Five Readings for Sister Anne - 1/1
Five Readings for Sister Anne
Rating: R (non-explicit references to abuse & non-consensual incest), Gen
Characters: Sister Anne (OFC), Missouri Moseley
Word Count: 4,018
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general angst. Sorry about the holes.
A/N: Door 5 in my SPN Advent Calendar
Prelude to 4.22 Lucifer Rising
Thanks to secret-seer for enhancing yet another banner (it looks amazing)
Setting: Detroit, MI (1964-1967), St Mary's Convent, Ilchester, MD & Lawrence, KS (1972)
Summary: Sometimes people ask questions they already know the answers to.
Sometimes the world doesn’t end in fire, brimstone, or rain, but rather with the tear of an envelope.
God likes to keep you guessing.
December 1964
She’d woken in one of those rare heightened states, the kind you usually only get on the first day of school holidays when the possibilities are endless and you feel if you could just reach out that little bit further you could touch everything. On a day like that you can’t possibly stay inside no matter what the weather. Sneaking out of the house on the sad edge of dawn was easier now than it had been when her mother was alive. It was the only thing that was.
The winter sun did little to brighten the gritted street slush of Detroit. Nothing like the home they’d had to leave, this city kept closing in on her, all those people rushing, needing more, just being, yelling, pounding, wanting in. Days spent in wasted dreams of walls of quiet comfort so far from the kerosene-smoked ones that watched her fall. Virginia tilted the familiar weight towards her, an easy kick to the stand, and they were ready to go, out onto those black roads with nothing in her head but the wind. Away, away, faster, get away. Out, out, out. Head enshrined in black, the Cross of Lorraine blazing above the visor.
Long minutes hunched over the helmet with her sister’s paint set, carefully tracing the double arms in white and waiting impatiently for the symbol to dry before bringing out the long-hidden bottle of clear nail varnish. ‘Won’t have any daughter of mine making herself up to be a trollop!’
She could block it out with her mind, but then she would wake grinding her teeth as her body remembered. Other times she felt so light she thought she’d be able to float away from it all. Headaches, hot, cold, never just normal. She bent over the handlebars of her father’s old Gecko, the one gift she wasn’t ever going to give up or regret. ‘Out of the house, you shameless slut with your shadows and paint!’ Scrubbing herself raw as he stood over her in the bathroom. Close. Don’t watch me. Don’t look. Don’t …
So much silence when it happened - why did she crave more when she spent all her spare time roaring down through the streets? His hand on the back of her head, pushing her mouth back and forth, rocking into her. Help me. She had to get away. Leave her family?
It was either that or the streets. God’s whore? She didn’t think so. No matter what he called her. She couldn’t do it. And it wasn’t safe; Shirley wasn’t the first or the last. Drink hadn’t helped, and she’d kept trying. Only one choice left. Should she do this? Am I strong enough to go? Would she get the chance?
The sound of the engine throttling back grated on her. Too little time away. She turned back into their street to the sight of the mailman hauling his satchel down the sidewalk ahead of her. Today, today, today …
‘Morning, Miss Virginia.’
‘Mr Boudry,’ she replied, flipping the visor back to smile at him as she idled her baby along next to him. Don’t break the spell, or the dream will just vanish again. Just another day. Today, today, today … Pretend it’s just another day.
‘Going to have to get me one of them bikes,’ he said yearningly, and not for the first time. ‘Just think how quick I be then on my rounds of Paradise.’
‘Faster than me,’ she forced herself to joke. Nothing to fear. Harmless. Does his job and walks away. Keep smiling.
‘Ayuh, reckon so,’ he nodded sagely. ‘I’d be on duty, see? No one get in my way then.’
‘The mail must get through,’ she agreed, trying not to mock his seriousness as she kept her eyes firmly off the mailbag. Quiet. Move softly through the world. Don’t ask. Virginia veered around another pile of furniture stacked precariously next to a lamppost. Another white bird a’flyin. Today, today, today … ‘I’d better not keep you then, and I’m running late to get my Daddy’s dinner ready to take to the plant.’ Who knew when Ford came a ‘courtin to their church that this was how they would all end up?
‘You’re a good girl, Miss Virginia. Not many girls do that now. Not since the war. Too busy getting jobs.’ He shook his head, baffled by that mystery.
Virginia didn’t flinch, she’d had too much practice. ‘My Mamma, God rest her, taught me right.’ Good girl. ‘You gonna be good tonight, Virginia Anne?’ She was glad that her mother had gone to God so far ahead of her. Gone the day her little sister started high school. So proud she’d been, raising them both alone after their father had followed the lure to Detroit. Gone before she got to see her girls go safe into the world, too soon to see where they’d ended up without her protection. I love you, Mamma, but please don’t you be watching.
‘Your mother would be proud,’ Mr Boudry said surely. ‘So I guess it’s no matter if I give you your mail a few minutes early. That ain’t exactly policy, but don’t think it hurt no one.’
