And Then There Were Nuns (22 page)

I quickly put the apron back and pulled out another one. I looked at her and waited for approval.

“Don't know who that belongs to, so it's probably safe to use. I think.”

I tied it on. When I turned around Sister Margaret Anne—someone in the kitchen had by then told me her name—was standing in the doorway that connected the refectory with the kitchen. Her hands were on her hips, and she gave me a look that said
What the hell is taking you so long?
I was becoming a rapid decipherer of body language.

I scurried after her into the refectory. Before I could speak, she thrust a broom, two dustpans, and a table brush at me and instructed me to sweep the floors “on that side.”

I set to work with a conscientiousness I had forgotten I possessed. I swept the parquet floors around and under the large oak refectory tables, and then with the table brush I swept the tabletops of breakfast crumbs. Another sister was sweeping the other side of the refectory, so once I finished my side, I helped sweep her side, too. I efficiently gathered all the bits into the dustpan, took it into the kitchen, and proudly dumped it into the bin.

Sister Margaret Anne was at my heels.

“You're not supposed to do that.”

“What?”

“You use
this
dustpan for the table, and
this
one for the floor. Don't mix them up. It's not hygienic. Besides, the crumbs from the table can be used to feed the birds. From now on, put the table crumbs in the blue bin on the ledge over by the breadbox, and the dust and dirt collected from the floor into the garbage. Food scraps go into this yellow bin for the donkeys.”

Donkeys? What donkeys?

I flushed with confusion.

“Furthermore, when you sweep the refectory you are only supposed to do the side you've been assigned; another person does the other half. Did you notice there were two of you with brooms? You might very well be faster, but that's not the point. We share our tasks, and it is important to make others feel valuable, even those who are slower.”

I flushed again.

Sister Margaret Anne had seen right through my so-called diligence and to the heart of one of my major flaws. I'm competitive, and I have a tendency to go overboard when given a task just to prove my capability and efficiency. I call it value-added; others call it sucking up. Ask me to do dishes, and I will wipe down the countertops and kitchen cabinets, too. Ask me to change a bed, and I will gather the linens, put them in the wash, and iron them afterwards. I don't know where this compulsion came from, but somewhere along the road of life I became an approval whore. I swept the other side of the refectory because I wanted to prove my indispensability; I collected the crumbs and dumped them in the garbage to show I didn't need to be told what to do. I hate this too-eager-to-please part of my personality, I really do, and yet whenever I have tried to correct it I end up disappointing people. Flaws: can't live with them; can't live without them.

Next, I was asked to set the tables for the noon meal.

Meals at St. John the Divine in Toronto were served buffet style; at St. Hilda's in Whitby, things were far more formal. A full complement of cutlery was employed—eating and serving utensils, water glasses, coasters, placemats and trivets, various bowls for discarding fruit rinds, and other bowls for collecting certain pieces of used cutlery.

In my previous life as a wife and mother I had set lots of tables—for evening meals, dinner parties, family celebrations—and I had also been fortunate to dine at a few rather fine restaurants in my time, but never have I been confronted with so much hardware as I was at St. Hilda's. It was like ground zero for cutlery fetishists.

My acumen for table setting must have taken a sabbatical without warning me because it became quickly evident that I was incapable of handling anything beyond placing the knives and forks, and even then I got that wrong, having transposed them while struggling to get my flustered state under control. Thank goodness Sister Margaret Anne was there to correct my error.

“We prepare our refectory and set the tables as if Christ was coming as a guest,” instructed Sister Margaret Anne, as she swiftly circled the tables and changed the position of the cutlery. The urge arose to mention that Christ might find this layout daunting, but Sister Margaret Anne might have considered the comment irreverent.

I could hardly wait to get out of the refectory that morning. Once the tables were set, I scrambled out of my “pinny”—
Must check the dictionary for that one
—and made a beeline for the sanctuary of my cell so that I could collapse in a heap of pity on my bed.

En route I was intercepted by Sister Katherine Thérèse.

