“Why’d you become a nun?” asked Mr. Ram.
“Well,
when I was a kid, my mother got me to enjoy all the music she and my
father had listened to when they were kids, you know, Big Band, Glenn
Miller, and she’d get me to watch all the movies she used to go see with
my father when they were growing up. I really liked the movies and
music from back then. They had a certain optimism, a joie de vivre,
almost a naivety about life, all of which it seems like we’ve lost
since then. While I was in college, there was Watergate and Viet Nam and
the CIA and racial problems, and Berkeley wasn’t exactly a hotbed of
contentment. If people in other countries liked our movies and music,
they hated our government, and everyone around me at college was either
cynical or distrustful or, or…it just all seemed so different from the
movies and music my mother had shown me. It seemed to me that there had
to be a better way to live life than being distrustful and cynical about
everyone and everything, and besides, I thought someone had to carry
the torch of American optimism, especially when everyone else was trying
to put it out. And I decided that person would be me.
“I
decided that what I wanted to do was to go abroad and show others that
America was still a country that wanted to help people. I had thought
about going into the Peace Corps, but I didn’t want to be connected with
the government because if I worked for them, I was afraid that the
people in the country I was going to wouldn’t trust me. So instead I
became a Maryknoll nun, purposing to go down to Central America to help
others and show them what America could be. My parents were Catholic,
and I had met a couple of Maryknoll nuns in California. One thing led to
another, and before I knew it, I was in the convent. My parents didn’t
like the idea at first since they were Methodist, but after a while they
accepted my decision.” Sister Carla had turned away from the table and
was studying the floor beneath her intensely.
“What’s she doing?” asked Mrs. Ram.
“She’s
trying to judge how far it is to the floor. Penguins are terribly
nearsighted because their eyes are adapted to seeing underwater. So it
takes them a while to judge distances. They’re quite good jumpers
though. Some can jump better than they can walk.”
“So what happened in the convent?”
“Being
there was quite an adjustment those first few months. Though I had
taken on the idealism of the thirties, I had not taken on the Hayes
Commission’s morality. I had always had boys chasing after me, but I
really didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. You know, men are
funny because it’s so easy to manipulate them. I took cues from the
movies and from friends and learned to act coy and shy, or aggressive
and spunky as the situation demanded. Most of them never realized how I
was controlling them. They were so happy to be with me, they didn’t seem
to care. What happened at the end of the date was their main concern.
Not that I didn’t enjoy it either. In fact, I probably enjoyed it more
than they did, but I also made sure the evening itself was just as fun.”
Sister Carla jumped off the chair and started to explore the Ram’s
house at her leisure.
“Anyway,
the convent changed my dating habits drastically, but I adjusted
quickly enough. A lot of the nuns I met there were nice, optimistic, and
even idealistic, though often for different reasons from my own. Nuns
are not the simplistic Debbie Reynolds types that movies make them out
to be. Most of them are probably more vivacious and thoughtful than the
average person. You know, they say clothes make the person, and it’s the
same with nuns. Most people only see the black and white outer habits
nuns wear before the world without ever thinking about what nuns wear
under their habits. But to some of the more liberal nuns, their
nightgowns were their pride and joy. Why, I myself had a veritable
rainbow of brilliant gowns to sleep in. Under a nun’s habit lies her
true nature, not in it.
“But
that’s beside the point. In due time I was down in Central America, and
I must admit, it turned out to be something quite different from what I
had imagined. I was sent down there to work with Sister Carla, that’s
whom I named our penguin after. She had already been down there for two
years, and she believed in helping people’s bodies as well as their
souls and went out of her way to do so. She made sure she had done
everything she could for the people she was working with, and she never
gave up. Whether someone woke her up in the middle of the night seeking
refuge, or came to her at the church, she went out of her way to help
them. It wasn’t always easy either. We were taken advantage of many
times and we knew it, but we stuck by our jobs nevertheless.
“Unfortunately,
Sister Carla did too good of a job,” continued Regina more solemnly.
“She helped everyone regardless of whom they were and that was her fatal
mistake. The government of the country we were in was rather brutal and
the leftists often did their best to be as inhuman as the people they
were trying to overthrow. There were rumors about some of the things
that happened to people the government didn’t like. They told me about
the ‘flying nun’ incidents. Government soldiers would take some nun who
wouldn’t cooperate with them up in a helicopter, fly over the ocean, and
then push her out the window and tell her to fly. None did. Both sides
had told Sister Carla to stay in the Church where she belonged, but she
and I ignored them. I guess we just figured it wouldn’t happen to us, or
if it did, it was God’s will.” Regina paused.
“It
was a Wednesday when it happened. I was walking home when some of the
people in the village ran up to me and told me some men had taken Sister
Carla away. They didn’t know who the men were or what side they were
on, but she was gone. Two days later someone found her body. She had
been shot twice. As soon as I heard, I went to see her body to make sure
her remains were taken care of.
“I
don’t know. The whole situation was just too real. Sister Carla would
have wanted me to stay on, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. My heart
wasn’t in it. I stayed down there a while and read the Bible every day.
But everything seemed so wrong. If Paul wasn’t preaching at me, the
priests were laying down rules and regulations for me. I knew how to
live without some man telling me what to do. And the men in the Bible
were bigger chauvinists than the men down in Central America. Just read
the Bible and see how the Jews treated women back in Old Testament
times. The Israelites killed all the men in battle, but raped the women
they captured or made them their mistresses. Their women were just
furniture. And then I realized Israel was just like Honduras or some
other Center American country. Every few years there was a coup, an
assassination, a war, or something like that. Nothing had changed in
three thousand years.
“After
Sister Carla got killed, I tried reading the Bible for solace, but
everywhere I read there was nothing but death and destruction from man
and from God. You read in one place where the Israelites kill 500,000
men in a few days. In another place an angel kills 185,000 men. I guess
God would justify that like we justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but what I
never could understand was Childermas, the Slaughter of the Innocents.
God sent an angel to Joseph so he would save His Son Jesus, but He let
all the other children die. Why didn’t God tell the other fathers that
Herod’s men were coming to massacre their children? Why did He save His
Son and not the other children? I never could understand that. Of course
now I’m an agnostic, so I think it’s all a bunch of nonsense, but I
never could reconcile Childermas.
Nuns
just want to have fun! But when three former Catholic nuns have too
much fun and get in trouble with the law, they become nuns on the run.
Driving
back to Washington D.C. where they work at the Kennedy Center for the
Performing Parts, the three sisters are arrested in Tennessee. After
defeating the local deputy in strip poker, they escape from jail, and
are pursued by the zealous Detective Schmuck Hole, who has personally
offered a $10,000 reward for their capture on The 700 Club. Little do
they know that when the three sisters visit the Washington Monument,
their lives will change forever.
Set
in 1979, The Three Sisters is a sacrilegious satire that skewers not
only organized religion, but the government, the media, intellectuals,
corporate greed and every other part of the establishment. Maybe not the
greatest story ever told, but possibly the funniest.
Buy @ Amazon
Genre – Humor, Satire, Catholicism, Politics
Rating – R
More details about the author
Connect with Bryan Taylor on Facebook
Website www.threesistersnovel.com