Virginia did her best to stop breathing while he rummaged in the satchel. Today …
‘Here it be.’ He grinned at her. ‘Gives you a minute to read your letter private like.’
Virginia didn’t correct the assumption. Let him think it was from a man, which it was in a round about kind of way she thought wryly. Only man for me now.
She didn’t see the mailman leave, too engrossed in holding the letter. Going to have to open it, she told herself. Open or shut wouldn’t change the message. Holding it, she knew what it meant. Her chance to run. Save yourself, then the rest of the world.
Her answer. It was, today …
‘Love letter?’ called a voice ahead of her.
Virginia didn’t have to look up from the opened letter to know from whom that impertinent query came. She did anyway. Bane of the street, Missouri sat grinning on the steps leading up to the boarding house. Hair in stubby plaits, knees grazed from yet another schoolyard brawl she was way too old for now, and a grin as big as Creation. No matter what anyone said, no one kept Missouri Moseley down, or out of their business for long, and it wasn’t like half the neighbourhood hadn’t spent a lot of energy trying. Virginia had given that up within months of meeting her, Missouri was a force of nature, and much too nosey for her own good, especially on days she was playing truant from school.
‘Letter?’ Missouri prompted with fake politeness as she idly laid some cards on the bricks in front of her.
‘It’s nothing,’ she answered automatically camouflaging the truth more out of habit than need. It wasn’t like the teenager couldn’t see right through her anyway.
‘Do you want to take that nothing and sit a spell?’ Missouri asked lifting an irritatingly ironic brow. She moved over on the step and patted the space next to her. Subtlety was not ever going to be something Missouri was going to grow into.
“Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them.” Virginia filed that disquieting advice away; it was only Missouri after all. She thought of the letter and the future and tried not to swear in her head. She wasn’t very successful at the attempt, or at not letting her hands shake as she awkwardly shuffled the deck she was handed. The one thing she’d avoided doing for so long now, and here she was giving in, today of all days.
‘Pick a card, any card,’ Missouri joked as she received them back and spread them in a horse-shoe between them. ‘You got your question in mind?’
No.
Missouri touched her gently on the back of her hand. ‘We don’t have to do this now.’
Yes I do. ‘I’m ready.’ Who am I?
Missouri turned over the first card. ‘I see … a journey,’ she said began softly.
In the end, the cards said a lot, and nothing that would make a difference. Her decision was right there in front of her. Stay for her family, or leave for herself, only the latter offered a glimpse of hope. Away, away, away …
Virginia jumped to her feet, unable to sit still as that thought fractured inside her.
‘How much?’ She’s going to shake me down.
Missouri looked up at her, grinning no longer. ‘First and last readings are free. In between? Well, you won’t need all that money for God will you?’
April 1967
‘Do not think I am sitting here to pass the time away telling you that religious life is poetry.
It is the roughest kind of prose.’
Justina Reilly, IHM (b. 1848)
Virginia-no, I’m Anne now- aligned the quote neatly in the top left corner of her otherwise empty cork noticeboard. Words to keep in mind, she just wished her old friend had chosen something a little more up-beat to include in what she’d called her “Welcome to Chastity” surprise gift pack. Day One of her brave new life and she needed all the positive reinforcement she could get. Not that she wasn’t firmly convinced of her choice; it was merely that, here and now, in her narrow bedroom at the Chicago motherhouse, she could feel those earlier doubts creeping back.
Anne thought about how they had finally led her to committing them to paper, and enclosing it with her fee. A question. Something for Missouri to “read.” She’d carried that letter around for a week before she’d got the courage to post it. Looking at her friend’s idea of an answer she shook her head in amazement.
The packet of condoms at the bottom of the box was definitely not going on display. It went against all her teaching to throw anything away though, so she tucked it back in the furthest corner of the top shelf of the mostly empty closet and tried to put that thought from her. Typical of the sender to add a wicked reminder to the mix, Missouri was never going to be anything other than a young sixties radical. Guaranteed, she was back in Detroit right now sporting embroidered bell-bottoms, more cheesecloth than a dairy, and beads in her Afro, while she protested her vocal big heart out for peace. On the latter at least, they were in complete harmony.
From what she’d gathered from the rare home-town papers that were slipped her way, and Missouri’s random acts of actual correspondence, the “conflict” wasn’t the only thing the neighbourhood was up in arms about.
Anne remembered all the trouble as a child back in the 50s when they razed Black Bottom for I75. Her Momma always said they ripped the heart out of the community that day, and she was right. Mayor Cavanagh might be a good man; he’d certainly had the integrity to march down Woodward with King in ’63, but she didn’t think he was going to be able to stop the unrest now. She’d spent so long praying, and worrying for her friends, and up until yesterday even … No, don’t think about him. What was the point, especially now? She’d made her break. Couldn’t go back, whatever the reason. Not when she’d worked so hard to get to a place within herself where she didn’t let the memories reach out to her every night.
If she was honest with herself she’d admit that the past was still there, religion had just given her the tools to build bigger walls around it. Maybe she’d have to re-open that door one day, just … not now.
