Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell (7 page)

I go to the New York Athletic Club with Nancy to meet the Order’s board of governors. If I am to take Mother Superior’s position, I tell them, then Nancy must take mine
. The Bishop is there, and six Monsignors, and the lay people like Charles Evans who give us so much money they think they run the show. I have been to many of these meetings with Mother Superior, and I know everyone by name. “This is just a formality,” the Bishop says.

The board calls me back for another interview. Charles Evans takes me aside. “There are no other candidates. But there have been rumors.” Rumors? I say. “Rumors about your habits.” I don’t follow, I say. “Vows. There is some concern about your vows.” The money? I say.
The vow of poverty? If the O’Kell money meant anything to me I would have left the Order long ago. “Not the money, Eleanor. That’s not the vow we’re talking about.” I don’t follow, I say. “Chastity. There is some concern about the vow of chastity.” Chastity? “It’s a very important vow. Chastity sets the Order apart from the rest of the world.” I ask if the board is concerned that I am not sufficiently chaste. “Rumors,” Charles Evans says. “There have been rumors.” Do rumors have a place in this process? I say. “Not unless they’re true,” he says.

The board decides to make me their
interim
choice. “A trial run,” the Bishop says. “Nothing to be concerned about. Mother Superior had one herself, you know.” This makes me Mother
Inferior
, I say. “Not at all,” the Bishop says. “It just means you have something to prove.” And what would that be? I ask. “That you have the spiritual strength to run the Order.” In English, please, I say. The Bishop says: “You have to establish to the board’s satisfaction that you are a holy woman.” Easy as pie, I say.

I go to the same young priest for Confession even though I know he will give me hell. Maybe I go
because
he will give me hell. He is not so young any more, but no matter. Bless me Father, I say, and then I start in. He knows who I am. He knows all sinners are alike. “You are the nun from far away, aren’t you?” He stops me. “How can you do what you do and stay in the Order?” God’s will, I tell him. “
Blasphemy!
” he says. For my penance, he gives me more Acts of Contrition than I can count.

“It’s me, it’s my fault,” Nancy says. “Can’t you see that?
I’m
the cause of all the problems in your life. If it weren’t for me you would be Mother Superior already. Rumors?
I’m
the rumor. They know about us, can’t you see that? It’s all my fault. I’ve turned you into a liar, a hypocrite, a sinner.” I don’t think we’re sinners, I say. I think we live in a different kind of world where the old ways don’t make sense any more. Just look at Vietnam and drugs and free love. The world is what you make of it. “You’re wrong,” Nancy says. “The rules never change.”

I decide we have to limit the number of women we take in each fall, to accept only the cream of our growing crop. Nancy says it’s a big mistake, that times are changing, that girls don’t want to be nuns like they did before. She says the cream has already been licked off the top. She tells me Sister Jane is keeping track of our recruits and the numbers are down for the first time since Nancy and I arrived. “It’s a new world,” Nancy says. “And it’s not pretty.”

“Congratulations,” Charles Evans says. “You are free and clear.” Sorry? I say. “The board has unanimously approved your permanent appointment to lead the Order. You are Mother
Inferior
no more.”

Nancy and I go to the city to celebrate and she tries hard to be happy for me. When I ask her what’s wrong she won’t tell me. “This is your day,” she says.

My day to think about Will, may he rest in peace.

“Defections,” Sister Jane says. We’ve always had them, I say. “Not like this,” Sister Jane says. “We’ve already had fifteen and it’s still April. That’s more than we usually have for the whole year.” How many did we have last year? I ask. “Twelve,” Sister Jane says. “Up from nine the year before.” What’s going on? I ask. Nancy says: “It has nothing to do with the Order. The girls don’t want to miss out on free love.” And what are we supposed to do about it? I say. “I’m praying as hard as I can,” Jane says.

Nancy and Sister Jane are in my office and all three of us are staring at the same sheet of paper. Impossible, I say. “I wish,” Nancy says. Jane says: “Recruits are way off compared to my year, Mother Superior.” Nancy says to me: “It’s not your fault, Eleanor.” You keep saying that, I say.

I give the order that no one leaves the Order without first speaking to me.

A Sister from Michigan calls. I demand that she come to the Convent before she makes any decision. “You can’t demand anything, Mother,” Michigan says. “I don’t belong to you any more.”

May 27, 1967

Defections? “More than double what we had all last year,” Nancy says. I can count, I say. How old are they? “All over the place,” Jane says. “A few, one or two, in their forties, some in their thirties, maybe half in their twenties.”
Why are they leaving? I ask. “They’ve got better things to do,” Jane says. Don’t you? I ask Jane.

I call Jane and Nancy into my office. “What
can
we do?” Nancy says. I say I am going to the major cities to stop the bleeding. I am going to meet with Sisters who are in doubt and I am going to meet with recruits.
Personally
. “Isn’t it too late for that, for this year?” Nancy says. “For the recruits, I mean.” I say it’s never too late, especially not this year. “When do we leave?” Nancy says. I need you to stay here, I say. To stay on top of things.

“There is evil in the world,” Nancy says. I wonder if I have heard her right. “
Evil
,” Nancy repeats. It is night, and the only lights in our room come from the spotlight the Order keeps on the Chapel. Are we evil? I ask Nancy. “What else could we be?” she says.

