As the Morning Rising

Late December, 1959

“They’ve come for you.” Sister Estelle stood facing the window beside the convent’s entrance.

Sister Alphonsine’s hand shook as she fumbled with the rusty clasp of the suitcase that had been handed to her yesterday.  She glanced back down the corridor, but no one was there.  The door to Reverend Mother’s office would remain closed until after she had gone.

The suitcase contained a change of underwear and her feast-day habit, which was lighter in weight than the everyday serge.  “My mother always said nothing matters as long as you have clean underwear,” Sister Alphonsine said, trying to lighten the moment.  Sister Estelle looked at her with inscrutable eyes behind thick lenses.  Her lips twitched, but she didn’t smile.

Sister Alphonsine felt grateful that Sister Estelle was the portress just now, and she breathed a silent prayer of thanks.  She wasn’t sure to whom the thanks were uttered.    Possibly God, which was only right, but perhaps her gratitude had been sent to the universe that generally spat people out and let them whirl in the chaotic darkness and then occasionally, like now, opened a crack of sunlight.  As for God, He played mercilessly, like a mean child that plucks out the whiskers of kittens.  Such thoughts as these, though, indicated merely the emotional state she was in, and they were not to be taken seriously.  “Feelings don’t count in the spiritual life,” she had told her novices often enough, and now she was testing that glib saying on herself.

She adjusted the bandeau that covered her forehead, ran her hand down her starched wimple, and pulled her black veil over both shoulders, as was the custom for travelling. Yes, she was glad that the only nun here to see her off was Sister Estelle, who knew the reasons.

She didn’t know the name of the short nun who had come to fetch her, and it didn’t matter; there would be no conversation on the train.  She already had her ticket.  Two others had gone to the train station yesterday to purchase it.  Sister Alphonsine presumed that today’s travelling companion had come to make sure she was not one of those runaway nuns whom people made up stories about.

And then they were out the door.

The train chugged away and at nighttime, their stop came and they alighted.  A car awaited, and the back door opened.  “Good evening, Sisters,” a man said in the dark.  The suitcase with the rusty clasp was taken from her by a large hand with calluses, a comforting hand.  She thought of Sister Estelle, whose face, behind the thick spectacles, spoke of indignation and resolve.

xxx

“I said to her, ’I need up-to-date books, please, Mother.  As novice mistress, it’s my duty to let the novices learn new….’  She didn’t let me finish.  ‘No,’ she says.  Just like that.” 

“Let me guess her response.  ‘Nothing of importance has been written since the sixteenth century.’”

They’re in Sister Estelle’s music room after night prayers.  The novice mistress and the music mistress, the two exemplary nuns who never break the Holy Rule, are now breaking the rule of the Great Silence, that time between night prayers and next morning’s Mass when no word must be spoken.  The piano stands between them, the only silent thing in the room.  A piece of music on it, with many black notes and stems.

“Changes are happening out there.  New discoveries every day.” Sister Alphonsine gestures toward the window.  She has been the novice mistress for five years.  If she’s going to break this rule, she should at least whisper, but she is speaking in a normal tone of voice and can hear it rising.  “We cling to what Reverend Mother says as if hers is the only font of knowledge that exists.  We have to find new ways–”

Sister Estelle holds up her hand as a warning to be quiet. “It’s dangerous to want changes,” she says. “You’ve already told her enough to make you suspect.”

xxx

It was true: a request for new books to improve the minds and lives of the novices in her care had rendered her an incipient danger.  She should have known.  She had been too forthright, insufficiently self-effacing.  Mother, these novices are eager to learn our way of life, but what we’re teaching them is too narrow, too negative, too lacking in the spiritual riches that are their right….  She should have spoken more humbly. Unquestioning obedience to the voice of her superior was demanded of her, and she had failed. Still, she was stunned at her abrupt removal as novice mistress.  It was beyond anything she’d thought would happen in the life of service to God.

“I want to speak to you,” Reverend Mother says, fingering the rosary that hangs at her side.  There is no expression in her voice.  She’s known for this: keeping her voice even, whether praising you (a rare occurrence, leading to pride) or correcting you. 

She makes a gesture, indicating that Sister Alphonsine rise from her knees. For such a big-boned, elderly woman, the gesture is as sleek as the stretch of a cat.  And like a cat settling down, she arranges the voluminous folds of her habit skirt.  At an indeterminate age, she is stooped, her face lined with deep brown wrinkles, her eyes hooded and shrewd.

“Does our work get done by people who think for themselves?  No, it does not.  Our magnificent work is accomplished in holy obedience, by sisters who know their place and follow the will of their superior in all things because they know that this is the will of God.”

Sister Alphonsine does not protest, does not contradict.  To do so would be an act of pride.  Pride is an inordinate passion.  It is also one of the seven deadly sins.

“You must learn again how to be humble, how to become fervent once more.”  Reverend Mother moves her cumbersome body to face her wooden desk and a stack of unopened letters.