The Forgotten Outpost in the Outpost

Not too long after the arson, I met an elderly white woman who lived in IrishTown. She was a nun, like a Poor Clare, one of the orders dedicated to serving the poor. She invited me to tea.

�What are you doing, living in this outpost of the devil?� she chided me, as we walked to her house. �This is a place full of sin.�

She didn�t wait for an answer, just chatted about the arson, and told me about her order, and about St. Francis. She did not ask my religious affiliation. She said hello to a couple of people on the street, then switched to the evils of drugs.

Her house was not that far away, but on a tougher street. The space of the front room was, like most of the 100-year-old plus houses in RiverTown, beautifully proportioned. Like most of the old houses in RiverTown, there were few inner doors, a wood floor. The wallpaper was a faded rose, the original stuff. I could see it was stretched onto tacked linen and not the walls themselves: durable work. The only decoration left, and it was not clean anymore, the dust of ages.

She told me the house was donated to her use a long time ago.
�I let homeless people sleep in here,� she said. �God bless the poor.�

She fixed tea.  She was wearing a tan habit, a cross knotted around her waist. We stood in the kitchen�bare, uncluttered�and sipped from our mugs.  I asked her why she was alone. Shouldn�t she have a convent, or a community?

�I�m the last of my order here,� she said comfortably. �We used to have quite a few, you know, but they went on.� Went on where, I wondered. With some other poor people? New orders from the chapter house? Heaven? She did not elaborate.

�Anyway, the bishop forgot about me,� she said. �But I�m doing God�s work.�

Maybe I gave her five dollars. As soon as I write that, I think I remember she refused money, or gave me no opportunity to give it. I don�t remember for sure.

Maybe she was a volunteer nun as opposed to an official one. Maybe stuck in some private fantasy. But not a scam artist.

I would see her from time to time. She wore the same clean habit every time I saw her. She was always walking alone to somewhere, cheerfully. It always seemed odd that the bishop would forget her. Maybe she was also a ghost.