The Novice

So that she could not delete her post naming the bad, dead priest, Sister Dolores tucked her phone beneath her pillow then snuck the convent car through the midnight suburbs, curving cul-de-sac to roundabout until she found herself on the edge of the city, the street dark save the strobe lights punching through one tall chapel’s rose window, glass so stained that she laughed and laughed and laughed and parked, parallel, back bumper jutting into a school board election enthusiast’s driveway, oh well. Yes, someone could have learned something re: impulsive curiosity, but the lasers punched in time with seismic music, offensive and exhilarating, and inside, oh—wasn’t this cute! This chapel turned roller rink.

An adorable, inventive, resourceful generation, hers, or at least the one to which Dolores technically, numerically belonged, verified by the Botticelli-haired bouncer glancing from paperback to ID. Reading! At a bar! Yes, people were complicated, whole worlds within, and while she generally chose to feel soothed by such insights/platitudes, she could not shake the problem of what people do vs. what people say vs. what people know and believe.

Related to that, for example, the bouncer glimpsed her cream sweater and lay name and not Sister Dolores, Real Live Nun. Of the novice varietal, at last approaching those vows that would make her title permanent, not that this crowd of temporal peers present could understand long, tedious, transcendent years of prayer and study and good works, discernment and bed time—but look at this external world! Overflowing! Very loud! But forget the whiff of sacrilege and the fact that she was not supposed to be here—the roller wheels lit up. Glowed. Neon rompers, epicene thighs, and imagine—where these skated so nearly naked, others had once opened hymnals, knelt and rose. And here, through the doorway, crossed themselves with holy water, never guessing that font would someday become planter, filled with soil for a sprawling fern. A very green fern, alive, real, and Dolores whispered sorry for pinching a delicate frond, for the harsh flick of doubt that sent one small leaf to the floor. Apologized to a fern. Well. She was sorry, too, that she couldn’t take the fern’s picture to post with exactly the sort of nice, neutral caption Catechism that Sister Bernadine had specifically requested, white eyebrows undulating over her black glasses, disgruntled and assured that Dolores, by decades the convent’s youngest, made the most logical steward of digital outreach—for her own generation, a beacon; for their vocation, an IV.

So she’d worked hard to wedge their convent into the outermost orbit of Catholic Influencers, marveling at their good lighting and growing audience of spiritual wanderers, the seekers and agnostics, the lonely and the lapsed, this last an especially perfect audience for a bite-sized lesson on the purpose of holy water at the doorway, how that cold tap to the forehead recalls baptism, that sacred rebirth which, for most, occurs not long after birth-birth, the soft-skulled infant passed into the hands of a priest. Perhaps the priest named in her post, who had never touched Dolores but reportedly, allegedly, many others, and so was moved from state to state, parish to parish, eventually settling and a decade ago dying peacefully in his bed in the rectory next to the school next to the convent where Dolores had left her phone, without which there would be no such educational fern-font post, now would there? And whose fault was that? Who indeed was at fault for that?

And what was a drink adults drank in this world? Vodka Collins, which her grandmother had drunk in short glasses after Sunday mass and the vestibule bake sales, gossiping right up until they risked missing the good cooking show they watched together from the kitchen table, Grandma shaking her head or jotting down filo secrets, bopping between her chair and the sugared heat of the oven, perfecting another bestseller for the next parish fundraiser—all without ever forgetting to offer Dolores at least one maraschino cherry, fished dripping from her drink.

Not that Dolores had been Dolores then. Was she now? Would she be? So few hours before morning, Friday morning facing Bernadine, standing beside Bernadine, serving the long breakfast line, waiting for her favorite regular to order chicken noodle, feign dismay, declare more like oatmeal kitchen, cueing Dolores to laugh, scoop, stir, keep stirring, oats so quick to congeal and her wrist nicked with burns, the ecstatic ache of scraping that immense pot. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Why shouldn’t they expect her? At the bar, she ordered her Collins with two cherries, please, sorry over the fine-veined hollows under the bartender’s eyes as he uncrumpled her cash and paired her drink with a waiver, rattled off skate rental policies. Size seven, bunions squeezed but at least these LED wheels glowed purple, nearly lavender really and just the color she would have requested. Her secret purple soul. Lucky thing.

