The Celtic Knot

The Conversion of Russia

Sister Eucharia is a great one for miracles. She has a special devotion to Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, who is only a new saint, and she tells the class they should all be great followers of Bernadette, because she was a girl, just like them. She means a poor girl, of course, but she can’t exactly put it like that, so she says she was a girl.

Brigid Mullane puts up her hand and asks a fair question: if Saint Bernadette had been a nun, how could she be a girl? Sister Eucharia gets very angry, even though it’s a fair question. The whole class can see little bubbles of spit gathering at the corners of Yuki’s mouth. The girls call Sister Eucharia “Yuki” behind her back, a play on “Eucharia.”

Kathleen can tell from the way Sister Eucharia rounds on Brigid that she only wants to know whether Brigid is giving cheek, but Kathleen can tell from the way Brigid asked that she genuinely wants to know. After all, everyone was a girl or boy once, so what was so special about Saint Bernadette having been a girl? Grown-ups never do like it when children ask questions, even though grown-ups are forever asking children questions themselves.

Sister Eucharia answers in a very clipped voice that Bernadette became a nun in later life, as if that settles whether she was ever properly a girl or not. Every statue of her shows her as a young girl anyway, kneeling with a pile of brosna at her feet as if she’s about to light a fire, though it’s hard to be sure of her age from a statue, since the faces on all of them look so dead. Anyway, Sister Eucharia explains, the way you become a saint is by working miracles. People pray to you, and if you work the miracle for them, and enough people notice, the Pope eventually declares you a saint. That’s how it works, and Sister Eucharia is a great believer in it. So is Mam, who swears her own prayers from doing the First Fridays are what got Da his few hours a week in the convent garden.

Kathleen doesn’t have time to do the First Fridays, which takes nine months, but she does have time to do a quick novena, which is completed over nine days. She picks Saint Bernadette, partly for the poor-girl connection, and partly because a newer saint should still remember how miracles are done, unlike some of the older saints, who might have gotten rusty from lack of practice. Sister Eucharia is very impressed to find Kathleen in the convent chapel every morning before school, lighting candles at the little indoor grotto built into an alcove for Our Lady of Lourdes, which includes Saint Bernadette. Kathleen thinks it’s a nice place for candles, smelling of cold stone and candle grease.

Kathleen does an awful lot of jam-jar hunting so she can put a penny in the box next to Saint Bernadette every morning. By the time her novena is complete, she’ll have spent ninepence, which is exactly what a dancing lesson would cost if she had to pay for it, and that seems like a satisfactory sign that she’s doing the right thing.

On the first morning, Sister Eucharia asks what she’s doing, and Kathleen tells her she’s doing a novena to Saint Bernadette. Sister Eucharia frowns, pleased, and for a few mornings, that’s how it stays.

But by day six, there’s still no sign of a dancing costume at the foot of her bed. She’d expected it would arrive like a present from Santy on Christmas morning. By day seven, still nothing.

On day eight, Kathleen decides God must be holding out for a supreme sacrifice, so she promises Him that if He sends the costume, she’ll be a nun when she grows up, just like Saint Bernadette. It doesn’t strike her as much of a sacrifice, since she never meant to get married anyway; she’d always assumed she’d end up an old maid in a garret with Polly.

By day nine, Kathleen is very disappointed the costume still hasn’t appeared, but there’s a chance God is waiting for the final day of the novena, so she gets up as usual and goes to light her candle. Old Yuki comes up to her while she’s praying and asks, gently enough, whether someone in her family is sick. Kathleen whispers no. She’s praying for a dancing costume to wear in the feis. Sister Eucharia’s mouth starts to bubble like a porridge saucepan on the range. Her already-white face goes whiter still, and for a moment Kathleen can’t work out what she’s done, since she’s sure she only whispered. At last Sister Eucharia gets a few words out, calling her a bold strap, then catches her by the elbow, hauls her up from the grotto, and steers her into the corridor to yell at her properly.

Miracles, Sister Eucharia warns, gripping and squeezing Kathleen’s elbow the whole time, are sacred gifts from God, meant for a healing or the Conversion of Russia, not to be squandered on trivialities like an Irish dancing costume. Kathleen has never even heard of the Conversion of Russia. When she tries to protest that dancing is a fine thing for an Irish girl to pray about, Sister Eucharia isn’t having it, calling it a pagan ritual and getting sidetracked into wondering aloud whether Kathleen would rather see Russia sunk in godless communism, or the revolutionaries winning out in Spain over General Franco’s lads. Kathleen, thoroughly lost, can only think that the one thing she knows about Spain is where the oranges come from. Sister Eucharia finally drops her elbow and sends her off to her classroom, warning her never to be caught praying for trivialities again, and saying she wouldn’t be surprised if God himself were furious at such disrespect for holy religion.

Kathleen is relieved it’s the last day of her novena, since she has no wish to ever meet Sister Eucharia in the convent chapel again. She privately hopes that by the time she’s old enough to enter the convent, Sister Eucharia will be dead, then feels guilty for wishing anyone dead and changes it to retired instead.