Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell Page 8

  Jane is beating the bushes again for recruits and her magical touch is intact. No one in their right mind would become a nun in the year 1969, but she is convincing one girl after another to join the Order. She is winning against all odds.

  February 6, 1998

  I look at Jane now and feel—nothing. In bed she does what I tell her to do. I wish I could feel something for her, love or lust or even longing.

  February 7, 1969

  Jane is more woman than girl now. She has worries and cares. She has a past and a history. She has black smudges under her eyes and her forehead is a broken line when she cries. She hurts.

  February 11, 1969

  Jane sneaks into my room late at night wearing a sheer nightgown and nothing else. She chins up under the blankets and mushes in against me. “I love you,” she says, but I pretend to be asleep.

  March 3, 1969

  Jane has become our miracle worker, I tell the board. Her numbers are way up when every other order in the world is falling off a cliff. The Bishop wants to know: “To what do we attribute this miracle?” To an act of God, I tell him.

  March 10, 1969

  “I’ve been praying to the Holy Ghost,” Jane says. Why not God the Father? I say. Or the Virgin Mother? Why not God the Son? “The Holy Ghost works for me,” Jane says. I ask her what she has been praying for? “For you,” Jane says.

  March 17, 1969

  I know St. Patty’s Day is all wrong but this is my day to think of Will and who killed him. I miss his purity, his smile, his need to save the world, even the overcoat he wore at the Yale Club over nothing at all. I would give anything to bring him back in a flash for one last drink. But I can’t. All I can do today is to hate Tom with all my heart.

  April 1, 1969

  “Don’t you love me?” Jane says. The board ordered me to stop, I say. “April fool?” she asks—but I say my hands are tied.

  April 6, 1969

  “I don’t know what to do,” Jane says. “First Nancy leaves me. Now you.” I haven’t left you, I say. I’m just not sleeping with you any more. Jane starts to bawl like a baby. All right, I say. Stop. Stop.

  April 9, 1969

  I am going through the motions with Jane but it seems to be enough to keep her happy. We are much more careful about it than before. She only comes out at night, padding down the hallway of the Convent to my room when all the lights are out. Jane will do anything for me now. She is becoming expert at doing exactly what I want.

  April 22, 1969

  Now I understand my problem with Jane. I am twice her age but she is much too old for me. I can see by her tiny wrinkles and lines what time is going to do to her. The Jane I loved, the Jane with the perfect young body and the innocent face of a child, that Jane is gone now, replaced by a being more complicated and more mundane, a grownup in thought, word, and deed. I begin to wonder about the next class of recruits coming in. Young blood is the beauty of the Order.

  May 5, 1969

  “Attrition,” the Bishop says. “What are we going to do about it?” We are going to change the world, I answer. We are going to take the earth off of its axis, divide the globe into continents instead of countries, and alter the course of human events. “Don’t trifle with me,” the Bishop says.

  May 19, 1969

  I want pictures, I tell Jane. I want to be able to put names to faces. I want to know who the recruits are and everything about them before they get here.

  May 22, 1969

  “You have to work with me on this,” Charles Evans says. “The board is not going to sit back and lose 28 percent of our Sisters to attrition over three years and do nothing about it. We can’t just sit on our hands.” And what would the board have me do? “You need someone to focus in on this problem to the exclusion of all else. You need someone to stop the bleeding.” I say I know just the person.

  June 4, 1969

  I’m going to set you free, I tell Nancy over the phone. The board wants someone to go around the country to talk to Sisters about staying in the Order. “Why me?” Nancy says. Because you’ve had every reason to leave and you’re still here, I tell her. This gives you a chance to tell them why. “Redemption?” Nancy says. That depends on you, I tell her.

  June 16, 1969

  I spread the pictures of the incoming recruits on my desk, gauzy yearbook shots of unformed girls in uniforms, all blemishes blushed out, the shots of legs in white tennis dresses creased like fans, tomgirls in helmets on horseback, girls with long teased tresses and prom gowns cut low. I can’t wait for school to start.

  June 19, 1969

  I write up a questionnaire for all the new recruits to answer before they come to the Convent. I need to know everything there is to know.

  July 4, 1969

  We go to Southampton for the holidays. Jane is like a little girl about the fireworks so she goes off with Diana, Luigi, and G. From the house I hear cherry bombs crackle on the sand and then big explosions in the sky that bring oohs and ahhs. The beach is where I had my fun with Nancy, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to clutter up my memories with Jane. She’s just another pretty face to me now.

  July 7, 1969

  Jane has nothing to complain about. She’s become one of the most important Sisters in the Order at a very tender age. I talk her up to the board. She travels all over the country on our tab. I watch her back. I’m starting to feel like she’s my favorite charity.

