Living Proof by Aisling Quigley

I have been a Catholic nun for forty-two years and an atheist for forty-four. The years pass quickly when every day starts and ends with Barry’s Tea and a square of chocolate. They melt into each other.

I awoke godless one morning in 1964 and never reconvened my nightly conferences with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They had never actually come to me. I had knelt at the bedside, reddening my knees on the hardwood floor, reciting and reciting. My whisperings at night, my “God bless mum, dad, Brendan, John, Marie, etc…” had been heard only by Maeve in the next bed.

****

I entered the convent at seventeen and I was wed to God. Our marriage was never consummated because I could not be penetrated by an invisible, distant, and frankly fictitious entity. My body is as pure now as it was when I was born to Michael and Joan O’Sullivan; my sexual organs untouched and forgotten, gathering dust!

I accepted chastity. I also accepted Morning Prayer. The Sisters of Mercy was a non-contemplative Order; our lives were dedicated to charity and, conveniently, the religious routines seemed almost incidental. The cross and habit were vehicles for education and training. It was the closest thing to a secular nunnery, and there I tied my black nurse shoes and accepted the title of Sister Kate.

Every morning, I walked down the convent staircase in my clodhoppers, nodding acknowledgment to the framed pope’s portrait as I descended. I could feign piety even if I could not achieve it. In the dining room we breakfasted on buttered scones and milky tea. Another girl starting her novitiate, her name was Lucy, would daily pass me a bit of Cadbury’s chocolate under the table while the Mother Superior said Grace.

“Bless us, Our Lord,” the tiny nun would say, her eyes closed and the hairy mole on her chin quivering as she appealed to God. Mother Superior was in ecstasy when she prayed. I would hear a faint snap as Lucy divided her chocolate bar in two on her lap. Then I would suddenly feel it warm in my hand. Warm and in my mouth.

“For these Thy gifts,” continued the grainy voice. We were so discrete! In a place so sanitary and surrounded by souls so virtuous, we did feel a twinge of guilt. But as it slid past my tongue, down my gullet, and lit a quiet fire in the hearth of my stomach, I recognized the chocolate as necessary sustenance.

“Through Jesus Christ, Our Lord. Amen.” As eyes became large over the steaming scones, and mouths drooled over the melting yellow butter, the prayer sped to a quick finish. Even Mother Superior had to temporarily sever the connection with God to satisfy her rumbling stomach.

****

It could have, and really should have, stayed as it was. But then Lucy disappeared. Her seat was empty at breakfast, and my hands were empty except for a teaspoon for stirring sugar into my tea. No chocolate for my mouth. None for my head, or my heart, or my stomach. I later heard from Sophie, the inaugurated gossip queen of the Sisters, that Lucy had been forced to leave St. Catherine’s.

“She was pregnant, Kate. Didn’t you know?”

I didn’t. I didn’t know how she, or anyone, could get pregnant under this roof, with nightly inspections by the robed and ghostly Mother Superior. I couldn’t imagine Lucy having sex in her tiny cot, the Virgin Mary candle glowing in her windowsill, her cross necklace jangling in rhythm with his prods. I couldn’t imagine sex at all, really, so I don’t know if he prodded or poked or tangoed his way into her. I knew he must have, though, because even in this supposedly sanctified place Immaculate Conception was scientifically impossible.

Lucy’s chocolate was one man’s aphrodisiac, but my daily nourishment. In its absence I grew haggard, not because I couldn’t get chocolate from elsewhere, but because a comforting ritual had vanished. An indispensable indulgence was gone. A friend had left. So I, too, absconded.

That’s an overly dramatic term. I departed legally and righteously in the oil-painted eyes of that youthful Jesus hanging above the Convent’s fireplace. Sister Jane, a mousy forty something, was my real-life savior. She helped me to leave with dignity.

“I’m going to America, Kate,” she said to me, her eyes sparkling and nose twitching excitedly. We were knitting and reading in the living room. Its abundance of radiators kept the place warmer than any other part of the Convent.

“Sister Jane!” I said. “That’s wonderful!”

“Will you come with me, Kate?”

“Will I what?”

“Come with me, dear. I’ve two tickets and contacts at a rehabilitation center requiring some holy hands.”

“Jesus, Sister Jane! Why shouldn’t I? I will, then! Yes, Sister Jane. Yes!” She must’ve noticed my poor appetite, my somewhat jaundiced complexion, and my uncharacteristic passivity in morning lessons since Lucy’s departure.

She patted my hand now. “Good to get out for a bit, right?”

