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It is a long way from Lagos, and God's will that brings me here. His hand steers the car into the frozen, bumpy parking lot. Helping Hand, says the sign. Put your hand in the hand: music stirs in my head, clapping too. The sound of clapping hands, marching feet; of people on the move, dancing in the Spirit. But on this most bitter of days, Mission Monday, there is no time for singing. There is work to be done.

The woman inside greets me, smiles as if seeing the Holy Mother. I swing my bag up onto the counter, mittens collected by the diocese. 'Any large ones?' She mouths the words wide as if that will aid my understanding. My face is so cold I do not speak, emptying out the contents. A mother with a small boy comes up and rummages.

'You givin' these away? Or do we gotta buy 'em?' The mother looks past me, past my hands, which are starting to thaw. She has a blue rucksack tucked under her arm. The boy clutches an orange plastic gun. There are rules regarding such donations, rules too often broken. His eyes are milky brown, like a river. There is mud - chocolate - around his mouth. He grabs a mitten; his mother slaps his hand.

'Don't touch, I said. How many times I gotta tell you?' The mother's voice is a nail splitting wood. She jerks the boy's arm - 'Wha'd I say?' - and the boy drops the mitts in the puddle at our feet.

My veil sweeps my cheek as I retrieve them. Wiping them off, I hold them out. The boy slaps them away, and the mother swats his head. I retrieve them again and pass them to her. But her eyes move past me and fix on the woman behind the counter, who blinks and says, 'Take them.'

We see so many mothers like this, Sister Marcetta and I: pale white girls pushing strollers, with their thin white boyfriends wearing ball caps. They choose clothes that don't look warm enough and they smoke, looking at us in a way that makes me want to cover my face. The look is cold and shameless. God forgive me for throwing stones. It is the children in the strollers whom Jesus gathers to Himself, for whom Marcetta and I most gratefully labour.

'The peace of the Lord be with you,' I say softly. The boy aims his weapon, lets it fall to his side.

'Put that down, I toldja. I'm not buyin' nothing.'

Clothing is free to those who cannot pay, though the sale of donations funds our mission. I pray for patience and to not grow weary, and that the love of Jesus will spill from my heart into the hearts of others.

The woman behind the counter says, 'Sister, if you wouldn't mind -'

There is sorting to be done, and I am in charge of it. Pots and pans, children's books, baby clothes and women's dresses such as Jezebel, wife of Ahab, might wear. Everything comes in large green garbage bags stuffed to overflowing. The donations are so plentiful they could be things collected after a famine perhaps, or a massacre - but they are clean, of course, if threadbare. Today there is a girl to help me, a volunteer named Tina.

'Tina,' I say. 'What is that short for?'

'Christina,' she says, not looking up. The thing most noticeable in this mission is the way the helpers and the helped look past you, as if talking to a bystander. As if they see your guardian angel, and it is she, not you, who is speaking.

'What should I do with this?' Tina asks. It looks like a man's belt, studded dangerously with chrome. 'My boyfriend wants one just like it,' she hints, and smiles, and tucks it inside her coat. She isn't dressed for the cold either, the skin above her slacks so very white, white as milk watered to nourish a multitude.

'Sister Berthe?' The girl's voice is flat, and I think of the doulas whom Sister Marcetta enlists to attend mothers giving birth to babies without fathers. I can't help but look at this girl's stomach, the way she has no stomach at all, but doesn't look hungry. No one here looks hungry for anything but guidance. The light of Christ, who came into the world so that we might see.

'Yes, my child,' I say, a pair of trousers folded over my arm and many pairs more to sort and hang.

'Shit - oh, shoot. Someone needs help.'

The woman from behind the counter appears. Her grin confuses me; her eyes are hard and grey as the roadway. Before I can step into the big room full of clothing, broken toys, mugs, plates, ashtrays and plastic flowers, there's a shout, a cry that sends needles up my spine. Buses and cars spit, shooting past just outside.

'What is it, my child?'