  July 12, 1969

  Jane says: “I need you to feel something.” I am what I am, I tell her. “And what’s that?” she says. You don’t want to know, I tell her.

  July 31, 1969

  I have the answers to all of my questions about the recruits. The targets have been identified. Soon I will meet the chosen few.

  August 10, 1969

  Jane says: “I can’t love a person who won’t be loved.” I tell her that’s her problem, not mine.

  August 15, 1969

  “The board is pleased,” Charles Evans tells me at “21.” “Even the Bishop is pleased.” Recruits are off the charts because of Jane. Nancy has indeed stopped the bleeding. One or two of our Sisters have left the Order, but everyone she talks to personally stays put. “Nancy and Jane have the power of faith,” Charles Evans says. “And you, Eleanor? You’re the Mother Superior. What do you have?” I have the power, I say.

  August 19, 1998

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Jane says. Can’t do what? “I can’t be your lover when you feel no love.” Nobody’s perfect is what I say. Perfect timing is what I think.

  August 28, 1969

  To not care is to know the true meaning of power.

  September 2, 1969

  Jane has succeeded too well. Our recruits are girls with doubts, with every reason to break the rules or to leave us outright. The weak ones practically nominate themselves for my own personal instruction. When they walk in the door Paradise has already been lost.

  September 3, 1969

  Do the names matter? When they come to the Convent we change their names. Do they care? Who cares! The girls come here not to find themselves, but to lose themselves in something larger. They call it the Order. They call it God. I don’t care what they call it. They are here to let go.

  September 4, 1969

  The vow of chastity is something you must embrace over time, I tell the recruits when they come into my chambers one by one. I am here to help you do that. But it takes time, child. It takes months and months. It takes years and years. It takes a lifetime. Trust me. I am your Mother Superior. Mother Superior knows what you need.

  September 5, 1969

  Tomgirls. That’s what I’m looking for. Big-boned girls with a rawness and a weakness to them, girls who like their bodies and like to show them off.

  September 8, 1969

  Here’s what I know about my Tomgirls, about Martha and Mary Beth and Megan. I know they have lost their names. I know their new names are the names of saints who were men. I know they trust me with their lives. Now
it’s only a matter of time.

  September 9, 1969

  Jane is right, of course. Charles Evans is right. The Bishop is right. There’s no reason for me to be here any more. My demise is only a matter of time. But I am going to get my licks in before I go down.

  September 11, 1969

  I tell Todd the janitor I want him to watch.

  September 12, 1968

  I will take you through guided prayer, I tell Megan. I tell her to kneel with her hands pressed together in prayer, to close her eyes as I touch her and we say the “Our Father” together. I start with her neck and her shoulders, and then I run my fingers down either side of her spine to the small of her back. I work the small of Megan’s back back around to her hips, all the while praying with her. I rub her hips for a long time and then move my fingers in flat circles between her hips and down, down below her belly button. Prayer is harder to come by now because she is breathing so hard when I start to move my palm in soft circles around one nipple, then the other, then back, then both. I say the prayer more slowly until Megan moans so loud she can’t hear a word I say. Todd is watching.

  September 13, 1969

  It’s like Martha’s never been touched before, so I tell her to start touching herself anywhere she likes. “Anywhere?” Anywhere under the sun, I say, because this is a spiritual exercise, and the body has to give way to the spirit by giving in to the flesh.

  September 14, 1969

  I tell Mary Beth I have learned this massage at Lourdes, though I have never been to Lourdes. I tell her it will work because she bears the name of the Virgin Mother, and this massage is meant to duplicate what Mary felt the night she conceived. Do you understand? I ask her. “Yes, Mother Superior,” she says. This is special, I tell her. You have been chosen. I won’t do this with any of the other girls. “Why me?” Because you have a special light that only I can see. “I do?” Indeed you do, I say. Then I tell her to turn out the lights.

  September 15, 1969

  “Why are you doing this to me?” Jane says.

  September 17, 1969

  Martha and Mary Beth are scared, blinking into headlights, but Megan knows my game and she loves it. She comes into my room late at night without even knocking, with a towel wrapped around her chest and nothing else between her and me. She clicks off my night light with a flick of her toe. “I wish my parents could see me now,” she says.

  September 20, 1969

  “They said if I lie I go to hell and I don’t want to go to hell, Mother Superior.” I tell Todd he’s not going anywhere. “I mean, you wanted me to, you wanted me to watch, Mother Superior. You told me to. You knew I would have to tell them. I have to tell them. I have to.” Did you like watching, Todd? “I know I’m, I’m bad. I know I’m bad. I know it’s a sin and I’m bad.” Yes, I say. You are very bad, Todd. You are a sinner. Not because you watched. But because you liked watching. To enjoy your sin is the worst sin of all.

