Force of Habit

Chapter 1

Dorothy Moretti woke up  one morning in 1962 on her 11th birthday  singing the Ave Maria. She sang it in Latin because that’s how it appeared in the Catholic Mass hymnal, on the top line with the English translation just below it. She disliked the English version because it was basically the “Hail Mary '' which she and her seven other brothers and sisters sped their way through fifty times a night when praying the Rosary, something they were forced to do by their strongly religious mother. Even so, Dorothy liked the Latin because it was mysterious and obscure and it took her out of the day-to-day and into their hometown church where the choir sang it during mass.  The priest wafted incense from the thurible  and she closed her eyes and inhaled the lyrics that now smelled of smoke, cinnamon, clove, pepper, frankincense, myrrh, and balsamic, 

Ave Maria, gratia plena, 

Maria, gratia plena, 

Maria, gratia plena, 

Ave, Ave, Dominus, 

etc…

This morning, incense not being available, Dorothy made her bed with fresh sheets and pillowcases. When everything was neat and tight, she wrapped her pillow in her arms and pressed it to her face. The smell of clean and purity closed out the world for a moment and put her in the church’s nave at the moment the Eucharist was consecrated; the priest’s arms forming an arch above his head with his hands cemented to the host as if it were a keystone. She did all of this quietly so that her sister Cathy, sleeping in the adjacent bed, did not wake or even stir. 

Closing the bedroom door softly, with her shoes in hand and in stockinged feet, she walked down the stairs to the kitchen where her mother was sitting. The percolator had just stopped, gasping its final steam-escaping puuuuufffffff  and Dorothy could see immediately that trouble was brewing along with the coffee. Her mother poured a serving into a cup and saucer, and stirred a single sugar cube into it with a small silver teaspoon. Later in life, it struck Dorothy that her mom  never drank out of a mug when having her coffee or tea and she came to  associate drinking out of a mug, like drinking beer,  with low-class women. 

Her mother sat down and Dorothy could see by her red face and rheumy eyes that she had been crying about something. 

“Good morning Mother”

“Good morning honey” she paused, “ I’ll bring you your oatmeal. ”

Mother always had breakfast prepared before her kids came downstairs in the morning and it was always the same: oatmeal on Mondays, Wheatena on Tuesdays, oatmeal and Wheatena mixed together on Wednesdays, soft boiled eggs and toast on Thursday, (ugghhhh!),  and, finally, happily, ecstatically,  cold cereal, either Wheaties or Cheerios on Friday, which was by far everyone's favorite to dump additional sugar on when mother wasn’t looking.

“Did you remember it was my birthday Mother,” Dorothy asked, hoping this would shift her mother’s mood off her troubles.

“Oh Dorothy!” Mother stretched out her arms and Dorothy stepped into them, flinging her arms around her neck and pressing her cheek into her hair. It worked,  she thought, breathing in deeply. She closed her eyes like she did when she sang the Ave Maria. 

They cuddled for a long pause. “Oh Dorothy,” her mother repeated,  “I’ll make you an angel food cake, my little angel!”  “Yes Mommy!” “Mommy” was the word Dorothy unconsciously shifted to when “Mother’s” mood seemed to have lifted. “I feel like the wreck of the Hesperus,” her mother said with a sigh and a laugh. This was one of her favorite sayings and Dorothy, knowing the gist of Longfellow's poem because it had been read to her many times, came to wonder whether her mother was the sinking ship, the little girl tied to the mast, or, stretching it a bit further, the father whose pride put them in the path of the hurricane in the first place. She was not too young, even at eleven, to detect a whiff of pride mixed with an unbending bearing that could make her mother, or anyone for that matter,  hurtful to themselves or others.

