Gertrude Foster: Being alone

The musty parish rectory creaks in the rain. I sweep the floors and I remember Kathleen. I am grateful for the sound of rain on the slate roof, I am thankful for the creaking sound of ancient floor boards beneath my unsteady feet, I am blessed by the pitter-pat of rodents coming from the attic. The noises soothe me, they comfort me.

When mass is over and the priest went to his quarters for the night, I walk down the narrow, groaning staircase to the rectory. The workday is over, the secretaries have gone home, the nuns have gone back to St. Aloysius. I look around at the rooms I’ve cleanred for nearly forty years. By myself, Gertrude Foster, the maid of St. Martin’s.

Alone in those rooms, I remember Kathleen Gallagher with her dark brown hair, her saucer brown eyes. I remember when she came to me first and I remember when she left me last. We would sit, side by side – a plain, freckled girl with a receding chin, and the beautiful young girl, not yet eighteen, the world hers for the asking – and she’d ask me about her deepest fears.

She’d take my advice, she’d ignore my advice, but she’d always smile those saucer brown eyes at me. When she visited me, her company would ease the silence of the unending hours at the rectory. I would remember her silky soprano, the vibrato of her gentle laugh, the long brown hair that bounced when she turned her head. And then she’d be gone.

Not long after that, Kathleen got married and moved to Lancaster. I went back to my routine. Work in the rectory, then upstairs to sleep on my own thin mattress. Thankful for the creaking noises of the rectory, the rain on the roof, the rodents in the attic.