Sadness

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  JOB More than any other book in the Old Testament, the book of Job is recognized as a classic of world literature. The impatient saint, festering on his dunghill, has served as a symbol for the human condition for such diverse luminaries as Martin Luther, Immanuel Kant, William Blake, and D. H. Lawrence. Modern poets, authors, and dramatists (Robert Frost, Archibald MacLeish, Elie Wiesel) continued to find inspiration in his story. The power of the book lies not so much in its poetic language, powerful though it is, as in the directness with which it addresses a basic human problem: the righteous suffer while the wicked prosper. Job provides no easy answers, and indeed there has been endless debate as to just what answers the book does provide. But it plumbs the depths of the problem in a way that is without rival in the biblical corpus. The book consists of a narrative introduction or prologue followed by a series of poetic dialogues and a narrative conclusion or epilogue. The prologue sets the stage by telling how Job lost everything in a single day because of an arrangement between God and Satan. At first, Job’s piety is not shaken. Then three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, come to visit him. The greater part of the book is taken up with their exchanges with Job. These fall into three cycles. Job speaks first in chapter 3. Then each of the friends takes a turn (Eliphaz in chaps. 4 and 5; Bildad in chap. 8, Zophar in chap. 11). Job answers each in turn (chaps. 6–7, 9–10, 12–14). The cycle starts over in chapter 15, with Eliphaz, followed by Bildad in chapter 18 and Zophar in chapter 20. Again Job answers each in turn (16–17, 19, 21). The third cycle starts in chapter 22 with the speech of Eliphaz, followed by the response of Job in chapters 23–24. In this case, however, the speech of Bildad in chapter 25 is exceptionally short, and there is no speech of Zophar. Moreover, parts of the speech attributed to Job in chapters 26 and 27 match the arguments of the friends rather than those of Job. These incongruities have led to various proposals. A typical solution is to regard 26:5–14 as the conclusion of Bildad’s speech, and to supply the missing speech of Zophar from 27:8-23. Some verses

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  According to Deut 25:5-10, if a man died without a son, his brother should marry the widow and raise up an heir to the deceased (this is known as the levirate law). The brother could refuse but would then be put to shame before the elders of the town. The purpose of this law was to prevent the widow from marrying outside the family, thereby alienating the family property, but it also was a way of ensuring that the widow would be taken care of. There are only two stories in the Hebrew Bible that illustrate the working of the levirate. One is the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis, where Judah refuses to honor the practice and Tamar takes matters into her own hands. The other is the story of Ruth. In the case of Ruth, we are not told which brother died first, or why the other did not take the widow to wife. For the purposes of the story, the two seem to have died at the same time. Naomi plaintively tells her daughters-in-law that she has no sons in her womb that they could hope to marry. Accordingly, she urges them to return to the houses of their parents until they should find new husbands. Orpah is persuaded to do this, but Ruth persists in going with Naomi: “Where you go, I will go; and where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Ruth thereby abandons the relative security of staying with her own people in an act of fidelity to her mother-in-law and to the family of her dead husband. The first chapter ends with the return of the two destitute women to Bethlehem (which literally means “house of bread”) and the lament of Naomi that although she went away full the Lord has brought her back empty. Her emptiness is all the more striking in the context of the barley harvest that was about to begin. The second chapter introduces another character who has a crucial role in the story. Elimelech has a rich kinsman named Boaz. Naomi had not mentioned the existence of this relative to Ruth in chapter 1. The levirate law, as formulated in Deuteronomy, applied only to brothers. Boaz would not have been under any legal obligation to help a distant kinswoman, nor do the women claim anything from him as a matter of right. Instead, Ruth proposes to support the women for a while by gathering ears of grain left by the reapers. (Biblical law requires the reapers to leave something for the poor and the alien: Lev 19:9-10; 23:22; Deut

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  They admitted that rumors abounded—one being that thirty-nine children were becoming a financial burden. But my mother said she had an alternate theory, which she based on a conversation she had had with Sister Catherine in Still River, long after the separation had taken place. “She told me that her wedding night was the worst day of her life. And so she asked Hank [her husband] to agree to a life of chastity between the two of them. I think she abhorred the whole notion of sex and procreation. She was a prude at heart.” I nodded and took this in. The fact that Sister Catherine’s two children were adopted suddenly made sense. It was heading toward midnight, and I changed the subject. “What did you think when you found out that we were being beaten all those years?” I was referring to a time not long after Sister Catherine died, when turmoil roiled the Center and, in a moment of near revolution, the children told their parents about the beatings with the Big Punisher that were meted out at the whim of an Angel for infractions often created out of whole cloth. My mother rushed to answer. “We were shocked. Sister Catherine had always told us how wonderful you children were, how good, how obedient and holy. We knew you could get into trouble, but there was never an inkling of physical abuse. I feel terrible to this day and will until I die. To have trusted my children to her and then to discover the treatments they received—for that I can never forgive myself.” “Well, it was all true,” I said, not in an attempt to upset them but to reinforce to them the reality of