The man before me has wild hair, as though he has stood for days on a mountain in the freezing wind. His eyes spin and dart. He's wearing a torn quilted coat, gold in colour, gold as threshed wheat. His hands are bare and chapped and he wrings them - to warm them, perhaps. But then he waves them, his hands a burning bush of activity, a firestorm, and he curtsies the way people curtsy for Queen Elizabeth, a trip-step then up again, and pushes himself past my outstretched arms. Briefly I feel his breath on my face and catch his smell; it is the smell of spiritual hunger: too much wine at the wedding feast.

Tina and the woman from the counter shy behind a rack of coats - worn, thick woolen coats that make me think of sheep, sacrifices made to God before our washing in the Blood of the Lamb. The woman, whose name escapes me, clears her throat and gasps. As if spotting a body swinging past in a current. Parting the sea of rags, I peer through. The man with wild eyes is urinating on the furniture, a plaid sofa that would have gone free to whomever asked. Seek and ye shall find; ask and it shall be given.

'Get out. Get out now,' the woman orders. 'You are not welcome in this place.' Her voice is as stony as the soil of our mission, as cold as the dawn when, on Fridays, I rise to prepare the small white loaves for Holy Communion. Just in case, as Sister Marcetta says.

The man zips his pants, wipes his nose. His gaze is cast downwards. There is a roll of Lifesaver candies beside the cash box, and I peel one away and offer it. He puts his tongue out as if to receive the Host. It calms him and, thank the Lord, the community of saints and all the archangels, he turns, shrugging his shoulders, and leaves.

When all the garbage bags have been emptied and their contents sorted, I take the volunteers' hands and we pray in a small circle. Their hands are pale as fish, and I think of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the feeding of the five thousand. Such a numbering of the hungry challenges me: I see multitudes of the living coursing down dusty streets. I see rivers running red.

'See ya next week,' Tina shouts, following me to the car, carrying the large white mittens I have almost forgotten. Sister Marcetta was kind enough to provide them, along with a gift of lock de-icer. It's a very long way from Lagos, Satan's voice cajoles as I scrape frost from the car.

'God be with you,' I call out. 'Bless you, dear. Bless you.'

At the convent Sister Marcetta is mashing potatoes for the hungry at the Hot Meal held near the mall. I think of the man in the quilted coat, and of mothers and dark-skinned babies, and pray silently for new ways to serve the Lord. Marcetta mixes in an egg, margarine and bluish milk for extra nutrition, and sets aside a dishful for us. Putting on boots she calls mukluks, she carries the pot to her car. Just the tip of the cross in our front yard shows above the snow; it's as plain as a grave marker when there aren't the means for something permanent. The blue security sign is buried, too. I vaguely recall the presence of grass.

'Don't forget the wash,' Sister calls. 'Man the fort. Good luck!'

Waving, I think of the Juju market where people purchase wares for voodoo: shrivelled heads of animals, paws and teeth. 'You're not to think of luck,' we counsel the sorrowful, who appear at odd hours seeking our prayers. It has nothing to do with luck: it is grace, we tell them. God's will, I remind myself, reeling our habits from the line. Dancing stiffly in the bitter gusts, they resemble pieces of sky, the lavender blue of forget-me-nots, Sister says, the flowers she hopes to plant by the cross. To me it is the Virgin's blue: the blue of sorrows, abandonment.

This is my afternoon for contemplation, but first there are chores: mending, the basement pews to be polished. With its red candle burning day and night like the Sacred Heart, our chapel is Golgotha, a place of bones bleached as white as this landscape. But we have no Stations of the Cross, nor do we have a regular priest, which grieves us when the faithful come to say confession. 'You are marching in the light of Christ,' an inner voice promised when I departed Nigeria. With gunshots echoing through the heat, I was glad to board the plane. But the rosy light of the sanctuary brings back the sound of soldiers, and I trudge upstairs.

Sister Marcetta has collected the clothing from the supermarket bin, a mountain of it serviceable with repair. I contemplate her machine in the kitchen, on which she plays her CDs, inspirational ones like 'Eternal Light: Music of Inner Peace,' my favourite. But it's all too easy to get lost in it, and one must be ready, always ready, not just for the faithful, but for all seeking respite from woe. Since the priest stopped coming, Sister and I have been forced to break rules, our duty being to listen and lighten burdens.