“Can I interest you in a job?” she asked with a smile.

“Sure!” I said with guarded enthusiasm. I did not want to come across as a grumpy-guss, but at the same time I did not want to cultivate a reputation as a doormat.

I made an exception for Sister
KT
, as she was known, because she had a spark to her. She was in her mid-forties, slender, with shoulder-length brown hair worn in a ponytail. She was from Lancashire and had a cheerful, slightly rough-and-ready quality.

“You see,” explained Sister
KT
as she steered me toward the chapel, “Grace got her foot in a garden pot, so she's off chapel duty. I need someone to take her place.”

I had no idea who Grace was or how she got her foot stuck in a garden pot, but I kept my questions to myself. I was still trying to work out how I could have forgotten how to set a table.

“Now,” said Sister
KT
as we walked toward the sanctuary, “all you do is vacuum and dust the Lady Chapel, the sacristy, and the sanctuary. Just clean out to the edge of these steps.”

I had never been given a task that brought me so close to an altar.

“Is there a special way to clean the altar, a ritual I should follow?”

“Nah. Just like cleaning your house. I mean, don't go knocking things about, but just clean it, normal like. Here's where we keep the supplies.”

Behind a dark brown wooden door at the entrance of the Lady Chapel was a collection of the most basic of cleaning tools: an old Henry canister vacuum cleaner, a couple of thick dusting cloths, an extension cord, and a bucket. There were no cleansers, no furniture polish.

“We don't worry about that,” Sister
KT
replied in answer to my query.

“Do I clean every day?”

“No, silly—once a week. Friday mornings once you've finished in the refectory after breakfast.”

Could I do it instead of the refectory?
Visions of Sister Margaret Anne flashed to mind.

I took off again for my cell but this time I bumped into Sister Dorothy Stella.

“What are you doing after lunch?” she asked.

I wasn't sure whether to say “Nothing,” tell her I was busy, or scream.

“I have to go into Whitby to buy a train ticket,” she continued. “I was wondering whether you'd like to come along. It would be fun for you to see the town and...,” she lowered her voice before adding, “to get out of here for a while.”

( 5:v )

WAS THERE
such a thing as spiritual jet lag? I was sure feeling it. Three convents in three weeks, all with different landscapes, schedules, customs, routines, and even faiths. If it's February, this must be Whitby. Plus, there were new names to learn, which was complicated by the fact that 75 percent of the sisters at St. Hilda's seemed to be named Margaret or a variation of it, or their names began with M. Who could keep up?

With my senses at various stages of wakefulness, I arrived for lauds the next morning and took a seat in the congregation area of the chapel.
At least I don't have to think,
the lazy monastic in me reasoned.
I can just sit and let the liturgy and the dreamy chants float over me.

“The sleepy,” wrote St. Benedict, “make many excuses.” I doubted that ol' Benny had ever contended with this level of disorientation, or set a refectory table with a complement of cutlery that rivaled what one might find in the sideboard of Hampton Court Palace.

I was barely settled in my seat when Sister Dorothy Stella caught my eye and cocked her head toward a choir stall.

Are you sure?
My quizzical look asked.

She responded with a nod and a confident smile.

I moved tentatively from the congregation area to the choir stalls and took a seat in the double prie-dieu she had indicated.
A prie-dieu à deux?
I chuckled to myself. My humor drained when I saw the small shelf in the prie-dieu crammed with an assortment of books: a psalter, two hymn books, a binder, a couple of spiral-bound booklets, a prayer book, and a few loose booklets and sheet music.
Oh dear.

The next thing I knew, Sister Margaret Anne was standing beside the stall staring at me with a similar look of panic, only hers wasn't about the prayer books; it was the fact that The Incompetent One was sharing her choir stall.
What the hell?
her look screamed. She spun toward Sister Dorothy Stella, whose head was conveniently bowed and her eyes shut tight in prayer.

