Agnes walked across the desert carrying a bucket of apples to throw in the winter lake that was still full despite the warming air. As the lake evaporated the seeds would sprout from the rotted flesh and an orchard would grow giving fruit for the picking, bringing more rain, more lakes and more trees. Agnes loved the ever changing landscape, and drawn-out passage of apple to seed to tree to apple, how it flowed and circled through their lives, making sense of time.
The lake shone, its surface rippled in the soft wind. As the first apple hit the water, something fell out of the sky, it sent up a plume of dust as it hit the ground. Dropping the bucket Agnes ran towards it. The dust settled on a disc that lay tipped on its side. At the centre was a dome. It opened and a person in a long black robe stepped out.
The nun straightened her habit and tidied her hair under the white band that fixed the black cloth to her head. From the cockpit she got out a clipboard.
“Name.” The pencil was attached by string, the nun’s hand hovered over her sheet of columns and rows and headings.
“Agnes.”
“Parents?”
Agnes didn’t like the nun’s tone. “Tom and Dolores.”
The nun sighed. “Have you heard of the Holy Bible?”
“Is it anything like the Sanctity of the Sacred Word or the Goblet of Enlightenment?” said Agnes, as they set off at a pace toward the city.
*
Agnes led the nun through sandstones streets, stopped at an open front door, and invited her in. At the table was Agnes’ father, trying to remove a thorn from their heel.
“You must be Tom,” said the nun looking shocked.
“Dolores,” said Agnes’ father, straightening up, letting their foot drop. They held out their hand.
“It’s exactly the kind of problem I expected,” said the nun, not taking it.
While Dolores made tea, Agnes observed the nun. She wasn’t very old, maybe thirty-five at most. Her lips would have been quite full if she didn’t keep pressing them together. Her eyes were blue but her face was tight as if the strain of such a colour was too much. Her wrists were thin, her body beneath the robe appeared to take up little space.
Dolores returned with a tray. They persuaded the nun to sit down. With the clipboard balanced on her knee, the pencil on a string in her hand, she said, “and your children? How many girls and how many boys?”
It was at that moment Agnes’ mother walked in. Tom put down their axe. “I see we have company. Agnes, Dolores, why haven’t you got out the best plates?”
Because they’d had visits like this before, thought Agnes; and someone always broke something.
“Never mind,” said Tom, collapsing on the sofa.
Dolores leaned toward the nun. “You’re asking the wrong question.”
“I should have thought it the simplest question in the world,” replied the nun, accepting a slice of lemon drizzle.
“We’ve told you our names,” said Agnes.
“Manners,” said Tom, their eyes shut.
“We don’t care about these things,” said Dolores.
“Care?” said the nun. “Care? That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“It’s got everything to do with it,” said Tom and Dolores together.
Dolores pinched their heel where the thorn still dug a perceptible annoyance. “If the roof’s leaking or your heart’s broken what does it matter what’s between your legs? It would be like debating someone’s shoes while Rome burns. Isn’t that the phrase you use? While Rome burns. I’ve always liked it.”
“I’m naked before God,” said the nun.
“Good lord,” said Dolores.
“I mean I have no secrets,” her eyes widened.
“These aren’t secrets,” said Dolores. “I’ve been trying out Dolores for a while. I’m very changeable.”
“I think you’re over doing the make-up,” said Tom.
“You always say that” said Dolores.
“But this is outrageous,” said the nun. “You can’t go about dressing up as a woman. Women are women and men are men, and that’s the end of it.”
“I’m not dressing up as anything,” said Dolores.
“But you’re not a woman,” the nun stamped her foot. “You are who you were born as.”
“Were you born a nun?” said Agnes.
“I’m talking about sex,” said the nun, choking slightly.
“Steady,” said Dolores, and Tom laughed.
The nun pursed her lips, inhaled through her nose and said, “there are only two kinds of person. God decides what you are.”
“Which god?” said Tom.
“I hope it’s the one she’s naked in front of,” said Agnes.
“You’re either a boy or a girl,” cried the nun, banging her hand on her clipboard and sending the pencil flying.
Tom fetched a pair of tweezers from the sideboard, handed them to Dolores, and said to the nun, “How does it help, to fix like this? Will it make us kinder, funnier, better at sport or maths or painting, more compassionate, more able to build community and live peaceably together? Will it solve world hunger or rising tides? Will it make you drop your weapons?”
Wisps of hair escaped the white band of the nun’s headdress, her narrow blue eyes strained to get out against the tight pinch of her skin. “It is order. It’s how we know our place.”
“It defines you?” said Agnes.
“Yes!” cried the nun.
“I don’t want to be defined,” said Agnes.
The nun dropped to her knees and grabbed Agnes’ hands in her own. The clipboard went clattering to the floor. “You see what this has done to you? It can’t go on. You must save yourself. Your father’s wearing lipstick.”
“I told you it was too much,” said Tom.
“There will be anarchy,” cried the nun.
“If they don’t change that colour?” said Agnes.
“I’m not talking about the colour,” shouted the nun.
“Why don’t I put the supper on?” said Tom.
“I don’t feel well,” said the nun shrinking into her habit like a defence, her skin ashen. She looked from one to the other as if she was falling backwards and dragged the cloth from her head. Blond hair fell about her face.
*
Agnes laid the table, Tom brought in a pot of stew.
The nun said, wiping her brow with a napkin, “you can’t live like this.”
“But we do,” said Tom. “We still argue and fight and have sex and fall in love, we still pay the bills and fix the roads. Life carries on.”
“What about God?” said the nun.
“I’m sure they don’t mind,” said Dolores.
*
They laid her on the sofa and she slept for thirteen hours. When she woke light streamed in through the open window and the air was fresh from an overnight storm.
“Where am I?” She sat up.
“You were talking in your sleep,” said Agnes, handing her a cup of coffee. “Was I?” The nun raised the cup to her mouth.
“You kept saying Georgina.”
The nun spat the coffee out. “I’m sure I didn’t.”
“I’m sure you did. Georgina, Georgina,” Agnes handed her a cloth.
“She loved me,” said the nun, her face exhausted.
Agnes went quietly to the kitchen, made porridge and served it in large earthenware bowls, a spiral of honey in the centre of each. The nun was collapsed like a doll, her eyes open to the ceiling.
Agnes held out a bowl.
“God hates me,” said the nun.
“But Georgina doesn’t,” said Agnes.
Her hands flew to her face and the bowl tipped. She jumped to her feet, freeing herself of the flying pottery, the crash and splat, the sudden chaos on the floor.
Agnes skipped over it and reached for the nun’s arm but the nun was off, searching for the door as if she were blind or it was dark, as if in this vast and cavernous world lay the endless possibility of yes. Her habit became tangled in her feet, she tripped and tore it, a rip up the side, a leg, the softness of flesh.
“It opens inward,” said Agnes.
The nun fell out into the glare, her hands to her face.
“Shall I walk you back?” said Agnes.
“That won’t be necessary,” cried the nun setting off at a run, slipping on a stone and nearly going over. She’d forgotten her clipboard and headdress, her hair shone tangled and long.
Agnes followed her down the dirt path to the road and out of the city to the desert. The nun ran on but Agnes stopped at the bucket of apples and winter lake. They stood on the shore throwing them in one by one, seeds for the orchard which would grow, the lake that would change, the ever shifting landscape, and watched for the glint of sun as the disc righted itself and lifted off into the air.