The Convent by Maureen McCarthy

outer dress. How was it going to feel in summer? And where was her chord and how were you meant to tie it?
    She swung around so a stern Mother Holy Angels could set her guimpe straight as they continued singing the psalm.
    He has placed his seal upon my forehead and I will admit no other lover but Him.
    After assessing each new novice for imperfections, the Mistress of Novices motioned for them all to fall back into line. One by one they knelt before the Mother Superior and took a long white flickering candle.
    Cecilia risked a small smile as she caught the eye of Marie Claire, now Sister Mary Scholastica, and Breda, now Sister Mary Perpetua. How different we all look!
    Breda nudged Cecilia. ‘We made it, kiddo.’
    â€˜We did.’
    A massive organ and the singing of Psalm CXXXIII accompanied their return into the main body of the church.
    Ecce quam bonum
    Quam jucundum
    Habitare fratres in unum
    Behold how good and how pleasant it is
    for brethren to dwell together in unity.
    Cecilia sensed a rustle of disquiet as the congregation, who’d been sitting and waiting for them for some time, craned forward. She went on singing and didn’t raise her eyes, but for the first time she thought of her own family sitting somewhere in the body of the church. Mum would be fine, but her father and brothers would be finding this long ceremony difficult. She wished suddenly for it all to be over, longed to hug them. No matter about her new religious name, she was still Cecilia, the same person that they’d always known.
    And yet the blunt truth was that she had left them, and she knew they knew it too. Apart from a couple of hours every six weeks, after this day she would be effectively gone from their lives. The new habit said it all. Only her face was visible. A sudden stab of sorrow shot through her, as an image of the home she’d grown up in filled her mind. Never again would she see that house, sit in the kitchen or smell a cake cooking in the oven. Nor would she ever ride again with her brother Dom, race across the paddocks towards Auntie Mon’s back paddock, clearing Patterson’s Creek near the bridge that they’d been warned a thousand times was too wide and dangerous for a horse – then up the hill to the finishing line, neck and neck, the horses wet with sweat, both of them breathless with laughter.
    Never again would she sit on the verandah and drink mugs of tea, listening to her brothers scrapping and fighting and joking with each other. No food or drink would pass her lips in front of any other person for the rest of her life except her fellow sisters. The twins – those two boys who’d arrived after her mother thought she’d finished having babies – were now only eleven. She would never know them, nor they her.
    Nor would she ever have a family of her own. No man to love; no babies to hold.
    In a final act of submission, the line of professed Sisters lay face down in front of the altar. The funeral pall that would be placed over her coffin one day was draped over her body to signify her retreat from the world. She could smell the floor wax and feel the cool of the wood, and she hoped she wasn’t going to sneeze or cry. Already her shorn head felt itchy.
    The new novices walked single file down the aisle joyfully singing the Te Deum along with the other Sisters.
    Te Deum laudamus: Te Dominum confitemur.
    Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur.
    We praise thee,O God: we acknowledge thee to be the Lord.
    All the earth doth worship thee: the Father everlasting…
    And it was over.
    After a quick lunch with her fellow sisters – they were all ravenous, having not eaten since the night before – there were two and a half hours of sitting about in the convent gardens with her parents and brothers. Dominic really had come, and although he’d been distant with them all, his smile for her was warm . They’d all started off shyly, probably because they