the life that was hidden from them. “But you can’t blame yourselves. Why shouldn’t you have believed her?” The room was silent. Everyone was asleep except for the three of us. It was now close to midnight. As my parents rose from the couch and I from my chair, I asked one more question. “Did you ever think life at the Center would turn out the way it did when you first joined?” “Never, darling, not in a million years” was my mother’s reply. She spoke without bitterness but with a sense of disbelief and regret. What had she done, unwittingly? How had she and my father, wanting only the best for their five children, managed to cause so much suffering? But lugubriousness was not a state of mind for either of my parents, and I was blessed to inherit from each of them the “life will be all right” gene. As Daddy would say on many an occasion, “Don’t waste time regretting the past. There’s nothing you can do about it. Look to the future and find happiness there.” He didn’t say it as an excuse for his own decisions and actions.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  It would be a whole week before we had this special time together again. Militaristic was the best way to describe our daily routine. At seven o’clock each morning, one of the four assistant Angels, each of whom reported to Sister Matilda, arrived on the third floor and rang a bell to wake us. They rotated a week at a time in the role of Angel for the eight of us Little Sisters who lived on the top floor. My mother was not one of them. The ringing of the bell signaled that I had ten minutes to rise, put on my clothes, wash my face, and brush my teeth, all the while observing the rule of silence. When the bell was rung again at precisely 7:10, it was time to make my bed, with perfect hospital corners and the spread tucked under the pillow so that there wasn’t a wrinkle to be seen. The third clang of the bell five minutes later told me to brush my hair, braid it, and tie ribbons on the ends of the braids. When Sister Mary Laurence was the assistant Angel, she marched through the four bedrooms checking on the eight of us Little Sisters as we rushed through our tasks. In her hand she carried a hairbrush, not as an aid for a Little Sister with snarls in her hair, but as a weapon to punish a straggler. I knew I could finish in time, but I worried about Mary Catherine, whom I couldn’t observe because her bedroom was around the corner. By 7:25 each morning, the eight of us were standing in line, facing the stairwell door. In silence we descended to the second floor, where the younger Little Sisters lived. Together, hands folded as if in prayer, and with the Little Brothers following, we filed across the yard to St. Gabriel’s House, walked up the stairs to the third floor, and took our assigned places on benches in the chapel, awaiting the start of First Breakfast at 7:30. The bedtime ritual was much the same. After preparing for bed, which included polishing our own shoes, spot-cleaning our jumpers, and washing out our white blouses in the deep sink, we headed downstairs to the chapel for night prayers, which were led by Sister Matilda. Our new regime was a tortuous adjustment. When my baby sister Veronica was born only five months before the separation, I had felt like a mother myself, carrying my sister Margaret Mary (just eighteen months old) on my hip around the apartment and helping my mother by changing her diaper and dressing her. Now, the only time I could spend with my baby sisters were those few minutes of recreation each night after dinner in the yard. And that pleasure, too, was stultified when Sister Matilda announced a new rule one Saturday morning after Chapter Meeting. “From now on, you may no longer hold the hands of the younger children.” I was stunned.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  As I took my place in the front row next to my graduating classmates, I was astonished to see four of the Big Brothers seated alongside the stage in the place reserved for the graduation speaker. They weren’t just any four Big Brothers; they were Brother Francis, Brother David, Brother Athanasius, and Brother James Aloysius, the original Boston College professors whose firing back in 1949 had been a catalyst for the creation of our community. Three of them had a child graduating that day. Brother James Aloysius, who had known for months of my impending departure, caught my eye and winked, which I instantly understood, as clearly as though he’d spoken the words aloud, meant, “How’s my little princess?” The graduation ceremony began, but my mind was elsewhere. I was now a little more than an hour away from being kicked out forever. If only Sister Catherine could have made it possible to say goodbye, to explain to the Big Brothers and Sisters that although I didn’t want to be a nun, I would nevertheless always remain a dear friend and I would come and visit often. Then I could have hugged and kissed each and every one of the adults, whom I’d known since infancy. I could have promised them that I would make them proud of me. I could have assured them that I would hold fast to my Catholic faith. There would have been some scolders, but most of them would have been sweet to me—I was sure of it. I never doubted that they loved me the way I loved them. I would continue to love them even when I was gone. But such a farewell was not part of Sister Catherine’s plan. I was to be secreted away within an hour of graduation. No need to tempt the other Little Brothers and Sisters with the idea that life out in the world might be appealing. And what would happen when, over the next few days, it became apparent that I was no longer around? I envisioned the scene as, one by one, members of the community—adults and children alike—would find their way to Sister Catherine’s office to ask about me. What will she tell them? I hoped she would be kind and simply say I didn’t have a vocation. But I couldn’t trust that would happen, as she had never answered that question when I asked her. I prayed that, regardless of what she told them, my Big Brothers and Sisters would still love me, as I loved them. I knew they would be disappointed in me. My “going out into the world” would be seen as a rejection of everything they had sacrificed and fought for. And what would she say to Margaret Mary and Veronica, my little sisters, and my brother too? Would she tell them that they would never see me again? Would they miss me the way I would miss them? Again, questions I had been afraid to ask.