Stone Yard Devotional

The protagonist hears the piano playing in the night; the next day, she wants to ask others about it but is interrupted by Simone, who announces that Sister Jenny’s bones will arrive soon. She warns that there is still much work to be done before she can be buried, though she does not explain. The protagonist finds that she is accustomed to waiting, comfortable with not having answers.

They hear the piano again at night, and the protagonist listens as Simone leaves her room, makes her way into the sitting room, and opens and closes the keyboard lid.

Simone announces that Sister Jenny’s remains will arrive in eight days and that they will sit vigil for her until the burial permission is granted by the local authorities. The protagonist feels uneasy about this. Simone explains that the remains will be accompanied by Sister Helen Parry.

More mice begin to appear across the abbey, becoming a problem. The sisters find it morally wrong to kill them, but with warmer weather patterns driving the mice south and east, the problem will grow worse. When Simone and the protagonist open the piano and find a mouse nest, the sisters decide they must kill the mice. Richard Gittens, who lives near the abbey and often comes to help, brings them traps, and Simone warns everyone not to tell him of Sister Jenny’s bones, not wanting their arrival to cause a disturbance. Richard Gittens warns the protagonist that the mice will become a plague. Despite the mice being relatively harmless to her, she fears them.

The sisters begin placing traps around the abbey, with the protagonist focusing on the kitchen. There are mouse droppings everywhere, but she is surprised that only one bag of flour is ruined. The protagonist is the only member of the abbey who leaves for errands, and Simone sends her into town for new glass and metal containers for the kitchen’s ingredients.

On her way back to the abbey from this errand, the protagonist remembers that when she was a child, a piano instructor would visit houses to teach, and when it became clear that he was a child predator, parents warned him to leave town. She thinks the sight of the filthy mouse nest in the piano incited this memory.

The protagonist remembers how awful she and her classmates at St Ursula’s Catholic High School were to teachers. Now, as an adult, the protagonist feels guilty, though she felt no guilt at the time. Back at the abbey, as she fills her new bins with grains and spices, the protagonist finds that this simple work brings her a sense of peace she cannot explain.

As the date of Sister Jenny’s return grows closer, the protagonist remembers her childhood admiration for Saint Maria Goretti. Maria was 11 when a “not-quite-cousin” stabbed and murdered her for resisting his sexual advances. Maria died later in the hospital, after forgiving her attacker, the 20-year-old Alessandro. After serving his prison sentence, Alessandro claimed to love Maria, calling her, “my little saint” (88). Maria’s mother forgave Alessandro, and he joined an abbey. As a child, the protagonist was attracted to the drama of the story; now, she reflects on how the story sparked her confusion over what it means to forgive.

The mice begin to overwhelm the abbey, traps springing constantly. The sisters find them in every room except the “good room,” where Sister Jenny will rest until her burial. When the protagonist was a child, she had a friend whose father managed a car showroom. She would visit on weekends, her friend’s father sitting in his underwear, drinking beer, not caring what his daughter did. The friend owned mice, which the protagonist refused to hold. When the mice began multiplying, the friend released them behind her house. Even now, the smell of mice reminds the protagonist of that friend and her father.

Dolores cannot stop sneezing because of her allergies. It annoys the protagonist, who cannot stand the drama of each sneeze. The protagonist feels guilty for these feelings and tries to be nice to Dolores. She realizes she wants to tell the young woman to leave and go live her life.

When the protagonist was in high school, there was a girl who everyone hated. She lived in an ugly, isolated house, with a mother who beat her and had to take the school bus to get groceries. The girl was rude, attractive, confident, and hated by everyone. Her nonchalance and indifference to other people’s opinions inflamed the protagonist and her classmates. They hated her poverty, her acne, and the way she did not want to fit in with them. The girl’s name was Helen Parry.

Many of the girls took a sewing class with Mrs. Bird, whom everyone loved. One day, when Mrs. Bird stepped out, the whole class, including the protagonist, physically attacked Helen. When Mrs. Bird returned, she broke up the fight, condemned the class for attacking Helen, and escorted her out, returning with the headmaster. Mrs. Bird then left, and the headmaster sided with the protagonist and the other attackers, warning them not to let Helen rile them up. After this, neither Mrs. Bird nor Helen Parry return to the school.

At lunch, Sister Sissy tries to start a conversation about how God answers prayers, even if it does not seem like it. No one engages, and the protagonist thinks of how she dislikes Sissy’s need to be right. She feels that Sissy acts out because of anxiety over Helen’s return. Meanwhile, Simone is stressed and avoids the sisters, as the preparations for Jenny’s return and burial are intensive and complicated.

Though the protagonist’s mother was Catholic, she believed in mystical practices from other religious traditions. She once brought the protagonist to a reiki specialist when the protagonist complained of tight legs. As the reiki specialist began his work, waving his hands over the protagonist, the protagonist’s mother announced she would step out to grab some milk. The protagonist did not want her to leave and locked eyes with her mother. Her mother stayed instead. Now, as an adult, the protagonist realizes that this deep trust between a mother and daughter is rare, and she wishes she had a way to tell her mother this before she died. The protagonist thinks that her thoughts stray to her mother and never her father, because she knew her father completely, while her mother remains a mystery.

The tension and anxiety in the abbey rise, and everyone believes it is Helen’s approach. Helen is an intimidating figure, and her influence is severe. Sister Bonaventure is upset that Helen is returning, calling her “that celebrity nun” (113). The protagonist believes Bonaventure’s connection to Jenny is deeper than she suspects.

The protagonist met Sister Helen Parry for the first time after high school at a protest. At first, Helen did not recognize the protagonist, but haunted by guilt, the protagonist decided to speak with her. She pulled Helen aside and reminded her of the fight in Mrs. Bird’s class. After a brief flash of pain in her eyes, Helen smiled at the protagonist and says, “I can see why that might have been a big…incident…for you” and walked away (116).

Ever since, the protagonist follows Helen across the world from afar. Helen stands up to dictators, protests for sex workers’ rights, and exposes environmental crimes. Beneath all of this, the protagonist recognizes all the qualities she hated in Helen in high school. She still remembers meeting Helen in the forest, and how Helen refused to accept an apology, leaving the protagonist with her guilt.

Bonaventure sweeps the cabin Helen will stay in, knocking over a statuette of the Virgin Mary. She is agitated about the arrival of the bones, and the protagonist offers to take over from her. She finishes sweeping and hides the broken statue in her room. Later, she sits in the library, and as Simone walks by, she teases the protagonist for reading Stories of the Saints, saying there are better options. The protagonist reads these childish stories, about Saint Brigid and Saint Julia, and they remind her of Ten Thousand Dreams Interpreted, a book she found and kept for its ridiculous interpretations of dreams, whose meanings were different if a woman dreamed them.

The protagonist and the sisters throw dead mice over the back fence. However, after finding 13 corpses in one day, they realize they must bury them. The oven stops working, and Richard Gittens suggests that the mice ate the insulation. They pull the oven out and find his theory to be true. The protagonist remembers Richard Gittens as a shy and quiet boy in high school. He lives near the abbey and often comes to help, though he did not recognize the protagonist when she first arrived. Now that they work on projects together, she wonders if he is a friend.

The mice continue to overwhelm the abbey, and Sister Josephine is horrified when she sees a chicken eat one. The protagonist suggests this is better than their usual problem of a rat or lizard eating chicks or eggs. The protagonist begins looking around the abbey to see what Helen Parry will see when she arrives. There is the old horse-riding school, a paintball course, the Gittenses’ property, and a solar farm. Among all this is an abandoned hall, reflecting the run-down appearance of the area.