"'In the convent', Sister Ursula's first submission
began, 'I was known as the whore's child'.
Nice opening, I wrote in the margin
as if to imply that her choice had been a purely artistic one.
It wasn't of course, she was simply
starting with what was for her the beginning of her torment.
She was writing and would continue to write a memoir.
By mid-semester I would give up asking her to invent things.
The first installment weighed in at a robust 25 pages
which detailed the suffering of a young girl taken
to live in a Belgian convent school
where the treatment of the children
was determined by the social and financial status of the parents
who abandoned them there.
As a charity case and the daughter of a prostitute,
young Sister Ursula-- there could be no doubt
that she was the first person narrator--found herself
at the very bottom of the ecclesiastical food chain.
With what little wealth she possessed,
some pens and paper her father purchased for her a few days
before they left the city, along with a pretty new dress
was taken from her and she was informed
that henceforth she would have no use
for her pitiful possessions.
Her needs, food, the uniform, and a single pair of shoes
would be provided for her though she would doubtless
prove unworthy to receive them.
The shoes she was given were two sizes too small, an accident,
Sister Ursula imagined until she asked
if she might exchange them for the shoes of a younger
girl that were two sizes too large only to be scorned
for her impertinence.
So before long she developed the tortured gait
of a cripple which was much imitated
by the other children who immediately
perceived in her a suitable object
for their cruelest derision.
The mockery of her classmates was something
that Sister Ursula quickly accommodated by shunning
their companionship.
In time, she grew accustomed to being referred
to as the whore's child.
And she hoped that the children would eventually
tire of calling her this if she could manage to conceal
how deeply it wounded her.
During periods of recreation in a convent courtyard,
she perfected the art of becoming invisible, avoiding
all games and contests when she knew even those on her own team
would turn on her.
What she was not prepared for was the cruelty
that she suffered at the hands of the nuns who
seemed to derive nearly as much satisfaction from tormenting
her as their charges, beginning with her request
to exchange the shoes.
She had not merely been told that this was not permitted,
but was given a horrible explanation
as to why this was so.
The chafing of the two small shoes
had caused her heels to bleed into her coarse white socks
and then even the shoes themselves.
Only a wicked child, Sister Veronique explained,
would foul the shoes that she had been given with her blood
and then beg to exchange them for the shoes
of an innocent child.
Did she think it fair, the old nun wondered
out loud that another child, one who
had not only a virtuous mother but also a father,
be asked to wear the polluted shoes of a whore's child.
Worse than the stain of the old nun's
suggestion that anything Sister Ursula touched immediately
became contaminated was the inference
that trailed in the wake of the other remark.
The innocent girl had not only a virtuous mother,
Sister Ursula knew what this meant, but also a father.
Which seemed to imply that she herself did not
have one, of course, she knew that she
did have a father, a tall handsome father who
had promised to rescue her from this place
as soon as he could find work.
Indeed, it was her father who had brought her
to the convent, who had assured Mother Superior that she
was a good girl and not at all wicked.
How then, had Sister Veronique concluded
that she had no father.
The young girl tried to reason it through, became confused.
She knew from experience that evil by its very nature
accounted for more in the world than good
and she understood that her mother's being a prostitute
made her the whore's child.
That her mother's wickedness diminished her father's virtue,
but did it negate his very existence?
How could such a thing be?
She dare not ask and so the old nun's remark
burrowed even deeper, intensifying a misery that
already bordered on despair.
Sister Ursula's first installment ended here
and her fellow students approached the discussion of it
as one would an alien spacecraft.
Several of them had attended Catholic schools
where they had been tutored by nuns
and they weren't sure despite my encouragement
that they were allowed to be critical of this one.
The material itself was foreign to them.
They had never encountered anything like it
in the workshop.
On a plus side, Sister Ursula's story had a character
and the character was placed in a dire situation.
And those were good things for stories to do.
On the other hand, the old nun idiom was imperfect,
her style stiff and old fashioned
and the story seemed to be moving forward
without exactly getting it.
It reminded them of stories that they heard
other elderly people tell.
Tales that the tellers eventually
managed to forget the point of, narratives that would gradually
peter out with the weak insistence
that all these events really did happen.
It's a victim story, one student recognized.
The character is being acted on by outside forces,
but she has no choices, which means
there can be no consequence to anything she does.
If she doesn't participate in her own destiny,
where is the story?
Well, not having taken the beginning
and intermediate courses, Sister Ursula
was much enlightened by these unanticipated critiques
and she took feverish notes on everything that was said.
I did like it though, added the student
who had identified it is a victim story.
It's different, he said it.
By which he seemed to mean that sister Ursula
herself was different.
The old nun stopped by my office the day after her workshop
and it was clear that she was still mulling over.
To be so much a victim, she said searching for the right words,
is not good?
No, I smiled.
Not in stories, not in life, I was
about to add until I remembered that Sister Ursula wasn't
making this distinction and my doing so would probably
confuse her further.
Maybe in the next installment, I suggested.
She looked at me hopefully.
Well, maybe your character will have some choices of her own
as your story continues, I thought.
Sister Ursula considered this possibility for a long time
and I could tell by looking at it
that the past wasn't nearly as flexible as she
might have wished.
She was about to leave when she noticed
a photograph of my daughter that I keep on my desk.
Your little girl, she said, she is a great beauty.
Yes, I said.
Indicating that it was OK to pick up the photo
if she wanted to.
Sometimes I see her when I'm driving by, she explained.
And when I didn't say anything, she added, sometimes
I don't see her anymore?
She and her mother are gone, I explained, the sentence feeling
syntactically strange as if English were also
my second language.
They're living in another state.
Sister Ursula, nodded uncertainly
as if deliberating whether state meant a condition or place
and then said, will she return to this state?
It was my turn to not know, I hope so sister, I said."