Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell (8 page)

October 12, 1967

No wonder she can talk so easily of sin and damnation. No wonder she can’t leave the Order. I hope they both go straight to hell, her and her little concubine.

October 16, 1967

Can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t even cry. My heart is broken into little pieces.

October 19, 1967

I want to catch them, to hold them up to the light, to watch them like flies on a windowpane when they don’t know they are being watched. I want to hear what she says to Jane when they are making love, to know the sounds they make when they lose themselves in each other. I want to see them naked. I want to mash their naked bodies against the glass, a slow death by mutilation. I want to watch. I want to watch.

October 20, 1967

I call Todd into my office. “Am I going to hell, Mother Superior?” You will if you don’t help me, I say. “Anything, Mother Superior, anything I can do, anything I can do to help you, Mother Superior.” First get up off your knees, I say. I need you to come to me the minute you see something. The minute you see
anything
. “Oh you bet I will,” Todd says, “you bet I will Mother Superior. You can count on me, Mother Superior. You bet, you bet, you bet.”

November 1, 1967

I say Nancy seems different to me, distracted. Jane smiles without looking up. “She just seems so happy,”
Jane says.

November 10, 1967

“It’s a good job, Mother Superior,” Todd is saying. “I like my job. I want to keep my job.” Then why aren’t you helping me, Todd? “It’s hard to find them, Mother Superior, like I said, like they was hiding.” They
are
hiding, I say.

I had Jane’s kind of beauty once, years ago, back when Bucky Harwell was in tow. I know what it’s like to touch her from that time when she was a recruit and I had to comfort her. It’s a beautiful body to the touch, both soft and hard the way only a young body can be. Now Nancy knows every line, every curve of Jane’s body. I can see what Nancy sees in Jane. I can
feel
it, and I can’t compete. That’s what makes me sick to my stomach.

I rub my sleeve against the stained  glass until I can see them. I slide open the window so I can hear everything. I watch Nancy’s first caress in the candlelight, the first kiss by Jane, their brown cow dresses dropping in bunches to the stone floor, to
our
floor, their whispers a hiss across the room before the quick shivering of Nancy’s hand between Jane’s legs, then Jane falling back, backwards onto the altar, her legs a collar around Nancy’s head, Jane yelping like a dog fed late. The stained glass windows steam up with their lust. The air outside is not so cold as my hate.

Every night I go to the same window to watch them, and every night I wait for the stained glass to steam up before I cry. I want to pull the wings off of flies.

I tell Nancy we can’t be together any more. “I know,” she says. “And you can’t leave. That means
I
have to go. That’s what’s killing me.”

I tell Jane I am sending her on a long recruiting trip so she will miss Christmas and New Year’s at the Convent. She bites her lip hard enough to turn it white. “Why?” she wonders. God’s will, I tell her.

“I seen them crying, Mother,” Todd is telling me. “I seen them
both
crying. In the, in the place at the bottom of the stairs where no one ever goes ever except for me and for them this one time. They were crying and crying, crying and crying.” I tell Todd he is definitely not going to hell.

So where do you want to go? I ask Nancy. “Far away,” she says. “It’s too painful to be this close.” I know exactly what you mean, I say.

January 7, 1968

I tell Nancy I am sending her as far west and as far north as I can. “Now?” she says. Now and forever after, I tell her. She will be long gone long before her little Sister can come back. For Nancy to complain to me would be to admit everything, and so far she has admitted nothing. Mother Superior has her ways.

Nancy is gone. I have won. This is what hell must feel like.

“Send me away, too,” Jane says. I need you here for the greater good, I say.

I feel much better already now that Jane and Nancy are no more. I have bigger plans for Jane.

Jane knows nothing of Nancy and me. She has no idea that I know about Nancy and
her
. I go to Jane’s room and her door is open a crack. She is face down on the bed, her shoulders heaving. I sit down beside her to knuckle her neck, to knead her shoulders and her arms and then the low scoop of her back, the meat at the very top of her thighs. I slide her legs apart just so. I slither my hands high up along the inside of her thighs. She reaches back and rings her arms around my neck. “Thank you, Mother Superior,” she says. “Call me Eleanor,” I say. Now that the wings are off I will force her to fly.

The board of governors wants answers. “They’re antsy,” Charles Evans tells me
sotto voce
. “They don’t exactly blame you for the nuns leaving, or the recruits, but they wonder why it all started when you took over. They want to know what you’re going to do about it.” Prayer? I say. “Very funny,” he says. “
Hardy-har
. But it’s not funny, Eleanor. The board is very unhappy.”

Jane lights up like a firefly whenever Nancy comes on the line. I see her laugh and jabber into the phone. Her tears explode when they hit the blotter.

