Authors: LaVyrle Spencer
There had been a moment, watching the Olczak girls collecting their sweaters, leaving with their aunts and uncles and grandparents and cousins, that Sister Regina had wished she, too, could be folded into the wings of her family, just for this one day. But she had given up all temporal ties to family when she’d taken her vows. Holy Rule allowed home visits only once every five years. Her
family
was now her religious community, namely these seven other nuns who lived, worked and prayed together in this convent and in the school and church next door.
She opened her eyes and examined them as discreetly as possible without stirring.
Sister Dora, who taught first and second grades, the most animated and happy of them all. She was the perfect choice for introducing children to their first year of school, for she respected them and was a gifted teacher. Although Holy Rule forbade special friendships within a community, Sister Dora was Sister Regina’s favorite.
Sister Mary Charles, grades five and six, a tyrant who elicited satisfaction out of whipping the naughty children with a strip of rubber floor tile in the flower room. Sister Regina thought that what Sister Mary Charles needed was for someone to bend
her
over the lowest bench beside the gloxinias and wail the tar out of her backside one time, and see if she might change her ways.
Sister Gregory, the piano teacher, fat as a Yorkshire on market day, who declined dessert every night under the pretext of offering it up, then nipped at it after it was placed before her until it was gone. Sometimes she stayed behind and ate the unfinished desserts of the others while helping clear the table.
Sister Samuel, the organist, who was pitifully cross-eyed and plagued by hay fever. Sister Samuel sneezed on everything and didn’t always cover her mouth.
Sister Ignatius, the cook, who was very old, very arthritic and very lovable. She had been here longer than any of them. Years ago she had taught, and stayed on after her classroom days ended, retiring to the kitchen, where she sometimes fell asleep next to the worktable with a paring knife in her hand. She had wangled the birth dates out of all the nuns and insisted on baking birthday cakes for them even though Holy Rule said they were to celebrate the birthdays of their patron saints, rather than their own. Sister Ignatius would have done very well being somebody’s grandmother.
Sister Cecilia, the housekeeper, was an inveterate busybody who felt it her province to tell Mother Agnes anything that she discovered or overheard within the community, claiming that the spiritual well-being of one affected the spiritual well-being of all. Sister Cecelia thought that because she had once visited the Vatican she was irreproachable, but she was an unmitigated busybody, and Sister Regina was getting tired of forgiving her for it.
Sister Agnes, their superior and principal, taught seventh and eighth grades. Sister Agnes was very much in cahoots with Sister Cecelia in monitoring the consciences of the other nuns rather than letting them monitor their own. She was a stickler for Holy Rule and the Constitution of their order. She could quote both books verbatim and was more unbending than a superior perhaps ought to be.
They were all meditating in silence, each of them having been helped by Mr. Olczak hundreds of times, encountering him repeatedly each day, knowing him perhaps better than they knew any other man, knowing both of his children, and having relied upon their mother for her charity on many occasions.
Were none of them grieved more by her death than they’d been grieved by any death in this parish, ever? Could they truly divorce themselves from caring about the aftereffects of this tragedy on that family? Well, Sister Regina could not. To do so, she felt, would be a mockery of what this habit stood for.
O Father, forgive my faithlessness, for only in You can I find eternal joy, only in accepting Your will can I
...
can I... can I what?
A fold of her habit was caught under her right knee. She rocked the knee and intensified the pain, offering it up as penance for her wayward thoughts, seeking selflessness, finding instead that her mind was filled with images of Anne and Lucy and their father. Had he gone home to them now? To that yellow brick house that could be seen from the main comer of town, where his family and Krystyna’s had undoubtedly gathered? Would he cry in his bed tonight without her? Would the children? What was it like to love someone that way and lose them?
Sister Regina was surprised when meditation ended. She couldn’t believe thirty minutes had passed, but Mother Agnes rose and led the silent departure from the chapel, the line of women descending the steps in single file and gathering in the refectory at their accustomed places. They began with grace, led by Sister Gregory, their prayer leader this week. She called for a special blessing on the soul of Krystyna Olczak and on her family. Then their simple supper began—beef stew tonight, served over boiled noodles with a side dish of pickled beets, grown in their own garden and pickled by Sister Ignatius, and fresh white bread, baked by her that afternoon.
