Sisters, Misters, and Blisters

They dressed in black and had wimples that made even the shortest seem tall. The school looked as foreboding as its masters. I was only seven, but I felt an uncomfortable mixture of doom and hopelessness as I walked through the door. This was Catholic school. My parents got me in after first grade, and it was clear to me this wasn't Kansas anymore.

I remember making my First Holy Communion that year and worse yet, my first confession. Confession was a terrifying ordeal. You went into the confessional, in the dark. Told your innermost crimes to a man you couldn't see. I made things up to tell the priest. I didn't trust him. The loneliest feeling on Earth is pretending to be someone you aren't. The most terrifying was the sound of the click when you knelt in the dark with a stranger.

My Place of Woe – Refurbished and Attractive

Sister Harriet Seton was my third-year nun. She liked me, and I liked her. She was charmed by my peppery personality, and I was captivated by her genuine love of children. It was always Sunday when we did the calendar, and I knew that was a reward. Sunday was the most important day. The next two years I spent with lay teachers, and then I faced Sister William Loretta. She was extremely obese. Her fingers were like swollen sausages. Her face was plump and red. She made a thumping noise when she walked. She didn't like me from day one. Sister had a big brass ruler with ridges on the back. It was so heavy. Every time someone broke her endless rules, they had to smack their hands with the ruler until they were bright red. I had the reddest hands in class. This was sixth grade and she must have felt it her duty to give us the "dirty speech." That's what I called her sex talks. We were commanded to be quiet and still while she talked endlessly about "touching oneself in unclean places." It was years before I knew what she meant. Her little talks disturbed all of us. They could go on for a good part of the day. She had dedicated her life, it seems, to making Mother Elizabeth Ann Seton a saint. Our nuns were The Sisters of Charity of Halifax, so Seton was the founder. One day Sister announced we were going to have a Mother Seton Club. Jeanie was to be president, and I was to be vice president. Every Tuesday morning, we were to go to the office for the morning announcements. Jeanie would read about Mother Seton's life, and I would sing the Mother Seton song Sister had written. This was beyond the pale! The song was a tuneless mess and I found every illness under the sun to be absent on Tuesdays.

One day a new boy was sent to class. He was from a family of Irish step-dancers. Sister made him dance for the class, and I was smitten. The entire sixth grade was taken to a roller skating rink on a field trip, and Timmy and I skated together, holding hands. Well, the repercussions could have tumbled the walls of Jericho. My mother got called, but she had learned to placate Sister and deal with her infernal calls. Timmy and I got spoken to individually. We were kept apart from that day forward. He eventually became a priest after years of playing professional basketball. My next two years were perpetually painful. Sister Joan Michael and Sister Ann Cabrini, my seventh and eighth grade teachers, were young and vicious. They tag-teamed students with their duplicity. One called my mother to tell her I was making friends with undesirables. Bernadette didn't live with her parents. Her father was unknown. Her mom worked as a maid in the city, and she was farmed out to a childless couple she called aunt and uncle. Kathy came from a family with ten kids, which although birth control was not allowed, nuns looked at large families as excessive. Terry was a dwarf. All were wonderful, sincere, well-behaved children. One day the Sisters confronted me about my friendships in the playground, right in front of them. Cabrini started poking me under my shoulder, telling me that I should have some sense in my choices of friends. She kept poking me over and over with Sister Joan egging her on. Finally, I exploded. It was an out-of-body experience. I grabbed her hand and squeezed as hard as I could. My voice sounded far away as I told her never to poke me again and to mind her own business. Everyone was just standing there in shock including me. The anger was rumbling through me like an earthquake. The Sisters seemed to know I was past caring what would happen to me now, and they turned and walked away... Nothing was ever said. They left me alone after that.