The Convent by Maureen McCarthy Page A

hadn’t seen her for months, and the new habit hid the sister that they remembered. But as the afternoon wore on, when she linked arms with them, laughed and joked like old times, they all relaxed. For Cecilia it was such a joy to be with her family. She would never go home again, nor eat another meal with them, but this was the next best thing.
    At one point there’d been a lull in the conversation. Her father had looked up from his paper to the big brick buildings. ‘This place will kill you,’ he’d muttered sourly.
    Cecilia laughed in dismay. ‘I’m happy here, Dad.’
    â€˜I heard you telling your mother just now that you couldn’t take your cardigan off without asking the Reverend Mother,’ he growled. ‘ That is just plain ridiculous.’
    â€˜Oh, Dad!’ Tears sprung to her eyes. ‘It’s nothing.’
    â€˜You could be using that head of yours.’
    â€˜But I am!’
    He slumped down in the chair, closed his eyes and shook his head slowly. ‘My only daughter,’ he said to no one in particular, before turning back to the pink Sporting Globe, ‘cooped up like a bloody chook! I never thought I’d see the day.’
    Cecilia tried to laugh along with her brothers. But his blunt ridicule cut deeply, all the more because he’d intended that it should.

    It was later, when Cecilia pulled the curtains around her bed and began to take off the new habit, that panic hit her. It came in waves, ebbing and flowing around her like the cold green ocean on a bleak day. The new robes were confining and hot, much heavier than the postulant dress. The starched linen encasing her head had chafed both sides of her face and a sharp line across her forehead. It diminished her hearing too. She missed half of what people were saying unless she was facing them directly.
    As she felt for the pins that held the whole set in place, she made herself take some deep breaths. Calm down! If only she had some oil or lotion for the sore bits. But it was when her hands touched the short stubble where her hair used to be that some deep part of her stilled, and her head became a roll of panicky drumbeats, all out of rhythm. What have I done?
    During the ceremony it had been exciting seeing the soft golden clumps fall about her feet, but now, feeling her bare head, and picturing again the grim satisfaction on the Novice Mistress’s face as the curls massed on the floor, something inside her mind gave way. The soft shapes turned into slivers of glass about her feet, and she wanted to cry out. I’m nineteen years old, and I have no hair! She fell to her knees and prayed. Oh God, let me see that it is leading me closer to you! But all the certain calm joy that had carried her through the day had vanished and in its place was a pit of black terror.
    Her heart was rattling, her skin clammy with dread. She put both hands up to her prickly skull and a silent scream echoed around and around her head high above the drumbeat. Oh, what have I done?
    She longed suddenly for human contact. If she could just talk to someone! If she could only pull the curtains aside and sit on the end of Breda’s bed. Ask her if she felt the same about losing her hair. But doing that would make a mockery of all that she’d decided to do that very day. To breach the Great Silence with such an inconsequential matter would be a very grave fault.
    Thou has made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee .
    Oh, but it was true! It had to be true. How many times had she said it? And so she must do so again and again and again. They were St Augustine’s own words written during his own dark night of the soul. Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee …
    Ever so slowly her equilibrium returned. Yes. She knew who she was. She was Annunciata, a newly received Sister in the Order of the Good Shepherd. She