A Change of Habit

ONE

In the Beginning

Much to my mother’s chagrin, the first time I fell in love, it wasn’t with a man, but with a movie, and that movie was The Nun’s Story.

My mother, Linda, had the soul of an artist and the look of Barbie—platinum blond hair, a petite frame, and fabulous clothes that she made herself. Mom wanted to be Brigitte Bardot. She wanted all her daughters to be Brigitte too. She wanted us to have romance and love and beauty. I wanted love too, only my idea of love was a little different.

I still remember the hot summer morning as The Nun’s Story played on my grandparents’ television. It starred Audrey Hepburn as a Belgian nun, and I don’t think any other five-year-old who ever watched that movie said, “Wow, that is what I want to do. Sign me up!,” but I did.

Watching the nuns move in their orderly lines, a sense of peace washed over me. Here was a world where everyone belonged, where your worth wasn’t determined by the neighborhood you lived in or the clothes you wore. I longed for that certainty, that sense of home. If I hadn’t been scolded for getting too close to the TV, I would have put my hands on the screen and rested my forehead on that beautiful world.

I told my mother that I loved the movie. That I loved the nuns’ dresses. That I thought the sisters were beautiful and that I wanted to be just like them when I grew up.

“Over mahh deeeead body, Claudette,” she drawled in her Alabama accent. She then explained that nuns were repressed and miserable and that Roman Catholicism is a terrible religion.

Our family was Southern Baptist, though Grandma, my mom’s mother, was the only one who went to church. Normally, on spiritual matters, I would turn to her, but I couldn’t discuss anything Roman Catholic with her because she believed all the Catholics were definitely going to hell.

So I did what I had to do. I ran breathlessly to the library and STOLE (God forgive me) the book that The Nun’s Story was based on, then proceeded to read it fifty times. Kathryn Hulme’s novel became my private manual for living. It presented a life of service, structure, and ritual—all things that I did not find in my modern, chaotic family of origin.


My mom and dad were rock and roll parents. Mom would slide behind the wheel of her purple MG Midget and turn the radio up. At stoplights, she waved her skinny arms above her head singing Fleetwood Mac, “And if I needed a little money, I know he would lend me, lend me a hand.” She looked like she was up onstage, which is where I believe she belonged. She should have been famous, only at sixteen she gave up everything for love, all her opportunities, all her dreams. She gave everything to my dad, even the grocery money.

My father, Clyde—we often called him Clyde—was very handsome, a combination of Elvis and James Dean, with a sweep of dark hair, hefty sideburns, and olive skin that made him look Italian. He was only five foot eight and trim, but to me he felt like a giant, and he always filled the room. Usually he filled it with his rage, but sometimes I would see him in public and there he could be charming and funny and brilliant. But at home, he was always on the fringes of our household, going to work mad, coming home mad, going out at night, sleeping all day, and waking up mad again.

Sometimes he’d be high on the hog—new job, more money, more time with friends—but then the money would dwindle, or something would happen at work, and we would have to move. I lived in seven houses or apartments by the time I was twelve. Sometimes we didn’t even get the pictures hung up on the walls before we left again.

There was one period where my father was always driving a different car—and the cars got junkier and junkier. The cars, like our homes, were symptoms of my father’s restlessness. He couldn’t sit still. His hands were always moving, his fingernails always bitten down to the quick. He often looked over my head as he spoke, as if there was something in the distance coming toward him. He even tugged at his long, beautiful eyelashes until he pulled them right out because he was such a nervous wreck.

My big sister, Autumn, on the other hand, was as cool as steel. Sixteen months older than I am, she was a scraggly kid, a little stick figure with enormous eyes, and long, tangled chestnut hair. Growing up, Autumn was my alter ego—where I was weak, she was strong. Where I was meek she was bold. She was tough and fiery and always did her best to protect me.

When I was eight my baby sister, India, was born. She had a cherubic face and just a few strands of tawny hair on her enormous head, and from the moment she arrived I wanted to take care of her.


After my younger sister was born, my parents moved us into a house on Piedmont Avenue in West Rome, Georgia, which was an up-and-coming suburb. This was the second house they’d bought; the first had been foreclosed on, but that was many moves ago. My mother had our new house painted mustard yellow with coral shutters—it was very 1974.

My parents went to Sears and bought a house full of furniture “on time,” which is how southern people say layaway. Soon a Sears truck arrived, and our house was filled with beautiful new things. Black faux leather couches and chairs. A quiet refrigerator—our fridges had always made a whole bunch of noise—and a shiny white matching washer and dryer, which meant no more laundromat.

But Clyde managed to lose his new job and soon Sears started calling and sending letters. My parents were the kind of people who weren’t bothered when they bounced checks; avoidance was their primary strategy. The phone would ring and one of my parents would announce, “Don’t answer it. It’s a bill collector.”

Then, my dad and his big, blustery southern lawyer-friend Ron Patton came up with a way out. One day a team of silent, burly movers came to our house with a van and took everything—the refrigerator, the couch, the washer and dryer. All our furniture was stowed in Ron’s basement. Then he and my dad went to Salvation Army and bought a bunch of old junk furniture, which looked pretty good but certainly wasn’t brand-new or from Sears. They decked out our whole house like a film set. Sitting on the new-old couch, they cackled—when the Repo Man came knocking, he would repossess all this junk. Before he came, my dad said, “I want you and your sister to look real sad, like they’re taking all the real furniture.”

That was my first acting job. It wasn’t that hard; I was sick to my stomach with guilt. Grandma had taught me it was wrong to lie and steal, and here we were doing so on a grand scale. I just knew the police would come and haul us all off to a jail or, since I wasn’t at all familiar with the legal system, maybe a dungeon.

At the appointed hour, my mom held Baby India and Autumn, and we all put on our most convincing sad-little-kid faces. Then, sure enough, the Repo Man came in with his team, carted everything off, looking a little guilty himself. When the door closed behind him, my parents laughed hysterically.

I longed for a world where people did what they were supposed to do. Although I was sure that God wanted the world to be orderly, by a very young age I had discovered that life is peaceful when people do what they are supposed to, and when they don’t, life is stressful and scary.

I caught a glimpse of an ordered world when Autumn and I stayed with my mom’s parents, my grandparents, in their stone cottage. Their home was a sanctuary, a place where voices were soft and all my needs were met. They offered me a taste of the kind of life—and the kind of faith—I would spend years searching for.


Many people were traumatized by religion in their childhood, of having dogma and guilt shoved down their throats. That was not my experience of religion at all. I loved spending time at church. Compared to my home life, it was a sweet, serene place where people were gentle and kind. For me, church was like a drug, but a good drug—an antidepressant.

My sweet grandma Zelda Jane Turner wore beautifully tailored dresses that she made herself and had chestnut hair that my mother dyed for her over her kitchen sink. It was from her that I received my faith. Grandma prayed for people all the time, and she always did her daily bible devotion, but she felt that she had had the great misfortune of marrying an unrepentant heathen.

My brilliant grandfather Rufus Turner identified as a Methodist but had stopped going to church decades before I was born. Though really, I think he was more of a Buddhist by nature. To me, Grandaddy was like Santa Claus—snow white beard, round belly, a lovely laugh. He lived a simple and frugal life and was one of the happiest people I’ve ever met. Regardless, my grandma prayed that he would not be cast into the lake of unquenchable hellfire for his heathen ways.

My grandparents were kind and compassionate, and they would give the shirts off their backs to help anyone in need. I always behaved well around them, not for fear of punishment, but because I loved them so much.