Chapter 2

Angelica Rossi-Moretti, was both a trial and an enigma to her children, and that never changed. She had three younger sisters who were gregarious, outgoing, and tough. Angelica was weak on the first two of these traits, but nature and nurture had doubled down on the third one. In family photos she either stared at the camera as if provoked, or appeared downcast albeit a thin smile barely supressing the moodiness beneath. She married the least obstinate of men, Joseph at seventeen. No one, least of all her husband, understood her obdurate behavior, especially concerning small things. But a few things were obvious; she was a black and white thinker;  things were right or wrong, good or bad, up or down, and once she made up her mind about anything,  that was it. Except for the commandments of the Catholic Church, she kept her own counsel, the church being the crutch that propped her up with promises of the sweet hereafter in times of depression and exhaustion, which was to say, all the time.  Joseph, who owned a gas station and feared no man, nonetheless lived beneath the shadow of his wife’s moods, her dictates, and her religious passion. His  easy going happy nature made him adored by his kids, but the target of his wife’s wrath, who in her mind after all, did one hundred percent of the childrearing, and who didn’t enjoy her role of enforcer to the children's beloved, easy to sway, perfect daddy! She drank this heavily brewed resentment with her morning coffee each day, blaming him for her kid’s faults and misbehaviors, and more important, for her own tragic life. If the family was late for Sunday Mass, she blamed him. If they didn’t like the food she served for dinner, she blamed him. If the kids were fighting, she blamed him. And worst of all, if her kids didn’t pray the rosary each night as fervently as she,  attacked him with such fury when he got home from his twelve hour work day that the kids listening in their beds with eyes open and hands covering their ears  hoped she would disappear or die so they could all move far away from their cursed house and live happily ever after with the Daddy who gave them quarters for candy on their birthdays.  

Her moods were chronic and relentless, like low,  muddy clouds during a monsoon.  She broke down two or three times a week, sitting at the kitchen table with her fists grinding into her eyes crying, sobbing, hitting herself, and screaming with rage over all the things she couldn’t change. Dorothy, shocked into another state of awareness during these episodes,  wondered if it wasn't just  possible to be really really tired and not blow up like her mother did by simply choosing not to get mad in the first place, and instead look for ways to improve her view of her life. That’s what she, Dorothy,  would do. She wished her mother could just be tired and take a nap and stop making everyone around her miserable and that was the number one thing Dorothy prayed for. Of course, she could not understand at eleven years old the spiritual, emotional exhaustion her mother faced each day. The endless clothes to wash, meals to cook, diapers to change, kids to pop out,  and on top of that, the responsibility of making her children good Catholics.  “God give me the strength to put up with you goddamn kids”, she would shriek. “If only I had a husband who would make sure we're not late for mass,” she would wail, and on and on.

Nobody ever talked back to her when she went apoplectic, especially her husband. Once he asked Father Bodner to talk to her and that seemed to help. Dorothy peeked into the kitchen from the living room and saw her mother, downcast and crying softly, holding a Rosary and talking to the priest who nodded, listened and spoke to her earnestly for two hours before blessing her when he got up to leave. This helped for a few days, but even with the church behind her she struggled. Her father spoke to the kids at times, usually when asked by the older children why he couldn’t do anything about mother and her troubles. He replied by reminding them how tired and overworked she was and that their mother worked very hard for all of them and that they must be patient and help her.  He always looked at Dorothy when he said this. He didn’t seem to understand that his wife’s unhappiness ran deeper than that, and even if he could have, he didn’t have the means to explain something like that to his children. Dorothy would pray for an end to the weeping fits, but never for her own sake. She loved her mother in spite of everything she witnessed, including the pain it caused her father and the fear and anger the younger kids experienced.  Dorothy was afraid for her mother, not of her, and loved her all the more for it because, as difficult as she could be to her family, she was most horrible to herself, and so Dorothy pitied and prayed for her more than anyone else. Nonetheless, her mother’s self-hate would not leave her daughter unscathed. In fact she would inherit it and be infected by it, for no  justifiable cause other then she witnessed it over and over until it became a part of her too. 

One afternoon shortly after finishing the last piece of her birthday cake, Dorothy walked across the quiet street she lived on, holding a quarter given by her father for her birthday. She headed over to the nearest Five and Dime store in the small shopping plaza near her home, having decided to spend it on candy. Her mom had fallen apart just before lunch and when Dorothy left the house, she was still sobbing at the kitchen table having sent the other children out to play in the yard. Dorothy had spent the better part of an hour trying to soothe and convince her mother that she would be OK, that things weren’t so bad, and that she would help her with whatever needed doing. Even though she was eleven, she had been changing diapers and cooking meals since she was nine. She babysat, wiped noses, made beds, folded laundry, gave the younger kids baths, and put them to bed, and she did it without complaining and without needing supervision either. This afternoon nothing helped though. Her mother was inconsolable, pressing her hands hard into her temples and sobbing and shaking, but never uttering a word about what was wrong, except occasionally, under her breath, the one, dreadful,  all encompassing word that Dorothy feared most: “everything.” Everything Dorothy repeated to herself. She was beginning to realize how angry and upset her mother’s blow-ups made her. Why couldn’t she say something that would get her to stop her endless fits?  Why couldn’t her mother think of one thing that was right instead of “Everything,” all things, being wrong? She had begun to wonder why her father didn't tell her, no, order her to stop the nonsense, to stop making everyone’s life so difficult, and to stop crying and hitting herself!, but that is not how her father dealt with her, and slowly, Dorothy began to grow angry at him too and at the cards she and her brothers and sisters had been dealt in life.

