Embracing Darkness (7 page)

“She’s a mute?” Father Poole repeated, feeling sorry for the woman.

“Yes. She’s been that way ever since… .” Sister Ignatius stopped. She perceived that Father Poole had not been listening, but rather giving all his undivided attention to Mrs. Keats as thick beads of sweat dripped from her forehead onto the thick lenses of her glasses and from there onto her hands, which were half immersed in the dough. Next to her Father Poole spotted the ominous cymbal suspended from the ceiling by a rope. On the table next to it was a rolling pin that she substituted for a hammer. The priest noted that the woman had not once looked up since they arrived, had no idea anyone else was in the kitchen with her, and had no knowledge that she was currently the focal point of discussion. He crouched down a bit and waved his hand in an attempt to get her attention, but given her bad vision she took no notice of either of them.

“What happened to the poor woman?” Father Poole inquired.

“Her husband happened to her,” Sister Ignatius said, devoid of emotion.

“I don’t understand,” he replied. “Was she abused in some way?”

“How detailed would you like it, Father? I can speak in generalities or be as explicit as you like.”

For a reason unknown to Father Poole, Sister Ignatius’s voice sounded even more menacing than before, as if
he
were to blame for the damage done to Mrs. Keats. “Tell me what you can,” he answered.

“Mr. Keats beat her every day of their marriage,” she replied. “After I’m done telling you everything, don’t ask me how I know what I know. That’ll be my business if you don’t mind.”

Father Poole continued observing Mrs. Keats and agreed to respect Sister Ignatius’s wishes.

She began to give him an account of what the cook had endured. “He slapped, punched, kicked, and cut her,” Sister Ignatius began. “He used to hit her on the side of her head once a day just to ‘make sure she was still breathing,’ as he would put it.” She inhaled deeply and went on. “He was big on playing cruel pranks on her at the beginning: putting molasses in her good shoes, spiking her lemonade with castor oil. Oh, the things he did to her! Once during a town picnic it suddenly started to rain. He blamed her for forgetting the umbrella at home and told her that, if she ever did something so stupid again, he was going to pull out as many of her pubic hairs as he could.

Father Poole gasped, yet as he recovered from the shocking beginning of Sister Ignatius’s story, Phineas realized that she’d either invented the story herself or saw it first hand, as he could never fathom anyone telling a nun such a story.

She continued as coolly as she had begun. “It’s a good thing for Mrs. Keats that I was able to overhear some of the ladies who come to Mass on Sunday. I sit in the pew behind them. Mrs. Foster and Mrs. Honigmann were two rocks of reliability when it came to spilling the beans, but they had no idea I was listening. Mrs. Honigmann only knows what she knows because her husband is the town doctor. He’d have firsthand knowledge of Mrs. Keats’s injuries. Naturally there is no such thing as patient confidentiality in
this
town.”

Sister Ignatius stopped for a moment. At first Father Poole assumed that she was beginning to suffer from a guilty conscience, talking in such detail about Mrs. Keats in front of her
and
to a perfect stranger, but her break was only so that she could think of more details to tell him.

“When they were first wed,” Sister Ignatius went on, “they quickly consummated the marriage, but it was as if Mr. Keats needed to consummate every night, and she accepted him every night. When she was six months with child he began coming home late every night drunk as could be. One evening he threw her down a flight of stairs, and she lost the child. After that he began raping her at will. Not long after she began to refuse him, but he’d go for her anyway. He’d have his way with her and amuse himself by finding different ways to humiliate her. He used broom handles, sharpened pencils, and a pair of scissors. Once I even heard that he got a telephone receiver halfway up… .”

She stopped abruptly as Father Poole shrieked in disgust and compassion all at once. The priest slowly regained what little composure he had left. By this time Mrs. Keats had taken notice of the two of them standing there. She nodded her head ever so slightly at Sister Ignatius but didn’t pay much attention to Father Poole.

“God bless you, my child,” he said to her softly as the plump woman turned her back to them, focusing her attention on the boiled meat atop the stove.

“Remember, Father,” Sister Ignatius said matter-of-factly. “If you want her to understand you, let her read your lips or simply talk very loud. She’s lost over ninety percent of her hearing. Her husband hated that she’d put too much rosemary on his lamb, so he boxed her ears with the handles of two wooden spoons.”