July 1967
Now expectations were pushing her back before she was ready. And he was there-waiting.
She had permission. Dispensation. She let that word roll through her head. After three years you think she’d be used to rules and regulations. It was undoubtedly harder than joining the army. You made your choice; you lived with God, and were content. Naturally, living that decision was even harder than it looked. Serenity wasn’t something that came automatically with the habit.
The other novices talked wistfully about home in scattered whispers during endless chores. If you were lucky, they let you go back once or twice in a lifetime. Anne had never wanted that kind of good fortune. She’d embraced the rigidity, joyous in the knowledge that every second of every waking hour was planned for her. She felt cherished. Something she hadn’t realised she’d missed since her mother died. Having someone tell you what to do for your own good. There was a freedom in that. Her thoughts were hers, and she kept her own counsel. Mother Superior’s perfect postulant. She’d heard the whispers. No one ever liked the class pet, that rule held was adhered to more strongly in convents than it ever had been at school.
Thoughts … You can’t get me here. Not now. Anne pulled her rosary free and knelt on the flagstones to pray for guidance. Stay and keep it all locked away, or do her Christian duty and go back if only for a few days and confront her sins, and the person who had sinned even more against her?
Another church. Not her own, not any more. Familiar faces, though she only looked for one. There, sitting alone in the front pew, the one left for close friends, no one with her. I should … Anne couldn’t do it, no matter how hard she needed that stalwart presence beside her; too hard to fight tradition, especially for her. She could hear the whispers beginning as she forced her legs to carry her forward along the aisle of the unequally packed church. Right side for well-wishers. Don’t look. The last thing she wished him was well. Gone, gone, gone. Moving through the buzzing parishioners to take her seat, also alone but on that tellingly empty left side-why wasn’t that sinister?
Tears for the dead. From the noise level everyone was crying. Except for the two of them. Brave. Stoic. She was glad she had no false tears to give; that would have been the ultimate hypocrisy. I’m safe. Her hymnbook soaked up her feelings. She couldn’t work out where the sudden tears were coming from. Can’t hurt me no more, Daddy. She cried for the things she’d lost. Not the father, but for her childhood. Gone, and about to be buried in a cheap pine box. She bowed her head and cried. Bowed her head and didn’t stand up and scream it all out. Because he wasn’t gone at all. He was still inside her, haunting her like a ghost. He was in every man she saw on the street, in their eyes when they looked at her and turned away. She bowed her head. ‘Our Father who art in Heaven …’
‘Tea?’ Anne couldn’t help slanting up an eyebrow, something even an old-fashioned wimple couldn’t disguise.
Missouri shot one right back at her. She’d always had the best aim on the block, slingshots, darts, or looks; nobody did irony better than Cat Moseley, particularly now she’d grown into the attitude. ‘You think you’re going to get served hooch in that get-up?’
‘It’s not a get-up! It’s my … oh,’ Anne subsided with a grateful laugh into the back booth of the diner on Hamilton.
‘So, that’s a no to alcohol?’ Missouri asked rhetorically as she ordered them a pot of tea each.
‘Haven’t had any since I left,’ Anne said shortly, the brief moment of amusement over with that reminder of the past, and what had brought them together today.
‘You want to scream, go right ahead,’ Missouri advised. ‘Won’t be anything they haven’t heard from women in here before.’
‘Even a nun?’ Anne couldn’t help asking as she added the unexpected indulgences of white and one to her tea. Oh, the things she’d given up for God. Sugar was even harder than alcohol some days.
‘The times they are a-changin,’ Missouri sang back to her.
Anne tried not to pout, because music was another one of those things. The playlist in her convent didn’t include Bob Dylan. ‘Bi…,’ she started to retort automatically because, my, she’d missed Missouri pushing her buttons. ‘Ah … I guess they are,’ she finished sheepishly.
‘Virginia Anne! What would your Mother Superior say?’ Missouri managed a fine line in shocked when it suited her.
‘She wouldn’t believe a word of anything you might tell her. She thinks I’m a saint.’ Anne tried for smug, but Missouri, as always, saw straight through her.
‘Like that is it?’ Missouri asked. ‘You still think this is worth trying that hard for?’
‘It’s holding me together,’ Anne replied finally. ‘I need the structure, without it I just go … crazy. I don’t like the person I am then. This way I might get to do some good. Help people who …’
‘Who’ve been hurt like you?’ Missouri was sitting there, seeing everything inside her, and for once, Anne didn’t mind.
‘You knew?’ All right, there was a touch of bitterness there, because she thought she’d been better at hiding it back then. But this was Missouri after all.
‘Knew something was wrong. Didn’t know what, then,’ Missouri said abruptly. ‘I was a kid. Saw more than I should have, and less than I thought. I’m sorry I couldn’t …’
Help? Me too. ‘I was older. It was my problem to fix. I just didn’t know how, so I ran away.’
‘You ever consider joining the circus instead? Certainly would have been easier, and a lot more fun than a convent,’ Missouri joked.