Dorothy stopped thinking about her mother and opened the door to the Five and Dime and walked in. She was glad to be alone. The air conditioning was on and she felt like she was at the North Pole for a moment. She walked three aisle over and one aisle back and stared at an entire row devoted to candy. She spent ten minutes sliding back and forth looking at all the variations of sweetness on display. She forgot about home, she forgot about her mother, but she remembered her father and the quarter he had given her and which she now clutched in her hand. She spent a half an hour picking her treats. On her slow walk back home, she slowly sucked on a Sugar Daddy; it was her favorite candy and was the only one that seemed to last forever, especially at the movies. A matinee with plenty of previews, and a Sugar Daddy or two was all it took for her to count a day as perfect. Or having her church all to herself, with or without Sugar Daddys. She could live alone in the sacristy, or in the vestibule or under the altar,  and her whole life’s work would be to take care of the communion wafers and the wine and the vestments and the incense. When there were services, she imagined moving to the furthest point in the choir loft  below the giant circular stained glass window that faced the main street of the town, and hiding in the shadows. With a few compromises, meaning other people, the church would be her home, and except for food and movies and Sugar Daddys, and possibly an Altar Boy friend, she would never need nor want to venture forth.

The next seven years passed slowly for Dorothy and her brothers and sister as the troubles at home with her mother   took on the character of a siege. Dorothy longed for her eighteenth birthday, at which time she would rescue herself and leave the whole wretched mess of her mother’s kitchen table breakdowns behind. Angelica Moretti turned more and more to the church for consolation and escape and would attend daily mass as often as possible, sometimes walking the mile from home to services  at 6:30am rain or shine. She didn’t drive, and didn’t want to learn to drive, so sometimes her husband would drive her there on his way to work at the gas station, or she got rides with neighbors.  Dorothy often watched her walking back home from church while washing the kids breakfast dishes; a solitary figure trudging down a road like a peasant in a Van Gogh drawing,  kerchief around her lowered head, looking for all the world like a tragic refugee or the lone survivor of a massacre. Her mother would enter through the kitchen door and, without words, take over Dorothy’s work so her daughter could eat quickly and be on time for the school bus. Dorothy would gauge her mother’s mood by the reaction, if any, to the goodbye kiss she placed on her cheek. 

When Dorothy climbed the school bus steps each morning she always glanced towards a boy named Ben who she thought would be in the movies once he was discovered. For now he was an altar boy though, so that was something. He was not too tall and not too short, he was not too gorgeous but he was in no way plain. In short; he was realistically accessible if only she were attractive to him. She thought he glanced at her once, but couldn’t be sure she hadn’t imagined it, nonetheless, that was enough for her to give in to being smitten and to try to get him to develop a crush on her too.  Usually she sat a couple of seats behind Ben on the bus and she never took her eyes off the back of his head with its wavy, shiny hair. And one time she sat on the opposite aisle from him. He was a foot away from her. When she got off the bus she was lightheaded and she realized she had barely breathed the whole time he was that close. She was fifteen at the time and she wanted him to ask her to the Junior Prom, but beyond that, the only thing she wanted was to be attractive to him, to be desired, to be beautiful. She knew she was rather ordinary but she couldn’t accept that…she wanted to be the girl in the movies to him, to everyone actually. She became a student of makeup and hair styling and all things glamor related.  Many were the nights where she washed her straight black hair and put it up in orange juice can rollers to give her hair more body. She wore them while she was doing homework, watching TV, and all night in bed, all to be ready to spend a half hour in the morning styling it to perfection. She got good at applying minute amounts of eyeshadow, blush  and lipstick that heightened her features but would slip by the constant monitoring of the nuns.  Her school uniform skirt was cut a half inch above the knee which technically was a half inch too high, but she and the other girls were always testing the limits of the school’s dress code. For all the wishing and hoping that she put into her appearance, Ben never asked her to the prom and no other boy did either. She wound up going stag with a couple of her girlfriends and they danced with each other and when they weren’t dancing they leaned against the bleacher wall, opposite the wall the boys were leaning against in the school gymnasium.

