I slipped the note under the door of Mother Superior’s office and hurried out of the back door of the convent with my backpack, leaving my life of the past eleven years behind. Tomorrow, I would have been making my final vows to enter the congregation and become a bride of Christ.
I ran into the woods, removed my nun’s habit and wimple, and put on an old threadbare pair of jeans and a t-shirt, the sole items of secular clothing I owned. I undid my braid and shook out my long blond hair.
Shouldering my backpack, I started out following a road that led to civilization, a civilization that was alien to me. The sum total of what I knew about the outside world could have been written on a Post-it note.
I had been walking for about thirty minutes when I heard brakes squeal behind me. Frightened, I turned, afraid that the sisters had discovered my absence and tracked me down. About twenty feet away, I saw two women looking down at me through the tinted windows of a motorhome.
The woman on the passenger side lowered her window, stuck her head out, and yelled, “Where are you off to, young lady?”
“As far away from here as I can,” I yelled.
“Want a lift?”
“How far are you going?”
“Key West.”
“Could you drop me off at the nearest city on your route?”
“Sure, hop in. My name is Magda, and this is my wife, Nikki,” she said, nodding towards the brunette who was driving.
“Your wife? … Sorry, I did not mean it to come out that way. I did not know women could be married to each other. My name is Bernadette,” I said, blushing in confusion at the faux pas I had just committed.
“Where have you been that you don’t know women can get married?” exclaimed Nikki.
“I have been an orphan in a convent for the last ten years.”
“They don’t listen to the news there?”
“To tell you the truth, you don’t do much there except pray and work.”
“If that is what you are escaping from, I understand. But why now? What took you so long?”
“Today was my last chance. Tomorrow, I turn eighteen and would have made my solemn vows and become a nun. After that, I would be a bride of Christ. That scared mem as I don’t think I want to be a bride of either Christ or man. Men scare me, and the hypocrisy of recent situations turned me off.”
“What do you mean?” asked Magda, turning to look at me.
“Yesterday, our chaplain asked me to come to confession to prepare for my vows. After I confessed my venial sins, he pressured me to disclose more. He wanted to know about my impure thoughts. He asked me if I touched my private parts and things like that. He stood in front of me when I told him I didn’t, and started caressing my breasts. I told him to stop, and he said he was preparing me to be Christ’s bride. He started kissing me and, lifting his cassock, placed my hand on his…cock.
“He smelled terrible, and I pushed him away and ran out of the room.”
“Poor child! Have you thought about reporting him to the authorities?”
“To what use? He would deny it. Before I left, I wrote a letter to the mother’s superior and left it in her office. I know now that I want to get as far away from here as possible. I want to discover freedom and what I want from life.”
Magda asked, “So when we drop you off at the next city, what will you do?”
“I don’t know for sure. I’ll have to find work. I have some money, but I’m unsure how long that will last or where I will live.”
“How much money do you have?”
“About one hundred and fifty dollars I saved from my weekly allowance.”
Both women glanced at each other and were silent for a long time.
After a while, Nikki announced, “Time for lunch.” She turned the motor home onto a side road under a sign that read Pleasant Acres. She pulled into a parking spot in a grove of trees next to a lake.
Nikki said, “Honey, why don’t you go and stretch your legs while we prepare lunch?”
“OK. However, I’m not very hungry.” I stepped out and walked down to the lake. I rolled up my jeans, removed my sneakers, and waded along the shore. The sun warmed the chill in my heart, and listening to the trilling of the birds in the trees, I wished I was as carefree as they were.
Incredible sadness and anxiety cast a pall over me. I did not know what I would do, where I would go, or even how to survive in this alien world.
I strolled back to the motor home, where a delicious smell wafted from the open window. I entered the side door and found myself in a small living room. Magda peeked out from the kitchen area and asked me to sit down. The food would be ready in a jiffy.
“Magda,” I said, “you don’t have to feed me, and if you do, I want to pay my share.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said, “It’s our pleasure, and we would also like to talk to you about your plans. Maybe we could help.”
Nikki came out of the kitchen carrying plates and cutlery, which she set on a dinette table and indicated I should sit on one of the leather-covered benches. Magda brought out a pot of brown rice and a dish I had never seen before.
