Death in the convent:
Sauro, Joan
DEATH IN THE CONVENT
OUR DAYS ARE LIKE GRASS
JOAN SAURO
From the outside the three-story, grey stone structure looks imposing, something like a fortress, secure. Set upon a hill, surrounded by...
...But there was not a sound spot on the man who hung in the storm with hardly a breath in him, only the body's sagging and the horrendous heaving against the sag...
...Not a single one...
...Then the sisters in the house lock the doors to their small bedrooms...
...They say anyone who loves her life loses it...
...In the morning they complain about the caretaker...
...When you find a strength beyond what you know is in you, he says, there is the saving presence of God...
...They say the earth rumbled and broke and people fled for their lives...
...On November 1, Feast of All Saints, Sister Eva was found hanging from a rope in the shower room...
...At the end of the day, when the business office closed for good, I went out back and sat for awhile on the loading dock...
...Water forms on the rose petals...
...She sees him go into the shower and bless the empty stalls, one in particular...
...She sees us find chairs close to each other, pat each other's hands as we sit, look anxiously in the Superior's direction, hoping for some raft of relief...
...Off in the distance, Eva looked peaceful enough, riding the wide open spaces in old clothes, doing her good and useful work...
...There is not a sound spot on him as he hangs in the darkened sky...
...Only Sister Eva sees me do it...
...She sees that he does not touch the gleaming bar...
...When the celebration is over, the sisters hurry to the small cars parked close out front, all the way down to the cemetery where other sisters lie close under stones unremarkable in their uniformity...
...That day I simply went back to my typing...
...In other convents they sit and look at each other and wonder...
...Anyone who hates her life in this world will keep it for eternal life...
...Sometimes she howls and cries in the empty stairwells, runs up and down the halls looking to rest somewhere...
...He laid a white cloth over the face, turned in the edges of white cloth lining the box, closed the lid, and snapped it locked with a violence that shook the house of God...
...At the head of the cemetery and towering over it hangs the one who went before all of us...
...Some move out altogether...
...I took it home with the water still in it and hung it by its leathery straps on a clothes peg, just inside our front door...
...They say the Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy...
...So Eva had climbed onto his equipment and gradually taken over his territory...
...They say the last anyone saw of her was at the Halloween party the night before...
...Sister Eva sees it all...
...They say that Jesus Christ himself hung between heaven and earth...
...Then she went back to her hills, I went back to the business machines, and the heat of the day got thicker...
...Visitors assigned there discreetly remove themselves to another part of the house, sleep on sofas, if they must...
...Almost two winters have passed and already a new row of graves is in place...
...Once or twice a year the sisters come from far and wide to celebrate Community Day...
...Upstairs, the halls of the motherhouse are very long and dark...
...Once or twice a year we all return for Community Day at the motherhouse...
...I take one, long, slow swallow...
...This is the mother convent for the Sisters of St...
...But no words come out...
...Only this was no Christmas...
...No one needs to be reminded that Sister Eva is always there watching - pervasive, oppressive, always with eyes at the windows and doors...
...She knows too that I took the canteen out of the tractor, pried it loose from its wedge between the seat and the door...
...Before long her hair hung like strings of kelp around her face...
...They say Eva spent long hours in chapel the last week of her life...
...They say he runs the tractor into the woods at night, that he helps himself to their firewood...
...I smiled at her offer, shouted a loud thank you, and lifted up a can of juice I had brought with me...
...So much need to cover my tracks...
...many machines banging away in such a small, airless room was getting to me...
...They say it is a sin of the worst kind to take your own life...
...I had come to the motherhouse to help in the business office...
...Still, they say our days are like grass and this does seem so...
...Set upon a hill, surrounded by twenty-five acres of land, the building has every reason to be these things...
...Sister Eva is right there and her mouth is moving...
...Rabbi Kushner says that when you are at the end of your rope, you say what am I going to do now, and who on earth is there to help me...
...DEATH IN THE CONVENT OUR DAYS ARE LIKE GRASS JOAN SAURO From the outside the three-story, grey stone structure looks imposing, something like a fortress, secure...
...Jude, patron of hopeless cases...
...Maybe it was the lunch, maybe the heat of the day, but somehow Eva managed to steer the tractor very near the row of trees without my hearing her...
...I certainly did not note that on that day Sister Eva whom I hardly knew went out of her way to offer me a cup of cold water in Christ's name and that he would never forget her for it...
...They say he conquered death, once and for all...
...Well, then you write a note saying that the headaches are more than you can bear and you can't take it any more...
...She closed her eyes, opened her mouth, and took a big chunk of whatever it was heaven had to offer...
...Just under the thorns, the eye of the storm raged in the man's eye, and in the glassy eyeball was not the reflection of the storm above him, nor even the sight of his distraught mother below him...
...From head to foot.there was not a sound spot on the man's body, but the pain gathered full force and zigzagged in brilliant shafts inside his head...
...There was no rain yet over the twenty-five acres, but it was coming...
...More water fell, and when I left the shelter of the loading dock, Sister Eva was still not finished...
...In and out of the muddy tire studs she aimed the water full force, then over the metallic yellow sides, and up into the sky that was soon roaring and pouring water back down on her...
...Never have I seen so many needy people...
...They close the triple-glass windowpanes and try not to hear the cries, try not to hear the groan of the tractor running across the hill in the middle of the night...
...The wind howls and cries in the empty stairwells, runs up and down the empty halls, looking to rest somewhere, and finally rattles down exhausted in the basement...
...I did know that she was fond of outdoor work and not at all fond of the way the caretaker took care of the place...
...Just a matter of condensation, they say...
...Perhaps...
...Then I screw the cap on tight and leave the canteen half buried under the coats and jackets...
...He did this to save us...
...Now it is generally acknowledged that there are deeper problems...