Anne realised she’d been turning her cup and saucer around in increasingly faster circles for the past few minutes. Missouri didn’t need that sign to know when to ease off though.
‘Drink up,’ Missouri advised. ‘It’s going to be a long time, you might as well get one more question out of me.’
Should I ask?
‘Damn straight,’ Missouri said, patting her briskly on the hand before reaching out to turn her empty cup upside down on its saucer.
Did I do the right thing?
‘You want to be a bit more specific?’ Missouri asked as she righted the cup to peer interestedly inside.
‘I …’
‘Just kidding you,’ Missouri said with a grin.
Huh. Same old Missouri even without the pigtails. ‘Tea leaves? Since when do you do tea leaves? Shouldn’t you wait till you’re a little old lady to try that routine?’ Anne couldn’t fit something as retro as reading tea leaves with the modern rebel in front of her.
‘Tasseography, please.’ Missouri muttered absentmindedly, rotating the cup in her hands to swirl the dregs into their final pattern.
‘Tasseography, then.’
‘First thing my grandmomma taught me,’ Missouri replied softly. ‘Truth is the how doesn’t much matter. It’s just a prop. Helps the customer more than it helps me.’
‘Oh,’ Anne replied a bit faintly. Obviously the convent hadn’t purged everything out of her. Here she was all these years later, well on her way to becoming a nun, and she was letting someone tell her the future. Some things never changed.
She leaned forward. ‘So?’
‘Impatient much? You can do your rosary while you wait if it will make you feel more comfortable,’ Missouri said with a disparaging snort that was at odds with the understanding in her eyes.
Several minutes passed before she settled back in her chair frowning, cup still idly clasped between both hands.
‘What did you see?’ Anne found herself asking much too eagerly.
‘Flames,’ Missouri said soberly. ‘Fire, and pain, and damnation. But not … not here … not now … I …,’ she’d put the cup down and was rubbing one hand through her explosion of curls in confusion. ‘No, that’s here too, or at least fire and death, but … not … all of it. Something else got mixed up. I don’t know what.’
‘Me?’ Anne had to ask. She knew she wasn’t going to like the response.
‘No.’
‘I did the wrong thing?’
‘No. I was thinking about the … fire,’ Missouri said looking out through the windows into the peaceful street outside. ‘That wasn’t about you, none of it, though for a minute I could feel this thread, an echo as if you walked past the room behind me, but that’s probably me getting a bit turned around. I just got an overload of something and you happened to be here at the time, that’s all.’
Anne tried to look serene and calm, because it was about time she got that face down pat, but she didn’t think she did that good a job at it because Missouri was gathering her belongings and ushering her quickly up and towards the register the whole time smiling at her reassuringly.
‘So, I’m going to be fine. I made the right choice?’ It wasn’t perhaps the perfect time to ask her old friend something selfish right after she’d seen something that obviously had shaken her to the core.
Missouri turned back to her while they waited patiently to pay the bill. That glance told Anne that Missouri had her number too. She knew Anne was trying to distract her out of the vision and back to something safely mundane like, “Did I do the right thing?”
‘You said it yourself. It’s holding you together, and you need it. But there’s one more thing you do need.’
‘What?’ Anne asked cautiously.
‘Your Daddy’s motorbike. You’d best cash in your Monday train ticket, grab that old bike you love so much and ride on out of here. Don’t worry about your Mother Superior; you’ll manage her fine. You’re going to need that bike for many years to come. So you get on that bike, and you get out of town tonight and don’t worry about me, or fires or nothing. That’s my problem now.’
Anne shut up and didn’t argue the unexpected order. One thing she’d learned growing up with Missouri was that when Missouri Moseley said git, you got.
Missouri nodded with satisfaction before swinging around to say to the waitress, ‘This one’s on the penguin.’
January 1972
Maryland was a long way from Lesotho. She’d lived this life before, then another one-freer, harder-in Africa, and here she was completing the circle. The only thing missing was her old bike.
Missouri had been right, as always, she had needed it. On a few occasions it had been all that had kept her alive over there. It always had been her preferred means of escape, and she missed it now, selfishly wishing it wasn’t lying bleeding rust onto a hillside in yet another war zone.
It seemed that no matter where she went, death always seemed to follow, if it wasn’t already there before her. But that was true of everyone.
Sister Anne wanted to believe Ilchester was different. That St Mary’s could be the sanctuary she yearned for after all she’d experienced. But she’d come to realise that was something you had to find within yourself.
Am I on the right path?
October 1972
In Lawrence, Kansas, Missouri Moseley sat looking down at the spread of cards arranged on the table in front of her. It was hours before she could bring herself to wrap them in the silk cloth that had been her grandmomma’s, and put them away for the last time.
She didn’t weep for her friend then, as she had done in 1964, after her first reading for Virginia Anne, and in all the years between.
These tears she shed for the others, those who’d fallen, and those whose fall was yet to come.