I met Sister Margaret Anne's gaze with a sheepish shrug of my shoulders. She did not look pleased but took her seat anyway. She shifted uneasily, looking at me, then turning away, then looking back several times as if not quite believing this intrusion.

Resigning herself to it, she pulled a few books and binders from my shelf, deftly leafed through the pages, and marked certain ones with greeting card covers and postcards that had been repurposed as bookmarks.

I mouthed “Thanks” many times. Angels do not always come in the guise of cooing, ethereal beings: they sometimes reveal themselves by their steadiness and their quick, no-nonsense help. Sister Margaret Anne was one such angel.

I was hopeless during the office. I flailed like a dog in a bathtub. Everything was inexplicably strange, only marginally familiar to the office said by the sisters at St. John the Divine. I glanced at the cover of the prayer book to make sure I hadn't inadvertently walked into the Lutheran Church.

I messed up the psalm by not pausing between lines, as is the monastic custom. I stumbled over the chanting of the Venite, which I have known by heart for years but which now struck me as foreign. As for the Lord's Prayer, had someone rewritten it? I did not dare sing. It was like being presented with a new language.

The learning curve didn't stop there. An infinitesimal number of things had to be remembered not only
in
chapel but
about
chapel: the times of the offices, how to decipher the abbreviations of the weekly chapel schedule that indicated what hymn book to use, what psalms to recite (and which verses), which version of the Magnificat to chant, which Eucharistic prayer was to be used for Holy Communion.

Around me the sisters flipped effortlessly between multiple books, landing on the right canticle or antiphon, locating the proper responsory, hymn, and prayer. Each office began with a vocal recitation of the Angelus to accompany the tolling bell. Would the day ever come when I could recite it without needing a cheat sheet?

( 5:vi )

A PLACE
of silence tunes your antennae to the observation of body language and of mood. At St. Hilda's, you had to keep your head bowed in prayer and humility and still be able to gauge facial expressions and gestures to know what was going on or whether you were messing up.

Example: At breakfast, I initially helped myself to a bowl of cereal. So far so good. Then I walked to the fruit bowl at the far end of the refectory, plucked a banana from the bowl, and returned to my seat to slice it on my cereal. Sometimes I added a piece of bread with marmalade to this repast.

It took a few breakfasts before I clued in, not by what was said to me but by the widened eyeballs of the sisters, that this amount of food was excessive. You could have cereal or bread or fruit, but not two of the three, and certainly not all three. I managed to figure out that two cups of tea were permitted with breakfast only because I saw Sister
KT
go up for seconds.

The noon meal was more structured. We assembled in the refectory after the midday office, found our places at table, and stood until grace was said. Then we sat down, and those sisters assigned to serve the tables would fetch the food. The sister at the head of the table would serve the main dish and pass the plates to each person. Once you had your plate, you could help yourself to potatoes or vegetables. When everyone at your table had been served, you could begin eating. When you were finished, you waited until others were finished. Occasionally, you might be offered a second helping. This was all conveyed through a series of head nods and eye and eyebrow movements. When everyone had finished eating, the prioress would ring a small bell. A cacophony of moving chairs and clanging dishes and cutlery would erupt as dinner plates were removed to a trolley and taken into the kitchen. The same trolley would reemerge laden with dessert—“pudding” as the Brits refer to it. Again, the head sister at each table would serve the pudding, and again you did not dig in until everyone at the table was served. When you finished, you waited for the rest to finish. The prioress would ring the bell again. Dirty plates and bowls were heaped onto the trolley and wheeled into the kitchen. When the sister who had taken the trolley to the kitchen came back to the refectory, we stood and bowed our heads for a parting grace.

Supper was sometimes formal and sometimes not, and periodically the vow of silence was relaxed at these meals, but I was at a loss to explain how this was determined. I did manage to retain the fact that Sunday dinner was a “talking” meal.

By evening I could not get into bed fast enough. As I waited for sleep, my brain neurons continued to fire like pistons with the eternal question cycling through my draining consciousness:
Are you or are you not going to be a nun?