After the prom Dorothy lost interest in Vogue and Seventeen  magazines and the soap opera romances she would watch after school and during summer vacation. Over the next couple of months she ceased wearing makeup and using  orange-juice-can- rollers to add body to her hair. She became quieter at home, though no one in the family seemed to notice,  and because she was never all that outgoing anyway. She was like a candle that tapers and grows thinner as the hours go by, the flame growing finer, focused and more fragile too.  She continued her child-rearing support-staff duties for her mother, but didn’t engage with her moods. When her mother broke down at the kitchen table, Dorothy remained in the room with her, but quietly did dishes, or made lunches. If the kids were in the room she would guide them out, and they flowed along obediently following wherever her hands directed them, which was usually outside, out of earshot. Then she filled a cup and saucer with tea and placed it in front of her mother until she cried herself out. Occasionally she would respond to the outpourings with a  question  about dinner, or about her after school schedule which these days involved helping her favorite nuns with their duties and spending time with them. 

This new activity was something Dorothy looked forward to immensely. The nuns recognized the flame of faith and service to others that glowed within her and they opened up to Dorothy with stories of their own early days and formative experiences. They talked about their love of prayer, even when they were quite young, and of having had crushes on boys too, just like Dorothy had.

One day Sister Olivia and Dorothy went on a walk around the town they lived in. Sister Olivia was her favorite; she was young and pretty and nice to everyone. Even the boys listened to her and did what she asked. In the 1960’s, most nuns wore full length habits with a rosary cinched around their waists and a white, starched, collar that framed their face so completely that not even the color of their hair was discernible. The habits draped down to their shoes, or whatever they wore down there, their feet being completely hidden and giving the sisters the effect of gliding on rollers, or moving on a conveyor belt instead of walking and swaying like normal humans. 

Dorothy felt very special to be singled out to walk with a nun around town. The day was a lovely one; it was early fall and the leaves were just beginning to go crispy and drop, and the air was clean and sharp too.  Sister Olivia walked with Dorothy slowly,  her hands hidden within the large black sleeves of her habit. Dorothy wore her school uniform with its half-inch-too-high-skirt and her light blue school blazer. Sister Olivia had given her a Miraculous Medal a few weeks back, and it had hung proudly around Dorothy’s neck ever since. Once they had cleared the Church and school grounds they began to walk a little faster. Sister Olivia spoke first: “Dorothy, How are you doing? Tell me about what’s going on in your life these days. You’ve been doing well in your classes, I know that,” she smiled, her head turned towards Dorothy. “Thank you Sister. I haven’t been doing much though, just school and home and church. I get bored a lot.” She paused and looked at the Sister who was watching her carefully.  Her eyes lowered and her lips trembled a bit but she remained quiet.  Sister Olivia put her hand on Dorothy’s shoulder and finally the eleven year old spoke. “Well Sister, my Mom is so unhappy all the time. She cries and sobs and nobody including my Dad can get her to stop. I’m so tired of it and I’m so tired period from all the work I do at home to help her.” Then the dam broke, “It doesn't bother me much anymore but it scares my brothers and sisters and my dad gets the worst of it when he comes home from work all tired out and hungry. She just won’t stop shouting at him and blaming him for everything and we all walk around on eggshells. I feel so guilty because I hate her Sister, and I’m beginning to hate my father too for putting up with all of it and letting her scare everybody. She goes to church almost everyday but it doesn't seem to help at all. Maybe it even makes things worse because she cries when she’s walking home after mass - I can see her when she’s walking towards the house and the neighbors can probably see her too. I just want to run away and get out of there. No, no, I can stand it but I can’t stand how the others can't stand it, including my Dad, and it makes me feel awful that I want to leave them just for me to escape it all. I’m a bad person and God is never going to forgive me. That’s why I want to be like you…I want to be like you, a Sister.” 

