For They Know Not What They Do
It had never dawned on Yumiko that normal nuns don't wear garter belts, especially ones under the age of twenty-seven. Even as she clipped them onto her black sheer thigh-high socks, a normal daily routine for her, she never thought about WHY she wore them. Some sort of quiet rebellion hidden beneath thick Puritan robes and pious petticoats, perhaps? But still, now that she looked upon them, sheer black against alabaster skin, barely concealing it really…the silver glistening in early morning sunlight, such an uncanny decoration for her almost Spartan Catholic quarters.
Running a small, delicate finger along her calf, a frown graced her tiny lips. What was she trying to hide?
***
It was during Mass later that warm, damned day that Yumiko found herself actually zoning out for once, her soft gaze apparently analyzing a nearby stained glass window. Mary looked so beautiful in that moment, holding her dying son in her immaculate lap. Even in a window, the look upon her face was just purley…divine, her intentions true. There was no sin in that woman. She was never wicked, never ungodly. Always just..Mary. Nothing more, nothing less. Scratch the surface and surely you would find nothing but divinity. How in the hell were nuns supposed to model themselves after her? It was far too much to live up to. Far too much.
A sharp jab to the ribs brought Yumiko out of her reverie, the small Japanese nun turning to fix the offender with a glare that was meant to be cold, but Yumiko being Yumiko, it was more of the equivalent of a look a mother gave to a naughty child. Of course she knew who jabbed her, it was the same person every time. And every time she glared, eyes the color of robins eggs would gaze back into hers and force a sigh from her lungs.
It was her. She could never be angry at her.
"Vhat's wrong?" That voice. Soft, dark, feminine and accented just enough to reveal that the owner was foreign born, but always just soft enough so that only Yumiko could hear. Her voice.
"Nothing."
Almond eyes quickly drew themselves away from those…those other eyes, and concentrated on her small book of Psalms instead. A sigh was heard, and she tried her best to ignore it, but she couldn't; not with that warm breath making the wafer thin pages of her book flutter.
What's wrong?
Her gaze returned to Mary's face in the window, but this time she wasn't just purposelessly staring off into space. No, this time she was searching for flaws in something rather..flawless.
Nothing.
***
She waited until it got dark. Until the sun's bloody hues as it clawed the daytime sky, fingers and arms outspread, hanging onto the daylight for dear life, left pink and red stains on the edge of the horizon. The battle ended quickly, as it always did, and night laid out a velvet picnic blanket of rhinestone stars and a giant luminescent apple for the evenings display.
It was at this darkened hour that Yumiko slipped out of her over-dress, the starched black fabric falling rather ungracefully off her body to land in a stiff pile on the floor, attempting to pool at her ankles. She stepped out of her habit, picking it up and folding it neatly to place on her bed.
She stood in her white satin slip before her mirror, fiddling with her glasses. They kept sliding off and down the bridge of her nose, and it was starting to bother her. Finally, she simply sighed and removed them, placing them next to her outer clothing on her bed.
In the mirror stood a completely different person than who she was used to. Long ink-black pin straight hair that streamed down her back, bangs that nearly covered her dark eyes, the barest glimpse of a figure beneath the shadow of her slip…and those damned stockings.
Really, why would Sister Yumiko Takagi wear garter belts and thigh highs? She wasn't a common streetwhore, she was a nun. Then again, why did she wear glasses that weren't even prescription? Her vision was 20/20.
What was she trying to hide?
And then there was her. At the thought, Yumiko immediately recoiled away from the mirror, averting her eyes from her own reflection. Her lower lip trembled as she recounted the days mass; the hymns and Gospels, the sunbeams filtered through the stained glass windows and making her hair seem almost haloed…that strawberry blonde almost boyish haircut to frame such a feminine face..it was truly divine to behold in sunlight….
Whats wrong?
Small hands working to pull her hair from her scalp, she scrambled over to her nightstand, and with shaking hands, grasped a small pink plastic rosary in her hands, falling to her knees in a sobbing heap with the hope of somehow still being able to coherently pray in that state.
Nothing.
What was she trying to hide?