I gave her an as-delicate-as-possible version of my meeting with Randall Sarafin.

She said nothing for several minutes after I had finished. “What changes a man? What makes him capable of this?” she finally asked softly.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe he had nothing else to do. Nothing to take him away from that moment when he saw you abandoning him.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Sister Ann answered. “All those years of hatred. The only way he could ever touch me again was to hurt me.”

“I guess we all need some semblance of control—power—somewhere in our lives.”

“Yes, we do. It’s a pity when it’s only the power to destroy,” she replied.

“Hi, Mick,” Bernie joined us. Then seeing the almost empty juice bottle being passed back and forth, “Do you want more? I’ll go get some,” she offered. “I’m going myself.”

“Sure,” I accepted, reaching for my wallet. “Whatever two dollars will buy.”

“It’s okay. I’ve got money.” She took our order and trotted off to the store.

“Ah, youth,” Sister Ann commented. “I think she has…”

“Don’t tell me she has a crush on me,” I said.

“She does, though she’s a little old for female crushes.”

“Unless it’s a lifelong occupation,” I amended.

“Is she?” Sister Ann asked, catching my implication.

“Heading that way, I suspect. Don’t tell her mother,” I replied. “I don’t recruit.”

“Of course, I never doubted that. Will she be happy, do you think?”

“Yes, I think so,” I answered.

“Are you?” Sister Ann probed.

“Me? Sure,” I replied offhandedly. “Or, if I’m not happy, it has nothing to do with being a lesbian.”

“If you say so,” she answered noncommittally.

“Do you blame every problem you have on being a nun,” I defended, “or do you think they have something to do with life just being difficult, period?”

“Point taken. Believe it or not, I’m not arguing with you. Not only is it too hot to argue, but you and I really have no argument.”

“We don’t?”

“No. If you have no problem with being a lesbian, then I don’t have any problem with it.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I don’t. I think…it’s one of the better things that’s happened to me. Or that I chose.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

I looked at her. Nuns weren’t supposed to approve of lesbians.

“Now, why don’t you tell me what happened on that church picnic,” she continued.

“What does that have to do with my being a lesbian?” I asked defensively.

“Nothing,” Sister Ann replied. “But since you don’t have a problem with that I thought we’d talk about something you do have a problem with.”

“I don’t have a problem with church picnics,” I said shortly.

“Then you can have no objection to telling me what happened. You see, I remember looking for you. I was always curious why you hid. And what happened to your shoe?”

“What do you think happened?” I retorted.

“At the time, I’m afraid I took your aunt’s explanation at face value. That you were a difficult, disobedient child, getting into trouble for no reason.”

“I probably was.”

“Not for no reason.”

I shrugged. It was too hot to get into all this.

“You do have a problem,” she pressed.

“No, I don’t,” I returned sharply, starting to lose my temper, then backing off as I realized it wasn’t her I was angry at. “Oh, hell, isn’t it obvious? A fourteen-year-old girl goes for a walk in the woods. Her…nineteen-year-old cousin and some of his friends follow her. What do you think happened?” I stared at the ground, not looking at Sister Ann.

“They made you do something you didn’t want to do.”

“Yeah.” I nodded, shredding the label off the apple juice bottle.

“Sexual?”

“What do you think?”

“Something sexual, that even fifteen years later, you’re too ashamed to mention,” she said.

“Do you know what a blow job is, Sister?” I retorted sarcastically.

“Celibacy isn’t ignorance,” she replied. “Is that what they made you do?”

“Yeah, that’s what they made me do.”

Bernie returned with our drinks.

“Made you do what?” she asked innocuously.

“Made me…” I started to make up some lie, not to seem tainted in front of Bernie, then I stopped. Silence was the trap. What if, when I was nineteen, someone I admired had admitted in front of me that she was molested? “When I was fourteen, I went on a church picnic, some place up north. I hadn’t been out of the city since I was ten, and, anyway, I went off, wandering by myself in the woods. My despised cousin Bayard, who was nineteen, and some of his friends…I don’t know if they followed me or just ran into me by chance. They…cornered me out in the woods away from the others.” I was shredding the label off one of the new apple juice bottles, I realized. “They made me…one did…a blow job. The next one…I started gagging. I got sick…started throwing up. Some of it landed on Bayard’s shoes. So he got angry. I had embarrassed him in front of his friends. I was supposed to ‘behave’ and do them all, not vomit on his shoes. They laughed at him, at his messed-up shoes.

“I don’t know what he would have done if one of the other guys hadn’t stopped him. I guess I lost my shoe somewhere in the fight. He kept punching me in the stomach and…between my legs. Calling me ugly names.

“The other guys finally stopped him. And they just left me there. I didn’t want to come out of the woods. I figured I had a better chance there than…Bayard had promised I would pay for it.”