Father Poole looked back to the hanging cymbal and said softly, “It’s her way of calling us to eat, isn’t it?”

Sister Ignatius didn’t answer at first, although her brief pause was pregnant with a thousand silent insults directed entirely at Father Poole.

“Does she not speak from the sheer trauma of her past?” he asked.

“Oh, you want me to go on, do you?” Sister Ignatius said sarcastically.

“You mean there’s more?” Father Poole replied nervously, thinking
Who
could
have
survived
what
I’ve
just
heard
? And yet there
was
more. “Brain damage, I suppose,” he said at length. “The injury done to her eardrums penetrated… .”

“No, no, no,” said Sister Ignatius in an annoyed tone. “Nothing like that. This woman had promised to love, honor, and obey that beast. What did he do to her? Beating her wasn’t enough. Breaking her eardrums wasn’t enough. That son-of-a-bitch… .” She paused, looked over at Mrs. Keats, and then leaned toward Father Poole. “He made her eat lye,” she whispered.

“What was that? Her husband made her what?” The nun grunted at the thought of having to repeat what she had just said.

“HE-FED-HER-
LYE
!” she hollered.

“Lye!” he repeated.

“Yes, Father,” she replied, sounding calmer now. “
Lye
. She lost most of her eyesight. Lye blinds you if you ingest it, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know,” Father Poole said. “I see. And this ultimately rendered her incapable of speech?”

The Sister sucked her teeth and began, “No, Father. You must let me finish the story.”

“Yes,” the young priest said, needlessly keeping his voice low. “Please finish. I am… uhm. Yes, finish your… uhm… .”

Sister Ignatius continued, ignoring Father Poole. “Mr. Keats was in fact a very smart man. He knew that feeding lye to his wife might land him in prison, possibly for attempted murder, so to silence her… .” She paused again before letting out a deep sigh. “He cut out her tongue.”

Father Poole yelled, “HE CUT OUT HER TONGUE? HOW BEASTLY!” Horrified by the brutality of one human being toward another, Phineas placed a hand on his heart and fell back against the wall. “God damn,” Father Poole whispered, but loud enough for Sister Ignatius to hear.

She walked over to Father Poole and nodded in approval. “The Keats’s were neighbors of this church. Their house lies just beyond. You can see it from the stained-glass windows. Every time Father Carroll, Argyle Hobbs, or I used to hear her cries, we’d run next door. That is, Argyle Hobbs would limp, and I would run. Father Carroll wobbled.”

The nun laughed a little at her cruelty, and Father Poole immediately ascertained that Carroll and Sister Ignatius liked each other very little if at all.

“I came here in 1921,” she continued. “By Christmas of the same year we’d had to go next door, due to shrill screams in the darkness, six times. The front door was always ajar, and Mr. Keats always stormed out before we could confront him. But by May of 1922, Mrs. Keats had had enough. One morning we heard screams coming from the Keats’s house, but they weren’t
her
screams. She’d already come to us just minutes before with a bloodstained knife in her hand. At first Father Carroll thought she’d been cutting tomatoes, but the red stains were darker than any tomato juice.”

“She
killed
him!” Father Poole gasped.

“No,” Sister Ignatius snapped. “Father, you
must
let me continue! She did not kill him, although I’m sure he wished she had.” The nun grinned and even managed a chortle. “In the end he got exactly what was coming to him.”

“And what was that, Sister?” Father Poole inquired anxiously.

“
He
had robbed
her
of her eyes, ears, voice, dignity, and self-respect.
She
robbed
him
of his jewels. Cut them right off with that old knife! She stood before us with the bloody knife in one hand and her husband’s severed scrotum in the other.”

Father Poole, his mouth hanging open, crossed himself and muttered, “God Almighty!”

Sister Ignatius, still relentless, went on. “I believe his screams could have been heard in the town below. Had we not been right next door, she’d have had no place to go. He would have killed her, writhing in his own pain. We saved
her
from
him
. Like a faithful child of God, she knew the doors to
His
house are never closed. Like a true Christian woman she acknowledged the ultimate sacrifice Jesus made for us, saving her from that jackal she once called husband. She is now devoted in her own way to serving the Lord.”

