And then she went to school, frightened at first of the sisters, who were stern and forbidding in their black habits. Her small round face was serious above her white middy blouse and navy-blue guimpe.
But they taught you the catechism and you made your confirmation and lost your fear as bit by bit you accepted them as your teachers, leading you into a richer Christian life, and the happy Sundays of your childhood fled deeper and deeper into the dim recesses of your mind, until you hardly remembered them any more.
Jennie lay quietly on her sixteen-year-old bed, her ears sharpening to the sounds of the Sunday morning.
For a moment, there was only silence, then she heard her mother's shrill voice.
"Mr. Denton, for the last time, it's time to get up and go to Mass."
Her father's voice was husky, the words indistinguishable.
She could see him in her mind's eyes, lying unshaven and bloated with Saturday-night beer in his long woolen underwear, on the soft, wide bed, burying his face in the big pillow.
She heard her mother again.
"But I promised Father Hadley ye'd come this Sunday for sure.
If ye have no concern for your own soul, at least have some for your wife's and daughter's."
She heard no reply, then the door slammed as her mother retreated to the kitchen.
Jennie swung her bare feet onto the floor, searching for her slippers.
She found them and stood up, the long white cotton nightgown trailing down to her ankles as she crossed the room.
She came out into the kitchen on her way to the bathroom and her mother turned from the stove.
"Ye can wear the new blue bonnet I made for ye to Mass, Jennie darlin'."
"Yes, Mother," she said.
She brushed her teeth carefully, remembering what Sister Philomena had told the class in Hygiene. Circular strokes with the brush, reaching up onto the gums, then down, would remove all the food particles that might cause decay.
She examined her teeth carefully in the mirror.
She had nice teeth. Clean and white and even.
She liked being clean. Not like many of the girls at Mercy High School, who came from the same poor neighborhood and bathed only once a week, on Saturdays.
She took a bath every night – even if she had to heat the water in the kitchen of the old tenement in which they lived.
She looked at her face out of her clear gray eyes and tried to imagine herself in the white cap and uniform of a nurse.
She'd have to make up her mind soon.
Graduation was next month and it wasn't every student who could get a scholarship to St. Mary's College of Nursing.
The sisters liked her and she'd always received high marks throughout her attendance at Mercy.
Besides, Father Hadley had written Mother M. Ernest, commending her for her devout attendance and service to the church, not like so many of the young ladies today, who spent more time in front of a mirror over their make-up than on their knees in church in front of their God.
Father Hadley had expressed the hope that the Good Mother would find a way to reward this poor deserving child for her devotion.
The scholarship to St. Mary's was given each year to the one student whose record for religious and scholastic achievements was deemed the most worthy by a committee headed by the Archbishop.
This year, it was to be hers, if she decided to become a nurse.
This morning, after church, she'd have to present herself to Mother M. Ernest, at the Sister House, to give her answer.
"It is God's mercy you'll be dispensing," Sister Cyril had said, after informing her of the committee's choice. "But you will have to make the decision.
It may be that attending the sick and helpless is not your true vocation."
Sister Cyril had looked up at the girl standing quietly in front of her desk.
Already, Jennie was tall and slim, with the full body of a woman, and yet there was a quiet innocence in the calm gray eyes that looked back at her.
Jennie did not speak. Sister Cyril smiled at her.
"You have a week to make up your mind," she said gently. "Go to the Sister House next Sunday after Mass. Mother Mary Ernest will be there to receive your answer."
Her father had cursed angrily when he heard of the scholarship.
"What kind of life is that for a child?
Cleaning out the bedpans of dirty old men?
The next thing you know, they'll talk her into becoming a nun." He turned violently to her mother. "It's all your doing," he shouted. "You and those priests you listen to.
What's so holy about taking a child with the juices of life just beginning to bubble inside of her and locking her away behind the walls of a convent?"
Her mother's face was white.
"It's blasphemy you're speaking, Thomas Denton," she said coldly. "If only once you'd come and speak to the good Father Hadley, ye'd learn how wrong ye are.
And if our daughter should become a religious, it's the proudest mother in Christendom I'd be.
What is wrong in giving your only child as a bride to Christ?"
"Aye," her father said heavily. "But who'll be to blame when the child grows up and finds you've stolen from her the pleasures of being a woman?" He turned to Jennie and looked down at her. "Jennie Bear," he said softly, "it's not that I object to your becoming a nurse if you want to.
It's that I want you to do and be whatever you want to be. Your mother and I, we don't matter. Even what the church wants doesn't matter.
It's what you want that does."
He sighed. "Do you understand, child?"
Jennie nodded.