Fortunate too that she just might be graceful, capable of keeping upright on the rink now and, oh delight, rolling forward. Finding a rhythm. Foolish. Prone to pride. Maybe! But! She had downed her fluorescent vodka mistake oh so quickly, because the waiver and that sign and another all said, in bold letters, No Rink Drinks, and so what if the electropop pulpit DJ had her heart pumping, her open hands swaying high with each stride, arabesque. She had skated as a girl, whole class birthday parties, and what a mistake to have stopped! Gliding past a jet engine fan, its gust soothing her temples, she envisioned her life as a figure skater (on ice, obviously), waking early to tighten the most impressive number of axels, sweat-soaked tights and heavy (tasteful!) beading, a trail of broken toenails twirling straight to her gold medal Olympics—Norway? Certainly someplace in view of the Northern Lights, a marvel to swoon back on as a broken-bodied twenty-something retiree. One entire quarter-life dedicated, all told, to what? Seconds suspended midair? Well, they were beautiful seconds, and a person made commitments, a person practiced devotion. Diligence was a virtue! And therefore never wasted! No matter how things went awry.

For instance, for example, consider the mural looming behind the DJ, over the once-altar. Vaguely retro cartoon skaters zigzagged down a rolling city hill, growing larger, coming closer, developing striped socks, defined teeth. Dolores imagined teetering on a scaffold edge to paint a dimple. And it obviously took effort to shade so many so, so shiny eyes. It would be hard, she decided, to hear critiques of her mural—how few appreciated the trapeze work required to brighten the world for everyone, scornful just because the result, taken as a whole, smacked uncanny. Not quite right. Always eager to criticize, eh, Dolores? Did it feel good, highlighting strangers’ failings? And how had the rink filled so completely? All around her pressed swinging elbows, the stench of last year’s, last week’s, tonight’s feet. Rubber brakes near the toes, right, remembered, but how exactly did one deploy them? She flung herself against the low rink wall, unsure when she’d started to pant.

The thing was, she would rewind, if she could, and unread the list of bad priests, dead and living, accused and collected in The New Investigative Report. If she could unread the whole thing! Return to her former hazy awareness, the wary euphemisms and arch allusions of her upbringing, snaking overhead even as she developed language, and “The Scandal” and “Boston” outlines of something that had always already happened, an unpleasantness as vague and obvious and over with as 9/11, or styrofoam, and how then to even imagine imagining anything gained by further research. But, just days ago, The Report had shaken this fixed notation from history. True, the investigation had focused on one faraway state. And true, the bulk of the abuses had occurred long ago. But only now had they been compiled, these thousands of victims—dizzying. Just like Boston, again, and how could it be? Shocking, shameful, all agreed—the clerics and theologists and substackers gathered for the Online Discussion of The Report. That TradWife who tumbled custom rosaries pledged to donation twenty percent of her proceeds. That Jesuit known for hoverboard homily videos offered a ramble of disgust and sorrow from a staid leather chair. Prayers and pull quotes. Refusals to tolerate. And as Dolores had scrolled through headline stock-photo cathedrals, she’d absorbed the detail necessary for sufficient outrage. She could make sure the convent said something—offered solace!—how her heart ached already!—and little use she would be to anyone if she read the whole thing!

What a relief when Bernadine had anticipated her turmoil—had, at that first post-Report convent dinner, acknowledged the sisters’ lowered faces, the downed wine glasses, the scorched sauce. She’d led a prayer for grace and healing in all Catholics. A shared wound. One stoop-necked sister had at that shot to the kitchen to run water, bang and scrub pots and pans. Another whimpered, then coughed. Bernadine clutched Dolores’s hand and reminded those who had endured past hardships of their call to lead by example now. To keep faith, and move forward, and to Dolores, more quietly, she warned against indulging in sorrow. Lamented how, as a girl, she’d allowed the transgressions of others to distract her from urgent work. Still, she agreed the convent could not remain completely silent, and after dinner, she led Dolores to her office and copied down a psalm. Post this and nothing else, if you can help it. But, ah, I trust you. She offered a Nutter Butter from her desk drawer. These poor people must believe they’ll find peace if they bankrupt every parish, she sighed, eating her cookie frosting first, no more any time for nonsense as she stared down the free breakfast budget, ever measuring the pantry’s growing needs against dwindling funds, and when Dolores took over the soup kitchen—one day, as promised—she would see for herself: They’ll never report who we feed.

