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Authors: Lavyrle Spencer
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Though conversation was allowed, little of it flowed, for Sister Dora had been assigned her reading by Reverend Mother, and it filled the hour of recreation time fully.
At 7:30 everyone left the community room and went upstairs to their own rooms, where they spent an hour and a half preparing the next day’s lessons. Sister Regina used part of that time to read Matins and Lauds, which she’d neglected earlier in the day.
At nine o’clock a soft bell rang, and they gathered once again in chapel to chant the Divine Office and end with evening prayers, tonight the litany that Mother Agnes had designated. Then Sister Samuel played the organ while they all sang Stabat Mater.
After evening chapel the nuns retired to their rooms, locked in Nocturnal Silence, which would last until 6:30 A.M., when everyone gathered in the chapel to meditate and chant the Divine Office from their Breviaries once again.
Sister Regina’s cell was a duplicate of everyone else’s, a narrow room with a single cot, desk, chair, lamp, window and crucifix. No bathroom, no clock and only a tiny closet in which hung two extra sets of clothing and a mirror no larger than a saucer, by which she could pin her veil in place or pick an eyelash out of her eye, should one fall in. The mirror was used for little else, for vanity had been forsaken along with all other worldliness when she took her vows.
She untied her guimpe in back and removed it along with the wimple—headband and veil intact—hanging them on a metal coat hanger bent especially to accommodate them. Next came the sleevelets and the loose scapular, followed by the cincture—the belt—with its three knots signifying the three vows she’d taken. From the pocket of her habit she took a black rosary and laid it on her desk before hanging up the long black dress. Sitting on her bed, she removed her shoes, black stockings and white garter belt, then donned a white nightgown from her closet, and sat down quietly to wait for the click of the bathroom door, signifying that Sister Cecelia was done.
Full baths were taken once a week, on Saturdays, for anything more would be considered wasting water, and wasting anything defied their vow of poverty. Practicing poverty had never bothered Sister Regina in the least. She sponged quickly, reaching underneath her commodious nightgown without glimpsing more than her feet. The last time she had seen her body she was sixteen, taking her own private vow of chastity long before she pronounced her final vows, for even then she had known that Grandma Potlocki was right, and she would enter the postulate as soon as she graduated from high school.
Communal living had never bothered Sister Regina except during bathroom time, for as a child she had been a dreamer, and it was during those long stretches in the outhouse on the farm that she had done her best dreaming. There, with the door propped open facing the woods, she had whiled away hours until her mother had called from the house, “Regina! Time to do dishes! You get in here now and quit hiding in that toilet!”
Eight women on a strict schedule in a house with one bathroom left little time for any of them to lolly gag behind a locked door.
Sister Regina switched off the light, slipped from the room and met Sister Dora going in. The urge to whisper pushed Sister Regina’s tongue against her teeth. She wanted to talk about Krystyna’s death, and the children’s loss, and Mr. Olczak’s ringing the death bell himself, and of her own sorrow and misgivings, which were growing and growing as the night wore on. But Nocturnal Silence had already begun, so she passed her friend in the hall without uttering a syllable and entered her cell with a silent closing of the door.
At ten P.M. when the last bell sounded for lights out, she lay in the dark with her arms locked over the covers, stretching the blanket binding so tightly against her breasts she hoped it would relieve the ache within. But it
At 7:30 everyone left the community room and went upstairs to their own rooms, where they spent an hour and a half preparing the next day’s lessons. Sister Regina used part of that time to read Matins and Lauds, which she’d neglected earlier in the day.
At nine o’clock a soft bell rang, and they gathered once again in chapel to chant the Divine Office and end with evening prayers, tonight the litany that Mother Agnes had designated. Then Sister Samuel played the organ while they all sang Stabat Mater.
After evening chapel the nuns retired to their rooms, locked in Nocturnal Silence, which would last until 6:30 A.M., when everyone gathered in the chapel to meditate and chant the Divine Office from their Breviaries once again.
Sister Regina’s cell was a duplicate of everyone else’s, a narrow room with a single cot, desk, chair, lamp, window and crucifix. No bathroom, no clock and only a tiny closet in which hung two extra sets of clothing and a mirror no larger than a saucer, by which she could pin her veil in place or pick an eyelash out of her eye, should one fall in. The mirror was used for little else, for vanity had been forsaken along with all other worldliness when she took her vows.
She untied her guimpe in back and removed it along with the wimple—headband and veil intact—hanging them on a metal coat hanger bent especially to accommodate them. Next came the sleevelets and the loose scapular, followed by the cincture—the belt—with its three knots signifying the three vows she’d taken. From the pocket of her habit she took a black rosary and laid it on her desk before hanging up the long black dress. Sitting on her bed, she removed her shoes, black stockings and white garter belt, then donned a white nightgown from her closet, and sat down quietly to wait for the click of the bathroom door, signifying that Sister Cecelia was done.
Full baths were taken once a week, on Saturdays, for anything more would be considered wasting water, and wasting anything defied their vow of poverty. Practicing poverty had never bothered Sister Regina in the least. She sponged quickly, reaching underneath her commodious nightgown without glimpsing more than her feet. The last time she had seen her body she was sixteen, taking her own private vow of chastity long before she pronounced her final vows, for even then she had known that Grandma Potlocki was right, and she would enter the postulate as soon as she graduated from high school.
Communal living had never bothered Sister Regina except during bathroom time, for as a child she had been a dreamer, and it was during those long stretches in the outhouse on the farm that she had done her best dreaming. There, with the door propped open facing the woods, she had whiled away hours until her mother had called from the house, “Regina! Time to do dishes! You get in here now and quit hiding in that toilet!”
Eight women on a strict schedule in a house with one bathroom left little time for any of them to lolly gag behind a locked door.
Sister Regina switched off the light, slipped from the room and met Sister Dora going in. The urge to whisper pushed Sister Regina’s tongue against her teeth. She wanted to talk about Krystyna’s death, and the children’s loss, and Mr. Olczak’s ringing the death bell himself, and of her own sorrow and misgivings, which were growing and growing as the night wore on. But Nocturnal Silence had already begun, so she passed her friend in the hall without uttering a syllable and entered her cell with a silent closing of the door.
At ten P.M. when the last bell sounded for lights out, she lay in the dark with her arms locked over the covers, stretching the blanket binding so tightly against her breasts she hoped it would relieve the ache within. But it
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