It plunges me into pitch blackness. I can’t see the bed in the dark. I wait for my eyes to adjust, but they don’t. I stumble in the darkness, then find the bed’s thin coverlet with my hands. I crawl onto the mattress, feeling safe and exhausted, and drift into sleep.
The next thing I know, my shoulder’s being touched. I look up, blinking in the gloom. There’s a shadow standing over me. Suddenly, a hand covers my mouth.
“It’s me, you idiot.” Angie removes her hand.
“Jesus, you scared me!”
“Shhh! Whisper. I’m supposed to be asleep.” Angie flicks on a flashlight and sets it down like a lamp on the night table. She’s still dressed in her habit, and her silver crucifix catches the light.
“Do you sleep in that getup?” I whisper hoarsely.
“I had Hours.”
“What’s that?”
“Nighttime prayers. I had from three to four o’clock.”
“You mean you wake up in the middle of the night to pray?”
“We pray all night, in shifts.”
“Are you serious?” Something in me snaps at the thought of these poor women-my twin included-praying all night long for a world that doesn’t even know they exist. “What’s the point of that? It makes no sense.”
“Shhh!”
“It’s crazy! It’s just plain crazy, don’t you see that?”
“Mary, whisper!”
“Why should I? You’re an adult and I’m an adult and it’s a free country. Why can’t I talk to my own twin?”
“Mary, please. If you don’t whisper, I’ll leave.” She looks grave, and her mouth puckers slightly. I know that pucker. My mother’s, when she means business.
“All right, I’ll whisper. Just tell me what kind of place this is. They don’t let you talk. They don’t let you out. They barely let you see your family. And these sayings on the walls, it’s like a cult! They cut you off from the world and they brainwash you.”
“Mary, please. Do we have to fight?”
“It’s not a fight, it’s a discussion. Can’t we just discuss it? I’m whispering!”
She sighs. “It’s not a cult, Mary. It’s a different way of life. A contemplative way of life. A religious life. It’s just as valid as the way you live.”
“But it’s a lie. A fiction. They pretend they’re your family, but they’re not. She’s not your mother and they’re not your sisters.”
“You sound jealous.”
“I am, I admit it! Mea culpa, sister. Mea culpa-Sister.”
Angie looks hurt.
“I’m sorry, but this makes me nuts! I’m your sister, your twin. I know you, Angie, like I know myself. And I agree with you. This is a perfectly valid way to live, but not for you.” I search her round brown eyes, identical to mine. We’re mirror images as we face one another in the tight cell.
“I’m here for a reason,” she whispers. “You just can’t accept that.”
“Maybe if I understood it, I could accept it.”
“You won’t try.”
“Give me a chance. I’m smarter than I look. What’s the reason?”
“To serve God. To live a spiritual life.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Angie averts her eyes but doesn’t say anything.
“I believe it from the others, but not from you.”
Still she says nothing.
“Why don’t you talk? You hate silence. You love to talk.”
She lifts her head abruptly. “No, Mary,you love to talk.”
“So do you!”
“No.” She points at me. “I am not you. We look the same. We sound the same. ButI am not you.” Her lips tremble.
“I know that, Angie.”
“You do? Are you sure?”
“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.