Dorothy was crying and shaking softly at this point and they both had come to a stop on the sidewalk. The nun took Dorothy’s hand with both of hers and kissed it. She stood up and closed her eyes and held the rosary hanging from her waist by the crucifix and moved her lips for a few moments. Then she motioned Dorothy to accompany her to a nearby park bench. They sat down and both were quiet.  The church graveyard rose up on a hill in the distance. A breeze picked up and Sister Olivia’s veil blew away from her cheek and Dorothy could see the vaguest tendril of dark brown hair emerging from where the starched collar lifted from her temple. The Sister's face had grown white and her eyes were full. 

“Oh Dorothy”, she began, “You are telling my story as well as your own. My mother was like that too... And so are you like me.” There was a pause, then Sister Olivia snapped out a momentary reverie  and looked at Dorothy carefully. “Are you OK? You can talk to me sweet girl.” Dorothy nodded, her shaking nearly quieted.  Dorothy was one of those people whose anguish actually made her more beautiful. Even with tears and snot running down her face, her father would mist up when she scraped her knee or cried at being disciplined. And now it took all of Sister Olivia’s will to keep from dissolving herself. She spoke slowly: “It sounds like your poor mother doesn't have the strength for what she’s been called upon in life. Maybe the burden is too great and though she has wonderful children and a good husband, it’s not enough.” Then her tone of voice changed slightly. “Does she hit or hurt you or your brothers and sisters in any way?” Dorothy flinched. “No Sister, no! She  spanks the boys sometimes but she’s never mean to us,  in like, wanting to hurt us. She never spanks the girls. She yells and screams though, and it scares everybody including my Dad. I know I said I hated her but I mean I hate her because she hates herself.” Sister Olivia dipped her head and frowned. “I can see that…how you would feel that way Dorothy. Maybe you’re angry at her because you can’t change her no matter what you do.” Dorothy flinched  and an overwhelming wave of gratitude burst forth and mingled in another wave of tears and this time Sister Olivia drew her close and Dorothy surrendered to the folds of the habit that blotted out the world and smelled so fresh and pure. Her hands fell on Sister’s rosary and she clutched a handful of the beads as she wept.

That evening back at the convent Sister Olivia spoke with her Mother Superior. Even though the Sisters of Mercy were an order devoted to teaching, she requested that she be allowed to assist Mrs. Moretti at her home for five hours a week. This would be during her own free time and would not interfere with any of her duties at the school or convent. The Mother Superior, who had been one of the reasons Sister Olivia entered religious service in the first place, assented without hesitation to the request. “I always knew you were special, Sister Olivia,” she said.

Chapter 3

Sister Olivia decided to meet Mrs. Moretti on the following Sunday after mass to broach the idea of helping her out at her home. She had already spoken with Father Bodner and since he was serving an 11am mass that Sunday, which was the mass the Moretti's attended without fail, she asked him to act as an icebreaker after the service concluded.  

At 10:55 Sunday morning, hymns were already being sung and the church was nearly filled. The ushers were busy patching people into the remaining available seats and the congregation waited for the final welcoming hymn to finish before the entrance procession began. At 11 am sharp, the acolyte carrying the crucifix began the solemn walk up the central aisle towards the altar. Just as the priest, altar boys, acolyte, and reader  positioned themselves at their stations in the sanctuary,  the entire Moretti family appeared in the church vestibule. A red-faced Mrs. Moretti, and her six children, all eyes upon them,  marched up the aisle quickly, and with the help of two ushers, dispersed themselves piecemeal in the front two rows of the nave. Mrs. Moretti, who had seated herself separately from her children in the front row, stared straight ahead with undivided attention. Dorothy had managed to get a seat just behind her mother. She leaned over the front of the pew,  and whispered “Where’s Daddy?” “He’s still parking the car, now shhhhhhhh!” her mother hissed. Dorothy sat back looking left and right out of the corner of her eye to see if anyone had witnessed this embarrassing exchange. Then she wondered what Sister Olivia was doing this morning. Sister had told her she would not be attending this mass but that she would be talking with her parents and Father Bodner after the 11am service.  Dorothy flinched at that but didn’t ask or say anything. Then she turned around in the pew and saw her daddy slowly making his way towards an empty seat five rows back from her and her mother. Her siblings, all separated from each other,  were behaving well, with two of them asleep and leaning against the adult strangers sitting next to them…