'I'm addicted, Sister,' a woman confessed once, 'to that stuff on the Internet.' Her hands flapped like helpless doves. 'Every Wednesday Satan tells me to play the slots. He's there, Sister. Honest to God, right there in my bathroom, under the sink.' What does one say? Go forth, my child; gamble your life away? It is meet and right to take chances?

The bell rings as I thread the needle, a small pair of trousers over my knee. The sound jars the stillness. I descend the stairs. The caller's shape looms through the entry's pebbled glass. Blurred, he appears agitated, his hair a bush in a fierce gale. Hesitating but a moment, I quickly open the door, hear a gasp - my own. I recognise his coat; it is gold and puffy, with stains on the front.

'How may we be of service, brother?' It takes extra breath to push this out.

He holds a shoebox in his gloveless hands. My eyes flit to the label: Airwalk. The man snarls like a wild dog. Before I can speak again, he lifts the lid. What I see surprises me, shocks me a little but not very much. Not when you have seen people in rivers and roadways. It is a pigeon, its feathers layered grey like billowing smoke. There's a greenish pink shine around its staring eye. Its wing sticks up like that of a chicken about to be roasted.

'Service,' the man mutters. 'Please ma'am. Help me out. I have to bury him.' It takes me a moment to comprehend. He tugs at my sleeve, tugs so sharply I fear it will rip. I explain, rather quickly, that the priest no longer makes regular calls, the need being insufficiently great. 'All things bright and beauteeeful,' the man says. 'Don't you think he deserves a decent burial?'

But I am thinking of the priest's final visit, to hear the confessions of a grandmother and her daughter. The faithful are seldom men; of course, it was women who found Jesus risen from the tomb. Women like the gambling lady who came to me, asking, 'Life is about taking risks - am I right, Sister? God spoke to me in a dream,' she said. 'There's this man, see? He's gonna meet me in Kissimmee.'

'What is this Kissimmee?'

'Sister, you don't want to know: it's warm there.'

'You must listen to what your heart tells you.'

'Like, I met this guy on the Net.'

'Listen to the Spirit. He's there to guide you.'

'Now Sister, the heart and the Spirit - ain't they the same?'

After a time their faces - those of the faithful and the afflicted - are faces in a river.

The man replaces the lid and shakes the box. Its contents thud against cardboard. 'Sister!' His voice relocates me, the look in his eyes angry, indignant. He clutches the shoebox to his chest. I think rather idly of the security system - the sign on its post beneath the snow. A buzzer meant to deter intruders will sound unless you disable it. The buzzer makes Marcetta nervous. Once it went off accidentally, the police came and the convent was billed - an amount that could have provided food for many. His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

The man gazes at the front of my habit. Someone - the gambler making her confession - called us bluebirds, Marcetta and me. She seemed a decent person, put five dollars in the donations box, on her way out to her car. She has not returned, and I wonder how things are in Kissimmee, whether she and the Internet man have tied the knot, been blessed in Holy Matrimony.

My brother with the pigeon slackens, his shoulders droop. I no longer see the man who spoiled the sofa, and whom the volunteer cast out. He isn't much more than a boy, really. Below his wild hair his face is flat, white, swollen, with a spray of pimples on his jaw. His mouth resembles a fish's. 'Help me, Miss,' he begs. The look in his eyes is one I have seen before, in the eyes of men running with knives through the streets.

'You got a church here,' he says, and his gaze climbs the small flight of stairs to the kitchen, to the clean white curtains, the sink, the table, walls spotless and bare but for a crucifix. Cold, cold air blows in past him, filling the stairwell.

'There's no priest, I'm sorry. No one to conduct a funeral, I'm afraid.' I keep my voice gentle, imagining Sister Marcetta at the soup kitchen, her nervousness if she returned now. 'You are not welcome in this building,' she too has told undesirables.

'We must open our hearts to the stranger,' I've reminded her, but Marcetta can be set in her ways.

The man-boy begins to weep, a gruff coughing.

'Come with me,' I say softly. 'Are you hungry?' Sister Marcetta would not approve, but I lead him to the kitchen, take a sandwich from the refrigerator. The bread is very white; everything about this place is so. He looks like he is eating snow, devouring it - a jackal that has not eaten in some time. The food soothes him. The dominion of God is suddenly vast and in the man's calm I am a refugee, nation-less before God's will. My life exists without borders. Sometimes it seems I will never comprehend the ways of this frozen place, but, as Marcetta says, it is up to us to cast the seeds. Only the Lord can make them grow.