Sister Samuel said, “It’s very sad about Krystyna Olczak. We will miss her.”
Sister Cecilia said, “She bought us our last fifty-pound sack of flour and had Mr. Olczak empty it into the bin. She was a generous woman, the kind you’d like to see live a long life.”
“Never missed a church bazaar or a bake sale,” Sister Ignatius added.
Reverend Mother spoke up. “Though we’ll all miss Mrs. Olczak, we must not question the Lord’s will in taking her.”
Sister Regina said, “Why not?” And seven forks stopped in midair.
Sister Regina knew immediately she should have held her tongue. Poor Sister Samuel was staring so hard it looked as if her crossed eyes might switch sockets.
The opportunity was too juicy for Sister Cecelia to resist.
“Even though you have both of her children in your room, Sister, you know what Holy Rule says.”
“But this was a special friend. Mr. Olczak’s wife. Someone who took special care to... to... to see to our needs.” Sister Dora nudged her under the table, but she persisted. “Tell me, Sister Cecelia, didn’t she give you a ride to Long Prairie the last time you needed your teeth fixed?”
“Yes, she did. But that doesn’t mean I would question—”
“I believe...” Mother Agnes stepped in, nipping this exchange in the bud. “... that at evening prayer we’ll say a Litany for the Faithful Departed.”
And so the talk about Krystyna was silenced and Sister Mary Charles brought up an article in the
St. Cloud Visitor,
the weekly diocesan newspaper, regarding a proposed decency rating for movies. While the talk revolved around the benefit such a rating would have for the schoolchildren, the meal proceeded as usual. Sister Samuel sneezed on the bowl of stew, rubbed her nose with her hanky afterward and tucked it out of sight up her sleeve. Sister Cecelia left the table and went to get desserts. Sister Gregory held up a hand, refusing her apple cobbler, which the old cook put before her anyway. When the meal ended, Gregory’s dish was as empty as everyone else’s.
Each member of the community was assigned a charge—a duty—each week, by Mother Agnes. Those whose charge was dish washing this week went off to do them and help Sister Ignatius clean up the kitchen. Afterward they joined the others for evening recreation in the main-floor community room. Recreation time was part of their unwavering schedule. It lasted sixty minutes and everybody was required to be there. Each nun had a drawer on the north wall of the community room, and from the drawers came crocheting, knitting, letter-writing gear and books. Sister Dora read from a volume about the life of Saint Theresa, the Little Flower, while everyone worked on whatever they liked. Though conversation was allowed, little of it flowed, for Sister Dora had been
assigned
her reading by Reverend Mother, and it filled the hour of recreation time fully.
At 7:30 everyone left the community room and went upstairs to their own rooms, where they spent an hour and a half preparing the next day’s lessons. Sister Regina used part of that time to read Matins and Lauds, which she’d neglected earlier in the day.
At nine o’clock a soft bell rang, and they gathered once again in chapel to chant the Divine Office and end with evening prayers, tonight the litany that Mother Agnes had designated. Then Sister Samuel played the organ while they all sang
Stabat Mater.
After evening chapel the nuns retired to their rooms, locked in Nocturnal Silence, which would last until 6:30
A.M.,
when everyone gathered in the chapel to meditate and chant the Divine Office from their Breviaries once again.
Sister Regina’s cell was a duplicate of everyone else’s, a narrow room with a single cot, desk, chair, lamp, window and crucifix. No bathroom, no clock and only a tiny closet in which hung two extra sets of clothing and a mirror no larger than a saucer, by which she could pin her veil in place or pick an eyelash out of her eye, should one fall in. The mirror was used for little else, for vanity had been forsaken along with all other worldliness when she took her vows.