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Bending down and touching my head, he said, “Mary Patricia, dear, how would you like to change your name?” What could I say? He was Father. Nobody said no to him. I remained silent, looking down at my shoes and still holding on tightly to my mother. I wished I could whisper to her, “Please tell him I don’t want to change my name.” But that wasn’t how things were done at the Center. Father was in charge, and he always had his way. He took it personally if anyone disagreed with him. He may have fallen off his pedestal in the eyes of the rest of the world, but within the confines of the Center, he was lord of the manor. He never let any member forget the vow they took when they joined—“obedience to Father and to whomever he may delegate.” “How would you like to be called Anastasia?” he asked. Anastasia? What kind of a name was that? I’d never heard of any St. Anastasia. I wanted no part of it. But I was trapped—the nightmare I had dreaded was unfolding, and I couldn’t run away from it. Father stood before me waiting for an answer. “She was a virgin and a martyr,” he added, as though that information would encourage me. I wanted nothing to do with martyrs. If I had to change my name, I wanted it to be for a beautiful queen, like St. Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, or St. Margaret of Scotland or St. Elizabeth of Hungary, my mother’s patron saint. Now as I stood before Father, still clutching my mother’s hand, I nodded, as I knew I had to, and the deed was done. In a flash, I was no longer Mary Patricia. I was now Anastasia. That evening at dinner, Father took me by the hand and led me to the head of the refectory. He announced to the whole community that I had a new name—Anastasia—and everyone clapped. I wanted to cry. During recreation in the yard after dinner, I pretended to be excited about the change in my name, but my outward smile belied my inner feelings. What I really wanted to do was stamp my foot and scream at the top of my lungs, “I hate being called Anastasia—I hate my new name!” But that wasn’t done at the Center. And besides, if my parents saw me upset, they’d want to fix it for me. This couldn’t be fixed. Despite the wave of name changes, family life within our apartment remained much the same. My father participated fully in the evening rituals of giving the oldest of us baths while my mother nursed the newest baby, my sister Veronica, the number five child in our family, born just two months before my sixth birthday. “Daddy, will you sing me a song?” was my nightly request.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I felt a fleeting burst of superiority whenever Sister Catherine referred to us as “the postulants.” But it quickly dissipated. In reality, the new life of postulancy was both humbling and confining. Gone were the hours of sports and games on the broad lawn behind St. Ann’s House. Gone the thrill of toboggan rides, of speeding down the endless expanse of gleaming snow, wind-made tears turning into tiny icicles on my face. As postulants, we were forbidden to run or yell or engage in any spirited activity. No longer considered Little Sisters, we were prohibited from speaking to the younger ones. But neither were we yet Big Sisters, which meant that they, too, were out of bounds. And as had been the case for years, any contact with the Brothers, both Big and Little, was forbidden. We now sat together at one table for meals, and we reported to a single Angel, Sister Colette, whose role it was to see to our personal needs. Our spiritual needs were in the hands of Sister Catherine. I hated the isolation from the rest of the community, and I dreaded the next steps in the journey ahead that I was supposed to embrace but could not—becoming a nun for life and taking vows of poverty, chastity (not that I had a clue as to what that was), and obedience. I was certain that of the eight of us postulant Sisters, I was the only one who desired a life that seemed unattainable—one of marriage and elegant clothes and parties, a lifestyle that Sister Catherine said was sinful and dangerous to the well-being of our souls. Day after day, I struggled to be accepted as a model postulant in the hopes of gaining favor with Sister Catherine, but without success. Sister Catherine found fault with nearly everything I did. I’m different from everyone else at the Center. Sister Catherine knows that. Is that why she’s so hard on me? Because she wants to change me? But she can’t. For several hours each week, Sister Catherine met with us in private, instructing us in the ways of a contemplative religious life. Sitting tall on the cane seat of the ladder-back Quaker chair in the front room, she addressed us as we sat on folding chairs in a semicircle around her. “The love of God must be above all other loves” was one oft-used expression. On other occasions she exhorted us to “fall in love with God.” She exuded a passion that I was unable to resurrect in myself. Love for me meant something different. I loved Brother James Aloysius and Sister Elizabeth Ann with far more intensity than any feeling I could generate for God or Jesus or His Blessed Mother. The spiritual world played a far back seat to my secret adoration of my parents, my intense feeling of protection for my siblings, and my exploding obsession for Brother Basil.