Traces of Mercy (6 page)

The girl shook her head. It made no difference to her what they called her. “No. You pick one,” she told the nun.

Mother Helena nodded. “I will promise to give it some thought. Now, I’ll have someone bring in a basin with some water for you to bathe, and then you can change into something clean for breakfast.”

“The dress.”

“Yes,” Mother Helena said. “Sister Gertrude is a wonder with a needle and thread, and we’ll have her make a few things that will be appropriate for you.”

The girl hesitated. “I’ll change into the dress, but I want to keep these clothes. Besides my journal that Doc gave me, and this chain”—she withdrew her silver medallion from under her shirt—“they’re the only things that are truly mine.”

“Of course,” Mother Helena said. “We will have Sister Ruth wash the clothes and put them away for you.” The sister crossed the few steps between them and gestured to the medallion. “May I have a closer look?”

“Yes.”

Mother Helena lifted the long chain and palmed the medallion. “I don’t suppose you remember what this is?”

“No,” she said. “Doc Abe just told me I was wearing it when I was brought into the clinic.”

“’Tis an Our Lady of Mercy medallion,” Mother Helena explained, “meant to remind the wearer to pray for safety.” She let the medallion drop against the shirt and smiled. “I take this to mean you’re a believer.”

“A believer?”

“In God.”

“If I was,” the girl said, “I don’t remember.”

Mother Helena nodded. “’Tis a hard thing you’ve been saddled with for sure, lass. But I have faith that the Lord brought you here for a purpose we have yet to know—and I believe He’s just provided us with your new name.”

“He has?”

The old nun nodded. “From now on, we’ll call you Mercy.”

C
HAPTER
F
IVE

My new name is Mercy. I think I like it just fine. Maybe even better than my old name—whatever that was. I am sleeping in a room with Deirdre and Oona. They are much younger than the other sisters here. They wear black skirts and white blouses and black caps. When Oona takes her cap off, she has very long hair that hangs in a braid down her back. They left their families in Ireland to come to America and work with the Little Sisters of Hope. Did I leave my family? Do I even have a family? Oona told me the sisters are her family now.

Everyone here stays very busy. Mother Helena says God likes hard workers.

I don’t care much for darning. If I ever did it before, I don’t care now that I don’t remember it.

It’s possible to miss the sound of something that you didn’t think you liked—even snoring. Quiet can be very loud.

Some of the sisters do the inside work and some do the building work, and all of them do the work of praying. Talking to God. They do it all the time.

God, if You’re listening to me, I would like to have my memory back, please.

The dark room enveloped the three women, and for a moment, the only sound was a breeze pushing through an open window. An earthy scent filled the room, probably from the large garden beside the house. Mercy thought about how different it was from the chemical smells of Doc Abe’s clinic. She gave herself a second or two to remember the sound of Doc’s snoring and how it made her feel as if she wasn’t alone in the world. But, she reminded herself, she wasn’t alone. She was now living in a house filled with women. As Mercy’s eyes adjusted, she could make out the forms of the young postulants. Deirdre lay opposite her on the only other cot in the room, and Oona was prone on a pallet on the floor between the cots. Mercy propped herself up on her elbow and whispered toward the dark form below her.

“I’m sorry you have to sleep on the floor, Oona. I should be the one down there.”

“Stop your apologizing, Mercy. ’Tisn’t your place to be on the floor. Mother made it quite clear that Deirdre and I will take turns with the cot.”

“But this is your room,” Mercy objected.

“’Tis your room too, now,” Oona told her.

Mercy loved the sound of Oona’s voice. Of all the women, Oona had the most lyrical Irish brogue. It almost sounded as if she were singing instead of speaking.

“Maybe Mother Helena doesn’t have to know if I take my turn on the floor,” Mercy offered. “I won’t tell her.”

“We can’t be lying to Mother,” Deirdre spoke up. “She’d know for sure.”

“We can’t be lying, period,” Oona said reproachfully.

“I
know
that,” Deirdre responded. “I’ve taken the same simple vows as you, Oona.”

“How come you aren’t Marys?” Mercy asked.

“We’ll both take on Mary when we begin the novitiate and choose our new names,” Oona said.

