The Summer of Ordinary Ways by Nicole Lea Helget

Author:Nicole Lea Helget
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Vanity and the Immaculate Heart

(SUMMER 1988)

Stained Glass

Suppose rumors spread through stained glass,

paint a tale of a mother weeping, pleading

go see the healer, Mary.

Suppose tinted panes

hide truth in grains of

a dove, flame, spirit

until light shines through and catches her dress

and beneath imprisoned blues

you see a shepherd’s cloak

and swaying grass

make the bed for virgin flesh

and hear again these desperate cries

her mother spoke, thrusting bits of gold

weeping, pleading,

go see the healer, Mary.

Suppose only the windows know

how soft,

he lay

her down.

JENNIFER WENDINGER

Jenny’s mom calls my mom one summer afternoon, and before the receiver hits the cradle, Jenny and I are dressed and packed for a religious retreat weekend with the Sisters of Schoenstatt. The previous sixth-grade school year had been rough for Jenny’s mom. Jenny had taken to blaspheming and swearing and not wanting to go to church on Sundays and writing smutty stories about the school counselor. Jenny drove her mom to the end of reason, and I suppose that having Jenny around all the livelong summer’s days without any school-day reprieve got Jenny’s mom to thinking about the nuns and the solace of a few days with Jenny out of her hair and in the care of people whose goal it was to edify young Catholic girls in the ways of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. That’s what the brochure said anyway.

All right, then, Mom says into the phone. We’ll see you there.

She puts her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, turns to me, tells me to get my nose out of the refrigerator and to go pack a bag.

Why? I ask.

You’re going to the sisters for a few days, she says to me. She takes her hand from the phone, says, Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah.

The sisters. Our school crawls with them. Sisters of every sort. Black habits, white habits, blue habits, no habits, veiled, unveiled. Sisters round, curved, and fat as baptism founts, some thin, stiff, and skeletal as a crucifix, some tall and severe as stone pillars, and some squat and fiery as votive candles. There are sisters who teach, sisters who tutor, sisters who clean, and sisters who cook. Sisters who are cruel, pull our hair and tie us to chairs for being fidgety, and sisters who are kind, put band-aids on jump-roping scrapes and star stickers on perfect tests. The only common things among them are their ages, which seem to range somewhere between fifty and a hundred years old, and their bare faces. High foreheads, white skin, parched lips, lashless eyes, gray irises. As if God had dipped them all in almond bark and set them aside to dry like a pan of Christmas pretzels.

I’m not going, I say.

You’re going, Mom says without covering the phone. Now move it.

I march to my room, find an old du±e bag and stuff it with underwear, jean shorts, tank tops, T-shirts, and flip-flops. I pack my curling iron, brush, barrettes, hair mousse, and the blush Mom had thrown away and that I had salvaged from the garbage. I grab a can of hair spray and tuck it in, too.

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