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I shook my head and whispered back, “Nothing.” When she saw me crying the next day, she nudged me with her elbow, mouthing the words. “What’s happened? Please tell me.” I kept silent for a while, but finally replied, “I’m not allowed to tell you anything.” “What do you mean?” she asked. “Sister Catherine said I can’t tell anyone.” But Mary Catherine, now sixteen and no longer the frightened Little Sister she’d been for so many years, took matters into her own hands. The next day, she cornered me down at the barn and said, “I went to Sister Catherine and asked her why you’re always crying, and she told me that you’ll be leaving when you graduate. She said you don’t have a vocation.” She paused and then added, “I don’t want you to go.” She spoke as my younger sister, not as a postulant. She wanted me to be there for her as I had for so long. It broke my heart to realize I was abandoning her. “I don’t want to go, either,” I said, swallowing hard so as not to cry. “But I have to.” “Will you be able to come back and visit?” she asked. I shrugged my shoulders to indicate I didn’t know. That was a question I’d never dared ask Sister Catherine, too fearful of the answer. The notion of abandoning Mary Catherine, my little sister, was unbearable. I thought about the many ways she’d depended on me to help her. We’d shared so many secrets. I knew her fears, her joys, the things she couldn’t tell anyone else either because they wouldn’t listen or because they couldn’t understand. I’d eaten her meals for her when she couldn’t. She hated the color yellow, so I had secretly swapped her yellow curtains for my pink ones. I had taped a piece of black construction paper to her window to block out the light of moon, which scared her. I was the one who’d taught her to read music when she wanted to play the trombone. I did her French homework because Sister Maria Crucis, the French tutor, was so strict that Mary Catherine could learn nothing in class. The constant worry about her caused me to lose my appetite, and as my final days approached, I was barely eating at all. Although Mary Catherine had matured into a vocal and opinionated postulant, she was still frail. For several days each month, she was confined to bed, causing her to miss tutoring. On other mornings, she was allowed to sleep well past second breakfast. When I asked Sister Teresa what was wrong with her, she simply replied, “She needs her sleep.” But fifteen hours a day? I thought. I was afraid for her and felt immense guilt at leaving her. To whom will she turn when I’m gone? What will she do without me? ” [image file=Image00030.jpg] My father as Brother James Aloysius, around the time of my graduation from high school.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  But with Sister Catherine’s demise and the subsequent internal feud, it struck me that she alone had been the glue that kept nearly one hundred highly intelligent human beings together as members of a religious order. Had it been out of their respect, their fear, or their love for her? I could only surmise, but, if their blind obedience to her had been grounded in deep spirituality, why would it fall apart so catastrophically when she was gone? I thought back to the rules Sister Catherine instituted that forced separation between men and women, boys and girls. I remembered how she had told us Little Sisters that we must never trust a man. Now as the place I had called home for so long seemed on the edge of disintegration, I wondered if it wasn’t she herself who had planted the seeds of its destruction. Within days of Sister Catherine’s burial, my brother David, who was seventeen and completing his junior year in high school, and my youngest sister, Veronica, who was about to finish middle school, informed Sister Teresa (Sister Catherine’s successor as overseer of the children) that they wished to leave and move to Cambridge with my mother and me. Over the course of the next twelve months, my father decided that if his children wanted to leave, it was his obligation to accompany them into the world. [image file=Image00033.jpg] My father with my Grandmother McKinley, on the day of my brother’s graduation from high school, just hours before he left the Center as Brother James Aloysius and became once again Jim Walsh–June 1969. I myself was becoming increasingly secure in my role as a worldly woman, provided, that is, no mention was made of my past. I had a nice Irish Catholic boyfriend, a couple of years older than I was, whose family lived on Long Island. He was in the Navy and said he was hoping to attend the police academy when he was discharged. Polite and soft spoken, he was courteous to my parents when he joined us for Sunday dinners, and he was blissfully romantic when I could be alone with him. He was my first true love out in the world. We talked of marriage, and he brought me to visit his family, but something inside me kept saying, “No—you need someone who is more intellectual. You will become bored with him.” I spoke only of going to college and of all the places in the world I wanted to visit. He’d laugh, not out of disrespect but more in disbelief, as though I was too much for him, not likely to be the kind of wife he needed. When we broke up, I was hurt but not damaged—he was almost too good for me, and I too adventurous for him.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I was overcome with sadness, the same kind I had felt so many times before when good things came to an end. I don’t want this day to be over. I mused on the wonderfulness of it—a community meeting, new toys, no silence. If only it could be like this every day. 26 Our Lady’s Army 1959 S ister Catherine had an idea: Our Lady’s Army. “You will be soldiers in Our Lady’s Army,” she said, “ready to fight against all her enemies.” It was the first stage in Sister Catherine’s mission to mold thirty-nine children into a cadre of religious activists. She wrote the pledge that we memorized and said at the start of each army meeting, a Friday evening event in her office that was closed to the Angels. Standing at attention, with our right hands raised in three-finger salutes to honor the Three Persons in God, we recited: “As a soldier in the Army of Our Lady, I promise to defend her cause, which is the cause of Jesus, with my life. I promise to be ready to die for her at any moment. I promise to live for her a life so holy that I may win, in the battles against her enemies, many, many souls for her to give to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I salute her as my Queen and Commander-in-Chief. I give her the complete allegiance of my heart, and I promise her the complete obedience of my will. I promise to love Jesus and Mary above all things and to have no other love before them.” [image file=Image00023.jpg] Our Lady’s Army. For the next hour or two, Sister Catherine spoke to us about how we children had been especially chosen by God, as she put it, to save souls and if necessary to lay down our lives for the cause of the Center, the doctrine of “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.” She warned us that the enemies of the Church were all around us, and the most dangerous were the Communists. “The Communists have now infiltrated our country, and they will soon take over,” she said on one occasion. “And when they come it will be necessary for us to flee to the desert in Arizona.” Her voice took on a transfixed, almost triumphant tone, as though fleeing was a heavenly journey, the fulfillment of the will of God for us at the Center. “We will set up our community in the desert and hide there until the Communists find us. Then we will be martyred for our faith.” She described martyrdom as a badge of honor that, as soldiers in Our Lady’s Army, we must embrace. For my part, I was repulsed by the notion of martyrdom and knew in my heart, never to be admitted in public, that I would never die for my faith. If we’re supposed to embrace martyrdom, then why do we have to flee into the desert? I wondered to myself.