For further Christmas stories and graphics see my: SPN Advent Calendar
Rating: R (non-explicit references to abuse & non-consensual incest), Gen
Characters: Sister Anne (OFC), Missouri Moseley
Word Count: 4,018
Disclaimer: The characters are sadly not mine. I’m just sticking pins into Winchester dolls for the purposes of general angst. Sorry about the holes.
A/N: Door 5 in my SPN Advent Calendar
Prelude to 4.22 Lucifer Rising
Thanks to secret-seer for enhancing yet another banner (it looks amazing)
Setting: Detroit, MI (1964-1967), St Mary's Convent, Ilchester, MD & Lawrence, KS (1972)
Summary: Sometimes people ask questions they already know the answers to.
Sometimes the world doesn’t end in fire, brimstone, or rain, but rather with the tear of an envelope.
God likes to keep you guessing.
December 1964
She’d woken in one of those rare heightened states, the kind you usually only get on the first day of school holidays when the possibilities are endless and you feel if you could just reach out that little bit further you could touch everything. On a day like that you can’t possibly stay inside no matter what the weather. Sneaking out of the house on the sad edge of dawn was easier now than it had been when her mother was alive. It was the only thing that was.
The winter sun did little to brighten the gritted street slush of Detroit. Nothing like the home they’d had to leave, this city kept closing in on her, all those people rushing, needing more, just being, yelling, pounding, wanting in. Days spent in wasted dreams of walls of quiet comfort so far from the kerosene-smoked ones that watched her fall. Virginia tilted the familiar weight towards her, an easy kick to the stand, and they were ready to go, out onto those black roads with nothing in her head but the wind. Away, away, faster, get away. Out, out, out. Head enshrined in black, the Cross of Lorraine blazing above the visor.
Long minutes hunched over the helmet with her sister’s paint set, carefully tracing the double arms in white and waiting impatiently for the symbol to dry before bringing out the long-hidden bottle of clear nail varnish. ‘Won’t have any daughter of mine making herself up to be a trollop!’
She could block it out with her mind, but then she would wake grinding her teeth as her body remembered. Other times she felt so light she thought she’d be able to float away from it all. Headaches, hot, cold, never just normal. She bent over the handlebars of her father’s old Gecko, the one gift she wasn’t ever going to give up or regret. ‘Out of the house, you shameless slut with your shadows and paint!’ Scrubbing herself raw as he stood over her in the bathroom. Close. Don’t watch me. Don’t look. Don’t …
So much silence when it happened - why did she crave more when she spent all her spare time roaring down through the streets? His hand on the back of her head, pushing her mouth back and forth, rocking into her. Help me. She had to get away. Leave her family?
It was either that or the streets. God’s whore? She didn’t think so. No matter what he called her. She couldn’t do it. And it wasn’t safe; Shirley wasn’t the first or the last. Drink hadn’t helped, and she’d kept trying. Only one choice left. Should she do this? Am I strong enough to go? Would she get the chance?
The sound of the engine throttling back grated on her. Too little time away. She turned back into their street to the sight of the mailman hauling his satchel down the sidewalk ahead of her. Today, today, today …
‘Morning, Miss Virginia.’
‘Mr Boudry,’ she replied, flipping the visor back to smile at him as she idled her baby along next to him. Don’t break the spell, or the dream will just vanish again. Just another day. Today, today, today … Pretend it’s just another day.
‘Going to have to get me one of them bikes,’ he said yearningly, and not for the first time. ‘Just think how quick I be then on my rounds of Paradise.’
‘Faster than me,’ she forced herself to joke. Nothing to fear. Harmless. Does his job and walks away. Keep smiling.
‘Ayuh, reckon so,’ he nodded sagely. ‘I’d be on duty, see? No one get in my way then.’
‘The mail must get through,’ she agreed, trying not to mock his seriousness as she kept her eyes firmly off the mailbag. Quiet. Move softly through the world. Don’t ask. Virginia veered around another pile of furniture stacked precariously next to a lamppost. Another white bird a’flyin. Today, today, today … ‘I’d better not keep you then, and I’m running late to get my Daddy’s dinner ready to take to the plant.’ Who knew when Ford came a ‘courtin to their church that this was how they would all end up?
‘You’re a good girl, Miss Virginia. Not many girls do that now. Not since the war. Too busy getting jobs.’ He shook his head, baffled by that mystery.
Virginia didn’t flinch, she’d had too much practice. ‘My Mamma, God rest her, taught me right.’ Good girl. ‘You gonna be good tonight, Virginia Anne?’ She was glad that her mother had gone to God so far ahead of her. Gone the day her little sister started high school. So proud she’d been, raising them both alone after their father had followed the lure to Detroit. Gone before she got to see her girls go safe into the world, too soon to see where they’d ended up without her protection. I love you, Mamma, but please don’t you be watching.
‘Your mother would be proud,’ Mr Boudry said surely. ‘So I guess it’s no matter if I give you your mail a few minutes early. That ain’t exactly policy, but don’t think it hurt no one.’
Virginia did her best to stop breathing while he rummaged in the satchel. Today …
‘Here it be.’ He grinned at her. ‘Gives you a minute to read your letter private like.’
