She knows she can rewind again and record something else over it. But she decides to leave the prayer and continue. In the published memoir, you won’t hear the Charleston drawl.
Lord, what if I am not up to this task? The girls so much want this little history. And who is better equipped than I to do it? I was at Mount St. Gabriel’s the longest of anybody, first as student then teacher. I am the only living person who actually knew our foundress, Mother Elizabeth Wallingford, during her last days in the infirmary. For better or for worse, I am the walking deposit box of what’s left. In every way, I am the most qualified person alive to preserve the memory of Mount St. Gabriel’s, if it is meant to be preserved. And, besides: I want to do it.
Well, Suzanne, as usual you have answered your own question.
But I need to know if you’re with me in this undertaking, Lord. Is it Your will, or am I just being driven by ambition?
For the most part, your ambition has served us well. It has produced many good results, but it has chipped away some of your soul.
(“WHEN YOU SAY you hear ‘His’ side of the dialogue,” her retreat master, Father Krafft, had queried her, “does the voice seem to be speaking to you from the outside? Would you say it is a corporeal audition? That is, do you hear it in the same way you are hearing my voice?”
She was on her month-long retreat before taking final vows.
“No, Father, it’s not outside me, but it’s a perfectly articulate voice and it’s not my voice.”
“What do you mean it’s not your voice?”
“Well, first of all, the pitch is lower. It’s a man’s voice. And He doesn’t have my accent. And it’s wise. He comes up with things I wouldn’t have thought of.”
“Can you be more specific, Sister?”
“He has answers to things I couldn’t begin to solve for myself. He points out places in me I didn’t know existed. It’s not always pleasant, either, Father. He can chastise or diminish. At other times He’s droll, almost teasing. His sense of humor is more the masculine sort.”)
…
I’M NOT SURE I’m following you, Lord, when You say my ambition has produced good results, yet chipped away my soul. If only I could see a plan of this little history I am going to dictate!
Just go tape by tape, Suzanne. Your ambition and your habits of discipline will serve you well. As for the undictated part that is going to restore your soul, remember your Ignatian exercises. Visualize the story of the year that haunts you. Go scene by scene. Inhabit each participant with all your faculties.
This afternoon I am beginning the school history of Mount St. Gabriel’s in Mountain City, North Carolina. This is a great undertaking, but I will do the best I can. There are scrapbooks covering the years from the school’s opening in 1910 to its closing in 1990, and we have yearbooks for all the years except for the first three years of the Great Depression, when the school couldn’t afford them. No girl was sent home because her family could no longer pay board or tuition. We ate a lot of oatmeal and beans in those years, but every girl was fed.
I came to Mount St. Gabriel’s as a seventh-grade boarder in 1929 and was kept on at the school when my father lost everything. That was just nineteen years from the school’s beginning. And I was to remain until its closing. So I was part of very much that happened in that unique place, and with the help of Our Gracious Lord I hope to make this account as interesting as the story of Mount St. Gabriel’s.
—from the preface to Mount St. Gabriel’s Remembered: A Historical Memoir, by Mother Suzanne Ravenel, Order of St. Scholastica, 2006; published by Mountain City Printing Company
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
Tour of the Grounds
Third Saturday in August 1951
Mount St. Gabriel’s
Mountain City, North Carolina
“WHEN YOU’VE DONE as much girl-watching as I have, Mother Malloy, you can see even as they’re coming up through the lower grades how each class reveals itself as an organism in its own right. You’re not too tired for a bit of a ramble, I hope.”
“Not at all, Mother Ravenel. I’ve only been sitting on trains for two days.”
“Good, in that case”—the headmistress, as quick of step as she was in speech, veered suddenly off the gravel walk and,