I’m giving you the recruits, I say to Jane. “Why?” she wonders. I tell her I’m too long in the tooth, I’ve lost touch. I go on the road, they tune me out. I might as well be their mother. You’re young, I tell Jane. You’re one of them. You
understand
them. And the board will like you. “I have no idea what to do,” Jane says. Neither did I, I say, and just look at me.

I spend time with Jane each day, more time every day, to go over the recruits and just to talk. Jane touches you when she talks. When she touches me I tingle. Then I make sure to touch her back.

Charles Evans calls. “A warning,” he says. “The board is on the warpath over the recruits, or the lack thereof.” It’s all been taken care of, I say.

April 16, 1968

Martin Luther King was shot dead coming out of a cheap motel room. There are riots in all the cities. The real world is coming apart at the seams.

May 1, 1968

Jane is starting to fly without wings. She is already ramping up our recruits. Nancy is no longer the only thing on her mind.

Jane and I have drinks in my room almost every night now. Tonight she crossed her legs over mine and she didn’t mind as I left my hands on her soft thighs. I practice touching her, her arms and her elbows, her back and her hips, even the underneath part of her breasts furthest from the nipple. I always stay close to her so that she can touch me back.

Bobby Kennedy was shot dead in California. The whole world has gone mad.

June 29, 1968

Jane makes a recruiting trip, criss-crossing the country, going everywhere, but coming nowhere near Nancy in the Northwest.

Jane and I drink to the incoming recruits and I watch her get drunk. I walk her to her room and she holds me tight, like a child afraid of the dark. “I love you, Mother Superior,” she says. “You been so good to me.” Call me Eleanor, I say.

Jane’s first presentation to the board. She lights up, like she’s been doing it her whole life. She stands by a map and sticks pinpricks into cities where she has been. Our numbers spike up everywhere, bless her, except in the Northwest, where I won’t let her go. “Sister Jane is too young,” the Bishop tells me over a cocktail. “But I like that girl. We need more of her kind.”

I invite Jane to Southampton for a reunion of sorts, without dear Will, without the wretched Tom. Becca brings her camera to take pictures of Diana and G for a spread in
Imagine
about managing your life with children. Luigi is spending every waking moment on the beach with his new homosexual friends, but when he comes back to the house he seems different, happy, as if he no longer needs to fight what he feels. He is sweet with G, chasing him behind the hedges, babbling in Italian, then building their dream house together on the porch with blocks. Jane skims along the water, skipping in the soft sand as the waves break against her feet and wash back into the sea.

Becca tells me that thanks to her camera she is as happy as she has ever been. “I look through the camera,” Becca says, “and what I see is me.”

Time for Jane and me to go back to the Convent to prepare for the arrival of the young girls with faith. Little G runs and jumps and hugs Jane at the neck, hanging like a crab. Becca and Diana give her kisses and Jane kisses them back. Jane drives all the way back. I can’t take my eyes off of her. “What?” she wonders.

The recruits have landed full force at the Convent and Jane is an ordained hero in the Order. She takes our message and turns it around so that God still makes sense in a world where God is dead. She convinces the recruits that to be a nun is to believe in something higher, something better and deeper, to drop in
and
to drop out all at once. The young girls swallow it whole.

Jane and I celebrate the successful indoctrination with champagne. “It’s really brainwashing, isn’t it?” Jane says. Absolutely, I say. I get her so drunk I have to help her into bed. I strip her clothes off and lay her naked under the covers. “Don’t go,” Jane says. I am not going anywhere. I slide my hands under the covers and wedge her legs apart. I slide both her knees up until they make a tent with the blanket, and then I run my fingers under the tent and inside of her. “
Mmmmmm
,” Jane mumbles. I slide my head under the tent. I know that I have won but I won’t celebrate just yet.

I pour Jane another screwdriver, tall and stiff the way she likes it. It takes almost nothing to get her drunk, like a high school kid who goes blotto in two shakes. I like sex with Jane when she’s drunk, when I’m not. I like to be sober when she lets go. I like to watch.

Jane still doesn’t know that I know about her and Nancy. Nor does Nancy know about me and Jane. To know nothing is a good thing.

“Rumors,” Charles Evans says. “Ungodly rumors.” We are at “21” again but neither one of us is drinking. I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, I say. “I’m sure you do,” he says. “Eleanor! You’re a nun, for Chrissakes, and you’ve got the libido of a teenage girl.” It’s the Cushing in me, I say. “God help us all,” Charles Evans says.

Jane starts to sob the minute she closes the door to my office. “There’s something I’ve got to know,” she says. “About Nancy.” I say Nancy asked to leave and I asked her to stay. “I feel like the minute Nancy turned her back—” You ended up with me? I say. “Nancy says she might leave the Order,” Jane says, “and it’s my fault. I just feel awful, horrible about the whole thing.” It’s not your problem, I say.