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****Alena Dillon’s MERCY HOUSE is #161 in the never-ending series called INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt. All INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links are at the end of this piece
What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? August 2015 with research to final edits around May 2020.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? Most of it was written in an apartment I moved from and in the Endicott College library, where I taught. Then there were various coffee shops, and the desk at my current house:
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I always work in the morning, especially now that my childcare hours are pretty rigid. I type on my laptop with a trusty cup of coffee at my right hand.
“It’s what we’ve feared,” Josephine said. “It’s him.”
“Him?” Evelyn asked, her hands clenching into fists at her side, her pulse rising.
“Him,” Josephine confirmed with a single nod. “He knows, and he’s coming.”
Rumors had been circulating their order for months that Bishop Robert Hawkins — whom they called the Hawk — was coming for an extended stay as part of the apostolic visitation, a nationwide Vatican-initiated scrutiny of religious sisters. A team of investigators was spending two years touring the United States, sticking their beaks into every order, examining them with microscopic eyes, hunting for deviations from doctrine. Hawkins was chosen by Cardinal Franc Rode, who initiated this great “nun-quisition,” reproaching American nuns for their “secular mentality” and “feminist spirit.”
Although nuns across the country took the same vows, the culture and beliefs of orders were as varied as the culture and beliefs of all Americans. On one end of the spectrum were the conservative orders. These nuns still wore habits and lived cloistered lives cut off from the rest of society, like medieval nuns. Some were so extreme they self-flagellated, and were so isolated they received Communion through a gate. On the other end were liberal nuns, sisters who didn’t attend church regularly, who didn’t consider themselves servants of the Vatican, who went so far as to refer to God as a She, and who wanted female ordination. One hundred and fifty such women had performed the Mass ceremony despite the papal edict that forbade it, and they were promptly excommunicated.
The Sisters of St. Joseph of Mercy, Evelyn’s order, fell somewhere in the middle, perhaps with a leaning more toward the “God as She” end of the spectrum. It was their type of order that many church leaders begrudged, calling them “radical feminists.” It was their type of order the Catholic Church hoped to “repair” — and, if not repair, then to purge.
In addition to the sisters’ beliefs, the Vatican — led by Pope Benedict XVI — took issue with their missions. They did not approve of much of the nuns’ work in the United States. They alleged sisters spent too much time focusing on social justice — advocating for human rights — and not enough time advancing church doctrine — No abortions! No contraception! No homosexuality! No divorce! They wanted less emphasis on love, equality, and fairness, and more energy spent promoting rules and regulations. Spare the rod, spoil the American child.
A year earlier, in 2009, the Vatican had distributed a questionnaire to the fifty-thousand-some-odd remaining American nuns, a fraction of their maximum number of two hundred thousand in 1965. Evelyn did not take this survey seriously.
Question: How do you understand and express the vow and virtue of obedience?
Answer: Well, that depends. Did my superior say, “Simon says?”
Question: What are the procedures for dealing with matters of criminal activity?
Answer: We make the wrongdoer smoke the entire pack of criminal activity — all in one sitting.
Question: How does the manner of dress, as specified in the proper law of your religious institute, bear witness to your consecration, and to the dignity and simplicity of your vocation?
Answer: I try to keep body glitter to a minimum. But I’m only human!
Although she supposed it was technically true, Evelyn didn’t consider herself a servant of the Vatican. She’d never been to Rome, she’d never met the current Pontiff, and she had virtually no desire to do so. Pope Benedict XVI wore red velvet capes with ermine fur trim. He commissioned his own cologne, which Evelyn called Pope-pourri. He was chauffeured around in a Mercedes. He had a personal library of more than twenty thousand books. It took two hundred architects and engineers to restore his Rome palace, and he resided in his other palace while the construction was underway. That lavish lifestyle bore little resemblance to her experience in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where gunfire rattled through the night, where she added more broth to stretch soup for dinner, where she applied for endless grants in order to afford heat and electricity, where girls cried themselves to sleep because they were hurt and scared and lonely. She and Pope Benedict may have shared the same God, the same Blessed Mother, but this community was her congregation. It was here she best served, and it was in the faces of her neighbors that she witnessed the love and compassion of Jesus Christ. She may have attended Mass once or twice a week, but Mercy House wasn’t just her ministry — it was her true church.
The Vatican didn’t quite see it that way.
Evelyn’s priest, Father John, a childhood friend who had grown up down the block from her family and become an affable man — if a little spineless — explained the Vatican’s intention in benign clichés: They just want to touch base with you. They are taking the pulse of our parish. They want to get to know your work better and find better ways to support you. You all are great; you have nothing to be concerned about.
But the sisters knew the truth. The Vatican had swept three thousand cases of priest pedophilia under the rug, protecting those criminals at the cost of their own morality and worldwide respect, but when it came to nuns, they wanted blood. This was an inquisition. A probing. And, if need be, a culling.
The sisters were rightfully concerned. Not just for the sake of Mercy House and their identities as nuns, but for their own survival. The church owned their house and provided them health insurance, cell phones, and a weekly stipend. They were senior citizens without belongings or bank accounts — who would support them if they were tossed from the order? Who would hire them? Where would they sleep? What would they eat? They might very well end up living in the kind of shelter they’d devoted their lives to operating.
To make matters worse, not only was Bishop Robert Hawkins a threat to the sisters’ work and well-being, he and Evelyn had a history. In fact, he was one of the few people on God’s good green earth whom Evelyn despised.
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? It shows what was at stake for these older women who were being investigated by the powerful institution to which they’d committed their lives. Though this novel is fiction, it was inspired by the real investigation of American nuns.
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked-up rough drafts of this excerpt. I wish I had these materials but I’m a Maria Kondo type of person. I don’t save much. I like to clean and eliminate—even documents on my computer. Probably a bad habit but I like to pretend a clean computer is a clean mind.
Alena Dillon's work has appeared in Slice Magazine, The Rumpus, and Seventh Wave, among others. She earned her MFA from Fairfield University. Mercy House is her debut novel. She lives on the north shore of Boston with her husband, son, and their black labrador, Penny.
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