  September 21, 1969

  So the Board knows. So what are they going to do about it?

  October 3, 1969

  “It’s the rumors, the very idea of these rumors, the continuation of these rumors,” the Bishop says. I tell him I will take the Order down with me. I tell him: I will take you down with me. No man is going to tell me how to live my life, not after all that I’ve been through.

  November 12, 1969

  “We have the goods on you,” Charles Evans says over lunch at “21.” “We have confessions.” You have Todd? “Yes. And we have your Jane. We have your Nancy. We have established a pattern of historical abuse of power, position, and authority that continues to the present day. Jesus God, Eleanor, what were you thinking?” I have a calling, I say.

  November 26, 1969

  Thanksgiving alone as planned.

  December 2, 1969

  “I’m leaving the Order,” Jane says. “So is Nancy. We’re leaving together, I mean. We’re going to be together.” What took you so long? I say. “Don’t you feel anything?” Jane says. I feel you two have a lot in common, I tell her.

  December 14, 1969

  “Why don’t you put us all out of our misery?” Charles Evans is drunk, this time at Toots Shor’s. “Chrissakes, Eleanor, what’s the point? Pisses me off about you. Never any point.” The point, I say, is that no man is going to tell me what to do, that I can be any way I want to be, and there’s not a damn thing any of you can do about it. The point is that you and the Bishop and the board can all go to hell. “Then Chrissakes go be whatever it is you are wanting to goddamn be. Just don’t rub my goddamn nose in it any more. It’s Christmas, for Chrissakes.” Merry Christmas, I say. I make sure he picks up the check.

  December 19, 1969

  Jane comes by to say goodbye. “I loved you, you know,” she says. I tell her that’s a mistake she won’t make again. “What’s to become of you?” Jane says. “Does someone like you go straight to hell?”

  December 31, 1969

  I write an enormous check to the Order in my own honor. I endow a chair in comparative theology at Yale to celebrate my reign as Mother Superior. It is the least I can do, and the last I will do. Fuck them. Fuck them all.

  The Seventies

  January 1, 1970

  My first meal in freedom is a chili dog at Dairy Queen. My taste buds are dead from twenty years in the Convent. It’s nice to be alive and licking again.

  January 2, 1970

  Diana’s house in Southampton will do for now, until I can think of something better. I keep it dark at night, the fire going for as long as it takes for me to fall asleep. At dawn I’m down to ashes. I start the day from scratch.

  January 14, 1970

  All those years praying to God the Father. Every word of it wasted.

  January 15, 1970

  I suppose the myth about the loving God who watches over us is as good as any until I can make up my own. But I am between myths at the moment.

  January 26, 1970

  Is this mourning? In the end, did twenty-five years of hard labor in the Convent turn out to be any better than a life in slavery to Bucky Harwell? I’m not so sure. At least in the Order I was able to rise to the top, to hack out a life of my own making without a man stealing the credit. With Bucky, lucky me, I would never have been anything other than Mrs. Bucky.

  January 27, 1970

  I feel empty now, today, with no Order to put the order back into my life, with no clear idea of what might come next. I am licking my wounds but I don’t like the taste of my own blood one bit. The beauty of the beach makes my life seem awful, ugly.

  February 6, 1970

  I have the money to go anywhere, to be anything or to buy anything I want. Why do I feel so empty?

  February 8, 1970

  I had to join the Sisters of Mercy. I had to escape from my house, from my past. I had no choice. Better to be a nun than to live out my life as a victim, as the daughter of a fraud, the half-sister of a full-time rapist.

  February 14, 1970

  Nightmares. The boat rocking in sight of Bimini. The explosion outside. The mushroom cloud in the round hole of a window. It’s always Tom or at least the shape of him, the weight of him, his awful groaning in my ear, the feel of his hard pole bursting up inside of me, breaking me apart into a thousand million pieces. I am so angry, so ashamed, so dead to the world.

  February 22, 1970

  I want to die or at least to forget.

  February 26, 1970

  “You must be hurting,” Diana says. She is trying to be good to me, but in the end she is playing the part of the concerned sister in private, just as she plays the part of the committed wife in public. Everyone knows her macho Luigi lusts after men, and everyone lets Diane play out the charade. Make-believe is not what I need right now.

  March 12, 1970

  I walk the beach at sunset without seeing a soul. I stare into the fire and lick at Luigi’s brandy. Nancy is on my mind today because of the way I used Jane in the Convent to hurt her. I drink until I pu
ke all over the deck.

  March 13, 1970

  Worst hangover of my life. One of the worst days of my life.

  March 26, 1970

  I touch myself at night thinking about Nancy until my body shivers and my sheets are wet. But it’s too late to save myself or someone I tried to destroy.