Standing on the other side of the ironing board, Sally said softly, “It’s true.”
The two worked together in silence, moving the tablecloth across the board, folding it carefully, Sister pressing the hot iron along each of the folded seams. Finally, when the ironing was finished, Sister said, “There’s a name for you.” She was arranging the still-warm cloth over Sally’s forearm, to be carried to the dining room upstairs and laid out in the bottom drawer of the server. “Mary Immaculate,” she said, still a little breathless from her work. “There’s a lovely name for a woman. A great name for a nun.”
Orders
THERE WERE the Little Sisters of the Sick Poor, the Little Sisters of the Assumption, the Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor of the Congregation of the Infant Jesus, the Sisters of the Poor of St. Francis, the Dominican Sisters of the Sick Poor of the Immaculate Conception, the Poor Clares, the Little Company of Mary. There were the Sisters of Divine Compassion, of Divine Providence, of the Sacred Heart. There were the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor of the Congregation of Mary Before the Cross, Stabat Mater, their own order.
But there were also the Daughters of Wisdom. The Daughters of Charity. The Sisters of Charity. The Benedictine Sisters, the Sisters of St. Joseph, the Sisters of Reparation of the Congregation of Mary. There were the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart. The Visitation Nuns. The Presentation Nuns. The Handmaids of the Holy Child. The Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit.
Sister Eugenia admired the Sisters of Mercy. Their foundress—“like our own,” she told Annie, as if courting her native pride—was an Irish woman, a daughter of wealth, called by God to serve the sick poor, first in Dublin, then all over Ireland, England, America. “A wonderful order,” Sister Eugenia said. She named the hospitals they ran, the schools, the very sanatorium upstate where Sister Illuminata had been cured.
Sister Joseph Mary, who kept the convent’s small library, mentioned St. Rose’s Free Home for Incurable Cancer, right across the river and run by the Dominican Sisters of St. Rose of Lima. Their founder was the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sister Joseph Mary said proudly. Not a Catholic himself, she explained to Annie, but a great writer nonetheless.
And wasn’t there wonderful work being done for the lepers in Hawaii by the Sisters of St. Francis out of Syracuse? Sister Dymphna kept a scrapbook of inspirational things. Annie was shown a folded newspaper clipping that mentioned Mother Marianne Cope. Most of the article was about Father Damien, the priest to the lepers who had first invited the Sisters to Molokai, but Sister Dymphna had underlined in black ink every good word about the nun. There was a photo of a young girl with leprosy—she had a ruined face, a monstrous face, but she wore a cunning skirt and jacket, as good as you’d see on Fifth Avenue. All Mother Marianne’s doing, the article said. The nun, the article said, had a flair for fashion.
Wouldn’t Annie be proud to see her own child bringing beauty to these suffering souls?
A consensus arose among the Sisters in the convent—perhaps because they had seen the girl helping Sister Illuminata up and down the basement stairs—that Sally would do well with the old folks. The French Little Sisters of the Poor—the order Sister Jeanne herself had once intended to join—did marvelous work in this regard. And the Sisters of Charity had a home for aged domestic workers, immigrants mostly, men and women who had outlived their usefulness and their employers’ largesse—faithful servants of the city’s faithless titans. Wouldn’t Sally be great with them?
Or indigent widows. The Carmelites were mentioned. They had a place on Staten Island.
And then there were the missionary orders to consider: the Foreign Mission Sisters of St. Dominic, the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, of Our Lady of Victory, of the Most Precious Blood. There were the Charity nuns as well, who seemed to be everywhere, doing everything. There were the teaching orders. There were the contemplatives and cloistered, although none of the nuns in the convent believed that such a life would suit Sally—who, they had observed, still fidgeted in the chapel, played with her hair at Sunday mass. Who, even now, despite her call, had to be hushed by her mother when her giddy laughter rose up the basement stairs.
One of the walking orders, then, like their own. An order that would get her out among the poor, out in the air. She might help to care for orphans, childlike as she was. The Sisters of Charity ran the Foundling Home in Manhattan. (“Aren’t they a busy bunch?” Annie asked Mrs. Tierney.) Given her youth and her innocence, her spark of mischief, Sally might, as a Sister, inspire and uplift certain fallen women. The Good Shepherd Sisters had a place for them.
“Give her to the prostitutes,” Annie told Mrs. Tierney. “Send her to China or Africa. Or to Hawaii with the lepers. That’s what they’re proposing. Let her work in an orphanage, they’re saying, after everything I’ve done to keep her out of one.”
When Sally’s high school days were drawing to a close, Sister Lucy ran her yellow eyes over the girl and then told Annie, “Let her follow me for the week. Let her get a glimpse of the work.”
On that early morning in June, mother and daughter entered the convent through the front door rather than the back. They waited for a moment, feeling like visitors in the hushed hallway, until Sister Lucy swung toward them, sweeping down the corridor from the kitchen. She wore her cloak and carried her black satchel. She produced a white postulant’s veil. “Wear this,” Sister Lucy said. “You don’t want to look like a tourist.” And smiled thinly at her own joke. “Come with me,” she said.
Annie helped her daughter fasten the veil and then kissed the smooth top of it as she sent her off. Sally took small, hurried steps, following behind Sister Lucy, as if a long skirt bound her ankles—not her own gait at all. Her mother wondered which of the nuns she was imitating now. She turned. Sister Illuminata was there in the hallway, standing before the basement door, leaning on her cane.
“Baptism by fire,” Sister Illuminata said.
Sister Lucy