Immaculata

There was a holly tree by the door to the convent, frosty in the dark winter morning. Penny touched it. She had been told the Sisters’ hospital was never locked but still she waited outside, watching the thorny leaves take shape.

Hospitality, her mam used say when Penny asked why all the village houses had a holly by the door. The holly tree gave shelter to the Blessed Mother when Herod’s soldiers were hunting the Christ Child. It covered them with its thorns until the soldiers had gone, and the Holy Family escaped to Egypt.

We plant it by the door to show welcome, her mam always said, and here it was again, a sea away from home. Its red berries were covered with frost, and round as Virgin’s belly itself. Funny, Penny thought, who’s a bloody virgin now? She crossed herself and ducked into St Therese’s Home for Mothers and shut the door before it could grow fully light.

Penny liked Sister Mary Albert right away. She reminded her of the milkman’s horse when she was a girl, with its world-weary tolerant strength that seemed as if nothing could shake it. She wore a white uniform with her wimple instead of a dark skirt like the other sisters. She sat Penny down in her office, which looked exactly like an ordinary book-lined study except for the examining table and jars of cotton swabs and iodine on the sideboard.

Penny climbed onto the table and placed her feet together on the silver stepstair. She’d been so proud to wear those shoes out dancing when she’d first come to England, bought with her very first paycheck from the mill. They looked old now, and tired. She realized that Sister Mary Albert was waiting.

“I think I’m pregnant,” Penny said. It was the first time she had said it out loud.

“Yes?” said the nun.

“But…” Penny swallowed. “But I can’t. I can’t be.”

“Why is that?” Sister Mary Albert asked.

“Because I didn’t...I didn’t. I never did.”

“Never did what, child."

“Never did the baby thing. I never-” her voice sank. “I never fornicated.” The nun’s eyebrows rose. “I didn’t!” Penny exclaimed. “I swear. He wanted to, but I didn’t let him. And-and he stopped.”

Sister Mary Albert didn’t look angry. Penny was prepared for outrage, or horror, or perhaps even awe, but not the look of simple curiosity that the nun gave her. Under her eye Penny began to cry, shaken by having said it at last. Sister Mary Albert handed her a clean handkerchief and waited.

“Now,” she said when Penny was calm, “Let’s go back a bit. You think you’re pregnant. Have you missed your menses?”

“Two of them,” Penny said miserably.

“And you’ve never missed one before?”

“Never.”

“Ah. Do you eat well?”

“I...I think so?”

“You’ve color and weight enough, so probably. How’s your appetite?”

“Terrible. Nothing tastes good anymore.”

“Hm. You’ve got good energy?”

“No, I fall asleep in me supper every night,” Penny said.

“You sound pregnant,” the nun said wryly. “Now tell me about this time when he stopped. You didn’t fornicate but you got close, didn’t you?”

Penny flushed. “I...I guess so. He had me skirt up, and I saw his willy.”

“Wrestling in the backseat of a car, was it?” It was a truck, really, but Penny nodded.

“But… this doesn't make any sense,” she said. “I’m not pregnant. How can I be?”

“Oh, it’s easy enough. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s possible for certain,” Sister Mary Albert said. “Look here.”

She took out a steel tray and poured out a little water from a glass. It made a round pool which she smeared with her finger. “This is you. It’s damp inside your Missus Jones, sometimes more than others, isn’t it?”

Penny gaped. She hadn’t supposed a nun had a Missus Jones, let alone a name for it. Sister Mary Albert looked as though she wanted to say something, and stopped. She simply rolled her eyes and went on.

“Sometimes it's sticky like the paste you used in school, and sometimes it's slippery like a trout, aye?” Penny nodded. “And it doesn’t stay inside always. Some days you might feel damp in your knickers, and if your man’s done right you might end up sitting in a pool of your own wet, right?”

Penny burned with embarrassment and said nothing.

“So there’s you. And here’s him.” Sister Mary Albert took a dropper of iodine and placed a fat droplet near the water. “You’ll have seen the wetness he has, then,” she said narrowly. “The man’s seed are really wee beasties that swim in it, did you know?” Penny shook her head.

“Aye, and they can swim in the thinnest slick of moisture, so.” Sister Mary Albert drew the two drops together, until the iodine burst through the edge of the water and flooded it with color. “If he goes off, even outside you, and any of his seed touches where you happen to be all loved up and wet already, why, nothing prevents it from swimming as far as it needs to go. Dreadful determined, are sperms.”

Penny sighed. “I should have just gone ahead and let him do it, if I was gonna get bloody pregnant anyway.”

“Most people do,” the nun said. There were several seconds of silence. “How do you feel about your fella?” Sister Mary Albert asked. “He is your fella, isn’t he?”

“Of course,” Penny said testily. “I’m not a whore to lift me skirt for anyone. Billy is….good looking. Charming as the day is long. Wild, and does no more than he has to.”

“Will he marry you?”

Penny thought. “He’s been asking. Wants to get in me knickers, I suppose. But...do I have to marry him?”

“Do you not want to be married?” said Sister Mary Albert, surprised.

“Yes. No. I don’t know. I don’t want to be a nun, at least, savin’ your presence. I want me own babies. But Bill…he frightens me. I don’t know how to say it. He’s got a look sometimes, and it sends me shivers.”

Sister Mary Albert nodded. “You don’t have the look of a nun. You don’t do too well in the obedience category, do you?”

Penny grinned. “Nay, I never did, at that.”

“Well. You could stay here until your time comes, but you couldn’t keep your baby.”

“Could I not?” Penny said longingly. At home in Ireland she knew she couldn’t, but she’d hoped that perhaps in England it might be different.

“Child, how would you support it? You couldn’t work with an infant, and who would pay to keep you both until it was old enough for school? You’d carry it for nine months and then take it to the workhouse. Or take it back to shame your family, and ask you mam to support you both.”

Not in a hundred years would Penny bring another mouth for her mother to feed, not with eight others still at home behind her.

“Bill it is, then,” she sighed. “I suppose I should just go on and do the dirty with him. No sense in waiting anymore.”

“Well, it is a mortal sin,” the nun allowed. She took a card from her pocket. “I want you to go see my friend Doctor Gregson at Longsight Medical Center. He’s a fine physician, and he’ll do right by your babe. Go every month and do what he says, mind, and we’ll pray God sends you a good husband and a fine baby.”

But God didn’t.

Penny and Bill were married the day after Epiphany, with the garlands still hanging in the church. On the night before the wedding he strangled her pet canary. He crushed it to death in his hand because it couldn’t stop singing for all the excitement in the house. She smothered her mouth with desperate sobs, thinking, I must not cry. Bill watched her with narrow eyes as its little life went out, and something told her that he mustn’t ever see her cry.

She married him the next day, knowing there was nothing else to do. She had a little one to think of now. And by the time her blood burst out on St Brigid’s day, leaving her little one a pool of red on the floor, it was far, far, far too late.