“This is my world-famous paprika chicken, a dish my Hungarian grandmother taught me to make when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”
“It smells delicious.”
She proceeded to load my plate despite my repeated protests that it was too much.
We dug into the food, which was truly delicious and very different from the bland fare that we were served at the convent. I shrieked when I felt something wet and cold against my leg. Looking down, I saw two liquid, soft brown eyes looking at me.
“Don’t worry, honey, that’s Snuggles, our pet Corgi. He’s been napping all day, and he just came to get acquainted with a potential new friend and source of forbidden food. Give him one piece of chicken. Only one, and he will love you for life.”
I put a piece in the palm of my hand and lowered it, where it was promptly inhaled by the dog. He sat there begging till we had finished eating, and then Nikki gathered up all the scraps, put them into a bowl, and set it down for him. He proceeded to lick the bowl sparkling clean.
After the meal, we all sat in the living room, and Magda opened the conversation. “Nikki and I talked while you went for your walk, and we have a proposition to put to you. We can’t drop you off at the next city. You would end up a homeless person sleeping on the street and easy pickings for some of the nastier people out there.
“We would like to invite you to join us in Key West. There, we could help you out. We’d offer you a place to stay and help you get on your feet.”
I looked at her, and the tension broke out, and I started crying. “Why would you do that?” I asked.
“We have not had it easy either. Being a lesbian is difficult, and both of us have fought a long battle to achieve both financial prosperity and to build a lifestyle that is pleasing to us. Nikki is a lawyer, while I own a nightclub and am active in local politics.”
Yes… but…”
“Hush. Just listen to our offer. We presume you have at least a high school education; is that correct?”
“Yes, and I have applied for a teaching certification, which I would have gotten as long as I concurrently attended a bachelor’s program in education. I guess that’s in the past. I also realize I don’t have any of my paperwork or social security number.”
Niki said, “Not to worry. I have already figured out how to sort that without you returning to the convent.”
“How?”
“Mother’s superior will receive a lawyer’s letter giving her the option of cooperating in getting us all that information or facing the wrath of the courts over what was done to you.”
“Really?”
“Oh yes, really.”
“But how will I repay you for all that?”
“We would expect you to enroll at the College of the Florida Keys in their Department of Education. That should not be a problem as I sit on the board of trustees, and you would also serve as the nanny for our daughter, Casandra.”
“You have a daughter?” I asked in surprise.
“Yes. I was married and had a daughter with a man before meeting Magda. I decided I would be happier living with a wife than a husband. She’s staying with our friends, who also have a daughter, while we are away. So, any thoughts as to our proposition?”
“Nikki, I’m flabbergasted. I don’t know what to say. That you trust me on such a short acquaintance stuns me. I would be a fool to say no. I’d certainly like to try.”
“Good, that’s settled. Now let’s go for a swim and take Snuggles out for some exercise.”
“Oh, I don’t own a bathing suit.”
“Do you know how to swim?”
“Yes, we had a swimming pool at the convent.”
“Stand up for me.”
I stood, and Magda said, “I think you would fit in one of mine. Come into the bedroom.
“OK, scoot out of those clothes for me, and try this on.”
She handed me two strips of cloth containing insufficient material to make a decent-sized handkerchief.
Self-consciously, I stripped as the two of them looked at me. Nikki let out a whistle. “Girl, you are stunning. You will be such a hit with the younger set in Key West.
I blushed and hastily donned the top and bottom of the bikini. Meanwhile, the two of them got out of their jeans and tops, and I was rewarded with my first exposure to a naked body. They were stunning, and I felt a pleasant twinge in my private parts as I looked at them in awe.
That one look changed my life path as I realized I was also a lesbian.
I entered the life of Key West like a fish takes to water. Minding Cassandra and helping Magda at the nightclub on weekends. Then Pat came into my life.
Pat was a local and would attend college with me in the fall. She came with a group of friends to the nightclub and when I saw her my heart almost stopped. It was lust at first sight. She and I kept glancing at each other till she finally came to me and asked me to dance. Soon, we were making out on the dance floor under Magda’s approving smile.
Pat pushed my boundaries until we were finally stripped and dancing naked in a private room.
That night, Pat took my lesbian virginity, and I discovered heaven on earth.