...They say no matter what you say, what's done is done, and no one can say a thing for sure beyond that...
...But Sister Eva neither rests nor sleeps...
...And when someone on earth comes to help you, there too, is the saving presence of God...
...Its four wings spread out to the four winds, but the wings are battened down, grown into roots...
...The Superior stops talking...
...I have memorized every sinew and shade of those straps, every twist they make down to the metal hooks holding them to the canteen...
...Only months later did these things come to me...
...The bedrooms off them are small, enough to hold a single bed, a desk, nightstand, a sink, and next to that a narrow closet...
...Then every bedroom on every floor and wing is filled, Then the halls are just a little brighter for the talk and laughter and hasty greetings...
...I did not know her very well, which was not unusual in a community of five hundred sisters...
...His statue stands in a bed of roses out front...
...All the other close-knit chairs stiffen...
...Uppermost in the man's splitting head and clear as day in his rolling eyeball was Eva, herself hanging and heaving...
...She was, after all, at home with the tractors and snowplows and the boiler room full of tools...
...They say the souls of the just are in the hands of God...
...Then she watches me go through drawers and closets and cupboards, removing little by little the accumulation of years...
...Every morning when I come back from Mass, I stop at the clothes peg and unscrew the green metal cap that falls on a chain down the front of the canteen...
...They say she looked more peaceful in death than she had looked in the last months of her life...
...But no one dares tojook toward the corner...
...Light zigzagged across the sky, leaving rips and tears...
...One by one Sister Eva throws us a stalwart rope and pulls, pulls mightily, pulls with those sinewy arms of hers until she has got us safely across the wide, dark abyss.got us safely across the wide, dark abyss...
...All around him the graves lie unadorned, all except Sister Eva's...
...I never gave her kindness another thought...
...There, in the middle of that burnt up place, we toasted each other, two mavericks out on a hot day, while the rest of the community was lunching in a hot dining room...
...I last saw her two summers ago on a scorching July day...
...So much thirst...
...Sometime during our stay most of us find our way down to the cemetery, there to remember those who have gone before us...
...No way to distinguish the great from the small...
...And when you are at the end of your rope and there is no one to help you...
...She laughed over the running motor and lifted a canteen she had wedged between the seat and the door...
...On every one we read,' 'rest in peace,'' and we believe they do...
...There is, of course, one who can say for sure, but no one thinks to ask her...
...Only she knows I do not refill the canteen...
...They say Sister Eva may have had water on the brain...
...I saw the funeral man wheel the casket around so the lid was facing us who sat in the large, motherhouse chapel...
...But by then the rope was waiting in her bedroom...
...Did she think to hold her face under the water longer than usual...
...The wind blows and we are gone...
...One by one we approach the edge, some of us screaming, some of us calm...
...Now and then I would turn my head in the direction of the lawnmower...
...She had the thing in idle practically on my toes before I jumped...
...Some say the sky grew black as night...
...Others say it Was more like purple and red, with shafts of light...
...Sister Eva knew where to find the rope, how to measure the heft and length of it...
...It was only a five-week stint on the typewriter, but already the sound of so JOAN SAURO, C.S.J., is author of The Diary of a Jogging Nun' (Paulist Press...
...They were both of them soaked, seaworthy...
...Someone has put a plastic rose under glass in front of her small stone...
...By this time the sky had darkened and a storm was rumbling over the town below...
...But they know who it is...
...The Superior's words are guarded, compassionate, half-apologetic...
...He fussed like a housewife smoothing a drawer...
...And she knows they know...
...She watches us violate her drawers, her closet, her trunk in the basement, her work place in the boiler room, watches us search for clues, as if tools and shirts and papers could talk...
...I was flat on my back under a row of trees...
...Her articles, stories, poetry, and photography have appeared in several Catholic periodicals including U.S...
...I know every single fiber of the dirty canvas covering that canteen, the button-down flaps, the tarnished brass buttons, the grease marks like fingers gripping the curved sides...
...Catholic, America, and the National Catholic Reporter...
...There didn't seem to be much wind preceding the storm, just the steady rumble, getting very close, and Eva standing in her bare feet over by the boiler room, hosing down the lawnmower from stem to stern...
...They say the storm that day was so fierce it tore the temple veil in two and, soon after, the temple as well...
...One by one the sisters next door, across the hall, two doors down move to another part of the house...
...All anyone can say is that on the last night of her life, this daughter of Eve dunked for apples and won...
...Around the broken head there was, pressed for good measure, a thornbush wreath not unlike the kind people weave for their Christmas doors...
...Then the sisters who live in the house shut the doors to their small bedrooms and try not to hear that the wind is dying...
...She also sees that despite the blessing no one goes into the shower room, no one is inclined to move into her bedroom...
...They say in some convents sisters sit with small glasses of wine and wonder over their sister's courage...
...Now he hangs at the head of the cemetery...
...That day Eva was on the lawnmower, cutting down the acreage, sweat pouring off her face plastering the old pants and shirt to her short, stocky frame...
...She watches us bring the priest to her bedroom, watches him throw holy water enough to wash the place clean, so much water it runs down the walls and desk and nightstand, soaks itself into the white bedspread...
...She watches us gather sadly...
...Over in a vacant corner a chair is disturbed...
...At first it was said that the house was settling...
...The motherhouse is relatively new and should not be showing cracks in the sub-basement walls, zigzag lines in the floor...
...I was glad to take my lunch out on the twenty-five acres...
...The house then, when the visitors have gone, is terrifying...
...Still, I saw for myself her wide, smooth forehead with hair the color of burnt summer hills and the wind tossed lightly through, her suit of dark brown like the earth...
...She watches...
...She was on her knees dunking for apples...
Vol. 115 • March 1988 • No. 6
