My Untitled Convent Diaries

 “Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us” – Oscar Wilde 

My convent diaries are gone.  I burned them some seven years ago during my last months as a religious sister.  They held way too much that I wanted desperately to forget, so much from which I needed to free myself in an ultimate act of catharsis.  Not until today, when I stumbled on Wilde’s poignant saying about memory, did I realize that that my diaries are still there, tattooed to my soul, burning within me, following me wherever I go.

I have joked numerous times over the years about how I could “write a book” with all that my life has been. Friends have agreed.  From the very first day that I abandoned life as a nun I have wanted to write about it, to tell all that I have experienced and learned those ten long years behind the convent walls.  Many times I have begun to write only to end up empty handed.  Perhaps it just wasn’t the time.

For some weeks now I have been hesitating to post this little piece, what I think may turn out to be the introductory entry to my convent memoirs. Today, I have decided to post.  So tell me what you think… yeah or nay, should I continue? 

As she felt the boiling blood coursing through her veins, she faltered and groped for the nearest object upon which to brace herself.  Thank goodness for the dusty little ledge just below the basement bathroom window, her savior, for the moment.  Damn, she was livid: beyond furious over what had just taken place.  She could hardly bare to think of it, yet it pounded in her head like the bells that rang there day and night. “Did I come here for this?” she whispered to herself, shocked at her brazen questioning. “What the hell?!”

She rinsed the last of the foul remnants from her mouth and straightened up managing to twist the handle of the nearly antique faucet just enough to firm the leak.  Pausing only a second to primp herself in the reflection of the mirror that wasn’t, she opened the door and headed down the long empty echo of a corridor, back towards what was growing into a rather stark reality. She grabbed her apron from the dark dank boiler room on the way, not bothering to stop in the refectory to clear her plate. “There’s no way I’m going back in there!” she thought “This is nuts.”

In the kitchen, the others chattered away to the rhythm of clanging cookware. They held their breath and stopped gabbing just long enough to throw a laughing smile her way as she entered the room.  She stood in the doorway, tying the patchwork apron which now hung around her neck like a noose. Somehow she managed to eke out a half-smile at them as she lifted her head, looked about and calmly mused over which task to tackle. After all, she was the postulant, and the American postulant at that.  She was the peon, last in rank, first in line for ridicule and it was up to her to do her part.  Grabbing the broom which lay leaning against the marble-top table, she walked across the floor, trying hard to ignore the Italian chit-chat that she was still way too green to comprehend. As she scoured the corners of the farthest end of the kitchen with the determination that only anger can ignite, she kept completely silent, outwardly silent at least. 

In no time she found herself dragging the primitive mop over the tattered terracotta tiles.  She rose every so often, stopping to assess her progress and to catch a breath. Who would have ever imagined her mopping? A few months ago she was happily finishing up her final university exams, a twenty-one year old whose only worry in the world was how to go about dispersing her belongings and her fiance’.  Now here she found herself smack dab in the middle of Rome, in the governing house of an unheard of religious community, at the end of a gated dead-end street, in a very untidy kitchen being rendered sparkling clean by the youngest sisters of the group.  For a brief moment she felt herself transported home to Connecticut. How she missed home: it and a language that she could understand.

Going home was looking like a great option at the moment. Only several weeks in and she had already discovered that convent life was not all that it was cracked up to be.  In fact, this lovely afternoon she had been the butt of a very nasty prank and damn, she was still truly angry.  “How could they?” she rambled to herself over and over again.  It was unthinkable that a nun would do such a thing, and a nun of rank at that.  “There’s no way I’m staying” she told herself.  “I’m going home, calling the ex, hopping in the cougar and going out for a drink.” Suddenly she was swept back to Rome and the task at hand by one of the novices who came by to swap out the bucket of dirty water and blurted a hardy “How are we doing?”  “Okay” she said, using one of the few expressions she had managed to learn during her Italian lessons. She was almost finished with the kitchen floor now, and was intent on heading right up to the superior’s office and demanding to be put on the first plane out.  There was no way that they were going to get away with such atrocities.