“I’ll be praying for you, Mother,” Jane says. Thank you child, I say.

New Haven. Hartford. Boston. All in the next three days. I feel like a Broadway show that’s about to close out of town.

New Haven. I meet first with all the Sisters in the Order and save the recruits for later. The Sisters seem peeved at me, out of sorts, like they have come to a pep rally without any pep. I tell them the Order has never been stronger, that our building plans are right on track, that all our new hospitals will be in the black. I tell them in a world that is nothing but change the Order has to stand for something. “For what?” one of the Sisters asks. For all the good things in the world, I say, for the belief that nothing is more important than serving your fellow man and woman. A Sister asks: “What does
that
have to do with God?”

Thank God for Hartford. I am a candidate here in a political campaign, stumping for the
Order instead of for myself. I go from the Cathedral to the auditorium to lunch with the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, with each place more packed than the last. Then I speak in a ballroom with twinkling prom lights and tinkling glasses, in front of every high school senior from every parochial school in the county. In the middle of summer, no less! There is also a tea with the Sisters in the Order and a tour of our hospital outside the city. For the first time on this trip I feel a shaft of hope.

On to Boston. “All my life I’ve wanted to be a nun,” says a young girl named Gloria. “But what does being a nun have to do with the
revolution
?” It’s a matter of devotion, I say. “How can I be devoted to
one
thing,” Gloria says, “when I don’t believe in
anything
?” To believe in God is to believe in
everything
, I say. “You don’t believe that,” Gloria says. No, I think, but I wish I did.

New York. The biggest city in the world and we can’t even fill the room. On the phone Jane tells me New York is the worst, with more defectors than anywhere else in the country and just two recruits signed up all year. For dinner I meet with Becca in a small restaurant on the East Side. She shows me her latest pictures of street people on the Bowery. Why do you go down there? I say. “It’s as close to God as I can get,” she says.

July 22, 1967

San Francisco. I call Nancy late enough to wake her up. I miss you, I say. “Me too,” she says. She sounds groggy, exhausted. I love you, I say. “I know,” Nancy says.

The City of Angels. But you would never know it. It’s much worse than New York even. Who has time for the Church when you’re shooting a movie? The Sisters, their eyes the color of silent films, tune out my talk. I have so little to say to them it scares me. And my individual audiences with the recruits are the worst ever. It’s a beautiful bright sunny day outside, and I feel like I am asking them to live out their lives in a cave. The girls seem different to me now, too full of questions about the war and what the Order is going to do about it. Where is
my
angel?

South to Palm Springs. Everywhere I go they ask me about God, and every time I duck the question. My soul is both naked
and
bare. I am having to profess to things I no longer believe in. I can’t do it any more. I’ve been sucked dry, I tell Nancy. I’m coming home. “So soon?” she says.

I was gone only ten days but it’s like the whole world has changed. Nancy won’t come to bed with me. She won’t even touch me.

July 31, 1967

“I had time to think while you were gone,” Nancy says. I pour her a drink but she won’t drink it so I drain hers and mine both. Think about what? I say. “Damnation,” Nancy says.

“We must admit to what we have done before God before we can move on,” Nancy tells me. It wasn’t about God, I say. It was about sin. “Everything is about God,” Nancy says. “Especially sin.”

Nancy says she is either married to God or to me and that it can’t be both. “We can’t stay in sin,” she says. “Not now. No matter how much we love each other.” She believes in God the Father but she knows the flesh is weak. She says she loves me even though she knows it’s a sin.

August 29, 1967

All that work and the defections are worse than ever. In New Haven, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs. My trip did absolutely no good, except in Hartford, and Hartford doesn’t count. “It’s not your fault,” Jane says. It never is, I say.

September 3, 1967

We had a full class of recruits until this last week. Now we are down for the first time since Mother Superior gave me responsibility for recruiting. I have never been so depressed in my life.

September 13, 1967

I am spending the whole session holding hands, cajoling. Even after they arrive the recruits act as if no one wants to be here, and no one wants to stay, as if God really is dead.

September 29, 1967

Jane is rattling on to me and to Nancy about all the things we can do differently with the recruits next year. I don’t even want to think about it. In my first year as Mother Superior everything is falling apart.

Nancy says she has prayed on it and there’s no way she wants to leave the Order. She says she can’t leave everything she loves behind. I feel like half-a-load has been lifted off of my shoulders.

October 11, 1967

“Sister I mean Mother Superior I seen something I shouldn’t’ve,” Todd the janitor is saying. “I don’t want to go to hell, Mother Superior, but I have to on account of, on account of—” What did you see, Todd? I say. “I really can’t tell you, Mother. I tell you I go to hell.” I tell him he
is
going to hell if he won’t tell me what happened. “It was bad, real bad, bad, bad, a real bad thing.” Todd is shaking. “I go, I go into Sister Jane’s room, to empty the garbage like, like  I do, and they, they was there, and it was bad, Mother, it was bad, bad, bad. Sister Jane was, she was holding her brown dress up, and Sister Nancy, she went down like that, down like that between her legs, and her mouth, her mouth, she had it here, she had it—” I get the picture, I tell him.