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  As much as I loved our tea parties, it was the Sunday morning community meeting that I lived for, counting down the days as the week wore on. Then for two blissful hours, it was family time, unrestricted by rules or oversight by the Angels. “How is my little princess?” Brother James Aloysius would greet me and each of my three younger sisters. Taking my father’s hand one Sunday morning, I felt something was different. I looked at his fingers: His wedding ring was gone. “Where’s your ring?” I asked. He grew silent and paused as he did when he was thinking. Then pointing to his chest, he said softly, “It’s right here, safe and sound in my scapular.” Everyone at the Center, adults and children, wore a scapular, a Catholic tradition. A simple square of sackcloth that had been blessed by a priest, the scapular was worn next to the skin. Father had told us again and again that if you died with your scapular on, you would never go to hell. I saw that my mother’s ring was gone as well. “Is yours in your scapular, too?” I asked her. “I gave my diamond ring to the Little Infant of Prague,” she replied, referring to the statue of the Child Jesus that had been a gift to the Center in its heyday. What she didn’t tell me was that she had turned over her simple gold wedding band to Sister Catherine as requested. Apparently, my father had chosen not to obey. I found an excuse to go to the front room and stood in front of the statue of the Infant of Prague, looking up at the crown on His head. There were sparkles in the crown, but I couldn’t tell what they were. All I knew was that somewhere in that elegant crown was my mother’s ring. One person at the Center continued to wear a wedding band—Sister Catherine. From my earliest memories, I knew she had a husband, Hank, and two children, Nancy and Joey. Hank had never come to visit the Center, neither in Cambridge nor in Still River, but Nancy, who was a few years younger than my mother, had joined the community briefly while we were still in Cambridge, taking the name of Sister Nancy Marie. Before we moved to Still River, Sister Catherine, after spending the day at the Center, returned each evening to the house she and her husband owned in Waltham. After the married couples were coerced into taking vows of celibacy (shortly after the separation of children from their parents), some chose to live separately, with the single men and women, while a few, including my parents, continued to live together under the same roof. My father sought out Sister Catherine, telling her that he hoped that the families could be reunited when we moved to Still River, and she gave him assurances that it would happen. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  “I’m here to find a job in the investment business, not drive some old lady to her shrink.” “It’s just while you’re looking for a new job, princess,” he cajoled. He paused and then went on: “I told her you would call her this evening.” More to please my dad than to earn the five dollars an hour that Mrs. Taylor grudgingly agreed to pay me, and convincing myself that this position would be for a few weeks at most, I tiptoed my way into scenes of a life of both privilege and horror. The position of chauffeur lasted for less than a week, by which time it had morphed into a mélange of roles including gal Friday, confidante, friend, lunch companion, and chauffeur. Mrs. Taylor (as I addressed her) needed help to bathe and dress in the morning because her breakfast consisted of a handful of pills (her “vitamins” as she called them) washed down with several large gulps of “water,” as she described clear liquid, which was quite obviously vodka. The routine was the same each day. After extricating Mrs. Taylor from her bathtub, terrified that I might break her rail-thin bones either by holding on to her too hard or by letting her slip and fall, I helped her through what generally ended up as a two-hour dressing ritual. Stumbling her spindly legs into a pair of white linen trousers was the first step in the process. Once seated at her makeup table, she embarked on a ceremony of sorts—namely, re-creating Brenda Diana Duff Frazier, debutante of the year 1938. Between sips of what she kept referring to as water, but I knew better, she drew with a deep black makeup pencil the shape of her eyebrows, which were nonexistent, as well as her once famed widow’s peak, which was now simply part of her nearly bald head that she adorned with a jet-black wig, another replica of days gone by. By the time she powdered her face and painted on her ruby-red lipstick, she looked more Kabuki than debutante, more a caricature than a re-creation of her once exotic beauty. Despite her intense reliance on pills and alcohol, Mrs. Taylor had a bright eye, a sharp tongue, and a wickedly good sense of humor. And deep inside there was also a kind, but badly broken, heart. Snippets of stories from her past that spilled out of her as we drove each day depicted a woman who craved love because it had been denied her. For a reason I couldn’t explain to myself, likely because I was well aware that this was a temporary employment situation for me, I found her fascinating rather than revolting. After visiting her psychiatrist, who seemed oblivious to her state of addiction, she and I would lunch at the Ritz Carlton, the same meal every day—beef tongue on rye bread with mustard for each of us, accompanied by a double martini (for her alone).