And there the whole issue might have ended, had Dolores let it. But no, of course she couldn’t leave well enough alone, couldn’t resist the persistent tug of some unsettled feeling, self-righteous, short-sighted, and now here she was, standing semi-point with a stomachache and a second drink, and despite her wherewithal to whisper-screech Less vodka? over the bass, it turned out she did not even want the cherries, nor did she wish to further burden the bartender by returning the drink or abet a drugging by leaving it on some table—about that danger, child-she had been thoroughly and repeatedly warned. And as she lined up to instead empty her glass down the toilet, she missed her grandmother’s goodbye kisses, the perfumed powder on her soft, sunken cheeks. There was a sweet musk along the bar’s back wall, and Dolores fought the urge to rest against it as she did the convent dormitory’s pristine hallway, and used as she was to sharing a single bathroom, waiting behind two boys (in bell bottoms!) was new.

And when the two boys entered the bathroom (together!), she sucked a sour ice cube from her glass and watched as, across the room, six delighted co-eds contorted into a confessional-turned-photobooth. Dolores considered just how horribly twenty-something so many saints and prophets had been when they’d made their important choices. Young and certain. Young and aflame. Shouldn’t she remember the feeling? Never giggling and squirming like her classmates at weekday mass, and thinking how lonely they must really be, what could fill them if not the blue green orange beams streaking overhead, the high windows and cushioned wood under knees. During communion, she would watch Sister Bernadine limp her squeaking sneakers up the long aisle, her eyebrows merely gray then, her calves swollen in bandage beige tights. Always she tried to glimpse the gold cylinder cradled in Bernadine’s palms, a locket for the wafers she would deliver to the homebound or hospitalized, this nun who touched death without fear and heard snickering children without shame. Loving kindness. Discipline. Did it matter who blessed those wafers? Where there was suffering, a person could offer comfort, a deliberate choice and always the right one. Good distinct from evil. Dolores had always known the difference, felt the compass pointing from her sternum. Innate, by instinct. Or else, when had she learned?

She felt a flush of rage and crunched another ice cube, aware now of a girl in the bathroom line behind her. Short pigtails and glassy eyes. Apologies then to the muralist. The lights flashed off and on in the bathroom. How many bell bottoms did it take to—ungenerous thoughts. Dolores pictured the boys fast asleep, mouths soft and slack, unembarrassed by the drool on their pillows. She let her heart fill for them. For the young adult in pigtails, sing-giggling to herself as she skated in place, rear bouncing against the wall and green wheels humming, whirr bop, whirr bop. Dolores’s blood throbbed in her toes. She touched the wall with her elbows. Sticky. She was here. She was okay. Let any blisters keep her alert serving breakfast, filling bowl after bowl, she’d survive. Late as it was now, it made perfect sense to sleep in the car. Let Bernadine yell at her for that disobedience, for her street clothes, get it all out of her system before they returned to the convent, which Dolores certainly would. All of her socks were there. That apricot tree outside her window. Blossoms and birds and on her nightstand, the psalm in Bernadine’s handwriting, which Dolores had, that first post-Report night, carefully typed and posted and read, trying to understand. If you, Lord, kept a record of sins/ Lord, who could stand?/ But with you there is forgiveness/ so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

Well. Not so far off from Dolores’s initial Report response, and yet—hmm. Perhaps not the psalm she would have chosen. Hmm hmm hmm. Curious, the sensation of her rib cage like two fists, tightening. But she was no expert in psalms, had never witnessed a scandal unfolding. And it had confused her, how in just a few days, her sisters’ stony dinners had given way to their favorite impressions of Carol Channing. Striking too, the TradWife’s sudden focus on abuse in public schools. And the Jesuit calling for nuance, repeating that the statute of limitations protected both the accusers and the accused. And these were good points, perhaps, thought Dolores. Good people. Still, something within her twisted, repelled. What didn’t she understand?

And so earlier this very night, she had read The Report. Front to back. Interviews and facts, accounts of horrors, victims’ parents, victims’ children, and somehow, at the end of this report focused on a faraway state, the priest fed and buried right here. And no, she could not understand the words words words, the laughing and moving on, the parameters of “all in the past.” Flickering in and out, one epiphany: The Report was both that old terrible thing and another. Real pain alive. Right now. Happening.

Whirr bop, whirr bop. Toenails. Screen tap, hymnal page and bile, creeping, retreating, and no ice left in her cup and the bathroom door closed forever. Which would the sisters notice first: Dolores missing, or the car? Phone turned off under her pillow. Imagine the calls. Sneaky, selfish—her parking too, the car could be towed. Where would sleep then, she wondered. If she couldn’t return to the convent, then where would she go?

“Hey, you okay?”

Pigtails stood at her shoulder, titling a round face.

“You look sort of… shiny? Shinily sad.”