She untied her guimpe in back and removed it along with the wimple—headband and veil intact—hanging them on a metal coat hanger bent especially to accommodate them. Next came the sleevelets and the loose scapular, followed by the cincture—the belt—with its three knots signifying the three vows she’d taken. From the pocket of her habit she took a black rosary and laid it on her desk before hanging up the long black dress. Sitting on her bed, she removed her shoes, black stockings and white garter belt, then donned a white nightgown from her closet, and sat down quietly to wait for the click of the bathroom door, signifying that Sister Cecelia was done.
Full baths were taken once a week, on Saturdays, for anything more would be considered wasting water, and wasting anything defied their vow of poverty. Practicing poverty had never bothered Sister Regina in the least. She sponged quickly, reaching underneath her commodious nightgown without glimpsing more than her feet. The last time she had seen her body she was sixteen, taking her own private vow of chastity long before she pronounced her final vows, for even then she had known that Grandma Potlocki was right, and she would enter the postulate as soon as she graduated from high school.
Communal living had never bothered Sister Regina except during bathroom time, for as a child she had been a dreamer, and it was during those long stretches in the outhouse on the farm that she had done her best dreaming. There, with the door propped open facing the woods, she had whiled away hours until her mother had called from the house, “Regina! Time to do dishes! You get in here now and quit hiding in that toilet!”
Eight women on a strict schedule in a house with one bathroom left little time for any of them to lolly gag behind a locked door.
Sister Regina switched off the light, slipped from the room and met Sister Dora going in. The urge to whisper pushed Sister Regina’s tongue against her teeth. She wanted to talk about Krystyna’s death, and the children’s loss, and Mr. Olczak’s ringing the death bell himself, and of her own sorrow and misgivings, which were growing and growing as the night wore on. But Nocturnal Silence had already begun, so she passed her friend in the hall without uttering a syllable and entered her cell with a silent closing of the door.
At ten
P.M.
when the last bell sounded for lights out, she lay in the dark with her arms locked over the covers, stretching the blanket binding so tightly against her breasts she hoped it would relieve the ache within. But it relieved nothing. Instead, all the pain and sadness she had so dutifully sublimated came bursting forth in a rash of weeping. It surprised from her a single loud sob before she could cover her mouth and turn her face into the pillow. And while it started out as grief for the Olczaks it permutated into something altogether different, for at sometime while she cried, she realized she was doing so for her growing dissatisfactions over this life she had chosen. She’d thought Benedictine communal life would mean strength and support and a constant sense of peace within. A strifeless valley of serenity where sacrifice and prayer and hard work would bring an inner happiness leaving nothing more wanting. Instead, it meant silence when communication was called for, withdrawal when it was sympathy that was needed, and a Litany for the Faithful Departed when it was tears that were needed.
With the greatest of sorrow Sister Regina admitted that her religious community had let her down today.
CHAPTER FOUR
When Eddie Olczak got home, his house was overrun with family, both his and Krystyna’s. Nine of his brothers and sisters still lived in the area, and five of Krystyna’s as well. Most of them were in his kitchen and living room, along with assorted spouses, nieces and nephews, and, of course, both sets of parents. So many people were there, in fact, that his little four-room house couldn’t hold them all. Some had overflowed onto the side porch and yard.
The family members had been counting the chimes of the death toll, knowing Eddie was ringing it himself, and were watching for him to appear. Sometimes he came down the alley from the north, sometimes he walked the block and a half along Main Street, around the comer of John Gaida’s store, then half a block over to his place. Today he came around the comer of the store and crossed the street kitty-corner. They were waiting, and moved toward him as he came up alongside the pair of overgrown box-elder trees in his front yard.
Their loving arms, reaching to comfort him, opened the floodgates again, and they shared tears as he was passed from brother to sister, father to mother.
Facing his parents was worst of all. He found them in his crowded living room and went to his mother first. She was a short, stubby woman with tightly curled graying hair that always seemed to smell like the foods she cooked. Her body was softening with age, and with each passing year it seemed to settle more and more into the shape of a pickle crock. Her face was always red, in the summer from gardening; in the winter from the heat of the kitchen range. He’d outgrown her by so much that now when they hugged, he had to dip his head to kiss her hair.