Use Me by Elissa Schappell

Author:Elissa Schappell [Schappell, Elissa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061882166
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The next morning, after Matins, despite the heat and the oppressive humidity and my sore, swollen feet, I strolled the convent grounds, hoping that Mother Saint Agnes—or, better still, Sister Corrina—might approach me and, while attempting not to stare at my pregnant bulge, inquire into the nature of the spiritual crisis that had brought me to the convent. I watched the sisters working in the vegetable garden, bent over in the garden pitching zucchinis as big as small dogs onto the grass, but didn’t dare approach. In truth, I didn’t like seeing the sisters outside the convent walls. Earlier I’d watched Mother Saint Agnes and a few other nuns pile into a big blue station wagon and drive off into town. I imagined them with windows rolled down and veils blowing, singing along with some Christian rock station. I wanted them inside, under glass, in diligent pursuit of salvation, not groceries and feminine-hygiene products.

I ventured down to the water. A peeling white boathouse filled with rubber rafts and rust-stippled beach chairs, long out of use, perched on the narrow, rocky beach. Off the dock was a rickety metal ladder, corroded badly at the joints, leading down into the water. For half a second, standing there on the dock, sweat dribbling down my spine and under my breasts, I wished I’d packed my bathing suit, but despite what my father suggested, I was here to pray, not swim. I would not swim, if only to demonstrate to God, and my father, that I meant business.

Instead I lumbered back up the steep hill to the convent and collapsed into a chaise set up under a maple tree. Sleepy from the heat, I was content to meditate on the grassy hillock that rose up behind the convent, obscuring all but a thin blue slip of the Sound licking the shoreline. Off to the side, Mother Saint Agnes was prowling around the perimeter of the convent, gardening. Every few feet she’d stop and frown and examine the rosebushes and dahlias, her lips moving as if she were praying or perhaps cursing the plague that was destroying her plants. Then she’d draw her veils up tight over her mouth and nose like a desperado, cross herself, and spray the bushes with an old-fashioned tin bug mister. As I drifted off to sleep, I wondered what Billy was doing, if he missed falling asleep with his hand on my stomach. I thought about how it seemed a trick the way the baby was drawn to his touch like a moth, as if even in utero it knew its father.

The following afternoon, I took refuge on the library sofa. Again Mother Saint Agnes was outside studying the ragged chew holes and brown scale that was attacking her bushes, but this time she wasn’t treating her plants. Instead, a six-pack dangled from her fingers, and every few feet she’d crouch down and pour some beer into the grass. Or that’s what it looked like.

Instead of investigating, I lounged

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