Free Mother Nature: The Journals of Eleanor O'Kell by Michael Conniff Page A

first caress in the candlelight, the first kiss by Jane, their brown cow dresses dropping in bunches to the stone floor, to our floor, their whispers a hiss across the room before the quick shivering of Nancy’s hand between Jane’s legs, then Jane falling back, backwards onto the altar, her legs a collar around Nancy’s head, Jane yelping like a dog fed late. The stained glass windows steam up with their lust. The air outside is not so cold as my hate.
     
November 25, 1967
    Every night I go to the same window to watch them, and every night I wait for the stained glass to steam up before I cry. I want to pull the wings off of flies.
     
November 26, 1967
Jane goes home so Nancy and I have Thanksgiving dinner together at the Convent. She is pale as a ghost and the ghost can barely touch her turkey. I say anyone can see something’s wrong. “Oh?” Nancy says. I don’t tell her what I know. But I feel so much better now because I know what to do. We wish on the wishbone and I win.
     
December 3, 1967
    I tell Nancy we can’t be together any more. “I know,” she says. “And you can’t leave. That means I have to go. That’s what’s killing me.”
     
December 14, 1967
    I tell Jane I am sending her on a long recruiting trip so she will miss Christmas and New Year’s at the Convent. She bites her lip hard enough to turn it white. “Why?” she wonders. God’s will, I tell her.
     
December 16, 1967
    “I seen them crying, Mother,” Todd is telling me. “I seen them both crying. In the, in the place at the bottom of the stairs where no one ever goes ever except for me and for them this one time. They were crying and crying, crying and crying.” I tell Todd he is definitely not going to hell.
     
December 20, 1967
    So where do you want to go? I ask Nancy. “Far away,” she says. “It’s too painful to be this close.” I know exactly what you mean, I say.
     
    January 7, 1968
    I tell Nancy I am sending her as far west and as far north as I can. “Now?” she says. Now and forever after, I tell her. She will be long gone long before her little Sister can come back. For Nancy to complain to me would be to admit everything, and so far she has admitted nothing. Mother Superior has her ways.
     
January 18, 1968
    Nancy is gone. I have won. This is what hell must feel like.
     
January 30, 1968
    “Send me away, too,” Jane says. I need you here for the greater good, I say.
     
February 1, 1968
    I feel much better already now that Jane and Nancy are no more. I have bigger plans for Jane.
     
February 3, 1968
    Jane knows nothing of Nancy and me. She has no idea that I know about Nancy and her . I go to Jane’s room and her door is open a crack. She is face down on the bed, her shoulders heaving. I sit down beside her to knuckle her neck, to knead her shoulders and her arms and then the low scoop of her back, the meat at the very top of her thighs. I slide her legs apart just so. I slither my hands high up along the inside of her thighs. She reaches back and rings her arms around my neck. “Thank you, Mother Superior,” she says. “Call me Eleanor,” I say. Now that the wings are off I will force her to fly.
     
March 2, 1968
    The board of governors wants answers. “They’re antsy,” Charles Evans tells me sotto voce . “They don’t exactly blame you for the nuns leaving, or the recruits, but they wonder why it all started when you took over. They want to know what you’re going to do about it.” Prayer? I say. “Very funny,” he says. “ Hardy-har . But it’s not funny, Eleanor. The board is very unhappy.”
     
March 9, 1968
    Jane lights up like a firefly whenever Nancy comes on the line. I see her laugh and jabber into the phone. Her tears explode when they hit the blotter.
     
March 20, 1968
    I’m giving you the recruits, I say to Jane. “Why?” she wonders. I tell her I’m too long in the tooth, I’ve lost touch. I go on the road, they tune me out. I might as well be their mother. You’re