The Opposite of Hallelujah (25 page)

“Really?” I asked. “Why?”

She shook her head and let out a short, angry laugh. “I have no idea. Vanity, I guess.”

“No. You’re not vain. I mean, look at that haircut.” I reached out and tugged at the very end of a piece that had fallen into her eyes.

“Convent chic,” she said. “Very now.”

I giggled. “I didn’t know nuns could make jokes.”

“We can’t,” she said, mock-seriously. “I’ve been saving that one for eight years.”

“Another joke. Incredible.” Then I had an idea, although I wasn’t positive Hannah would go along with it. “Why don’t we fix it?”

“Fix what?”

“Your hair,” I said. “I bet we could get a walk-in
appointment at the salon. You could get a cut, and maybe some highlights.”

Hannah looked uncertain. “I don’t know, Caro.”

“Come on, it’ll be fun. And it might make you feel a little better. I’ve got Mom and Dad’s credit card,” I told her in a singsong. I was liking this idea better and better every second. Nothing made me feel good like a haircut. There was something freeing about trimming off all the old split ends, and if there was anything Hannah needed, it was to cut loose from the dourness of the convent and step into the light of modern womanhood. Or something.

Hannah glanced at the clock on my nightstand. “How are we going to get to the salon? Mom and Dad didn’t leave us a car.”

“I have an idea,” I said, picking up my cell and dialing Reb’s number.

Twenty minutes later, Reb dropped us off in front of Hair Quarters, the salon Mom and I went to. I’d called ahead and Erica, our normal hairdresser, had agreed to squeeze us in.

“Thanks, Reb,” I said, unbuckling my seat belt. “I owe you one.”

“No problemo,” Reb said, flashing me an encouraging smile. “Just call me when you need me to fetch you, okay?”

I nodded. Hannah thanked Reb, as well, and we both climbed out of the car and walked into the salon. Erica was waiting for us in the reception area; she greeted us warmly, shook Hannah’s hand when I introduced my sister, and guided us to an empty chair, where she commanded Hannah to take her hair out of the ponytail it’d been tied up in and let it fall down to just above her shoulders.

“Yikes,” Erica said, lifting it in places and fingering the edges. “Who cut this last, Edward Scissorhands?”

“Sister Augustine,” Hannah said. Erica gave me a puzzled look.

“A friend,” I said, by way of explanation.

Hannah glanced at the hairdresser with concern. Erica had been cutting my hair for years, and every time I saw her she looked different; at the moment she was sporting a short, angled cut and her entire head was dyed pitch black. But I wasn’t worried. Erica would know just what Hannah needed. It was her gift.

“An enemy is more like it,” Erica told her. “A blunt cut like this does your face no favors, sweetie. But don’t worry, we’ll fix it up—add some layers, maybe a little color. When I’m through with you, you’re going to look gorgeous.”

“Thank you,” Hannah said softly, blushing. Even a foul haircut wasn’t able to cover up Hannah’s beauty; once Erica was done pruning her a little, she was going to be a knockout. I wondered what Hannah’s general
feelings were about dating; as soon as she stopped skulking around the house all day, she was going to get all kinds of male attention. But knowing Hannah, it would probably just freak her out.

I was sitting in the chair right next to Hannah’s. When Erica hurried into the back room to mix the hair dye, Hannah turned to look at me. I must’ve had a miserable expression on my face, because she put her hand on my leg and asked, “What’s going on, Caro?”

I sighed. “I just had a bad day at school, that’s all.”

“Pawel?” Hannah asked.

“And Erin,” I said. “Erin is one of my best friends.”

“Okay.” She gave me a
tell me more
look, so I just opened my mouth and let it spill out. She nodded throughout my story, making the appropriate sympathetic noises as I related the awkwardness and humiliation of physics.

“He must think I’m a stalker as well as a liar,” I said.

“I doubt it. How could you know how things would go?” Hannah said. “It was coincidence.”

“Then why do I feel like I manipulated him into being my science fair partner even though I tried to prevent it?”

“Because you’re glad it worked out that way and you’re afraid he isn’t,” Hannah told me.

“I’m not ‘glad it worked out that way,’ God, Hannah.” I scoffed. “Oh, sorry.”

“You can say ‘God’ to me,” she said, smiling. “Even in vain. It’s okay. I’m not the Jesus police.”

“Having Pawel as my partner is actually worse for me,” I pointed out. “Now we’re going to have to spend all of this time together, and he’s going to think I’m angling to get him back. Plus, I want to get a good grade, and Pawel’s smart, but he’s not what you would call a hard worker.”

“So you’ll have to teach him,” Hannah said.

“Ha. That’s a good one.” I leaned back in my chair and spun it about forty-five degrees. “This stupid high school stuff must be so boring to you.”

“No,” she said firmly. “It’s a nice distraction.”

“From what?” I asked. Maybe we were finally going to talk about it—her reason for leaving the convent, her reason for going in the first place, her disordered eating. The idea made me a little nervous; a hair salon didn’t seem like the right place for that kind of serious talk.

Hannah frowned. “I have to start working on my college applications. Mom and Dad are really on my case about it—they’re afraid I’ll never go back if I don’t start right away. But it feels like it’s too soon. I don’t know if I’m ready.”

“Yeah, but aren’t you sick of sitting around the house all day? Wouldn’t it make you feel better to have something to do?” That was certainly the advice Father Bob would’ve given her.

