The nun on the Kubota was bundled up like a Russian kid against the late chill of spring. She was supposed to be studying the Kubota manual. She was looking at me instead. A deceptively plain face, the kind that decomposes into self-forgetfulness at rest but then, the next moment, is suddenly animated with joy or wrath.
"You're quiet," she said when we walked in the fields on the day the Sisters blessed their farm.
"I know. Even when I think I've talked too much, somebody says, 'Why don't you ever talk?'"
"Quiet is okay. Do you pray?"
"I talk to God."
"That's prayer."
"Asperger's," I told her weeks later, when she asked why religious life might be difficult for me.
"Ash what?" she said. "Say it again?"
"Sounds like 'asparagus.' It means I'm a little bit autistic."
The sleepy-clay face was abruptly alive and it was laughing. "They told you THAT?" Somebody had told her something similar, a long time ago; then she got her PhD. That's why she's laughing, she explains. I don't tell her that there are lots of Aspergians with PhDs. She says, "Do you want help? I will help you."
That Little Brown Rabbit had said, "If you keep your eyes on the ground, you can remember Jesus, and not be distracted. That way, you can pray without ceasing." She never made eye contact, so I watched her face. That's how I know that she looked like a rabbit; very quiet but furtive, with large front teeth and an overbite. Her hands, too, without being actually hairy, were endearingly similar to the knobby paws of something furry that lives among trees. I had a mental image, almost a premonition, of them shivering among dried leaves and holly berries in a winter woods and I hoped very earnestly that she would never be cold. I will be cold instead of Sister Rabbit, I thought. I will freeze so her rabbit-fingers won't shiver.
"You need to look up. Don't look down!" says Kubota Nun. She has a wide, unswerving, unblinking stare. I don't know why her eyes don't dry up. Pale brown eyes -- I know, because I try to play her staring contest. I lose. "That's bad body language! It says, 'I am afraid of you.' Maybe in another country it is good, but not in America. In America, you need to use body language that says, 'I am confident!' Remember, your dignity comes from God and cannot be taken away."
"But the little Carmelite said 'Look down and pray!' I thought it might be an invasion of privacy to look at nuns."
"It is true that the Rule says to look down out of sorrow for our sins, and to mind your own business; but it also says that, when you meet another person, you must receive them as you would receive Christ. Look at people! They are Christ looking at you!"
I am a little peeved now because the nice Brown Rabbit helped me look even more like somebody with Asperger's. Freeze, little paws.
(I still would rather she stayed warm.)
I said, lightheartedly, to the Guestmistress: "I have been here three months and I just now found out I am supposed to be looking at people. I thought I was supposed to look down!"
"WELL! I'm sorry I didn't correct the Carmelite nun earlier. It's true that the Rule says to keep our eyes down, but when we see another person, we greet Christ in them. And for me, that's ALWAYS accompanied by a SMILE." She often says things with capital letters, and sometimes, if the capitals aren't enough, she makes engine noises.