I boil water, stir the powdered coffee in. His dirty hands reach for the cup.

'Will you take care of it for me, Sister?' he says meekly, and I remember the box on the stairs. 'Can you gimme a lift somewheres, Sister?'

I think of my car, how it will need to be scraped again, and Sister Marcetta's instructions as she loaded the pot into the back of hers.

'Sister. I need a drive to my girlfriend's.' Once more the man looks around like a hungry animal.

Allow me, Lord, to open my heart, to open my life to you. The stranger.

'I know you got the keys to your car here someplace,' he says.

I take them from the hook beneath the cupboard, and put on my coat. He ignores the shoebox by the mat. 'Leave it,' he says, when I go to pick it up.

The car does not want to start at first. 'Don't flood it,' he says, and I think of the river full of rags. His breathing makes an ocean sound in my ears. 'I shore appreciate this.'

My hands on the wheel tremble, not from the engine's vibration so much as the pulse of fear, as he directs me through a zigzag of streets. Oh Holy Spirit, Counsellor: what wilderness have you led me into?

Outside a small house he orders me to stop. The tires skid on the icy road and my chest contracts. Holding my breath, I pray for the guidance of the Counsellor, the blameless, ever-present Comforter.

'Wait here.' His coat rides up as he gets out. The motor tick-tick-ticks as he slouches to the door and lets himself in. I think of Marcetta finding the shoebox but no sign of me.

'Cherished and Holy Infant,' I pray aloud.

The man reappears, with a paper bag under his arm, and gets in, telling me to drive again. I hear the slosh as he uncaps the bottle inside and drinks, a long slurp, as I try to keep my gaze on the road.

The Spirit led the Saviour into the wilderness, not in the wildnerness. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, He said, and Him only shalt thou serve. I want to cross myself but my hand won't leave the wheel. 'Got some thirst, boy,' the man apologises. 'Just a little errand, Sister.' But his voice grows sharp again. 'Right here. Left there. Right, now! At these lights,' he directs. 'Now drive. That's right. Now. See them lights?'

Deliver me, Lord.

Obeying, I turn onto a road that climbs a hill higher than the one on which our convent sits. Children slog over the snow banks. A few look slightly familiar; perhaps they have visited the Helping Hand. We pass rows and rows of buildings, their homes perhaps. Many have boarded-up windows.

Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

'A ghost town,' I observe, my voice quaking, and he smirks.

'Shut up!'

Quietly I pray, 'Our Father, who art - '

'Shut up that God stuff!' He pushes the bottle at me, its neck nudging my coat.

Oh Lord, forgive me all my transgressions.

Up and up the hill we drive, miles and miles it seems, past more of these houses. Some have Christmas ornaments flapping in the wind. Big sheets of foil in the windows, big metal doors, barricades. I think of the faithful and all their confessions, of the woman in Kissimmee.

'Welcome to Greystone, Sister.' He laughs.

'When,' - I swallow - 'did your bird die, sir?'

He scowls, and the liquor slides back down the neck of the bottle. 'Bird?' he says, and barks something unrepeatable. Before us the top of the hill shines, the snow's brilliance reflecting the afternoon sun. In front of the last row of houses the man shouts, 'Right here, Sister. This is where my girlfriend lives. You better wait, though, till I see if she's home.'

The tires bite into ice. I'm perspiring. In the name of the Father, and of the Son.... Against my heart's advice I park. The heater has finally come on, emitting a dry burst of heat. Perspiration twists under my clothing, a clammy wetness. Still I am grateful for the heater and for my heavy coat, and give thanks - for it and for Sister Marcetta and even her catalogue, the one she brought before the snow arrived, filled with every imaginable good. Choose a good warm coat and boots, she said and placed the order; such was her welcome.

In the name of - I imagine her juggling the empty pot, wrestling it and the shoebox upstairs.