As Sister Ignatius went over to Mrs. Keats, the crippled woman handed her a plate of food, generously filled, and Father Poole thought, “And serving
you
as well, isn’t that right, Sister of the Humble Shepherd?”

SEVEN
Argyle Hobbs
 

Dinner being ready, the three prepared to sit down in the dining room. By now it was dusk, and both Sister Ignatius and Mrs. Keats were making their rounds along the first floor, illuminating the lamps that made for a pleasant ambiance equal to that of candlelight. Father Poole, not knowing the rectory’s protocol, was seated at the head of the table and waited for the ladies.

He inspected his setting, which contained boiled meat of some kind, two unpeeled boiled potatoes, string beans, cooked carrots (also unpeeled), and a glass of milk. The latter was not cold, as Father Poole was able to make out by the warm feel of the glass.

The ladies came back and took their places at the other end of the long table, sitting directly across from one another. As they did so, Father Poole noticed that Mrs. Keats walked with a limp.

“Why is the dear lady limping?” he asked.

Sister Ignatius replied coldly, “Ask her yourself. I’d like to start my dinner, if you don’t mind.”

Father Poole still didn’t know how to gauge the nun. He found her to be boorish and insubordinate, and even though she did remind him that she was his inferior, she didn’t act like it. He ignored her tone once more and waved his hand in the air to get Mrs. Keats’s attention, angering Sister Ignatius.

“What
are
you doing, Father?” she hissed.

His reply sounded angry. “I’m trying to get her attention without having to scream over the dinner table.”

Sister Ignatius tried to object. “I’ve already told you that she has minimal hearing and that her eyesight is… .” But Father Poole cut her off.

“Yes, you’ve told me in wonderful detail how much the woman has suffered, but now I’d like to speak to her directly. Do I have your permission?”

The nun’s left eye twitched twice. She bit her lip hard and picked up the fork she had placed beside her dish seconds earlier. Meanwhile Mrs. Keats piled food into her mouth so fast that she looked as though she were vying for first place in a pie-eating contest.

“I say, Mrs. Keats,” the priest said in a loud voice, but the woman continued scooping her food like a coalman on a steamship. He tried again, this time even louder. “Mrs. Keats. I was wondering…,” but Mrs. Keats kept on eating.

Not looking up from her own plate, Sister Ignatius said, “She’s sitting right across from me. Would you like me to get her attention for you?”

Father Poole felt utterly ridiculous. “Thank you, Sister,” he replied.

Sister Ignatius placed her left hand on Mrs. Keats’s right wrist, which rested on the table as she ate. Mrs. Keats quickly looked up from her meal, her lips soiled with food. Slivers of potato adhered to both corners of her mouth, and a shaving of meat hung from her bottom lip.

Without saying a word, Sister Ignatius motioned for the mute woman to face Father Poole at the other end of the table. Mrs. Keats obliged her. The priest, fearing now that his question might strike a nerve, asked boldly, “Why do you limp?” Mrs. Keats didn’t react. Poole assumed that she hadn’t heard him. He didn’t want to shout any louder, so he rocked his torso side to side and then pointed down at her feet. Mrs. Keats followed his finger down and then opened her mouth as though she were going to speak, but it was only a gesture as if to say, “Oh, right!”

She turned her index and middle fingers upside down and made a gesture of legs walking downstairs. Then she stuck out her chest, grimaced, and swayed her own torso from left to right. The priest understood this representation to be her abusive husband. Mrs. Keats suddenly made a pushing motion and then pointed to herself. Then, in a descending angle with her hand, she made tumbling motions.

“You were injured in a fall,” Father Poole said sadly. Mrs. Keats understood him immediately because she could read his lips. She smiled, nodded, and shrugged as if to say, “That’s life.” He beamed at Sister Ignatius, feeling victorious in his first communication with Mrs. Keats, but the nun was quietly eating her dinner with her head still down.

Father Poole decided that it would be a good idea to start eating himself. As he chewed his first bite of meat, he smelled a strange odor. He dismissed it as nothing since neither of the ladies scowled. After he swallowed his second mouthful of beef, he asked, “Whatever happened to her husband? You never said.”