Dolores prepared to lie. “That’s kind of you, but I’m—”

“I’m about to pee on my skates, personally, thanks to”—here, she yelled—“certain some-people taking forever in the bathroom.”

“You’re welcome to go in before me,” said Dolores.

“Oh my god, you absolute angel,” Pigtails trilled, still loud, twisting the loose ends of her hair into two fat ringlets. “I’m jealous that you pull off that sweater. Ivory? I’d look like an egg, but you’re luminous. Like, meadow fresh. A nice birch.” She flapped her arms toward the two men, finally emerging. “I knew it, I said it—the pair of you. Wait, where did you get temporary tattoos?”

One man sniffed. “Daniel claims they glow in the dark.” The moon on his bicep did not.

Daniel jerked to examine his shoulder. “They worked after the bonfire!”

“Forest. Night. Psilocybin.”

Pigtails said, “You’re welcome for taking your Saturday close.”

“No restaurant talk here, I beg,” Moon-man said. “Cease. Be free.”

Daniel raised his chin, pinched his nostrils, a harsh sniff.

Pigtails pointed. “You promised to share.”

And the boys promised again, but next week, after a refill, and it dawned on Dolores that drugs had been done—perhaps there was a speck of drugs right there, on Moon’s beard. Oh, not an ideal situation. Getting worse now, as Pigtails flipped off the boy and pushed Dolores into the bathroom, locking the door behind them and promising that if drugs were what Dolores was up to, there was no pressure to share—just, yeah, on principle, she wanted the boys to know that she knew when they lied. Fool me once, and etc. She didn’t latch the stall door when she peed.

Dolores rinsed her cup. Filled it. Drank. Tepid water, and no soap when she washed her hands. She would leave once she was ready—she didn’t owe Pigtails, who was now asking if Dolores had come to the bar on her own, which was very cool, going out alone, tons of people honestly had fun by themselves, and Dolores should have fled right then, when Pigtails answered her phone. Except the impulse to vanish made her worry that ejecting from trouble might become a habit—a loop of temptation, relief. That’s how one of the breakfast regulars had explained addiction. Most of them liked talking to her. Trusted her. All those litanies of abuse. Would they trust her still? Prefer Sister Dolores to a stall door’s framed flyers for DJ Swervo Saturdays and a hotline for substance abuse? Graffiti frowns in the 1-800. Pigtails slurring, “No, you don’t have to pick me up.” Ungenerous thoughts, and maybe Dolores was not wise enough to revere forgiveness. Maybe she belonged in this bathroom, wobbling through murky puddles of (please be) beer.

On the phone, Pigtails said, “You don’t have to come get me.” Her words clipped, her tone swooping—strange. “Yeah, no, you’re so great and nice, I’ll figure it out.” Flushing. “But they are being nice.” Humming. “Your sleepy voice is the sweetest. What—nothing! Also, if so, then they won’t be just work friends—oh shush, kisses, sweet dreams.” She lurched from the stall, hand extended. “Cross my heart completely, I am so good.”

Dolores caught her before she cracked her face on the sink.

“Okay, don’t tell my girlfriend—you don’t know her—but like do not tell that I am a little messed up? From the littlest bit? She—no—what matters: I needed my own party favors, for once, for myself. I’m the magician of my own life. Oh my god, it’s really started, and I am so, so sorry I don’t have enough to share.” Pigtails stroked the wrist hems of Dolores’s sweater. “Luckily you don’t really seem like—but it’s rude to assume—so—hmmm…”

“Take deep breaths.” Dolores anchored Pigtails to the basin. “How do I seem?”

“Everything seems wonderful.” Pigtails was all pupils. “Except don’t let me look in the mirror, oh my god. But I’m fine, this isn’t my first—ugh, I hate rodeos. Dusty. All those hooves. Hey, can you fix my lipstick? I can’t look.”

Dolores caught the pink tube miraculously extracted from tiny denim shorts, determined to do her best when it opened to reveal a small brush, nothing like the lipstick she recognized. She lifted Pigtail’s jaw—in the light, the soft skin had faint wrinkles, smile lines. All these years flossing her teeth while wizened nuns crowded the mirror, it had been easy to find something grotesque in her full features, to forget life’s many stages. The flesh weak. Ever transfigured. She’d drawn the cupid’s bow far outside the lines—an uneven, pouting alp.

“You’re powerful because you’re tender,” Pigtails cooed.

How embarrassing, to be praised as she wanted. “It’s kind of you to think that.”