Virginia didn’t correct the assumption. Let him think it was from a man, which it was in a round about kind of way she thought wryly. Only man for me now.
She didn’t see the mailman leave, too engrossed in holding the letter. Going to have to open it, she told herself. Open or shut wouldn’t change the message. Holding it, she knew what it meant. Her chance to run. Save yourself, then the rest of the world.
Her answer. It was, today …
‘Love letter?’ called a voice ahead of her.
Virginia didn’t have to look up from the opened letter to know from whom that impertinent query came. She did anyway. Bane of the street, Missouri sat grinning on the steps leading up to the boarding house. Hair in stubby plaits, knees grazed from yet another schoolyard brawl she was way too old for now, and a grin as big as Creation. No matter what anyone said, no one kept Missouri Moseley down, or out of their business for long, and it wasn’t like half the neighbourhood hadn’t spent a lot of energy trying. Virginia had given that up within months of meeting her, Missouri was a force of nature, and much too nosey for her own good, especially on days she was playing truant from school.
‘Letter?’ Missouri prompted with fake politeness as she idly laid some cards on the bricks in front of her.
‘It’s nothing,’ she answered automatically camouflaging the truth more out of habit than need. It wasn’t like the teenager couldn’t see right through her anyway.
‘Do you want to take that nothing and sit a spell?’ Missouri asked lifting an irritatingly ironic brow. She moved over on the step and patted the space next to her. Subtlety was not ever going to be something Missouri was going to grow into.
“Do not turn to mediums or seek out spiritists, for you will be defiled by them.” Virginia filed that disquieting advice away; it was only Missouri after all. She thought of the letter and the future and tried not to swear in her head. She wasn’t very successful at the attempt, or at not letting her hands shake as she awkwardly shuffled the deck she was handed. The one thing she’d avoided doing for so long now, and here she was giving in, today of all days.
‘Pick a card, any card,’ Missouri joked as she received them back and spread them in a horse-shoe between them. ‘You got your question in mind?’
No.
Missouri touched her gently on the back of her hand. ‘We don’t have to do this now.’
Yes I do. ‘I’m ready.’ Who am I?
Missouri turned over the first card. ‘I see … a journey,’ she said began softly.
In the end, the cards said a lot, and nothing that would make a difference. Her decision was right there in front of her. Stay for her family, or leave for herself, only the latter offered a glimpse of hope. Away, away, away …
Virginia jumped to her feet, unable to sit still as that thought fractured inside her.
‘How much?’ She’s going to shake me down.
Missouri looked up at her, grinning no longer. ‘First and last readings are free. In between? Well, you won’t need all that money for God will you?’
April 1967
‘Do not think I am sitting here to pass the time away telling you that religious life is poetry.
It is the roughest kind of prose.’
Justina Reilly, IHM (b. 1848)
Virginia-no, I’m Anne now- aligned the quote neatly in the top left corner of her otherwise empty cork noticeboard. Words to keep in mind, she just wished her old friend had chosen something a little more up-beat to include in what she’d called her “Welcome to Chastity” surprise gift pack. Day One of her brave new life and she needed all the positive reinforcement she could get. Not that she wasn’t firmly convinced of her choice; it was merely that, here and now, in her narrow bedroom at the Chicago motherhouse, she could feel those earlier doubts creeping back.
Anne thought about how they had finally led her to committing them to paper, and enclosing it with her fee. A question. Something for Missouri to “read.” She’d carried that letter around for a week before she’d got the courage to post it. Looking at her friend’s idea of an answer she shook her head in amazement.
The packet of condoms at the bottom of the box was definitely not going on display. It went against all her teaching to throw anything away though, so she tucked it back in the furthest corner of the top shelf of the mostly empty closet and tried to put that thought from her. Typical of the sender to add a wicked reminder to the mix, Missouri was never going to be anything other than a young sixties radical. Guaranteed, she was back in Detroit right now sporting embroidered bell-bottoms, more cheesecloth than a dairy, and beads in her Afro, while she protested her vocal big heart out for peace. On the latter at least, they were in complete harmony.
From what she’d gathered from the rare home-town papers that were slipped her way, and Missouri’s random acts of actual correspondence, the “conflict” wasn’t the only thing the neighbourhood was up in arms about.
Anne remembered all the trouble as a child back in the 50s when they razed Black Bottom for I75. Her Momma always said they ripped the heart out of the community that day, and she was right. Mayor Cavanagh might be a good man; he’d certainly had the integrity to march down Woodward with King in ’63, but she didn’t think he was going to be able to stop the unrest now. She’d spent so long praying, and worrying for her friends, and up until yesterday even … No, don’t think about him. What was the point, especially now? She’d made her break. Couldn’t go back, whatever the reason. Not when she’d worked so hard to get to a place within herself where she didn’t let the memories reach out to her every night.
If she was honest with herself she’d admit that the past was still there, religion had just given her the tools to build bigger walls around it. Maybe she’d have to re-open that door one day, just … not now.