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I was mentally depleted and needed to be alone to digest the enormity of what had befallen me. In the silence, Sister Catherine spoke. “We all love you, dear.” “Thank you, Sister Catherine,” I replied. As I turned to leave, my mother gave me a reassuring smile, one that seemed to say, “I’m with you, darling. Don’t worry.” I returned her smile with a fainthearted one of my own. I could muster nothing more. Closing the door behind me, I felt an unbearable sadness. This was worse than getting into trouble—this was forever. As I made my way slowly to the refectory, I felt forsaken, abandoned by the whole court of heaven. For years I had prayed to them to sustain me in times of trouble, and now they had deserted me. I was a failure. And worse, I now faced a time bomb, a countdown to my graduation, just seven months away. On that day in June, I would lose the only thing in the world that was dear to me—my home and my huge extended family. What had I done to deserve this punishment? What could I do to change Sister Catherine’s mind? That became my mission, and instinctively I prayed once again for help from heaven. S 2 A Moment of Grace 1935 ix-year-old Betsy Ann McKinley stood on the sidewalk outside the Willard Elementary School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next to her best friend, Peter Bailey, as they waited for their mothers to pick them up at the end of the school day. The sound of singing distracted them, and they turned to witness a procession coming in their direction through the park. Betsy stared at the sight of a white and gold canopy held aloft by four men who walked slowly, providing cover for a priest who wore an enormous, radiantly embroidered cape and held high a gold monstrance, as though inviting the entire world to view it. Behind the priest came the congregation, solemn and reverent, singing hymns in unison. Nuns, wearing long black habits and wimpled veils, escorted their charges—schoolchildren in blue-and-white uniforms. Following them were the parishioners, men wearing suits and hats, and women in modest dress with kerchief veils on their heads. As the procession drew nearer, an elderly lady next to Betsy got down on her knees, bowed her head, and made the sign of the cross. Betsy was mesmerized by the giant gold monstrance and the circular glass window in its center, displaying a white object. She nudged Peter and whispered, “What’s happening?” Peter turned to look at her. “It’s the feast of Corpus Christi. Aren’t you a Catholic?” “No,” said Betsy, “I’m Episcopalian. What’s the priest carrying?”

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I grabbed my woolen coat and headed for the door on my way back to St. Ann’s House to play with my new games and toys. As I turned to exit the front door of St. Therese’s House, I ran into Sister Catherine. She was in a cheerful mood as she leaned down and kissed me. “Happy feast day, my goddaughter,” she said quietly. “Did you have a lovely time at the community meeting?” “Oh, yes, Sister Catherine,” I replied, feeling in that moment that she really did love me. As I paused, reveling in the fact that she had singled me out for special treatment, she reached up to a shelf and took down her hat and pinned it to her hair, the telltale sign she was leaving the property. In an instant, I realized that Sister Catherine was going home to her family in Waltham for Christmas dinner. We left St. Therese’s House together, she to get into her car to drive home, and I to walk back to St. Ann’s House. As the afternoon turned to dusk, I watched the sun, a giant orange-red ball of fire, while it slowly drifted toward the horizon in the southwest sky. I was overcome with sadness, the same kind I had felt so many times before when good things came to an end. I don’t want this day to be over. I mused on the wonderfulness of it—a community meeting, new toys, no silence. If only it could be like this every day. S 26 Our Lady’s Army 1959 ister Catherine had an idea: Our Lady’s Army. “You will be soldiers in Our Lady’s Army,” she said, “ready to fight against all her enemies.” It was the first stage in Sister Catherine’s mission to mold thirty-nine children into a cadre of religious activists. She wrote the pledge that we memorized and said at the start of each army meeting, a Friday evening event in her office that was closed to the Angels. Standing at attention, with our right hands raised in three-finger salutes to honor the Three Persons in God, we recited: “As a soldier in the Army of Our Lady, I promise to defend her cause, which is the cause of Jesus, with my life. I promise to be ready to die for her at any moment. I promise to live for her a life so holy that I may win, in the battles against her enemies, many, many souls for her to give to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I salute her as my Queen and Commander-in-Chief. I give her the complete allegiance of my heart, and I promise her the complete obedience of my will. I promise to love Jesus and Mary above all things and to have no other love before them.” Our Lady’s Army.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  of flowered pajamas, and my extra blue jumper. As I packed, I imagined my new room in Still River. Sister Catherine had described it to us—a “cubicle” she called it, where I’d have my own dresser instead of having to share drawers and shelves with other Little Sisters. My half-filled box sat at the end of my bed awaiting the final possessions that would go in on the last morning: a coloring book and crayons, my hairbrush and comb, my toothbrush, my crucifix, and my own small copy of the New Testament with my name embossed on the front. In the hectic final days of packing, the rule of silence seemed to slip away as Big Brothers and Big Sisters alike packed and stacked boxes, loaded up vehicles, and made round trips to Still River. Meals were served on paper plates, and recreation was barely supervised. I reveled in what felt like a newfound freedom. Will it be this way in Still River? I wondered. Will we be able to run around and laugh all day with no rule of silence? Seven days, six days, five days. January 31 was almost here. It was hard to fall asleep at night. Then one evening, with only a few days to go, an announcement was made at dinner—the Big Sisters would be going on the last bookselling trip before moving day. Please don’t let it be Sister Elizabeth Ann, I prayed in my head, invoking every saint I could imagine. The following morning, I stood at my bedroom window craning my neck as the Big Sisters who were heading out on that final bookselling trip put their suitcases into the trunk of the car. