THE BLOND NUN
I knew a woman once whose family had immigrated from Italy when she was two or three years old. It was the middle of the depression of the 1930s, and the family suffered deep, hard poverty. Dad sold pencils and hankies off the streets of Boston to try to make a few pennies with which to buy food. Mom worked as a maid in a cheap hotel in return for a room in the basement. Mom was cruelly angry at Dad for taking her from her family and her homeland to this terrible place where they could not make a living.
More and more, Dad turned to Maria for affection and support. She became his significant other, his confidant, which of course made Mom even more angry at him.
One day when Maria was about five, Dad came wearily home from work. As he hugged Maria, Mom started in on him again, shrieking at him about his inadequacies. As he held Maria close to his side, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a pistol and shot and killed Mom, and then himself.
No one in the extended family could take on the responsibility for a five-year-old girl, especially a traumatized girl. So she was sent to a convent – which turned out to be extremely strict and harsh. Overwhelmed with the trauma she had experienced, and speaking very little English, Maria felt absolutely alone, different, terrified.
Her only possession was an old Raggedy Ann doll, which was her one tie with the past, the only thing that brought her any sense of security, a kind of friend and protector. It was the only thing that was familiar in this bewildering world of chaos.
Once, in the middle of the night, Maria had to go to the bathroom. When she opened the door, there in front of the mirror was one of the younger nuns, brushing her long blond hair – hair that should have been cut off when she joined the convent. Apparently, this nun just could not sacrifice her beautiful hair. She kept it rolled tightly in a bun and carefully hidden under the hat that was part of her attire.
She begged Maria not to tell anyone, and so of course they became friends. In a sense, they were like co-conspirators, drawn together by the dangerous secret they shared. Maria finally had a sense of being important to someone – here was someone who needed her! She was in a sense the blond nun’s protector, for she carefully guarded her secret. For the first time in this terrible place, Maria felt valued. She had an ally, someone else who was different, someone else who like herself was to some extent an outsider.
Sometime after that, on a very windy day, a gust of wind blew the hat off the head of one older nuns – a rather large woman who had never been very nice to Maria. As she ran awkwardly through the yard to retrieve her hat, she looked so absurd that Maria giggled.
Unfortunately, the director of the convent witnessed this. To punish Maria for her disrespect, she snatched Maria’s dolly and threw it in the trash. She then made Maria stand in a dark closet for the rest of the day.
It is incredible how cruel people can be to each other in the guise of religion!
Maria was devastated. As soon as she could, she found the blond nun and sobbed and sobbed inconsolably in her arms, terrified about what else might happen, what else might be taken from her.
The blond nun told her that as soon as everybody was asleep, she would go and look through the trash to see if she could find Dolly. So late that night, she rummaged through the trash and actually found Maria’s Dolly. But she told Maria that she couldn’t give it back to her. If anybody found it, they would both be in a lot of trouble. But she had a place where she could keep Dolly safe from all prying eyes. She would keep Dolly safe.
For a long time afterward, Maria would ask the blond nun, “How’s my Dolly?”. And the nun would tell her, “Dolly is fine. She says to tell you that she loves you and wants you to be happy.”
A couple of years later, the blond nun left the convent. It still wasn’t safe for Maria to have her Dolly back, but the nun promised her that she would keep Dolly safe with her for as long as she lived.
* * * * *
Unfortunately, I do not know what transpired after this. Here is one possibility (hypothetical, but perhaps possible).
* * * * *
It was years before Maria saw the blond nun again, no longer blond but now gray. Maria’s children were now in college, and she had been reflecting back on her own life. It took a while, but she had found out where the blond nun lived and went to see her. They embraced warmly, with many tears.
The nun told Maria there was something she had to tell her. But Maria interrupted her. “You never did find my Dolly, did you?” “No, I didn’t. I looked very hard, but they had already taken the trash away. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.”
Maria assured her that she was very glad she handled it the way she did. “I don’t think I could have handled it if I had known Dolly was gone. But what happened was that you took the place of Dolly for me. You became my special friend. I knew that you loved my Dolly and had a place for her in your heart. That meant that you loved me and had a place for me in your heart. And that’s what was important.”