A child answers the door and the man pushes inside. Through the strips of tinsel in the window he waves to me, like a priest passing benediction. Lord have mercy. Tears of gratitude blur my vision. Wiping my eyes, I bow my head and breathe. Next door someone appears with a large black dog on a chain. Neither looks as I pull away. By now Sister will be warming our supper, dividing the bowl of potato, mixing it with leftover meat.

My stomach races with hunger; this climate feeds the body's appetite where heat would stifle it. The sun is a low orange glare shining off every surface now, and carefully I proceed downhill, wondering about the man's girlfriend and the child - his child? Perhaps I should have stopped, knocked, made sure the child was all right, that there was food. Something other than the brown paper bag under his arm.

The same children are climbing the snow banks uphill. They look like small, bright-coated animals squirming towards me.

Please, Lord Jesus, forgive my selfishness and sins of omission.

A car comes racing up behind, passing, its tires making a hissing sound.

I see the boy, the one from this morning, from the Helping Hand, the one with the plastic gun. He is walking the top of the snow bank like an astronaut exploring the moon. His face is wide and pale, so pale, like all the faces in our mission. Even his hair is pale as he turns and shouts to his friends. He has the blue rucksack strapped to his back, and takes big floppy steps in his boots.

As the snow breaks and spills, he slips and the car ahead of me skids and spins.

The thud is like the Lord's fist coming down. All I see are the boots flying up, one a little higher than the other, then falling like heavy, flapping birds.

I don't even feel the slip of the seat belt as I jump out. The rusty blue car sits across the road. Its driver takes a long moment to appear. A white man with a dirty growth of beard and a ball cap, he could be the boyfriend of any of the mothers we minister to, Sister Marcetta and I. Perhaps he is coming home from the supper Marcetta has helped serve.

He sucks a cigarette, sucks it as if it were a mother's nipple, as the two of us kneel over the boy.

My heart turns hollow, my soul like the hot-cold roar inside a seashell plucked from the scorching sand of a beach.

Children, rosy cheeked and smelling of school and damp clothing, press around us, the driver and me, and the boy who lies limp and cold on the icy pavement.

Only my soul hears. An anguished noise, hysterical. If there are words, voices, they float far above us, like a hurricane wind threshing the palms.

Already the boy's face is turning grey as the slush. A sliver of orange plastic sticks out from his jacket, but there is no blood. His eyes are closed. His mouth is serene, peaceful, without a hint of astonishment or surprise. I put my hand over his heart. Someone folds a scarf, places it under his head.

Tenderly, trembling with the love of Jesus in my throat, I make the sign of the cross.

The driver waits in his car, the engine running. Glancing back, I glimpse the pigeon man's face in the window, but he does not come outside. I take off my coat and cover the boy with it. It covers him from head to toe, his body is so small. It surprises me, how small.

The air freezes my breath. I don't want to leave the boy, I will not leave him. The wind pulls and tugs at my habit. It is a cold that scorches, but I no longer feel it. The sting is in the wait for the authorities - the ambulance and the police, who eventually arrive and take our statements.

I do not even know the boy's name. His mother is merely a voice scratching in my head, a pair of hands holding mittens.

'Sister Berthe Uledi Adumi,' I offer my identity, 'Order of the Eucharistic Heart - ' No one blinks, or bats an eye. It was an accident: God knows this, I tell the authorities and everyone who will listen. No one contests my statement. The driver, whose name becomes a single sound, smokes and kicks the snow, smokes and scratches beneath his cap, keeping his lips drawn tight.

It is dusk when we are free to go, the orange sky aflame and the streetlights blazing as I drive slowly through the blackened streets. The traffic lights remind me of Lifesaver candies and the colours of Kwanzaa. In this wilderness everything is black now, red and yellow and green.

At the convent Sister Marcetta has placed the shoebox under the back step, and taken up the mending that I have neglected.

She lays her hands on me as we kneel before each other to pray. It is a special prayer, which we offer before the tiny altar, with the light of Christ's sacred gift burning brightly. Through my tears I promise to do one thing: I will bury the bird in the back yard, as soon as the ground thaws enough to work. With this promise made, we pray deep into the night for the rocks and the trees, the grass and the soil; for the good of all children, the seeds of our mission, whether or not they take root.