I finish buckling, start the car, and glance over at the prioress. She’s staring serenely back at me, knobbled hands folded in her lap, the stark framing of her wimple around her head making her eyes behind their glasses look even bigger, inescapable.
“Yes,” I say. I don’t know what else to say after that, though, so I turn back to the road and shift into gear and we pull away.
“And?”
Well, that was definitely not what I was expecting. Does she want some kind of report? Or am I due for a lecture and she wants to start with me accounting for my actions like a schoolboy?
“And what, ma’am?”
She makes a noise—it’s the noise old people make when they think young people are being deliberately obtuse. “How is she? How is she feeling? Where does her heart wander? I might be her mentor but you are her lover—surely you know these things.”
My hand opens and closes on the gearshift as I search for words. Trying to describe Zenny in some kind of bizarre moral report—and within such a short time as the drive allows—is an impossibility. Zenny defies simple observations, simple explanations. It’s part of why I love her so much.
“Try,” the old nun says, seeing my struggle.
I don’t like talking about Zenny like this—when she’s not here—so I decide to talk about her only in the most abstract and broad strokes, so as not to accidentally betray any confidence.
“She’s magnificent and fierce and smart,” I say. I think of the roller-skating rink, of our nights together at the shelter, and then say, “She cares more than I can tell you about the people in the shelter and becoming a midwife for the needy; she speaks about God with reverence and balance. She told me she wanted to take this month to make certain of her path and her upcoming vows, and all I see from her is ironclad certainty.” I give a smile that I mean to be lighthearted but it twists bitterly on my mouth instead. “She’s more committed than ever.”
“Ah. You love her.”
What’s the point of denying it? “Yes,” I say, helplessly. “Yes, I love her.”
“And you don’t understand why she chooses this path.”
I shrug with one shoulder as I shift gears. “I understand it better than I did two weeks ago, but…you’re right. I still don’t understand. Not all the way.”
The nun is silent for a moment, and I get the impression she’s more comfortable in silence than she is in words, and it’s not as awkward as I would have thought it might be, sharing a car with someone who prefers quiet.
It’s actually quite soothing, the silence not heavy or demanding or smothering. It’s restful, and everything takes a kind of bluing, quieting hue like this. Zenny and my unrequited love for her, my mother in a hospital bed right now, getting scans and tubes and medicines.
Images of empty sanctuaries flit through my mind, the kind of reverent hush that comes with a sacred space. The calming way candles flicker and dance along the edges of the room.
“Zenny told me about your sister. It was a terrible thing that was done to her. A terrible, evil thing.”
And suddenly, like a key turning in a lock, I trust this woman. I trust her because she didn’t give me some blandishment about God’s will or how Lizzy is “in a better place” (although even the last phrase was only sparingly handed out following Lizzy’s suicide, given the uneasy Catholic attitude toward self-destruction and its implications for the immortal soul). The Reverend Mother didn’t offer up an empty apology or murmur something about praying for our family or Lizzy’s soul.
She simply said the truth. And having the truth acknowledged feels like an embrace and comfort all on its own. I thought of the night last week when I prayed; when I decided to believe in God just long enough to accuse and censure Him, when I realized I wanted Him to sit and listen to me roar and scream until my voice was hoarse. Because having God listen to the truth, to really hear it, to really see it, was the only thing that could heal the sister-shaped gouge in my soul.
I’d tried disbelief, I’d tried scorn, I’d tried every kind of nonbeliever’s stance and sinner’s trick, and I tried them for a decade and a half, and still there was this ragged, infected wound somewhere inside me. The only thing left to try was going back to God and informing Him of the mess He’d made.
“It was terrible,” I echo. My voice is barely there when I say it.
“And so you wonder how anyone can believe in God after that? After what She let happen?”
That catches my notice. “She?” I taunt, gently. “That’s not very devout.”
The prioress smiles. “Biblical metaphors for God include a laboring woman, a breastfeeding mother, even a mother hen. And man and woman were both created in God’s image, were they not? Why use Him and not Her? In fact, why even say God instead of Goddess? Both Him and Her are not enough to contain the fullness of God, who is outside the construct of gender, who is so much more than the human mind can conceive.”
I smile too, because if this is a sample of the Reverend Mother’s mentoring style, I can see why Zenny is at home in her order.
“I don’t know what to think about God,” I say, going back to our earlier thread. “I used to know exactly what I thought, I used to know exactly how I felt. But I’m more confused than ever. It feels like going backwards, going from being sure to not sure at all. Going from all the answers to none.”
The nun nods, as if I’ve said something wise and not just confessed to my own muddle-headed stupidity.
“Isn’t that bad?” I follow up. “Not to know anything? And then I look at Zenny and how she is so comfortable with what she doesn’t know, and that scares me too. I’m worried getting comfortable with not knowing means surrendering something crucial.”
“Sean, faith and belief are the practices of committing a life in the face of no answers. God is and always will be outside of human comprehension. And loving Her is an act, it’s not stubbornly repeating creeds and trying to force Her into modern expectations or rational paradigms. She’ll never fit in the same boxes we apply to science and reason; She’s not meant to. And to try to force it only breeds spiritual violence in the end.”
“Okay,” I concede, although the things she just said are all things I’ll have to think about later. “That’s God. But what about the Church then? Can’t Zenny—or you or any of the sisters—do these same good works without pledging away your free will?”
“Our free will?”
“Obedience is one of the vows, isn’t it? Obedience to the Church? Obedience to the men who run it?”
The old woman snorts, and I look over in surprise. “I’ll be obedient to those bishops the day I die and not a day sooner.” At my expression, she huffs again. “I’m obedient to God and to my conscience and to the poor. I’m obedient to my fellow sisters.”
And then under her breath, she mutters, “Obedient to men. Hmph.”
“But they’re the entire administrative structure of the Church.”
“For now. But the Church belongs to us as much as it belongs to them.” And then she nods her head at her own words.
I want to protest this—there’s still so much I can complain about, ways that the Church hasn’t changed since the abuse scandals for example—but then she adds, “We make a place for people to meet God and for God to meet Her people. A place that is safe and free of corruption.”