Welcome
to the March 2025 edition of Charity Sunday. I’m glad you took the
time to drop by
For
today’s event, I am featuring one of my favorite charities: Rosie’s
Place. An independent multi-function social service center,
Rosie’s Place has been helping vulnerable women in the Boston area
for more than fifty years. The organization provides shelter, food,
clothing, sanitary facilities, child care, education and employment
advice to women dealing with homelessness, domestic abuse, addiction
and related
issues. Most importantly, Rosie’s treats each of its “guests”
with respect and compassion.
These
days it seems that compassion is in pretty short supply, especially
in the United States. The country has been infected by an epidemic of
selfishness. Apparently, “America First” translates into “me
first, and everyone else be damned”. There’s a disturbing
tendency to blame people who are in need – those people who
depended on help from the richest country in the world but have now
been abandoned – for their problems, as if their tribulations were
deserved and somehow made them less worthy.
Ultimately,
though we’re all at risk. Poverty, disaster, disease and conflict –
it would be nice to think we’re immune, but our world can change in
the blink of an eye. Covid taught us that. The Golden Rule isn’t
just a warm and fuzzy idea. It’s a practical guide for living. If
we were in trouble, wouldn’t we want to receive the help and
compassion of others who were more fortunate?
Anyway,
I’ll get off my soapbox now and let my blood pressure subside.
Rosie’s Place is a local organization, working to solve local
problems. That may in fact be the only way to make progress against the multiple challenges we face.
So
for this Charity Sunday I will donate two dollars to Rosie’s for
every comment I receive. Help me prove that compassion is still
alive.
For
my excerpt, I’ve got a snippet from my short story “The First
Stone”, originally published in Cheyenne Blue’s 2014 anthology
Forbidden Fruit: Stories of Unwise Lesbian Desire. The tale is
set in a women’s shelter in Boston, not too different from Rosie’s,
and explores the attraction between a nun working at the shelter and
the ex-addict hooker who’s one of the “guests”.
“You're
kinda pretty, for a nun.”
The
voice was low and throaty, laced with echoes of the ghetto. It
dragged me away from the columns of figures marching down the screen
in front of me, out of the well-ordered realm of accounting and into
the messiness of our inmates' lives. Our guests,
I corrected myself. Nobody was forced to stay at Serenity House.
“Um
— excuse me? Can I help you?”
My
interlocutor grinned at me. Her plump, mauve-painted lips framed
teeth that were a shocking white in her ebony face. She shook her
head. Cheap, brassy earrings dangled from her fleshy lobes, swinging
back and forth over her bare shoulders.
“Just
wanted to say hi. Oh, an' to ask if I can stay out past curfew
tonight. Heard you were in charge.” She extended a hand tipped with
hot pink fingernails. “I'm Magnolia. Me and Moonbeam just got here
yesterday.”
November
in Boston, two weeks before Thanksgiving, but Magnolia's skin felt
August-hot. The woman's breasts almost overflowed the sequined tube
top that constrained them. Below, she wore baggy sweatpants with a
Celtics logo that didn't hide her more than ample curves. Her feet
were crammed into open-toed high heels of scuffed gold-toned plastic.
She towered over me. I felt pretty sure that would be true even if I
were standing.
“Moonbeam?”
Confronted by this apparition, I couldn't seem to manage more than a
couple of words.
“My
kid.” Magnolia indicated a diminutive toddler with kinky pigtails,
sprawled on the floor of the common room, surrounded by alphabet
blocks. Hard to believe that delicate child was the offspring of this
Amazon.
“Ah
— um — well, you're very welcome here, Magnolia. We're glad to
have you with us.” I struggled for the warm yet professional manner
I'd learned to adopt with our guests. Rising from my chair, I gave
her hand a firm squeeze before relinquishing it. My skin tingled in
the aftermath. I'd been right; she stood half a head taller than my
five feet six inches, and probably weighed nearly twice what I did.
“Have a seat, please. I'm Sister Kathleen Patrick, the assistant
director. But I guess you know that.”
She
settled her bottom into the chair I'd indicated. “Yeah, the other
gals told me. Pleased to meet you, Sister.” Her plucked eyebrows
knotted into a frown. “That what I should call you? I ain't had
much experience with nuns.”
