trinity

The nun was old. She had seen many things in her lifetime, in fact, she sometimes really believed that she had seen everything. She’d seen liars, adulterers, and thieves. Some who died young and many who died old. People with maladies and deformities she never even knew could exist. Burnt houses, sick livestock, tornadoes, hurricanes, hunger. The nun had seen every single form of devastation a human heart could witness. She knew the Devil well. But the nun had never seen God. 

The nun came to the convent as a little girl. She got lost on her way home from school one day and an older man picked her up in a beat up old ford. The nun spent a few days in that beat up blue ford before she realized that dying might be better than whatever this was. She popped the driver’s side door open and jumped out onto the highway. The nun didn’t die and she saw the blue ford pulling over so she ran off the road and into the woods. She ran and ran and ran until she saw what she thought was a castle, yanked the door open, and threw herself inside. The sisters found her and told her she was in Alabama and she told them her home address, 809 SW 33 Lane, Gainesville, Florida. The sisters called her parents but it was either that they never picked up the phone or flat out told the sisters to keep her. She couldn’t remember now. 

The nun liked growing up in the convent. She liked that she was the only little girl in the whole place and she liked the theatricality of it all. The sisters praying, heads bent to the floor tiles. The old priest pouring red wine into a crystal cup that threw rainbow refractions up onto the walls. The stained glass window which showed Jesus being hoisted to the sky while a single shining tear fell from Mary’s eye. It was all so magical and foreboding, like growing up in a fairytale. 

The nun became a novice when she was twenty. It was then that the sisters sequestered her in a secluded corner of the monastery, away from any other human life. She lived in a single room no bigger than a closet with nothing but a mattress stuffed with straw and a candlestick. The room had a little window that let in streaks of yellow light during the day by which the nun could read her Bible and recite her prayers. Once the sun set, one of the older sisters would come in with a matchstick to light the candle. And once the candle burnt out, it was time to go to sleep. 

There was another room next to the nun’s, since the sisters usually liked to train novices in pairs. The nun heard sounds emanating from the room often; whispered prayers, moans, and even the occasional song. She would press her ear against the wall and listen. Once she realized she had a neighbor, the nun engaged with her fellow novice often. They discussed passages and prayers, they even reflected on how cruel the sisters could be at times. The girl next door told the nun that her name was Jessa and that her favorite color was yellow. Jessa had chosen to come to the convent after realizing that she had little interest in finding a job or getting married. Jessa could not be certain there was a God but she enjoyed saying her prayers and pretending. 

Once she had completed her two years as a novice, the nun was released from her secluded room and led to the cathedral where she knelt beside the altar and swore her temporary vows. Afterwards, she asked the sisters about Jessa, but they insisted that no one by that name had ever set foot in the convent. Either Jessa was a hallucination borne out of many months of solitude, or the sisters were harboring a secret prisoner. The nun would never go back to that forbidden corner of the monastery; she would rather not think on it again. The sisters soon decided to stop locking their novices away, dismissing the practice as dated and abusive. The far corner of the monastery was closed off and abandoned.

Years passed and now the nun was very old. The sisters who raised her were long dead and she was the oldest soul left in the monastery. Even the priest was her junior, a young boy from Mississippi whose face was still pockmarked and whose voice retained a squeaky quiver. The nun knew she would soon die and she felt it was time. However, as she lay in bed waiting for God to reach down and reclaim her, Jessa crossed the nun’s mind for the first time in decades. She sat up in bed, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders and lighting a candle. 

The nun tiptoed through the monastery, although there was no real need for secrecy. When she came upon that dark forbidden corner, she gingerly moved the wooden board blocking off the back end of the corridor. Then the nun plunged into the darkness, wrinkling her nose at the dust swirling in the air. She passed by her old single room, which sat with its door ajar, just as she had left it. A few steps more and the nun stood in front of Jessa’s quarters. The door was shut but had no handle. The nun pushed against the wood, which was rotten, and fell away at her touch. Again she pushed, this time with more force, and again the wood fell away. The nun made a small opening through which she stepped into Jessa’s room. 

It was completely empty. No bed, no candlestick, not even a window. No sign that life had ever, could have ever existed there. The nun stood amongst the emptiness, confused and alone. She whispered, Jessa. And then she felt it. An energy, an awareness, a perception. Something that goes beyond explanation but is palpable all the same. The nun would never know whether Jessa was a ghost, God, or Devil because it was in that moment that she succumbed to time.