“You need music. Me too.”

Dolores followed because Pigtails held her wrists, and because the girl was drugged, the place wild, blatant glares from the bathroom line and a whooping horde skating in the dark. Had the lights been this dim before, or did the night have some secret layers, the early hours unfolding to stretch on and on. Dolores was so tired. On the rink, Pigtails managed to hold herself upright—in fact, she zipped pretty quick, leaving Dolores to follow, passing from pulpit DJ to mural, photo confessional to bar to rose window, a harrowing stretch of bare wall. Pigtails’ colleagues waved as they skated past—holding rink drinks! (!) So boo to them and their broken tattoos. When the bar finally closed, as it had to, Dolores would drive Pigtails home, yes, and now the reason they’d met was so obvious! So perfect! To invite the girl along to serve breakfast—to come face-to-face with her future, stripped of counterfeit elation. What a dangerous path she was on!

Pulpit DJ again and Dolores was falling behind. It was dark, and there was a girl wearing braids, too long to be Pigtails, who was right there across the rink, passing the bar, and in the gap between skates and soup kitchen, Dolores would track down an open store and buy the girl a big bottle of water and a granola bar, maybe gum. Coffee. One of those crossword puzzle books the sisters squabbled over. Tokens of good will, which she should offer if she wanted to return to the peaceful days at the convent, which was of course what she wanted—to return, forget the post, make her vows, pledge her whole life to the Church, the window, the bare wall, and here was Pigtails, scooting a slow moon walk. Quite the skater, then. Neat.

The music paused, and the DJ yelled, “Reverse, reverse!” The mass of skaters twisted, and Dolores, slow to understand the mechanism of turning, staggered upstream. But she could do it. She could handle this, passing under the window. Learning horrible things. Her grandmother’s gnarled knuckles going red as she kneaded butter, golden raisins, caraway seeds. Loaves of St. Patrick’s Day soda bread cooled on the table, the counters, racks propped on kitchen chairs, and her grandmother grit her teeth as she sprinkled each with sugar. Plastic wrap tied with tinsel shamrocks and green ribbon, ends curled with a scissor flick. Over and over, precise and pretty ringlets until her hands spasmed and she taught Dolores how to angle the blade. Brought Dolores along to deliver bread to the neighbors, the teachers, school secretaries and priests, saving the most perfect loaves for the nuns, who deserved nice treats more than anyone. Imagine all that sacrifice for the love of others—and listen. Grandma on the convent porch, pointing. They must still have dove’s nests in the eaves.

The music stopped and started. The skaters flipped. Spilling drinks. DJ, horrible music and mural, breastbone collapsed and fists seizing, no space and no Pigtails and what was the point. How did the rest say grace as though their worlds hadn’t changed? Always so dramatic, Dolores. Chasing the wound. Choosing that name! How her grandmother would have teased her. She would have been proud. Never one for the news, she would have missed The Report, just like she must have missed all the coverage of Boston, way back then. Probably the parish bulletin had welcomed new priests. Announced departures. Not a nice subject for Sunday gossip. God. Dolores was stumbling. Why did she have to know?

“Oh no,” Pigtails said, somehow taking her elbow, hoisting her up. “Oh, poor baby. You’re okay. You’re okay. Breathe.”

She led her through the squealing crush, off the rink to the photo booth and its empty, anchored seat.

“That stupid game. Somebody could get trampled,” Pigtails said beside her, closing the thick curtain. “I completely needed a break.”

And they sat together in the little box, almost quiet, very still. Pigtails counted to five for each inhale, each exhale. Their breath synchronized. Their reflections warped on the blank screen. Pigtails produced a neat roll of dollars. With great patience, she smoothed out bills for the machine. As the screen flashed on, Dolores wondered what the girl was like as a waitress. Smiling for tips, sweeping under the tables, greeting favorite regulars without one thought of divinity. Rent and phone bills. A whole type of life. Dolores imagined its near future, this night repeated, when Pigtails would pay for her skates—whatever color, surprise her—and find photos in the pockets of her shorts. What a strange, silly night, she would think, assured she was right, that good times happened here. Why had she picked that heart border! And this girl crammed beside her, in the beige sweater, half-smiling—who was she?

Kathleen J. Woods is the author of the pornographic novel White Wedding, published by FC2. Her work has been featured in Electric Literature, LitHub, Western Humanities Review, The Racket, and others. She’s currently writing a fictional biography mired in seances, self-help, and tempting epiphanies. Find her at kathleenjwoods.com.