I looked out the rain-streaked window panes at the dark night lit dimly by sickly yellow streetlamps. I noticed the squat proportions of the room, the cold pinkness of my hands. There wasn’t a God, but here was Sister Jane, the definition of generosity itself. This was why I’d taken vows, wasn’t it? To be good without being a believer. To be moral, not because of religious stricture, but because it was right. To get out of Ballygobackwards bogland Ireland.

****

In 1969 I left Ireland for Reno, Nevada. Sister Jane packed some cheese sandwiches and jam-filled scones for the airplane. I slept most of the flight, having taken paracetamol with warmed milk. I awoke once to find Sister Jane making the sign of the cross over and over, rocking back and forth and spouting prayers. The turbulence had shaken her.

The convent in Reno was informally plotted. Nuns were assigned their own suite with bed and bathroom, their own set of keys, and their own privacy. I hung contemporary art posters and decorated the bedroom ceiling with a canopy of fairy lights. A room of my own.

In rural Cork I had mostly treated alcoholics: high-income businessmen wearing polished shoes and trouser suits, penniless gypsies from the traveling community who’d cowered and been taunted, “Nacker! You’se a bladdy Nacker!” and fallen face first into another pint of stout. I’d treated teenaged mothers, like Lucy, who came in red-eyed and often bruised, praying for their stomachs to miraculously shrink and their problems to dissolve into my proffered tea. I could only give them milk and brown sugar and soothe them a bit.

I now counseled compulsive gamblers, prostitutes, and depressed, middle-aged recluses who’d adopted pallor beneath the neon casino lights. Nymphomaniacs came in, red-faced and embarrassed, jittery and animated as they described their nightmares. I loved it. I loved their coffee-stained teeth, their lank hair and speckled eyeglasses, their deep inhaling of a cigarette. It was beautiful.

I never spoke about God, never made any allusions to the bible. That was the case, at least, until Annette, a young prostitute from Northern Nevada. She wore baggy pants and sweaters to our sessions.

“These are my plainclothes,” she used to joke. “I keep the leather and fishnets at the office.”

“So you’re a nun, right?” she asked me, flicking open a cigarette lighter and sucking on her Marlboro.

“I am, yes.”

“So can you help me?”

“What do you mean, Annette?” It was rare for the request to be so explicit.

“I think that I had an, um,” she looked at the ceiling. “I dunno.” Her eyes were on me now. “I mean, I think that I had a religious experience.”

“So…what happened?” I asked.

“I went to church last Sunday. You know, one of those little community churches for farmers up in Lander County. Tanned folks with ripped jeans. Anyway, they had candles up near the altar, and I put a quarter in the box and lit one- you know, just took the match and tapped the wick of a little tea light. And I knelt and prayed that…well, I prayed that my mom would talk to me again. You know, it’s been months and months?” She smiled suddenly. “She called me yesterday.”

“Wow! That’s really lovely, Annette!”
”So,” she persisted, “do you think it was really God?”

****

I lied. I kept things suitably ambiguous. I said that maybe it was, even though I didn’t believe it was God at all.

“Sister Jane.”

”Yes, Kate? It’s brilliant to hear from you. I haven’t spoken to you for ages. How’s Reno keeping? Ooo, there’s a bit of crackling on my end. Bad reception. I’m sorry dear.”

“Sister Jane. I can’t be a nun anymore.”

There was silence on Jane’s end. An occasional buzz.

“Sister Jane?”

“Yes, I’m still here. Why ever would you do that, child? Aren’t you happy?”

“I am, Sister, but you see there’s a bigger problem than that.”

“You’ve fallen in love? You’ve become pregnant?”

“No. You know I was never like that. I’m hardly going to get into bed with a man!”

“What is it then?”

Silence on my end this time. “I don’t believe in God. I never have. Well, not since I was fifteen at least.”

“Oh, that’s alright.”

“What?”

“I think that as long as you’re doing well and as long as you’re doing good things for others then I don’t see a problem.”

“But I have a false identity. I’m posing as a servant of God. Surely that’s not good.”

“It isn’t dear, but you’re the only one to suffer from that. Everyone else is benefiting from your little lie, really. It’s too late, though, isn’t it?”

****

I sent my mum and dad a postcard addressed to Knockavilla, in Cork.

I hope all is well at home. Reno is lovely. It’s bigger than anything. Nobody sleeps here, and it’s never dark, even at night. I miss you, and hope the daffodils have started to flower. I love you, Kate.

And here I remain, talking to the world’s outcasts.