Hannah sighed. “It sounds like such a silly obstacle, but I don’t know what I’d study.”

“Well, what did you study before?”

“Theology. I doubt that would be prudent now.”

“Because you don’t believe in God anymore.”

Hannah looked away from me. “It’s not that simple.”

“I know,” I said.

Hannah and I sat in silence for what felt like eons. I was starting to see, from the look on her face, just how complicated her life had really become. The past eight years had changed her. It must have been like being born again, except not in the life-affirming way—in the terrifying way, in which you emerge from blackness into a bright, cold, unfamiliar place, aching with fear.

“It’s not losing my faith that upsets me,” Hannah said finally. “It’s the fact that I’m starting to wonder if I ever had any in the first place.”

“You don’t think you ever believed in God?”

“I wanted to believe. I really thought I had a vocation, but maybe I imagined it.”

“That doesn’t seem possible,” I said. “You were so sure.”

“Was I? Or did I just convince myself that I didn’t belong out here, that God would only come to me through contemplation and determined prayer? I tried harder at that than I ever had at anything else in my life! For years I tried to open my heart and hear God speak to me. I kept hoping that one day I would experience some sort of epiphany, but it never came, and the more discouraged I felt, the less able I was to pray, until … I had to go.”

“Did you talk to anybody about it?” The convent
she’d lived in had been full of other nuns just like her, but older; surely at least one of them had had a similar experience.

“I did,” Hannah said. “Mother Regina said that I was too young when I went in, that I wasn’t ready to give it all up.”

“Give what up?” I asked. Hannah didn’t seem to care very much about
stuff
. She owned almost nothing, even now that she was back. Her life was completely unsullied by the material world, insofar as that was even possible, so what was it that Mother Regina thought she was struggling to let go of?

“None of us goes into the convent clean,” she said, not looking at me.

“And you left,” I prompted. I could see why.

“I didn’t,” Hannah said. “I stayed. I sat in the chapel and forced myself to pray, but I was doing something wrong. I felt nothing. When I couldn’t pray anymore, I would sit in my cell and
beg
for a sign, just something that could tell me he was out there, somewhere, watching over me, but there was only silence.”

“What made you decide not to listen anymore?” I wondered.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Hannah told me. “I was coming to the point where I was supposed to take my permanent vows, and Mother Regina didn’t believe the religious life was right for me anymore.”

“She kicked you out?” I cried. No wonder Hannah felt ashamed.

“She didn’t kick me out. She just told me that she could tell I was having difficulty coping with the strain of the contemplative life and suggested I might consider withdrawing from the Sisters of Grace,” Hannah said. “She told me that if I really wanted to come back after I had sorted things out, I should investigate some of the more active orders. She thought the solitude was crushing me.”

“Was it?” Hannah certainly looked crushed. It was hard to believe that my quiet, unassuming sister was incapable of living a contemplative life, though. If anyone was made for it, she was.

Hannah nodded. “I still don’t know why. So many women came and went while I was at the convent, but
I stayed
. I tried harder than any other novitiate I knew—I worked until my bones ached and I prayed until I had no more words, and … nothing. No reward. No grace. Just emptiness.”

“Do Mom and Dad know all this?”

“Bits and pieces. I don’t think they really understand. I’m not even sure they want to.”

I put my hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I had no idea.”

She gave me a smile, but it was weak and sad and it sent a tremor through me. She looked like a little bird, small and slender and utterly breakable. If there was a
God, how could he abandon someone who was so sincere about following him? I could see why she would lose faith. If it had been me, I would’ve lost it a long time ago.

“I wouldn’t worry about me too much,” Hannah said, patting my hand. “It sounds like you have plenty of your own problems.”

I wanted to talk more about it, but Hannah had a way of saying things with such finality. Erica came back with a small bowl full of purple goo and started applying it to Hannah’s roots. It took almost two hours, but Erica worked her magic and Hannah left looking refreshed, gorgeous, and even a little confident, which I considered to be the greatest triumph of the day.

Our parents went gaga over Hannah’s new look. That is, after they took the time to grill me about where we’d been, why I hadn’t answered my phone, and didn’t I know I was still grounded, young lady? They didn’t even notice Hannah at first; I suppose it was years of practice yelling at only one child, and the stealth with which she managed to blend right into the background.

“We went to Hair Quarters,” I told them huffily, presenting my sister with a dramatic flourish.

“Oh, sweetheart,” my mother said. “You look beautiful.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Hannah said, blushing. She was
happy that they were happy, but even now I watched as she wilted under the beams of our parents’ adoration. She hated attention; a haircut was unlikely to change that.

“Really lovely, Hannie,” Dad said, giving her a pat on the head.

“Hey, hey!” I cried, waving him away. “Don’t mess it up! It took two hours to get that right.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to get a haircut,” Mom said, fingering the ends of Hannah’s newly blond, newly layered hair almost in disbelief. “You should’ve told me, I would’ve taken you.”

“It was Caro’s idea,” Hannah said, nodding at me. I nodded back. I hadn’t felt this good about myself in a long time, and they were right: she did look beautiful.

Mom turned her eyes on me now, gooey with sentiment.

“Don’t,” I warned.

“I’m going to go upstairs,” Hannah said, picking her purse up off the couch cushion. She stopped at the stairs and smiled at me. “Thanks, Caro. I had a really good afternoon.”

“Me too,” I told her. She meant it, and so did I, but it would take more than a haircut to get us where we were supposed to be, if we ever got there at all.