Angelica’s mood soared all afternoon. Father Bodner, interceding on her behalf, had offered Sister Olivia’s help at the Moretti home. Five hours a week of practically having her home turned into a church!, thought Angelica. But more than any actual work that Sister Olivia would do (Angelica had Dorothy to help with all of that!), it was the prospect of gaining the nun’s attention and confidence. She had realized immediately, almost before the words were out of Father Bodner’s mouth, that what she wanted most was to have God's representative all to herself. Imagine, a sister, Jesus Christ’s bride,  wearing her full other-worldly habit in Angelica’s house for two hours on Wednesday and three hours on Saturday. Twice a week! Five hours! Angelica knew this meant she would always have something to look forward to; that she could survive whatever hopelessness sank over her between visits. She would have Dorothy take care of the kids and she and Sister Olivia would be together and they could talk and pray and she could pour her heart out and all would be wonderful, all would be explained, and all would be forgiven.

Later that afternoon, Angelica Moretti bustled about the house in what could only be described as an elevated mood. Her usual florid complexion had transformed into a peachy, friendly hue, though her earlobes, outliers, still sang with blood the color of altar wine. She kept to herself; she had a lot to do preparing for dinner, a celebratory banquet really, that she had envisioned on the drive home from church,  and she hummed away at her tasks continuing to be overjoyed at the miracle that occured after mass. It was as if God had gifted her with the grandest Spirit of Mary and Martha award for best front-row-Catholic-homemaker ever. In the space of ten minutes within the vestibule of the church, she  had ascended from garden variety depressed Catholic housewife, to Saint Teresa of the Andes, the patron saint of joy and happiness herself. What an apotheosis! What other explanation could there be for what had taken place that day? Had she the slightest inkling who and what waited for her in the sunny vestibule where the open church  doors invited fall leaves to breeze in like angels clad in red and yellow? It was as if the Baptismal font she walked by had bestowed upon her new life,  either that or  the end had come and she was standing outside the gates of heaven bearing the smear of Extreme Unction oil on her forehead that would gain her entrance to what lay within. Angelica Ranieri-Moretti was not at all sure that she hadn’t ascended to heaven…and so to celebrate, she, with the help of Dorothy,  prepared a special feast for that evening:  a grand banquet,  of antipasto, gnocchi, sausage and meatballs, a garden salad big enough to feed an army and baccala, the saltiest of sea dishes which would contrast nicely with the sweet red sauce she favored with her gnocchi. 

Earlier that afternoon when the family returned home from mass, Dorothy changed out of her church clothes then walked into her parents bedroom. She looked around, went over to her Father’s night table, picked something up, then left the room. She went downstairs and exited the house, carefully closing the door behind her so as not to make a sound. Her mother, for once, hadn’t asked her for help preparing dinner and Dorothy didn't offer either. She looked down at her hand and felt the quarter between her fingers that had been on her Father’s night table a few moments before. Now it was hers and she was shocked that she did not pass judgment on herself. She felt locked in some kind of new position, like the turning of a deadbolt, that squared up with her thoughts and feelings. She walked slowly towards the shopping center with the quarter in her hand determined to buy candy and not share any of it. She took little note of the fall colors lit up by the afternoon sun, nor the cobalt sky that pressed the leaves to the dirt road  like they were in a hymnal. The clouds ambled along above her, matching  her gait and sharing Dorothy’s own thoughts of wishing to be left alone. She walked with her head down and her mind  paused and crystalline. She had not been invited to participate in the meeting  with Father and Sister and Father and Mother after church that afternoon, and when her mother announced on the drive home that Sister Olivia would be a guest in their home twice a week, Dorothy sat absolutely still in the backseat, unaware of anything for several minutes, until she even forgot what she had just heard. She thought she was dreaming: that she had to get somewhere, but a fog fooled her as to which way to go. It rolled around her and muffled the sounds the way snow does when it falls at night. 

