My Aunt Rita's Cross
by Ann Marie
Staples
Rochester, New Hampshire
June 2012
When I go over next week, she won't recognize me at all.
But that particular day back in the Summer of 2002, she had
no memory problems whatsoever, yet.
That day, my cousin and I felt like interrupting the holy
tranquility of the rest home where our aunt Rita had just
settled. We spoke in English, as usual, during the
inconvenient enough drive. We were anticipating spending a
boring enough hour with her, but not without really wanting
to see her and chat with her. She was our aunt and we
respected her.
Having celebrated her eighty-third birthday, my aunt Rita
was resting there, working at her leisure with two sewing
machines while listening to her hundreds of spiritual
cassette tapes. She welcomed us warmly, in English, in the
hallway. Upon entering her room we observed her glancing at
a cheerful pink coverlet under construction spread out on
her narrow bed. It wouldn't be finished that day because of
our arrival. She put a needle back on its cushion and sat
in her rocker across from us.
We were, my cousin and I, seated on stiff chairs from the
1960s, aware that this sunny private room on the second
floor was our aunt's reward for her forty-five years of
teaching thousands of children and her fifteen more of
nursing elderly nuns. Silently, she was looking at us.
"I had wanted to be cloistered," she announced, only she
said it in French.
A single word slipped from each of us in unison, "What?" My
aunt Rita had something to tell us that couldn't be heard
in English. We switched languages.
Her lips broke into a feline smile and she let rip a second
time, "Yes, I had very much wanted to be cloistered, but
they didn't have any more places."
Her weakening chestnut eyes didn't hide their pleasure in
seeing our mouths agape. "It was my Aunt Bella, Papa's
sister, who brought me to the convent by taxi."
Aunt Rita rocked three times, stopped and added, "A boy
wanted to marry me. He had received fifty thousand dollars
after his father's death. He was studying to become a
pharmacist."
The good sister's face lit up. She had decided that her
graying nieces were finally mature and sensitive enough to
hear an ancient mystery from their childhood memories
finally unveiled.
Suddenly, I had a flashback. Suddenly, I was
eleven-years-old. Pa was sleeping under his Boston Sunday
Globe on the living room couch. In the kitchen, Ma was
opening her box of old photos and I was thrilled because I
adored listening to the details of the ancient dramas
depicted in these pictures. I fished around in the jumble
of pictures and chose one of a young gentleman wearing a
cape and cane. "That one, that's Georges-Albert. He became
a priest because Rita didn't want to marry him," said Ma
matter-of-factly, in French. What type of fellow would
become a priest because of a pretty nun? Especially, not my
aunt Rita whose perfect behavior personified all the
Christian virtues. Impossible! However, I had been wrong to
judge Ma's imagination as too active.
Now, speechless and awaiting the spilling of secrets, I was
thinking about the box. Come to think of it, the young
gentleman posed in plenty of my family photos taken towards
the end of the 1930s. The camera framed him between Mémère
and the uncles. Sometimes he appeared amid the aunts from
Montréal, or standing next to my aunt Lucille in her black
veil. In the photos with my aunt Rita the young gentleman
smiled explosively.
My aunt Rita continued, "One night, I was sleeping
fitfully, stressed by the whole question of marriage. Papa
wanted grand-children. I could have gotten married like it
was the thing to do, but I hesitated." She knit her
eyebrows, "The boy was waiting for my answer." The story
was unfolding clearly. Aunt Rita wasn't drowsy that
afternoon despite the warm humidity of her room. She was
reanimated by the passion that had enflamed her soul more
than sixty years ago.
"In the middle of the night an enormous cross appeared at
the foot of my bed. I was horrified. 'Look,' I whispered to
my sister Doris who was snoring next to me.' 'Look at
what?' she growled at me. 'Don't you see it? The huge cross
dripping with blood?' 'What cross?' Doris wasn't too happy,
'you're dreaming!' Finally the cross and the blood
disappeared, but naturally I couldn't sleep anymore. I went
down to breakfast very pale. Maman advised me to stay home
instead of going to work at the mill that morning. Your
grand-mother was very sensitive and had already guessed
what my problem was. She told me to go see the pastor.
"I went to the rectory after the six o'clock mass. I told
him about my crazy vision. The pastor made me see that I
was strongly attracted to religious life and that if I were
married without at least spending a few weeks in a convent,
I would always regret it. If God didn't want me, he'd show
me the door and I'd get married."
This wasn't our aunt Rita talking to us. It was a young
lady of twenty-two whose conscience was causing her
profound unrest. She closed her eyes four seconds, five
seconds, and continued:
"I prayed, and I prayed. Your aunt Lucille had already
taken her final vows and was teaching in St. Albans,
Vermont. We had very much prayed and sacrificed for her
vocation before she left. Now, she was continuing her
prayers for mine, although a future like hers filled with
noisy kids wasn't too appealing.
"The more I prayed, the more I wanted to enter a cloister.
Papa hadn't wanted any of his daughters to become nuns!
Having a second one wouldn't make him too happy.
"My maiden aunt Bella understood that marriage wasn't for
everybody. She had me spend some time with her in Montreal.
After several long conversations, she took a day off from
her secretarial job. She took me to the convent by taxi,
but had to wait for me at the entrance gate.
"The mother superior welcomed me in the parlor, but told me
gently that the convent was teeming with young postulants.
The tears started again. Finally, I came to understand that
God was calling me to St. Laurent to enter into my sister
Lucille's congregation. In a flash, my aunt Bella gave the
address to the cab driver.
"And there you have it that they accepted me and that's
where I stayed."
It occurred to me that the young man's name never touched
her lips after sixty years. I admired her reserve. My
curious cousin couldn't stand it any longer had to ask what
had become of the boy whose name was never spoken.
"Oh! The boy! He wailed plenty, but finally, despite his
grief he accepted my decision. Then, separated from me, he
had time to think and entered a seminary where he became a
very good priest." Her eyes sparkled in a discrete smile.
"We celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversaries in the same
year; me with my sisters, and him as a Reverend Father."
"I thing that I served the Lord well enough as a teacher."
Aunt Rita looked up at the enormous crucifix at the head of
her little bed, "Still, I would have liked to be
cloistered." A long sigh signaled us to leave and bring
away in our hearts this profession of faith that we had
been allowed to witness.
Today, my aunt Rita lives at the nursing home for religious
women. They put on her veil every day. She smiles when they
bring her Holy Communion. She doesn't recognize practically
anybody, floating somewhere between earth and heaven with
her prayers, rather cloistered, finally.