a major donation from the magazine if she agreed. I never knew how much, but it must have been substantial.
“I spent the first week there watching the women in their routines and reflecting on these experiences. I watched their body language, their eyes and movements. In the second week, I began to talk with many of them. A few didn’t wish to engage in conversation but three seemed hungry to talk. Remember Patrick, these women are normally not allowed to talk except for forty-five minutes a day during recreation time. You would think they would all be eager for conversation; however, as I said before, I don’t understand their way of life. By the way, there are eighteen nuns living there. They raise their own vegetables and milk a couple of cows from which they make their own cheese. They have a greenhouse and sell their flowers to a local florist to bring in an income for the maintenance of the buildings.
“The nuns, who were willing to talk, taught me so much, especially about sacrifice. One of the women told me that as a little girl she changed her name to Ginger because she wanted to grow up to be a dancer just like Ginger Rogers. She must be terribly unhappy,” Carol laughed, but not in a cheerful tone. “I cannot think of a worse place for her. That would be like an alcoholic working in a distillery. She never told me what changed her mind although I pressed her time and time again. In the middle of the third week I commented to the three women individually, we never talked as a group, that she must have a strong faith to live like this, to give up all worldly and material goods and thoughts. Their responses were as different as each of them. Ginger said certainly it was true that she did have a strong faith, but she also approached it as her service here on earth. She rather danced around the remainder of my questions; the only dancing she does, I might add. Isabella told me that she believed she was destined to live this life, this prayerful existence made her feel whole and totally connected to God.
“It was what Ann told me that I was completely and utterly unprepared for. When I asked her the question, she didn’t say anything for the longest time. It was beginning to make me nervous because I was afraid I had said the wrong thing. Finally, she lifted her gaze, her eyes looked straight at me and then she called me by name. That was the first time I had heard my name, I think, in three weeks.” She said, “Carol, I have told no one, but for some reason I truly believe I can trust you. You cannot use this in your story so you may not even want to hear what I am about to tell you.
“I told her to continue and she reminded me that the Reverend Mother could never know. I asked her why she was telling me and she looked me right in the eyes and said she needed to say it, to share it; she had carried the secret so long, and she said she had thought about it so much and that, for some reason she felt a particular bond with me, an unexplainable, almost friendship, if that were possible, in that setting.”
“Well, hurry up,” Patrick laughed. “This is driving me crazy. It’s like a movie.”
Carol continued. “Here sat a woman in a cloistered convent dressed in a habit, but even with her head covered, I could tell she was beautiful. She had the most defining eyes, an almost lavender color and her skin had a glow that I didn’t see in the other nuns. She said she always tried to work in the vegetable garden so she could at least get some sun on her face, so as not to look pale. Then she looked at me again, and I remember her exact words. She said, ‘You asked me about a strong faith? Perhaps, I see it differently from the other sisters. I do understand faith as the Bible says, as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, but sometimes I think I confuse faith with love, because Carol, I didn’t come here because I was a strong Catholic girl who wanted to live a godly life. I was not even reared Catholic, I came here because I loved a man who no longer loved me. I came here to run away, not to run to something. I came here because I had his baby and was not strong enough to look at her everyday and see him in her. I came here because he chose to be a priest and if I could be a nun, I would be closer to him in a strange way. I knew that was the only way. I came here because the outside world no longer held anything I wanted. So, if you can say that faith is one’s capacity to love no matter what happens, to give up everything to keep that love alive then Carol, I have faith.
“Then she told me her daughter’s name and that she left her with her sister when she was four days old. Everybody thinks Ann is dead. She said that in many ways she was. That’s it, Patrick. End of story. Now you have to see the best part, the photographs.”
Patrick suddenly felt like he had been slapped by a huge wave and was drowning. Driving, he looked straight ahead so he would not give away his emotions. He thought, “It can’t be. No, it is a coincidence. There is no way Sue would have done that.”
“Well, here is our turn off. We’re almost back,” he said, making small talk and trying to still his racing heart.
“Are you too tired to come in, Patrick?”
“If it’s okay, I think I will go home to unpack and clean up. Then I’ll pick you up. We’re going out to Vincent’s on the Bay tonight, my dear. I have a bit of a surprise.” He was beginning to feel calmer, but his mind was still trying to comprehend what he had just heard.
“I’m glad you told me where we’re going Patrick. I’ll dress differently than planned. That is an elegant place. What is the occasion?”
“You’ll see. I’ll be back in about an hour and a half,” he said as he kissed her cheek.
Driving away he let his memory drift back: Sue if that is you, why didn’t you just stay in Townsend and marry some nice guy… Why did you have to do this to yourself…just because I ran away, you didn’t have to. He hit the steering wheel hard with his fist. “Why?”
As quickly as he asked himself, he stopped. Always the master at suppression, he willed himself to do what he had been doing since he was ten years old, trying to forget and convince himself that that Life has a way of dealing cards that one plays or discards, and once that game is over, it can’t be replayed. “We both made our choices years ago and now we have to go on,” he said out loud, as if to fool himself into believing it.
There was no question that he loved Carol. She had captured his heart, but it wasn’t the first time his heart had been stolen, and the first time is always special. It’s not something a person forgets easily, that time of innocence when one believes there will never be another one as perfect as the first. He knew he wasn’t the only person who had ever felt that way and it made him a little sad.