Then, just before the shopping center came into view, she heard a high pitched scream from old man Romeo’s backyard. He was the ancient, crusty Italian man in the neighborhood the kids all avoided. He lived in a dilapidated bungalow with patched screens,  chalky green paint, and a tilted Virgin Mary statue perched on a cinderblock in his overgrown front yard. The windows of the bungalow were closed and their ratty shades were pulled down. The screaming continued in the backyard for a few seconds then quieted down, then stopped. Mr Romeo, both hands covered in blood, emerged from the side yard carrying two freshly killed rabbits. Her father once told her that the old man used the rabbits in his spaghetti sauce along with grackles he trapped in boxes rigged up with a deadfall trigger. He would smoke his pipe and twist the heads off the birds, leaving a miniscule amount of actual meat and tiny bones to accompany the rabbits and spaghetti and sauce. They would be the meals he would eat all week and he would dine alone. 

Mr Romeo, waved his bloody right hand holding the slumping, dead rabbit and Dorothy put her face in her hands and started crying. She turned around and started running home, the thought of candy utterly obliterated. Then she slowed down and turned away from the road back home and headed towards church. The steeple grew larger before her and she sped up again, and what would normally have been a fifteen minute walk took only ten.  The 1pm sun glared off the  massive gray granite exterior walls of the church, hurting her eyes. Finally, she reached the great bronze doors in front of the church where she paused and tilted her head back as far as she could.  The giant circular stained glass window above her was like an enormous communion host and it glared at her too, causing her to flinch and her eyes to water.  A powerful emotion of anger and despair and hope broke over her. She pulled on the huge bronze door handle and  it opened easily and she entered the vestibule, the door silently closing behind her. The nave before her was completely empty and, with all the ceiling lights turned off, was bathed in the eternal dusk of the saints. There were votive candle boxes on the left and right side of the nave near the sacristy glowing with a low flickering crimson orange. Dorothy walked over to the one on the left because it still had a few candles that were unlit. Then she dropped a quarter into the money box below the first row of candles. She knelt down and prayed for the butchered rabbits she witnessed that afternoon and for the souls of the future-to be-trapped grackles that would land in Mr Romeos spaghetti pot. She asked, with crossed fingers, forgiveness for putting her father’s quarter in the votive candle money box. And finally, she asked that she wake up tomorrow morning and be eighteen years old.

Chapter 4

It took Dorothy many years to forgive Sister Olivia for choosing her mother over her. Truth to tell, she forgot more than forgave. Her mother and the sister enjoyed each other’s company to the point that she called Sister Olivia her second daughter. Her mood changed to the extent that she became a better version of herself, which may have meant that she became healthier and happier by five or six percent; no small amount of personal growth considering the depths of her lifelong problems. Dorothy existed on the periphery both at home and out in the world, often feeling lonely and lost. She saw herself as being incidental, optional to herself and others, but it was more of an odd, rather than painful feeling to her. A few days before her eighteenth birthday, while opening the refrigerator door to search for a treat, Dorothy suddenly pictured herself as a forgotten slice of frozen wedding cake pushed to the back of a freezer. She stared into the cold box, then shut the door quickly. She thought back on Sister Olivia and that fall-day walk they had once shared.  Dorothy had gone from being in love with the beautiful nun to seeing her as flattened down  and useless, the same as she saw most other people.  The years in the house before turning eighteen were interminable. But things did get  better for Dorothy with Sister Olivia absorbing much of her mother’s wrath and religious fervor, leaving her to lay low, a habit she continued into her adult life. She remained her mother’s daughter but except for altar duty, and mass, Dorothy’s trips to the church on her own faded from her world too. 

Sister Olivia and Dorothy never took another walk together. Dorothy’s fantasy of becoming a nun and living together with Sister Olivia in the same convent, as sisters yes, but mother and daughter too, vanished. Dorothy went on with her life, alone and independant without even a cat for company. She wanted a simple life, a cloistered life even, but in a secular setting, and that’s what she took from the world. Sometimes when she made coffee for herself in the morning and poured it into her cup and saucer and stirred a lump of sugar in with her silver teaspoon, she would tear up out of the blue and look out her kitchen window as if waiting for someone to come home. 

When her mother finally passed, Dorothy was asked to make a few remarks on her behalf at the service. From the pulpit, she could see the entire funeral party and her mother’s casket  covered with a pure white funeral pall. She began her eulogy with her eyes on her brothers and sisters down below her,  but as she spoke,  her gaze slowly shifted to the distant vestibule with its dim, massive bronze entry doors, and then up past the choir loft to the great stained circle of glass that looked back not  only at her,  but out onto the main street of the town and beyond.