mwestbelle

bandonano

Talking to Sister Mary Peter always left Gerard humming “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?”, although he’s fairly certain Julie Andrews never cussed out the archbishop. Still, despite her loud laugh, rough voice, and brash nature, Mary Peter--Gerard only ever called her Mary Peter in his head, because she’d promised him that if he didn’t just call her Pete she “didn’t care if he wasn’t using his balls for anything, I’ll rip those suckers off anyway”--was a good nun. It wasn’t about how many tattoos she had (several, each of which less becoming a woman of her position than the last, all the way down to the bat on her belly), or her tendency to burst out laughing during hymns at something one of her kids had said three days ago; she was devoted, and she was an angel with the troubled children who came to youth group’s at Our Lady of Sorrows. All she had to do was shove up the sleeves of the less-than-sisterly hoodie she wore over simple dark clothes to show off her tattoos, and they listened--not all of them, and most of them not all that well, but more than they would have listened to Gerard (he didn’t have any physical marks of what he’d been through) or any of the other sisters. She made a difference and that, he thought, was what she wanted--what made her turn her back to screaming onstage and pills for daytimes, nighttime, and any time in between and got her to trade in skinny jeans for her habit (although not even the Mother Superior would dream of trying to get her offensively colored hoodies away from her).