Then Came Heaven

  But the church saw every one of the youngsters as a potential priest or nun, and it would not do to be candid about a nun who was leaving the order. It might breed the dread question, why?

  So she must depart without goodbyes. Not to the children, or to her friends, particularly Sister Dora, most certainly not to Mr. Olczak. Her eyes lingered on the box of building blocks he’d cut for her, but there was no time for dawdling.

  Mother Superior was waiting.

  “I’ll show you where we were working in our reading and arithmetic books, and I’ve put a marker in the novel I’ve been reading them every Friday afternoon.”

  All the while she marked the pages and gave Mother Agnes verbal instructions to pass along, her heart grew heavier and heavier. She’d always assumed she’d stay until the end of the school year, and would have a picnic on the school grounds with the children on the last day, and watch them board the school bus, waving goodbye, ending the school year like any other.

  But everything was orchestrated to keep this departure quick and clandestine. No time for reveries or goodbyes. No opportunity to speak of dissatisfactions or futures. Pack up the traitor and get her out of the convent without anybody finding out. Pretend she has gone anywhere but where she has: toward freedom.

  The moment came to walk out of her classroom for the last time, and she requested, “Please, Mother, may I be alone for just a few minutes?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  When Mother Superior was gone, Sister Regina opened her center desk drawer and found the Zagnut bar at the very rear. She tucked it into one of her deep pockets, shut the drawer silently and stood a moment, trying to force herself to go. She had not thought it would be this hard, but five years was a long time. Finally she made herself move as far as the doorway, but stopped and turned with tears in her eyes. This room felt very much hers—her writing on the alphabet that circled the top of the blackboard, her grades in the red grade book in the top-left drawer, her writing on the holy cards that were stuck in the pages of the children’s catechism books.

  Goodbye, children, she thought. I will miss you so much.

  In the hall she found Mother Superior waiting, a discreet distance from her classroom door. From across the auditorium in the seventh- and eighth-grade room she heard Mr.

  Olczak whistling while he cleaned, but with Mother Superior waiting to accompany her to the convent, she had no opportunity to say goodbye to him.

  I’ll write to him, she thought, and explain why I left without a word. Goodbye, Mr. Olczak. I’ll miss you, too.

  ________

  In her room at the convent she stripped and remade the bed and packed her personal belongings in her cardboard suitcase. There were pitifully few—underclothes, the black shawl that Grandma Rosella had knit for her, prayer books, rosaries, the crucifix she’d received from her parents when she took her vows, a black-bound copy of Holy Rule, shampoo, toothbrush and toothpowder, a partially used bar of Ivory soap, and class pictures from the last five years.

  The pictures brought on a fresh onslaught of emotions. She dropped onto her ladder-backed chair holding the photograph from last school year on her knees. There was Anne, a little shorter than now, still missing one of her teeth, which had grown in beautifully this year. And herself, standing dead center in the last row between all the smiling farm boys whose hair was slicked back with Bryl-creem for the occasion. She could still remember the smell of them on picture day, perfumy like their dads on Sunday. This year’s class picture included both Anne and Lucy. It had been taken shortly after their mother died, and Regina thought she could see the sadness in Anne’s eyes. Lucy was smiling foolishly big, so her eyes disappeared and her lips pulled flat.

  What would happen to them? Would she see them again? Would their father come and find her? Or would he, too, believe she thought so little of him she hadn’t bothered with goodbyes?

  She placed the pictures atop her personal items and the Zagnut bar beside them, then closed the suitcase just as the bell sounded for afternoon prayer time. Right or wrong, she opened her door and stood within its frame until Sister Dora emerged from her room and passed by on her way to chapel. She stopped at the sight of Regina in the open doorway, with the suitcase on the bed behind her.

  “Oh, no,” Sister Dora breathed. “I was afraid of this.”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you, but I’ve received a dispensation and I’m leaving today. They’re trying to whisk me out without anybody finding out about it, but...”