“Novitiate? Is that another name for nuns?”

“No, it’s our formal training to prepare us to take our sacred vows,” Oona said. “We will be known as novices then. I have already chosen my new name. I want to be Sister Mary Magdalene.”

“I may not be Mary,” Deirdre said quietly. “I may choose something else.”

“You can’t do that, Deirdre,” Oona said in a scandalized tone.

“I can—and I might.”

The room went quiet for a moment, and Mercy heard the soft, resigned sigh from Oona. “Your decision is between you and the Holy Father, of course. ’Tisn’t for me to judge.”

“Wouldn’t it be something, if when I remember my real name—it turned out to be Mary?” Mercy asked. Both of the postulants were quiet for a moment before Deirdre giggled.

“That
would
be something.”

“I have a younger sister named Mary,” Oona offered. “Truly. Her name is Mary.”

Deirdre giggled again. “You never told me that.”

“Does that mean if she wanted to be a sister, she would be Sister Mary Mary?” Mercy surmised, causing both Deirdre and Oona to laugh.

“My parents were never worried that one of their daughters would join an order of Catholic nuns,” Oona said, “considering they are Protestants.”

“What does that mean?” Mercy asked.

“It means that Oona grew up rich in a country that hates and persecutes Catholics,” Deirdre said.

“I don’t understand. Why would people hate you?”

“I don’t understand it either,” Oona said. “One group of people hating another because of the way they choose to live their lives and worship God. Catholics were left without rights. No property—no voice in their country. No education for their women. No hope for their future. I’m thinking it has to cause tears in heaven for sure.”

“Does that mean that your Protestant family hates you now, Oona?” Mercy asked.

Mercy barely heard Oona’s covered whimper in the dark. Then came Deirdre’s apologetic voice over Mercy’s unguarded question.

“She didn’t mean anything, Oona,” she said. “She doesn’t know any …”

“No, I don’t believe they hate me,” Oona said quietly. “I was quite young when I told them God had called me to serve. Children want to be all sorts of things when they grow up, and I don’t think they took my quest to become a nun any more seriously than my brother telling them he would be a great knight and slay dragons.”

“Ah. Dragons. Giant fire-breathing beasts that can tear you limb from limb,” Mercy said.

Mercy could hear the smile in Oona’s voice when she answered. “My brother did not grow up to become a knight and slay dragons.”

“But you grew up to become a nun,” Mercy observed.

“They tried to convince me otherwise. Year after year of arguments, but it didn’t matter. I knew God wanted me, and that was more important—
even
more important than my parents. Finally, my da and I made an agreement. I would spend one year after school contemplating my future, and then at the end of that time, if I still felt the call in my heart, I would join the church.”

“Was it hard—to say good-bye?”

“So hard,” Oona whispered. “My ma and da, two brothers and sister, Mary, took me round to all my relations for a final farewell. We knew by then that I would be joining the Little Sisters of Hope here in America.”

“Ireland is a long ways off?”

“Another world,” Deirdre said wistfully. “Across water wider than you can even imagine.”

“My family brought me all the way to the little seaside town where I was to board a ship for the journey,” Oona recounted. “We arrived the night before, and there was a dance. A lovely band played waltz after waltz, and I danced with my da round and round in a barn that had been made to look like a fairyland. My green silk skirt twirled about my ankles and my da looked so handsome and my ma wiped tears away when she thought I didn’t see. We danced until they put the fiddle away and the candles went out, and my da put a kiss on my cheek and told me he couldn’t be there the next day when I traded my silk for the black skirt of the postulant.”

“And then she met me at the ship,” Deirdre said, “with enough family there to tell both of us farewell.”

Oona laughed softly. “True enough.”

“Your family was happy to have you leave, Deirdre?” Mercy asked.

“I am the oldest of thirteen brothers and sisters. From the time I was a wee girl, I knew I was supposed to become a nun. ’Twas my ma’s dream for me. In Ireland, the best a little girl can hope for is to marry a farmer who has a big enough plot for potatoes to keep his family alive.”

“So being a nun is better than being a wife of a potato farmer?”

Deirdre hesitated. “I almost married a potato farmer.”

