After lunch, which was more what the girls from the country called dinner—a heavy meal of soup and homemade bread, a salad, a main course of roast beef or chicken, vegetables, and some tasty little custard for dessert—the postulants would pour out into the backyard to sit under the trees or walk up into the orchard, happy to be free for a while in the apple-filled air of autumn. Too soon the bell rang for afternoon classes.
Once a week they would have instructions with Sister in their study hall. Sister Mary Margaret led them through each chapter of the Holy Rule of the Order, which had been handed down from St. Dominic himself. A study period followed, during which Kate often nodded over her algebra assignment, then Vespers in the chapel, and then another hour of recreation, spent sewing in their upstairs community room, or playing pinochle on feast days and Sundays. Kate’s mother played bridge, but pinochle! Kate had never heard of it. Sister Mary Margaret scolded her for not paying attention when she and Kate were partners one night. Kate saw that the nun was deadly serious about the game and decided not to volunteer to be her partner again.
When the bell rang for Compline, the girls filed into chapel for the last prayer of the day, their chant books heavy in their hands, smothering yawns. The last song was always a hymn to Our Lady, and when the voices of the nuns died away, deep night silence muffled the convent like a blanket of snow.
Kate hadn’t seen the point of all this silence, having been raised in an Irish family where everyone gabbed on from morning until night. The postulants often played tricks on each other in the darkness of the dormitories, short-sheeting beds and mixing up dresser drawers. They would stuff sheets in their mouths to stifle laughter when the unsuspecting victim discovered the prank and swore softly in the dark.
Some of the postulants were a few years older than Kate. They had already been to college or had worked, so were more sophisticated than she. Because several girls were in the throes of nicotine withdrawal during their first weeks, Sister Mary Margaret supplied them with hard candy to help them over the hump. Gradually friendships formed as the girls got to know one another. Kate found herself drawn to several of the older girls whose wisecracks undermined the rules and formalities of daily life in the novitiate. The six-inch rule was particularly funny to them all. Signs, neatly lettered, were posted everywhere. The water in the bathtub was not to exceed six inches; the windows could be raised only six inches.
Kate’s world was shrinking. She lived in a cocoon of women, free to wander around the convent property, up into the orchard or woods, but she saw no other people for days at a time. Kate found herself delighting in watching the nine-year-old altar boys as they brushed back their hair and winked at each other during Father’s daily homily. There was no radio or television, and worst of all for Kate, no daily newspaper. The great world beyond shrank into a dim memory.
Sometimes her memories returned with vivid poignancy. One Saturday night Kate had gone to bed after a long day of housework (Saturday morning was entirely devoted to major housecleaning), choir practice, and instructions. Finally, starting at eight o’clock, the nuns spent an hour and a half in chapel singing Matins. Sister Mary Margaret told them to offer up these prayers for all the sins that were being committed in the world on a Saturday night. Several postulants grinned knowingly.
Although it was October, the windows were open in the dormitory, as it had been a particularly warm day. Kate heard a car go by with the radio blaring loudly. She tried to identify the song, when a girl’s laughter rose ethereally in the humid night. The car sped off, and the silence of the country echoed in the sudden stillness. She pictured herself in that car. That’s where she belonged, she thought. She was eighteen. What was she doing in bed at ten o’clock on a Saturday night? She tried to sleep, but tears ran down her cheeks, wetting the pillow.
Most days she was cheerful. She loved her classes, especially English. She had discovered the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins and would wander out to sit under a tree during Saturday afternoon study period when she should have been working on her algebra, and memorize his poems: “Elect’d Silence sing to me . . .” Hopkins’ struggle to give himself over to the Divine Lover helped her see the way to surrender the world.
Sundays were Kate’s favorite time. As the external world receded, she felt her internal world expand. Kate remembered the rainy November Sunday she found Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain in the library. She had curled up in a big chair in one of the empty front parlors used only for visitors and was startled several hours later when the bell rang for Sext. Kate was mesmerized by Merton’s early life—the loss of his mother, his travels all over with his artist father. Reading about his years of desperate adolescent loneliness, and his drinking and chasing girls, took her far away from the convent for a few hours, yet brought her closer to an obscure understanding of what was supposed to happen to her. She read in The Seven Storey Mountain of Merton’s delight when he discovered the way of life of the Trappists, and she copied the passage into her notebook: “What wonderful happiness there was, then, in