Her
obvious concern made me chuckle. “'Sister' would be fine. Or you
can just call me Kathleen. We don't stand on ceremony here at
Serenity House.”
“Not
like at Baystate Rehab. You forget to call one of the nurses 'Miz' or
'Mister', you lose privs for twenty-four hours.” She swiped the
back of her hand across her brown forehead, which was beaded with
sweat. The woman must have a furnace inside.
There
was something lush and tropical about Magnolia. Her name fit her. She
seemed totally out of place in this shabby office lit by the
unrelenting gray of the late autumn sky. I could imagine her wrapped
in a rainbow-hued sarong, dancing barefoot on a beach beneath swaying
palms. Or swimming naked through the waves under a golden moon...
I
hauled my thoughts back to the present. “Is that where you've just
come from?” Not all our guests had substance abuse problems, but it
was pretty common.
“Escaped
is more like it.” She giggled. “This place's like heaven after
Bayhab. Six fucking weeks — oh, sorry, Sister — I mean, six long
weeks in that hellhole! Away from my baby, too. 'Course, I deserved
it. All the junk I pumped into my veins, not thinkin' about who'd
care for her if something happened to me. Then the OD — I really
fucked up. Oh, I'm sorry, Sister!”
“Never
mind. So you've made yourself comfortable, then? You're happy with
your room?” Yesterday had been my day off. Rachel must have done
the intake. I reminded myself to check Magnolia's file after she'd
left the office.
“It's
great. I'm sharing with Lou-Ellen and her little boy. He's only a
couple months older than Moonbeam. Food's good, too.” She flashed
me another grin and glanced down at her generous body. “Not that I
need it!”
Her
laughter kindled mine. Our eyes met. Hers were espresso-brown,
practically black, fringed with mascara-augmented lashes. They
snagged me like magnets.
Something
jolted through me — a lightning strike, a sudden storm, some
personal earthquake. The floor dropped out from under my chair and I
found myself suspended in space. My breath caught in my throat and
perspiration soaked the armpits of my gray wool sweater. I'd been
chilly before — we tried to stretch our donor's generosity as far
as possible — but now I burned. I couldn't tear myself away from
her gaze, though I knew I'd been staring far too long.
“Are
you okay, Sister?” Her husky voice, barely louder than a whisper,
wound its way into my stunned consciousness. Her hand hovered above
mine, threatening a gesture of comfort.
Don't
touch me, I pleaded silently. Don't.
I pulled back, abruptly enough that I probably seemed impolite,
and folded my hands in my lap, a safe distance from the smooth, dark
glow of her skin. An almost forgotten ache woke in my belly. The tips
of my breasts tingled under my shapeless garments.
“Ah
— oh, um — sorry. I — um — just felt a bit faint. Most likely
it's low blood sugar. I have problems with that sometimes.” I
fumbled in my desk drawer and found a couple of lemon drops. “These
help. Do you want one?”
“I
shouldn't,” Magnolia replied. But she popped it into her mouth
anyway, her lips pursed into a tight O around the candy.
I
sucked hard on the sweet-sour nugget, glad for an excuse not to talk
while I regained my composure. What in the name of Jesus was going
on? Why was I reacting this way? She was a guest, a client. I had a
responsibility to her and her child, a responsibility to protect and
succor her. To nurture her fragile recovery and send her back into
the world stronger, better able to handle the challenges I knew she'd
face. To do that, I had to be friendly but a bit aloof. Our women
needed the sense of authority that came with my status. They needed
the discipline.
As
for me — I was a nun, for heaven's sake, sworn to chastity and a
pure life of service to others. Lust was a mortal sin.
Lusting
after a man would be bad enough. I didn't need to worry about that.
Since Tony, I'd had no desire for a man. The body the nuns had
snatched from the jaws of death served me and my God well, but my
sexual self seemed to have bled out from the razor wounds and down
the drain.
Lust
for a woman, though... An abomination! I'd been brought up in the
Church. The catechism was silent on the question, but of course I
knew it was forbidden. Mary Jane, Griselda and Brigitte had never
been more than beloved friends.
Please
leave a comment. It might not seem to mean much, but it’s a vote
for compassion.