  Sister Dora looked stunned and saddened. She extended a hand and Regina took it, squeezing it hard between both of hers.

  “Where?”

  “To my parents’ house for now.”

  “God bless you.”

  “And you.”

  “I’ll miss you.”

  “No matter what Holy Rule said, I considered you my friend.”

  Sister Dora had tears in her eyes as she squeezed Regina’s hand one last time, then continued along the hall toward chapel.

  Moments later the chanting began. It echoed through the upstairs hall in one sweet, haunting, soprano note, ascending up, up, beyond the rafters and roof, carrying the Latin words to the heavens beyond. How displaced Regina felt, listening to unison voices without adding hers. She felt the urge to hurry, join them: she was late for chapel and would have to confess it at the Chapter of Faults on Friday!

  But she was a nun no more. She would not chant the daily office again, or confess to anyone except a priest in a confessional.

  A knock sounded below. She hadn’t known Mother Agnes was still down there until her voice, chanting too, moved along the main floor hall from the rear of the house to the front. She stopped chanting before she opened the door, then Regina heard her father’s voice. And her mother’s—quiet, almost secretive. And Sister Agnes’s low murmur, greeting them, telling them to have a seat in one of the music rooms.

  Regina slipped inside her room, closed the door and waited.

  Momentarily, Sister Agnes appeared with a packet of white butcher paper tied with store string.

  “Your parents have arrived, and they brought these for you. And here are your dispensation papers, signed by Pope Pius.” She offered a white envelope. “There’s also a small amount of cash. It’s not much, but you brought a dowry when you joined the Sisters of St. Benedict. They feel it’s only right and proper not to turn you out without something to fall back on. Well, Regina, how do you feel?” Not Sister anymore, just plain Regina.

  “Scared.”

  Reverend Mother offered a benign smile. “No need to be. God will watch over you.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “May I say again, Regina, that I’m sorry to see you go. I hope you’ll teach again somewhere. You have too much talent to waste.”

  “Thank you, Mother Agnes.”

  “Now if you’ll kneel for my last blessing...”

  Regina knelt and felt the older nun’s hands on her head for the last time.

  “Good and gentle Savior, watch over Regina as she goes forth into the secular world to carry out Thy holy will in different but important ways. May she continue to practice obedience to Your commandments, and to offer up for Your greater glory whatever work she chooses to do in the future. May she practice charity to all, but especially to those less fortunate than she; and continue to espouse the cardinal virtues so that at the end of her temporal life she may dwell with You in life everlasting. Amen.”

  “Amen,” murmured Regina.

  She rose and faced Mother Superior, whose watery blue eyes looked a little more watery than usual.

  “Remember His words—be not afraid for I am with you all the days of your life. Now, go in peace.”

  ________

  Alone in her cell, when the door closed behind Sister Agnes, Regina could still hear the chanting through the white stucco walls. She opened the butcher paper and found a short-sleeved white cotton blouse with buttons up the front, and a pretty spring skirt of periwin
kle blue printed with tiny pink rosebuds. The skirt, she could tell, was homemade. Tears stung her eyes as she realized how much love it had taken for her mother to cut it out and stitch it for this occasion, for Bertha, she knew, remained heartbroken over her decision to leave the sisterhood.

  Beneath the skirt she found a pair of white anklets, a very demure full-length cotton slip and a clean but used brassiere of unadorned white. Pinned to it was a note in her mother’s hand: I couldn’t guess at your size, so this is one of mine. Hope it’ll do till we can buy you some.

  For the very last time, Sister Regina undressed as required by their Constitution, in the reverse order of which she’d dressed that morning. She kissed each piece and laid it aside with a prayer for each—veil, wimple, guimpe, scapular, the cincture with its three knots signifying her three vows, her sleevelets and dress. And, of course, the binding around her breasts.