Mercy heard Oona’s surprised intake of breath. “You never told me that before,” Oona whispered.

“Patrick O’Leary.” Deirdre breathed his name into the dark. “Handsomest man in the county, but as poor as he was charming. My ma said ’twas like looking in a mirror of the past and seein’ my da standing there. Handsome and charming got her a house filled with hungry children and a husband who worked from sunup to sundown and a life that never changed for the better.”

“Patrick O’Leary never had a chance, did he?” Oona asked.

Mercy heard the soft rustle of the pillowcase under Deirdre’s head as she shook it in the dark. “He may as well of been the Devil himself, according to my ma. She wanted me to have an education—see the world. Have more out of life than worrying about how to feed hungry babies and wondering when the next potato famine will happen.”

“But I thought God had to call you to be a nun,” Mercy said.

“He did,” Deirdre said quickly. “He did. I just didn’t hear it as clearly as Oona.”

“Maybe that’s because He told your ma first, and then He told you,” Mercy offered.

Deirdre didn’t answer right away. Mercy heard the soft clearing of her throat and then the sound of her shifting on the cot. “Maybe.”

C
HAPTER
S
IX

Four weeks, two days, and five needlepoint lessons is how long I have been with the Little Sisters of Hope. I have learned many things since my arrival. I confess I’m worried I may go to sleep, then wake up with my new memories as gone as my old ones, and I don’t think I could stand that. So I will continue to write things down in this book just as Doc Abe told me to—so I can always remember.

Someone is stealing jams and sweets from the larder behind the kitchen. Sometimes I catch the sisters watching me. I heard Sister Constance tell Sister Ruth that things started to disappear just after a certain someone arrived. I think they may believe that I am the certain someone.

The orphans’ house is almost ready, but there are still no beds. Mother Helena says, “God meets the needs of those who trust Him completely.” She’s not worried. She says the beds will arrive when God wants them to arrive.

I despise sewing. All of it—even the needlepoint they keep trying to teach me.

Horses have their own language. Lucky talks to me, and the sisters let me take care of him. He is the one thing I love.

Mother Helena gave me beads like all the sisters wear. It is called a rosary. There are prayers that go with each bead, and honestly, I can’t remember them all. Oona and Deirdre said someday I’ll be able to say all the prayers like they do, but I’m not so sure. Sometimes when I touch each bead, I’m thinking of other things instead of talking to God. I’m thinking how good the rooms smell when Sister Sarah bakes bread. How Mother Helena looks like she’s stern and angry sometimes but then her face cracks in a smile and she is beautiful. How weeding the garden with my hands in the hot dirt makes me lonely for something.

I have three dresses Sister Gertrude made for me. The sisters all looked so relieved when I started wearing them—but I feel like an impostor. I am ashamed to admit I felt more at home in my old clothes than I do in my new dresses. I miss the scratchy wool of the shirt and the comfort of those trousers. Is there something wrong with me?

Several nuns swarmed over the orphans’ large room with a level of activity that Mercy found exhausting. It was midmorning, and they had been at the work of painting the walls since just after sunrise.

Mercy, in a pale-blue dress, stood out in the room filled with sisters in their black and white. She dipped her brush into the last of the paint in her bucket.

“How do you know that orphans will be coming?” Mercy asked.

“God has told me,” Mother Helena answered.

“In actual words?”

The other sisters stopped painting and looked at Mother Helena as she answered. “Yes.”

“Out loud and talking like we are right now?” Mercy persisted.

“No, Mercy. Not like this. It’s a different way of talking. It’s communicating in prayer.”

“So in a prayer—you heard God’s voice.”

“That’s right,” Mother Helena said, dipping her brush into a bucket of paint.

“But He didn’t say when? He didn’t say today or tomorrow or next Friday?”

“He said there will be a need and we are to meet it,” Mother Helena answered. “I take it on faith that if we don’t dillydally, neither will the orphans.”

She looked at the sisters, who had stopped painting to listen to the exchange, and raised an eyebrow. “Is everyone’s paint bucket empty?”

“No, Mother,” chorused the nuns, who went back to painting. Mercy stood with her brush dripping over the floor.