“No.” Sister Teresa nodded. “She’s quite correct. Menial labor—is that what you mean?”
“Um, yes,” I said in a quiet voice.
“There’s a reason for this.” Sister Teresa rummaged in her apron and lit a cigarette, offering us the pack. “Do you know the meaning of ‘kenosis’?”
Next to me, I felt Isabella shaking her head, so I joined in.
“It means something like death of the self.”
Isabella caught my eye. We exchanged a grimace, and my mind settled on the scythe in the spa graveyard. “I thought that was a sin,” I whispered, finally.
Sister Teresa laughed. “No. In this sense, it is beautiful. It means to empty yourself of yourself. To practice death of the self, so God can fill in all the empty space.”
I remembered Katherine’s comment about St. Teresa—how when she died she was nothing but a shell, filled up with God. But if St. Teresa was tried by fire, then what was Sister Teresa’s trial—gardening? I pointed at the bumps in the earth. “I don’t understand, though. What does that have to do with lettuce?”
“Repetitive work is a way of teaching discipline,” she said. “Weeding. Sweeping.”
I thought now of the strange calm that comes with erasing a whole page of notes, the pencil marks obliterated into scraps of hot putty.
“Our humble acts are a form of mortification,” Sister Teresa continued. “They help us to die.”
I shivered. All around us were moldering leaves and white pebbles glinting through the dirt. I looked more closely at Sister Teresa. Was she really slowly trying to die? The smoke was putrid in my mouth. I wanted to be away from the garden and Sister Teresa’s uncanny calm. “No offense,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, “but that sounds sort of creepy.” I laughed and looked at Isabella, but she was pale.
“I know it sounds unappealing,” Sister Teresa said, “but it is meant to aid concentration.” Her tone was obliging; I recognized it as a storytelling voice. She must have had the same conversation many times with many other nosy academy girls.
Isabella turned and stubbed her cigarette out on the gate, and without looking at her, Sister Teresa held her palm out. Isabella placed the crumpled butt on Sister Teresa’s outstretched palm; then Sister Teresa shook open her packet and slid the two burned ends back into the packet. It was such a natural, synchronized gesture that a circle of complicity was cast between them and shut me on the other side. My chest squeezed. I ground my cigarette butt under my heel, not wanting to test if Sister Teresa would also hold her hand out for mine.
“Mortification is a form of devotion,” Sister Teresa was saying. “And silence, also. It brings its own blessings.”
“The quickenings? Yeah, I read about—,” I said.
Isabella frowned at me. I stopped talking.
“Exactly,” Sister Teresa said, with no trace of a smile. “Silence allows us to hear the voice of God. It’s hard,” she said. “But it’s supposed to be hard.”
While she spoke, I imagined yellow sand draining through the throat of an hourglass and gathering in the empty bulb below. I was struck by how strange it was. That her concept of fullness was my idea of lack. I looked around the shabby allotment of straggly herbs. This was what she did all day. Sweeping and weeding and snipping apple leaves and pulling worms from the earth.
“Well, I’m glad,” Isabella said, swallowing. “I mean, it’s a good thing we’re here now. Since your time is short. Your speaking time, I mean.”
Sister Teresa smiled at her. “I’m glad too.”
It occurred to me with a tilting lurch that Isabella and Sister Teresa had become friends. And why not? She was beautiful, otherworldly, with her white cloak and meditative calm. I was a sort of gargoyle next to her. My stomach gave a despairing twinge.
“I should probably head in,” I said to Isabella, putting my hands in my pockets. “You coming? I could use some help with my grammar.”
Isabella stuck her tongue out. “Grammar? No, thanks. I’ll take my chances with the lettuce.”
* * *
That evening it began to hail. Hard, sharp little teeth of ice that skittered against the window frames. I was in the common room when it began, copying the notes Patricia had made of Patrizi’s lectures. Barbie had raised the window, and the clattering sound of hail filled the room. Chips of ice were bouncing off the floorboards, and Joan caught a little rubble of hail in her palm. “It stings,” she said.
“Taste it,” Bunny said. “I dare you.”
Joan balked. “You taste it.”
And before I knew what I was doing, I’d scooped the shards of ice from Joan’s hand into my mouth, where they dissolved. “Delicious,” I said. “Just like ice cream.” Truthfully, it tasted like rainwater, slightly metallic.
“Bridge, no!” shrieked Bunny, as if it were the most hilarious thing she’d ever seen.
“Oh, I miss ice cream,” Barbie said mournfully.
I yawned and stretched and went to stand up. “You’re not going to bed, are you?” Joan said, wiping her hands on her jeans.
“Maybe not quite yet,” I said, collecting my papers.
“I need to ask you something,” Joan said. She looked pointedly at the corridor. “But not here.”
“OK.” I walked down to my room, Joan following at my heels.
Joan took a seat on the second bed, pulling out a book lying on the blanket. “Your—” She began to hand it to me, then frowned at the cover.
“Oh.” I reached for it. It was a German recipe booklet I’d found jammed into the magazine stand in the common room. It was old and grimy, and I didn’t understand the words, but I found it soothing to look at the photos of neat little pies tucked into their trays, glossy and plump. “It’s just some magazine,” I said, casually sliding it onto my nightstand. Isabella teased me for looking at pictures of German pies in the middle of the night, and I wasn’t keen for the others to begin, too.
But Joan had a glazed, distant expression. “Bridge, your family is Catholic, right?”
I started. “Of course. Everyone is, aren’t they, other than Nancy, but—”
“Yes, but I mean Catholic Catholic.”
I slipped my hands under my legs. “Yes,” I said, a little stiffly.
Joan’s shoulders relaxed. “It’s just—the other girls can be so—” She twirled her fingers. “And Ruth is so—” She grimaced.