  Undressing felt indecent in broad daylight while the chanting of lauds penetrated the walls. She hurried to don the brassiere, finding it too large, and extremely awkward to hook. The blouse was store-bought, size thirty-four, and fit her fine. The skirt was tight around the waist—how could her mother possibly guess?—but she got it buttoned anyway, and felt a first ripple of enjoyment at the feeling of the air on her legs. The white anklets looked silly with her black Cuban-heeled oxfords, but she had no other shoes, and promised herself they’d be the first things she’d buy, along with a brassiere that fit.

  When she was all dressed, she removed from her left ring finger the plain gold band she had donned when she became the bride of Christ. Looking down at it in the palm of her hand she remembered that day, her gown of white, the bridal veil on her head, and the intense sincerity with which she’d vowed her fidelity forever: “In toto corde.” With a heavy heart, she laid the ring upon her neatly folded garments on the chair.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It simply wasn’t the life for me.”

  From her desktop she took the smallest of mirrors and a short black pocket comb and put them to use on her hair. So few times she’d openly studied her hair. It was cider blond, cut haphazardly by her own hand with a paper shears from her schoolroom. As she combed it, it lay in pathetic whorls against her skull, and she had a sudden fear of going out into public this way, unstyled and dumpy.

  So much to learn.

  But she would. She would.

  When she was ready to leave, she paused in the doorway and looked back at her black and white clothing lying neatly folded across the chair and listened to the chanting from down the hall, which was nearing its end. Running her eyes over the barren, narrow room devoid of creature comforts, she felt a sudden craving for color. Wallpaper, curtains, rugs, clothing! Pinks, blues, yellows! She would not miss this austere cell, not a bit.

  Downstairs in the music room her parents were waiting.

  “Hello, Mother, Dad,” she said. “Thank you so much for coming.”

  They sprang from their chairs as if caught in some illicit act.

  “Sist—” Her mother shot a sheepish glance at her feet and began again. “Jean, dear. How did the clothes fit?”

  “Just fine, Mother.”

  “I hope they were okay. I didn’t know what to bring.”

  “They’re just fine. So colorful,” she added with a cheery smile. “Thank you for making the skirt.”

  “I didn’t make it. Elizabeth did. She insisted, and she also sent a shorty coat for you. She wasn’t sure what you’d have for outside wear.”

  “How thoughtful.”

  Her father hadn’t said a word yet. He held the coat while she slipped it on, and for a moment she felt his hands squeeze her shoulders through the warm wool and shoulder pads of Elizabeth’s coat.

  “I’ll bring your suitcase,” were his first words.

  Her mother said, “And I’ll take that coat,” reaching for her heavy black one.

  They went out first, and she followed. Not even Mother Superior was waiting in the hall to say goodbye. She had secreted herself away and was chanting with the others, apparently following orders and letting the traitor slink out on her own. She passed the bench in the entry hall where she’d often greeted piano students, sometimes Anne or Lucy, who waited for their lessons with dimes wadded up in their handkerchiefs. From the glassed-in porch that ran across the entire front of the house she paused and looked back along the center hall where the shiny linoleum caught the light of the setting sun from the open music-room doorways, into the kitchen where something oniony and beefy was cooking for supper, and up the stairway where seven nuns were finishing up afternoon prayers with silent meditation.

  I have no regrets, she thought, and went out into the spring evening.

  ________

  Ah, the wind. The wind in her hair! And on her legs! And in her uncovered ears! It sighed through the deep afternoon while the lowering sun clasped her bare head with warmth. Robins were singing, louder than she ever remembered, so exquisitely audible without a layer of starchy white cloth binding her ears. She caught herself attempting to stick her hands up the sleeves of Elizabeth’s coat, but the opening was too narrow, reminding her she no longer need hide her hands.

  Then she was in the backseat of her father’s car and they were pulling away from the curb, and she wondered if Mr.

  Olczak was on the opposite side of the school building, cleaning her classroom, or if he’d gone home already, and who would tell him she was gone, and if he would presume she’d gone to her parents’ farm.

