“Sure I’m sure.”
“What makes you so sure? What? How do you know?” She doesn’t pause for my answer but says softly, “As kids, we dressed the same. We wore our hair the same. We had the same favorite sandwich-bologna with mustard on white. We got duplicate presents on our birthday and at Christmas. We went to the same schools. We sat next to each other in the same classes, all our lives.”
“So?”
“So who are you, Mary? And who am I?” Angie’s tone is almost desperate. “Where do you end and I begin?”
My heart fairly breaks with the revelation. “Isthat what this is about?”
“I need to think. I need to find out.”
“But it’s been so long, Angie! The prime of your life! Can’t you find out on the outside?”
“I tried to, but I couldn’t”. She shakes her head sadly. “I couldn’t as long as you were around, and Mom and Pop. And I love you all. I want you all to be happy.” She shudders with the force of a hoarse sob.
I feel an anguish so deep it hurts. Now that I understand what she’s asking, I know the convent is no answer. And I know because I’ve asked the same question. I have to get her out, to convince her. I prepare to make the most important oral argument of my life. For the life of my sister.
“Angie, I didn’t know who I was either, until Ilived. Graduated. Met Mike, lost Mike. I got knocked around and twisted every which way. Things happened to me I’ve never told you about. Bad things, good things, too. Those things helped me find out who I am. They made me who I am. It’s life, Angie. You don’t figure it out before you live it. It takes living it to figure it out.”
She’s crying softly, but she’s listening.
“Angie, you don’t have to hide yourself to find yourself!”
Suddenly the door bursts open. It’s the Mother Superior, whose slash of a mouth sets grimly when she discovers Angie. “Sister Angela. To Lauds.”
Angie springs from my embrace and backs away.
“Angie!” I shout, my arms empty.
But Angie runs from me, and the sound of her footfalls disappears into silence.
25
Idress before dawn in the quiet little cell. The shadows are a purple-gray, but now at least I can see around me. Not that there’s much to see. There’s no stenciling on the wall, and the night table is bare on top. The bed looks like a child’s bunk bed, maybe donated from one of the families, and the white coverlet that felt so scratchy last night has fuzzy tufts of cotton scattered over it. Behind the table is a rectangular window. I slip into my shoes and look outside.
I think it’s the back yard of the convent, but I can’t orient myself. I know I’ve never seen it before. Huge oak trees climb to my window and even higher; some of them look a century old. Their thick branches block the view of what’s beneath them, but if I tilt my head I can see down below: a grouping of white crosses, set in rows. There are about fifty of them, white as bleached bones. It takes me a minute to realize what I’m seeing.
A cemetery.
I never thought about that. I never knew. Of course, it makes sense. The nuns who live here are buried here, in rows of crosses, like at Verdun, or Arlington.
Will Angie be buried here? I can’t quite believe it. Even in death, would she stay here? I draw away from the window.
There’s a soft knock at the door. “Mary, are you awake?” whispers a voice. Angie’s.
I cross to the door and open it.
Angie’s face looks pale, almost pasty against the raven-colored habit. There are dark circles under her eyes; I know they match mine. “You didn’t sleep either, huh?” I ask.
She puts a finger to her lips. “Mother says we may take a short walk together before you go,” she whispers. “Follow me.”
So I do. She leads me down hallway after hallway, like the Mother Superior did last night. I have to admit that the convent looks better in the daylight. The hardwood floors that seemed dark last night are in fact a golden honey tone, a high-quality pine, and they reflect the morning light. The walls are pure white, without a scuff mark on them. The sayings seem less bizarre too, once you get over the shock of phrases likeMORTIFICATION OF THE FLESH in ten-inch letters. But I keep thinking of the cemetery in the back. Tucked away, like a secret.
We head down a flight of spiral stairs that appears to be at a corner of the convent. I don’t remember going up them last night. They’re narrow and there’s no rail, so I run my hand along the wall as we wind down them like a nautilus shell. Angie holds a tiny door for me at the bottom. I have to stoop to pass through it.
And then we’re in paradise. The door opens onto a lush garden, with a skinny brick path outlining it in the shape of a heart. The path’s border is marked by low-lying plants with rich olive-colored leaves, thriving even in the shade of the pin oaks. A row of flowers grows behind the row of plants, dotting the perimeter with blossoms of pink, yellow, and white. Behind them are rosebushes, one after another, just beginning to bud. The effect is something like an old-fashioned floral valentine.
“Wow!” I say.
Angie pushes the door closed in a businesslike way and moves aside a stack of clay pots. “Thank you.”
“You did this?”
She blushes. “I shouldn’t take all the credit.” She steps into the garden and stands at the point of the heart. “I designed it.”
I follow her. “When? How? What do we know about gardens? We’re city kids.”
She smiles, and her face relaxes. “Which question do you want me to answer first?”
“Pick one.”
“Well, I designed it about five years ago. Mother felt we needed a garden, a place for quiet contemplation. The shape, obviously, is the Sacred Heart.”
“Obviously.”
Angie glances back at me. “You haven’t forgotten everything, have you?”
“I’ve tried, Lord knows I’ve tried.”
She suppresses a smile. “Let’s take a walk. There’s a bench at the top where we can sit down.” She leads me up the path, slipping both hands into the sleeves of her habit, like the nuns did at school.
“So tell me how you did this. It’s wonderful.”
“It wasn’t hard. We have a library here. I read about the types of flowers. Perennials. Annuals. What grows in shade, what doesn’t.” Angie looks up at the sky. “I think we’ll get some sun today. Good.”
“You can get out the sun reflector like you used to.”
She stops on the path and shakes her head. “I can’t believe we actually did that. A sun reflector, of all things. With only baby oil for protection. What were we thinking?”
“We were thinking we wanted to look good. What all teenage girls think. Burn off those zits.”
“Stop.” She bumps me with her shoulder. “Look here. These are my favorites.” She nods in the direction of a group of white flowers. The stems stand about two feet high and are covered with what appears to be soft white bells. They nod gracefully in the slight breeze.
“They’re beautiful. What are they?”
She bends over and cups a dimpled bell in her fingertips. “Campanula. Bellflower. Aren’t they lovely? They need some sun, but they don’t like too much. Most of the varieties bloom in the summer. I have those on the north side of the heart. But this little baby, this is an early version. Aren’t you, sweetie?” she coos comically into the upturned face of the flower.
“The vow of silence doesn’t extend to flowers, huh?”
“Why do you think they grow so well?” Angie says, and we both laugh.
“That’s the first time you ever made a joke about this place, you know.”
She straightens up. “Don’t start, Mary.”
