I almost laugh. It catches in my chest like a fishbone. I have spent literally years learning how to walk without sound, how to be small and excellent and unremarkable in exactly the right ways. Invisible is the prize and the punishment. “I’m aware,” I say.
She studies me the way a surgeon studies a stubborn growth. “You are on a path,” she says, gentler now, like bringing the voice down can bring me down with it. “There is a time to test the world and a time to renounce it. We have spoken about this.Your father has been most…generous really…in support of your discernment.”
There it is. The donation sitting in a frame to the right of the cross.
“His generosity,” she continues, “keeps certain doors open for other young women. It keeps a roof repaired and a scholarship funded and a pantry stocked. Do you understand what your recklessness threatens beyond yourself?”
As always, I feel the reminder that maybe I am not as good as my mother was, maybe I never will be, burn its way through my soul.
I should be better.
But I’m not.
I’m nothing more than a sinner.
A thought comes and I don’t invite it; it climbs out of me anyway.Even the Amish give their kids a rumspringa.The snort escapes before I can strangle it. Sharp. Inappropriate. Mine.
Her gaze snaps to mine like a trap. She slaps something flat—book, ledger, ruler—against the desk. The crack echoes. I jump despite myself, a reflex born in rooms with tinier windows. “This is not a game,” she says, and the softness is gone. “You do not get a little rebellion as a treat. You do not get to practice sin because you think it will make your vows feel more real.”
I feel it then—everything I’ve swallowed for years rising like a tide through my rib cage. The good grades and the clean hems and the careful shoulders. Smiles that pass inspection. The way no one ever saysthank youbecause obedience is supposed to be its own reward. I stare at the crucifix over her shoulder and think,At least He got to rage for an afternoon before they nailed Him down.
Mother Superior exhales. Smooths the habit over her knees. Puts dignity back on like a shawl. “No matter,” she says, in a tonethat meanswe will pretend it does not matter until it does.“We will restore what can be restored.”
“How?” Do they have a sacrament for photographs? A prayer for men with loud mouths?
A cure for the loss of the hymen?
“There are…conversations,” she says. “There will be a dinner at week’s end. Mr. Moretti and certain associates will attend. We will affirm our mutual goodwill.” She says goodwill like it’s a recipe card. “You, my child, will be modest. You will be silent. You will allow the men to do what men do.”
“Which is?”
“Make peace,” she says, not hearing the echo the way I do.Make peace. Like they make messes. Like they make women.“And you will do your penance.”
Ah. There it is. The tidy part.
She slides a small folded card across the desk, as if I’ve ordered it and she’s the waitress. “Twenty rosaries,” she says. “All five decades. The Joyful mysteries. It is good to return to beginnings when one has lost one’s way.”
Twenty. All five decades.The Joyful.The irony is so round I could roll it between my fingers.
“Yes, Mother,” I say.
She watches my face for a crack that will make her job easier. I make my face into the chapel walls. She nods, satisfied with plaster.
“You may go.”
I stand. My knees ache in that way that tells me I’ve been holding them polite too long. I walk without hurrying, because hurrying looks like guilt and dragging looks like tantrum. The corridor smells like chalk and incense and fundraiser coffee. I hold the card in my palm like it might catch on fire.
Rebellion is a small, bright spark under my tongue. Shame sits next to it, trying to look taller. I let them both ride alongas I cut across the foyer toward the side aisle that leads to the sanctuary.
“Cat!”
Prudence barrels into my path like a sunbeam who got bored with the laws of physics. Fox-colored hair in a scarf that doesn’t match anything she owns, swallowed by an oversized sweater that looks like it belongs to yesterday. And a grin you can see from the corner of your eye. She hooks her arm through mine and tugs until there’s nothing I can do but follow.
“Not now—” I start, because the card is heavy as a brick in my hand.
“Now,” she says, steering me away from the church doors with the agility of a seasoned pickpocket. “Field trip. Therapy. Chicago dogs.”
“You’re not from Chicago.”