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t make out who they were. I waited, knowing that the car would have to pass by my window on its way through the big red gate. As it slowly came into view, all polished and washed to a sleek black gleam, my heart sank. There in the driver’s seat was my mother. The car glided through the open red gate and turned right onto Hayes Street, as one of the Big Brothers closed and bolted the gate. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Throwing myself on my bed, I buried my head in the pillow. With the relaxation of rules, I’d been hoping that Sister Elizabeth Ann might be allowed to help me do the last bit of packing. I even imagined being lucky enough to ride in her car for the final exciting trip from Cambridge to Still River. And now she was gone. What if she couldn’t find her way? Despondent, I turned to prayer. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, please bring Sister Elizabeth Ann safely to Still River.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  known and loved since my infancy. They were all I had, the only people I’d ever known in my life, the only people I’d ever loved or cared for. Would the Big Brothers and Sisters hate me when they found out I was gone? I couldn’t bear the thought. I couldn’t bear to hurt them or let them down. Worst of all was the realization that I would be leaving my four siblings and my parents. One evening during dinner, overcome by the impact of my impending fate, tears streamed down my cheeks, a silver veil of sorrow. I didn’t try to stop them. Mary Catherine, sitting next to me at the dinner table, looked alarmed. “What’s wrong?” she whispered. I shook my head and whispered back, “Nothing.” When she saw me crying the next day, she nudged me with her elbow, mouthing the words. “What’s happened? Please tell me.” I kept silent for a while, but finally replied, “I’m not allowed to tell you anything.” “What do you mean?” she asked. “Sister Catherine said I can’t tell anyone.” But Mary Catherine, now sixteen and no longer the frightened Little Sister she’d been for so many years, took matters into her own hands. The next day, she cornered me down at the barn and said, “I went to Sister Catherine and asked her why you’re always crying, and she told me that you’ll be leaving when you graduate. She said you don’t have a vocation.” She paused and then added, “I don’t want you to go.” She spoke as my younger sister, not as a postulant. She wanted me to be there for her as I had for so long. It broke my heart to realize I was abandoning her. “I don’t want to go, either,” I said, swallowing hard so as not to cry. “But I have to.” “Will you be able to come back and visit?” she asked. I shrugged my shoulders to indicate I didn’t know. That was a question I’d never dared ask Sister Catherine, too fearful of the answer. The notion of abandoning Mary Catherine, my little sister, was unbearable. I thought about the many ways she’d depended on me to help her. We’d shared so many secrets. I knew her fears, her joys, the things she couldn’t tell anyone else

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  It would be a whole week before we had this special time together again. Militaristic was the best way to describe our daily routine. At seven o’clock each morning, one of the four assistant Angels, each of whom reported to Sister Matilda, arrived on the third floor and rang a bell to wake us. They rotated a week at a time in the role of Angel for the eight of us Little Sisters who lived on the top floor. My mother was not one of them. The ringing of the bell signaled that I had ten minutes to rise, put on my clothes, wash my face, and brush my teeth, all the while observing the rule of silence. When the bell was rung again at precisely 7:10, it was time to make my bed, with perfect hospital corners and the spread tucked under the pillow so that there wasn’t a wrinkle to be seen. The third clang of the bell five minutes later told me to brush my hair, braid it, and tie ribbons on the ends of the braids. When Sister Mary Laurence was the assistant Angel, she marched through the four bedrooms checking on the eight of us Little Sisters as we rushed through our tasks. In her hand she carried a hairbrush, not as an aid for a Little Sister with snarls in her hair, but as a weapon to punish a straggler. I knew I could finish in time, but I worried about Mary Catherine, whom I couldn’t observe because her bedroom was around the corner. By 7:25 each morning, the eight of us were standing in line, facing the stairwell door. In silence we descended to the second floor, where the younger Little Sisters lived. Together, hands folded as if in prayer, and with the Little Brothers following, we filed across the yard to St. Gabriel’s House, walked up the stairs to the third floor, and took our assigned places on benches in the chapel, awaiting the start of First Breakfast at 7:30. The bedtime ritual was much the same. After preparing for bed, which included polishing our own shoes, spot-cleaning our jumpers, and washing out our white blouses in the deep sink, we headed downstairs to the chapel for night prayers, which were led by Sister Matilda. Our new regime was a tortuous adjustment. When my baby sister Veronica was born only five months before the separation, I had felt like a mother myself, carrying my sister Margaret Mary (just eighteen months old) on my hip around the apartment and helping my mother by changing her diaper and dressing her. Now, the only time I could spend with my baby sisters were those few minutes of recreation each night after dinner in the yard. And that pleasure, too, was stultified when Sister Matilda announced a new rule one Saturday morning after Chapter Meeting. “From now on, you may no longer hold the hands of the younger children.” I was stunned.