  Well, at least he knows where it is.

  Her mother said, “Did you have supper, Sist... Jean?”

  “No, not yet.”

  Her father said, “Your mother and I thought we’d stop at long Prairie maybe and eat in a restaurant, sort of... well, celebrate.”

  She noted her mother’s abrupt left-face and the glare she shot at her husband that warned she was not ready—might never be ready—for celebrations. Jean understood her father’s attempt to inject some specialness into this milestone, with its mix of bitter and sweet, for eating in restaurants was as rare as missing Sunday Mass.

  “I’d like that,” Jean said.

  At Hart’s Cafe, they sat on one side of the booth, she on the other. Sometimes she forgot she was allowed to look around at the Coca-Cola sign, and the customers on the counter stools, and the candy bars in the glass case beneath the cash register. A man with a beautiful voice sang “Mona lisa” on the jukebox. The waitress had wavy brunette hair, bloodred lipstick, and called Jean “honey” when she suggested a malt to go with her hamburger. When their food came she folded her hands, bowed her head and said a fairly lengthy grace. When she put the straw to her lips her father asked, “How’s the malt, Jean?” and she beamed and nodded with a mouth full. Then he said, “Oh, is it okay to call you Jean again?” and she smiled and took his rough hand on the tabletop, and took one of her mother’s hands, too, and said, “Of course it is. Everything’s just the way it used to be. I’m your daughter. There’s no need to be uncomfortable with me.”

  But they were, and she knew it would take time to adjust.

  ________

  When Anne Olczak walked into her schoolroom the day after Sister Regina became Jean Potlocki again, she balked at the sight of some stooped old nun with a fuzzy face and spotty hands sitting in Sister Regina’s chair.

  “Who are you?” she blurted out.

  “I’m Sister Clement and I’m going to be your teacher for the rest of the school year.”

  “Where’s Sister Regina?”

  “Sister Regina was needed elsewhere.”

  “Where?”

  “Jesus called her to another place.”

  Shock suffused Anne’s face. “You mean she died, too?”

  “Oh no, no, no. She’s perfectly fine. Jesus just needed her there more than he needed her here, that’s all.”

  “That’s what they told me when my mommy died, but it isn’t true! We still needed my mommy a lot! Why didn’t Sister Regina tell
us she was going?”

  “Perhaps she didn’t know.”

  “Is she coming back?”

  “No, child, she isn’t. What’s your name?”

  Anne’s mouth pursed. She didn’t want to tell this imposter her name, but she had no choice. “Anne Olczak.”

  “Olczak... mmm. The janitor’s girl?”

  “One of ’em.”

  “Yes, of course. I met your father. And I also have your sister in my third-grade group, I believe.”

  “She’s outside waiting for her friend’s bus to get here. We both liked Sister Regina awful much.”

  Sister Agnes came into the room then, and Anne used the interruption to make her escape. She went straight outside to broadcast the news to her arriving classmates as they stepped off the bus, that they had a new teacher who was very old and had a moustache.

  That morning during Mass and classes, Anne studied Sister Clement with a jaundiced eye. The nun was boring, and lazy, and not a very good teacher at all. Mostly she told the kids to open their books and work on their own. At recess time, she didn’t bother going outside with them, but assigned two kids as monitors and said everybody had to be good or they’d be reported. Recess was horrible. The boys aggravated the girls and took their jump ropes away from them and stole the rocks from their hopscotches, which never happened when Sister Regina was there. Back inside, Sister Clement assigned fourth-graders to team up with third-graders and give them arithmetic quizzes. Then she sat at her desk and just before lunchtime started nodding off and looked as if she’d tip off her chair.

  Long before Sister Dora rang the noontime bell, Anne knew what she’d do.

  ________

  It had been a shock to Eddie as well when he walked past Sister Regina’s room that morning and found someone else looking through her desk drawers. He had stepped inside and said, “Good morning.”