The Whore's Child

one of the side doors would finally creak open, momentarily flooding the floor with bright light. Then the long dark shadow of a nun would fall across Sister Ursula where she knelt in prayer at the foot of the cross, and she would have no choice but to rise and be led back to her torment, often by a twisted ear.
    In addition to the authorized prayers she’d memorized, Sister Ursula composed others of her own. She prayed that Sister Veronique, who had suggested that she had no father and who worked in the convent stable, might be kicked in the head by a horse and paralyzed for life. She prayed that Sister Joseph, who used her command of the kitchen to ensure that charity children were given the poorest food in the smallest quantities, might one day slip and fall into one of her boiling vats. Required herself to spend most holidays at the convent, Sister Ursula prayed that the children who were allowed to go home might perish in railway accidents. Sometimes, in an economical mood, she prayed that the convent might burn to the ground, and the air fill with black ash. She saw nothing wrong with offering such prayers, particularly since none of them, no matter how urgent, were ever answered. She felt a gentle trust in the Jesus of the Cross who hung above the main altar of the convent chapel. He seemed to know everything that was in her heart and to understand that nothing dwelt there that wasn’t absolutely necessary to her survival. He would not begrudge her these prayers.
    In truth, Jesus on the cross reminded Sister Ursula of her father who she knew had never wanted to see her packed off to the convent, and who missed her every day, just as she missed him. Like Jesus, her father was slender and handsome and sad; and unable to find work and married to a woman who was his shame. He was, like Jesus, stuck where he was. Yet if the prayers she had struggled to memorize were true, there was hope. Had not Jesus shed His crown of thorns, stepped down from the cross to become the light and salvation of the world, raising up with Him the lowly and the true of heart? Sister Ursula, when she wasn’t praying that a horse kick Sister Veronique in the head, fervently prayed that her father might one day be free. The first thing he would do, she felt certain, was come for her, and so every time the chapel’s side door opened, she turned toward the harsh light with a mixture of hope and fear, and though it was always a nun whose dark silhouette filled the doorway, she held tenaciously to the belief that soon it would be her father standing there.
    One Christmas season—was it her third year at the convent school?—Sister Ursula was summoned to the chamber of Mother Superior, who told her to ready herself for a journey. This was a full week before any of the other students would be permitted to leave for the Christmas holiday, and Sister Ursula was instructed to tell no one of her impending departure. Indeed, Mother Superior seemed flustered, and this gave Sister Ursula heart. During her years of secret, vengeful prayer she’d indulged many fantasies of dramatic liberation, and often imagined her father’s arrival on horseback, his angry pounding at the main gate, his purposeful stride through the courtyard and into the chapel. Perhaps Mother Superior’s anxiety stemmed from the fact that her father was already on his way to effect just such a rescue.
    At the appointed hour, Sister Ursula waited, as instructed, by the main gate, beyond which no men save priests were permitted entry, and awaited her father’s arrival. She hoped he would come by a coach or carriage that then would convey them to the village train station, but if necessary she was more than happy to make the journey on foot, so long as she and her father were together. She had better shoes now, though she still hobbled like a cripple. And so when a carriage came into view in the dusty road beyond the iron gate, her heart leapt up—until she recognized it as the one belonging to the convent. Inside sat not her father but Sister Veronique, who had not been kicked in the head by a horse despite three years’ worth of Sister Ursula’s dogged prayers. When the carriage drew to a halt, Sister Ursula understood that her hopes had been led astray by her need and that she was to be banished from the convent, not rescued from it. She did not fear a worse existence than her present one, because a worse existence was not within her