July 1967
Now expectations were pushing her back before she was ready. And he was there-waiting.
She had permission. Dispensation. She let that word roll through her head. After three years you think she’d be used to rules and regulations. It was undoubtedly harder than joining the army. You made your choice; you lived with God, and were content. Naturally, living that decision was even harder than it looked. Serenity wasn’t something that came automatically with the habit.
The other novices talked wistfully about home in scattered whispers during endless chores. If you were lucky, they let you go back once or twice in a lifetime. Anne had never wanted that kind of good fortune. She’d embraced the rigidity, joyous in the knowledge that every second of every waking hour was planned for her. She felt cherished. Something she hadn’t realised she’d missed since her mother died. Having someone tell you what to do for your own good. There was a freedom in that. Her thoughts were hers, and she kept her own counsel. Mother Superior’s perfect postulant. She’d heard the whispers. No one ever liked the class pet, that rule held was adhered to more strongly in convents than it ever had been at school.
Thoughts … You can’t get me here. Not now. Anne pulled her rosary free and knelt on the flagstones to pray for guidance. Stay and keep it all locked away, or do her Christian duty and go back if only for a few days and confront her sins, and the person who had sinned even more against her?
Another church. Not her own, not any more. Familiar faces, though she only looked for one. There, sitting alone in the front pew, the one left for close friends, no one with her. I should … Anne couldn’t do it, no matter how hard she needed that stalwart presence beside her; too hard to fight tradition, especially for her. She could hear the whispers beginning as she forced her legs to carry her forward along the aisle of the unequally packed church. Right side for well-wishers. Don’t look. The last thing she wished him was well. Gone, gone, gone. Moving through the buzzing parishioners to take her seat, also alone but on that tellingly empty left side-why wasn’t that sinister?
Tears for the dead. From the noise level everyone was crying. Except for the two of them. Brave. Stoic. She was glad she had no false tears to give; that would have been the ultimate hypocrisy. I’m safe. Her hymnbook soaked up her feelings. She couldn’t work out where the sudden tears were coming from. Can’t hurt me no more, Daddy. She cried for the things she’d lost. Not the father, but for her childhood. Gone, and about to be buried in a cheap pine box. She bowed her head and cried. Bowed her head and didn’t stand up and scream it all out. Because he wasn’t gone at all. He was still inside her, haunting her like a ghost. He was in every man she saw on the street, in their eyes when they looked at her and turned away. She bowed her head. ‘Our Father who art in Heaven …’
‘Tea?’ Anne couldn’t help slanting up an eyebrow, something even an old-fashioned wimple couldn’t disguise.
Missouri shot one right back at her. She’d always had the best aim on the block, slingshots, darts, or looks; nobody did irony better than Cat Moseley, particularly now she’d grown into the attitude. ‘You think you’re going to get served hooch in that get-up?’
‘It’s not a get-up! It’s my … oh,’ Anne subsided with a grateful laugh into the back booth of the diner on Hamilton.
‘So, that’s a no to alcohol?’ Missouri asked rhetorically as she ordered them a pot of tea each.
‘Haven’t had any since I left,’ Anne said shortly, the brief moment of amusement over with that reminder of the past, and what had brought them together today.
‘You want to scream, go right ahead,’ Missouri advised. ‘Won’t be anything they haven’t heard from women in here before.’
‘Even a nun?’ Anne couldn’t help asking as she added the unexpected indulgences of white and one to her tea. Oh, the things she’d given up for God. Sugar was even harder than alcohol some days.
‘The times they are a-changin,’ Missouri sang back to her.
Anne tried not to pout, because music was another one of those things. The playlist in her convent didn’t include Bob Dylan. ‘Bi…,’ she started to retort automatically because, my, she’d missed Missouri pushing her buttons. ‘Ah … I guess they are,’ she finished sheepishly.
‘Virginia Anne! What would your Mother Superior say?’ Missouri managed a fine line in shocked when it suited her.
‘She wouldn’t believe a word of anything you might tell her. She thinks I’m a saint.’ Anne tried for smug, but Missouri, as always, saw straight through her.
‘Like that is it?’ Missouri asked. ‘You still think this is worth trying that hard for?’
‘It’s holding me together,’ Anne replied finally. ‘I need the structure, without it I just go … crazy. I don’t like the person I am then. This way I might get to do some good. Help people who …’
‘Who’ve been hurt like you?’ Missouri was sitting there, seeing everything inside her, and for once, Anne didn’t mind.
‘You knew?’ All right, there was a touch of bitterness there, because she thought she’d been better at hiding it back then. But this was Missouri after all.
‘Knew something was wrong. Didn’t know what, then,’ Missouri said abruptly. ‘I was a kid. Saw more than I should have, and less than I thought. I’m sorry I couldn’t …’
Help? Me too. ‘I was older. It was my problem to fix. I just didn’t know how, so I ran away.’
‘You ever consider joining the circus instead? Certainly would have been easier, and a lot more fun than a convent,’ Missouri joked.
