Kate raised her hand immediately, but Sister looked past her, trying to see if anyone else had something to say. Finally, she nodded at Kate.
“Sister, we . . . that is, I was wondering why we never get to say goodbye to someone who leaves. You’re always encouraging us to think of each other as sisters and to love each other. It just seems so cold to have someone hustled off in secrecy without time to say a word to anyone. Of course, I’m not talking only about Sister Mary Lucy,” she amended, seeing Sister Mary Paul’s face darken.
“Yes, I’m sure it does seem cold, as you say, Sister Mary Katherine. It hurts us all when someone decides to leave. But my responsibility is to protect and encourage those of you who are choosing to stay. I do not want you influenced by someone who is questioning and doubting our whole way of life. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sister, but I don’t agree.”
There was a long moment of silence while Sister Mary Paul’s cheeks flushed and Kate held her gaze. No one moved until finally, from the back of the room, Kate heard someone murmur, “I don’t agree either.”
“Neither do I.” The comments were coming now from all over.
Sister Mary Paul got up stiffly and rested her hand on the table in front of her.
“Well, my dears, you must realize by now that religious orders are not democracies.” She smiled tightly and left the room. Kate realized that her victory was hollow and would probably cost her in some way.
That’s why she was astonished later that afternoon. Hurrying to chapel for None, she almost bumped into Sister Mary Paul and Reverend Mother in Our Lady’s Chapel, huddled in conversation. Though their voices were low, Kate sensed they were talking about Sister Lucy’s flight. Meaning to slip past them quietly, Kate was startled when the novice mistress reached out and grabbed her arm, holding her lightly as she said kindly, more so than ever before: “I was talking to your pastor, Father Peters, this morning about . . . well about Sister Lucy, actually. He asked me how you were doing. I told him to send me ten more just like you.”
Both Reverend Mother and Sister Mary Paul gazed at Kate with mingled affection and amusement. Kate was dumbstruck. Sister liked her! Since the day Kate became a novice, Sister Mary Paul had seemed constantly irritated by her, chiding her for her bouncy, undignified way of walking, her careless handwriting, her stream of chatter during silent time.
Kate mumbled hurried thanks and ducked quickly into her pew in chapel. She was distracted during the chanting of the office by what the novice mistress had said. Kate thought she understood now the psychology used by the novice mistress in forming young nuns. Constant, intense criticism, which, if it could be borne with reasonably good grace, would be the refining fire that would separate the gold from baser metals, or something like that, she thought, realizing at once the arrogance of her analogy. She didn’t agree with this theory of education, but it was an immense relief to know that despite all her carping, Sister Mary Paul thought she would make a good nun. But wouldn’t it be better, more effective, to show encouragement, affection, even love to all these struggling young women?
Suddenly Kate thought of her mother. What she gave Kate was what she missed sorely here—that deep, unshakable love that lay beneath the normal nagging of a teenager’s mother. Love had been like air at home. Nobody talked about it, but it was always there, invisible, indispensable. Now she was living at a rarefied altitude; the air was thinner here. The question was, could she survive in this atmosphere?
Without having answered that question, Kate knelt two years later on the feast of St. Dominic, August 3, and pronounced her first vows: “I, Sister Mary Katherine, vow and promise to Almighty God, and to you Reverend Mother, that I will live for three years in poverty, chastity, and obedience.” She unpinned the white veil of the novice from her headdress, and in its place pinned the black veil of the professed nun. Dry-eyed and calm, Kate had whispered as they filed back into the chapel, “If You want me to do this, You’ll have to help me. I have a feeling it’s not going to be easy.”
C
hapter Twelve
Saturday, June 27, 1964
In the dark church, Kate awakes, panicked. Feeling the woolen jacket beneath her, she remembers Peter. She thinks sickly of the trouble she caused him. Thank God he left her the money! How will she be able to repay him? She pictures the nuns and priests in Juliaca. By now they would have radioed Sister Jeanne Marie who was still in Bolivia with the Poor Clare nuns after her retreat there. She would be the calmest, trying to reassure the others about Kate, but secretly furious at her for causing all the commotion.
Sister Josepha would be angry and deeply worried. At sixty-two, Josepha was an ascetic, committed missionary, scornful of creature comforts and of the younger nuns’ questioning of their mission in the Altiplano. Her fair, serene Slavic features were straight out of a painting by Van Eyck, Kate had thought the first time she’d seen her. Her eyes were light blue, fringed by pale, almost invisible lashes, and her hands were as large and red as a farm wife’s. She bustled around the parish with a brisk, no-nonsense approach to doing good. Self-doubt didn’t seem to be a part of her makeup, and she had a hard time disguising her impatience when it surfaced in others.
One afternoon when they’d been working together in the small sacristy polishing the gold chalices and patens, Kate tried to talk to Sister Josepha about Tom Lynch. It was a cold, rainy April day, and Kate’s mood reflected the weather. She was desperate to open up to someone.
Suddenly, Kate put down
