Page 112 - NS 2024

“A soldier, no less, of God. Your grandmother was one of the most pious people I’d ever met, and you shall do well to follow in such an image.”
Sister Tonya was much of the reason that St. Mary’s—the reader would be correct in assuming was the same establishment our current Min was now trekking away from—provided far from the sanctum her grandmother had promised. Whilst her initial impressions of the young girl had been that of an astute and shy character whose mind was merely requiring the molding of a proper Christian education, it soon became clear that Min was far more devious than the good Sister had previously expected.
Min spent the first few years trying to survive a litany of harassment from the other girls at the home. There were a few boys who she could get along with just fine, but the separation of the sexes made it tricky to interact with them for longer than fleeting moments after meals when washing dishes. Their quarters were on opposite sides of the church, and this left our poor timid Min isolated in a sea of young girls livid with her existence. They would rip into her for her hair,
which lacked the curls that seemed ideal in their youthful society. They would tear into her for some of her slight verbal tics, and with each onslaught the lapses in her enunciations seemed to worsen. Her posture also exaggerated itself, with her shoulders growing more and more slumped and her eyes less and less bright or twinkling as the months slipped by.
The Reverend Mother at the time, Sister Maggie, didn’t concern herself with the interpersonal relations of her wards. After all, where else would their spite be aimed but each other? Such resentments were seen as inevitable and handled accordingly. Sister Tonya, to her credit, felt this laissez faire approach put the reclusive Min at a notable disadvantage. Whether it was out