Anne realised she’d been turning her cup and saucer around in increasingly faster circles for the past few minutes. Missouri didn’t need that sign to know when to ease off though.
‘Drink up,’ Missouri advised. ‘It’s going to be a long time, you might as well get one more question out of me.’
Should I ask?
‘Damn straight,’ Missouri said, patting her briskly on the hand before reaching out to turn her empty cup upside down on its saucer.
Did I do the right thing?
‘You want to be a bit more specific?’ Missouri asked as she righted the cup to peer interestedly inside.
‘I …’
‘Just kidding you,’ Missouri said with a grin.
Huh. Same old Missouri even without the pigtails. ‘Tea leaves? Since when do you do tea leaves? Shouldn’t you wait till you’re a little old lady to try that routine?’ Anne couldn’t fit something as retro as reading tea leaves with the modern rebel in front of her.
‘Tasseography, please.’ Missouri muttered absentmindedly, rotating the cup in her hands to swirl the dregs into their final pattern.
‘Tasseography, then.’
‘First thing my grandmomma taught me,’ Missouri replied softly. ‘Truth is the how doesn’t much matter. It’s just a prop. Helps the customer more than it helps me.’
‘Oh,’ Anne replied a bit faintly. Obviously the convent hadn’t purged everything out of her. Here she was all these years later, well on her way to becoming a nun, and she was letting someone tell her the future. Some things never changed.
She leaned forward. ‘So?’
‘Impatient much? You can do your rosary while you wait if it will make you feel more comfortable,’ Missouri said with a disparaging snort that was at odds with the understanding in her eyes.
Several minutes passed before she settled back in her chair frowning, cup still idly clasped between both hands.
‘What did you see?’ Anne found herself asking much too eagerly.
‘Flames,’ Missouri said soberly. ‘Fire, and pain, and damnation. But not … not here … not now … I …,’ she’d put the cup down and was rubbing one hand through her explosion of curls in confusion. ‘No, that’s here too, or at least fire and death, but … not … all of it. Something else got mixed up. I don’t know what.’
‘Me?’ Anne had to ask. She knew she wasn’t going to like the response.
‘No.’
‘I did the wrong thing?’
‘No. I was thinking about the … fire,’ Missouri said looking out through the windows into the peaceful street outside. ‘That wasn’t about you, none of it, though for a minute I could feel this thread, an echo as if you walked past the room behind me, but that’s probably me getting a bit turned around. I just got an overload of something and you happened to be here at the time, that’s all.’
Anne tried to look serene and calm, because it was about time she got that face down pat, but she didn’t think she did that good a job at it because Missouri was gathering her belongings and ushering her quickly up and towards the register the whole time smiling at her reassuringly.
‘So, I’m going to be fine. I made the right choice?’ It wasn’t perhaps the perfect time to ask her old friend something selfish right after she’d seen something that obviously had shaken her to the core.
Missouri turned back to her while they waited patiently to pay the bill. That glance told Anne that Missouri had her number too. She knew Anne was trying to distract her out of the vision and back to something safely mundane like, “Did I do the right thing?”
‘You said it yourself. It’s holding you together, and you need it. But there’s one more thing you do need.’
‘What?’ Anne asked cautiously.
‘Your Daddy’s motorbike. You’d best cash in your Monday train ticket, grab that old bike you love so much and ride on out of here. Don’t worry about your Mother Superior; you’ll manage her fine. You’re going to need that bike for many years to come. So you get on that bike, and you get out of town tonight and don’t worry about me, or fires or nothing. That’s my problem now.’
Anne shut up and didn’t argue the unexpected order. One thing she’d learned growing up with Missouri was that when Missouri Moseley said git, you got.
Missouri nodded with satisfaction before swinging around to say to the waitress, ‘This one’s on the penguin.’
January 1972
Maryland was a long way from Lesotho. She’d lived this life before, then another one-freer, harder-in Africa, and here she was completing the circle. The only thing missing was her old bike.
Missouri had been right, as always, she had needed it. On a few occasions it had been all that had kept her alive over there. It always had been her preferred means of escape, and she missed it now, selfishly wishing it wasn’t lying bleeding rust onto a hillside in yet another war zone.
It seemed that no matter where she went, death always seemed to follow, if it wasn’t already there before her. But that was true of everyone.
Sister Anne wanted to believe Ilchester was different. That St Mary’s could be the sanctuary she yearned for after all she’d experienced. But she’d come to realise that was something you had to find within yourself.
Am I on the right path?
October 1972
In Lawrence, Kansas, Missouri Moseley sat looking down at the spread of cards arranged on the table in front of her. It was hours before she could bring herself to wrap them in the silk cloth that had been her grandmomma’s, and put them away for the last time.
She didn’t weep for her friend then, as she had done in 1964, after her first reading for Virginia Anne, and in all the years between.
These tears she shed for the others, those who’d fallen, and those whose fall was yet to come.
For further Christmas stories and graphics see my: SPN Advent Calendar