When Kate told her friends the story later she had laughingly admitted that it was the one time all summer when she’d had serious second thoughts about her decision. But now she was excited. She couldn’t wait to go down and show her family how she looked. As she hurried to pull back the curtains and join the other giggling, chattering girls heading downstairs, she realized there was no mirror in her cell. Sister Gabriela was waiting for her, and as she helped Kate fasten on the stiff white collar and cuffs, she smiled.
“You’ll wear this outfit for three weeks,” she said. “Then on the third Sunday, you’ll receive the cape and veil of the postulant.”
“When do we get the real habit and white veil, like you?”
“Oh, that’s a whole year away, not until next July 25, the feast of St. James, if you make it that far,” she said with a grin. “Okay, let’s go. Your parents want to see you, and the bell will be ringing in a few minutes for the end of visiting.”
As Kate came downstairs, she caught sight of her parents and Maggie in the crowd of families waiting in the foyer below. She twirled before them. “Well, how do I look?”
Then she saw their faces. Her mother’s set smile could not quite hide the pain in her eyes. Her father for once said nothing and looked nervously away. Only Maggie seemed herself, and as they hugged goodbye, she whispered, “Better you than me, kiddo.” Kate felt tears forming, and could not even whisper that last goodbye as the heavy convent door shut behind her family.
Kate followed the novices into a long line forming in the cloister walk. On her right was a carefully tended square courtyard garden with roses and zinnias and petunias, beside a flagstone path. The afternoon shadows were lengthening across the grass and the ivy-covered walls of the chapel opposite. Then the long line of novices and postulants filed into the chapel, cool after the heat of the August afternoon. As Kate’s eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, she saw that the chapel was filled with a hundred or so black-veiled nuns, all rising as the organ intoned the music for Vespers, the evening song. Suddenly light flooded the church, and Kate gazed down the long aisle to the gold and white altar that lay at the heart of the convent, the altar of sacrifice.
Those first weeks in the convent were strange yet exciting. Kate felt as if she were living in a foreign country whose language and customs she was struggling to learn. Each minute of the day, the postulants followed a strict routine in the old monastic tradition of prayer and work. Kate was awakened each morning in the dark at 4:45 a.m. by the irritatingly cheerful voice of her guardian angel Sister Gabriela, the novice assigned to their dorm: “Life is short; death is certain. God alone knows the hour of death.” With this scary thought Kate would be jolted out of some dream and struggle to her feet to bathe her face and hands in the basin of water on her night stand, brush her teeth, and dress quickly, all the while trying to remember the sequence of morning prayers the other sleepy girls were reciting around her. Then it was down to the cloister walk to wait for the little silver bell that Sister Mary Margaret, the postulant mistress, would ring when all were assembled to signal the postulants and novices to file into the chapel for the first hour of the Divine Office, Lauds.
Silent meditation followed. Kate would begin to meditate on a scene from the Gospel, say the one with Jesus and the woman at the well, and fifteen minutes later would find herself fantasizing about swimming in a lake with her friends from high school.
After a half hour, Father Finn, the chaplain, came to the altar to say Mass. There were rumors that the Father was a shell-shocked veteran of World War II, and Kate wondered about his story. The only man living among all these women, he became for her a comforting presence, and she was happy to see him on his walks through the grounds, smoking his pipe, his old Irish setter padding stiffly behind him.
Kate wasn’t used to going to Mass daily, but it soon became her favorite part of the day. When the nuns sang the Gregorian Chant, the singing rose like silver in the echoing chapel. At times high and ethereal, their voices would suddenly sweep low and passionate so that Kate trembled at the intensity. She felt like crying for happiness sometimes and would whisper her thanks to the image of the handsome resurrected Christ on the cross above the altar. This was no man of sorrows, suffering and gruesome, but a splendidly dressed bridegroom, and they were all his brides.
Once when a group of the postulants were scrubbing the floor, they began to laugh about being brides of Christ. JoAnn, older and more cynical than the others, said she felt more like Cinderella at the moment, and Kate snickered and wondered aloud, “Well, does that make Jesus a bigamist?” At this they all laughed helplessly, wiping their tears on their blue-and-white checked aprons until Sister Mary Margaret appeared in the doorway.
After a quick silent breakfast of hot cereal and a roll, the postulants and novices scattered to make their beds and do their chores before class started at eight. Their studies were interrupted at nine to pray Terce, and fifteen minutes later the postulants and novices were all back in class until Sext at noon. After a brief spiritual reading at lunch, Sister rang the bell permitting them to talk freely for the first time all day. Their eager young voices would rise in a great clash of laughter and teasing until Sister tapped the bell, “Sisters, let’s remember to speak in ladylike tones.”
Kate thought that Sister Mary Margaret’s idea of ladylike came