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  During the late 1970s, on one of my visits to Still River, I was astonished, as I entered the library, to find Betty Sullivan sitting in the red leather wing chair next to the piano. She caught my eye as I approached and her face lit up—as much as her doleful eyes would allow. She no longer looked decrepit. It was evident that whatever mental illness she had suffered years earlier was at least under control. For the next couple of hours, we shared reminiscences and caught up on our lives. She knew, to my amazement, that I had a career in the financial world. That pleased me—that she had made an effort to keep me in her sights. For her part, she said she had taken up oil painting and followed it with, “And I’d love to paint your portrait, and Davey’s, too,” referring to my brother’s name as a baby. “That would be wonderful,” I replied, intrigued by what she might produce. Sadly, time ran out before her dream became reality. She was ill with breast cancer at the time and succumbed before she had a session with either of us. In an act of Catholic kindness, the prioress of one of the splinter groups of Big Sisters admitted Betty into their convent on her deathbed, fulfilling a request she had been making for years—that she be allowed to rejoin the Center. She was buried in the Center’s cemetery, and the stone on her grave is inscribed: Sister Mary Elizabeth. After I had been living for several years in New York City, I reconnected with Charles Forgeron (formerly Brother Sebastian). He was single and often in need

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  In the hectic final days of packing, the rule of silence seemed to slip away as Big Brothers and Big Sisters alike packed and stacked boxes, loaded up vehicles, and made round trips to Still River. Meals were served on paper plates, and recreation was barely supervised. I reveled in what felt like a newfound freedom. Will it be this way in Still River? I wondered. Will we be able to run around and laugh all day with no rule of silence? Seven days, six days, five days. January 31 was almost here. It was hard to fall asleep at night. Then one evening, with only a few days to go, an announcement was made at dinner—the Big Sisters would be going on the last bookselling trip before moving day. Please don’t let it be Sister Elizabeth Ann , I prayed in my head, invoking every saint I could imagine. The following morning, I stood at my bedroom window craning my neck as the Big Sisters who were heading out on that final bookselling trip put their suitcases into the trunk of the car. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t make out who they were. I waited, knowing that the car would have to pass by my window on its way through the big red gate. As it slowly came into view, all polished and washed to a sleek black gleam, my heart sank. There in the driver’s seat was my mother. The car glided through the open red gate and turned right onto Hayes Street, as one of the Big Brothers closed and bolted the gate. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Throwing myself on my bed, I buried my head in the pillow. With the relaxation of rules, I’d been hoping that Sister Elizabeth Ann might be allowed to help me do the last bit of packing. I even imagined being lucky enough to ride in her car for the final exciting trip from Cambridge to Still River. And now she was gone. What if she couldn’t find her way? Despondent, I turned to prayer. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, please bring Sister Elizabeth Ann safely to Still River. 15 Still River 1958 I t was late in the afternoon when we assembled in the main house in Still River—a large, rambling, white clapboard structure that Sister Catherine named St. Therese’s House in honor of one of her favorite saints. The original part of the house had been built in 1683 and was rumored to have served as Major Simon Willard’s headquarters during the French and Indian War. On its front door was a carved wooden pineapple, the emblem of New England hospitality. Three of the four front rooms had a giant working fireplace, including an oven for baking bread. Those rooms in the original part of the house would serve as refectories where we would gather to eat our meals.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I 7 The Noose Tightens 1953 had an enormous appetite for asking questions. “What does that word mean?” was my constant refrain as I’d hover around the adults who chatted among themselves on matters far beyond my comprehension. When one of them would offer to take me for a walk, the questions bursting inside my head would spill out in a torrent. “Why are buttercups yellow?” “Why does the moon change its shape?” “What city were you born in?” “What do the cedars of Lebanon look like?” “Can you speak Italian?” “French?” “Russian?” Not a day passed that I didn’t glean a smidgeon of knowledge from the ever- ready “uncles” and “aunts” in my life. But those resources started to become restricted, as Father and Catherine Clarke imposed regulations on the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary that increasingly bordered on monastic and religious discipline. One of the first was an edict by Father prohibiting members of the community from discussing their past lives—what they did in the world before joining the Center. He referred to this rule in code, calling it PL (past life) and I felt it in a personal way. No longer could I listen with rapture to the adults’ stories that brought the outside world into my imagination—about their time in the war in Germany, Japan, the South Pacific, and Africa; how Fakhri had crossed the Atlantic Ocean on a boat and saw the Statue of Liberty when he reached America; how others came to America from Lebanon and Spain and Italy.