I won’t even go into what happened at Vilas, the first school I went to in El Paso. A big misunderstanding all around. So two months into the year, of third grade, there I was in the playground outside of St. Joseph’s. My new school. Absolutely terrified. I had thought that wearing a uniform would help. But I had this heavy metal brace on my back, for what was called the curvature, let’s face it, a hunchback, so I had to get the white blouse and plaid skirt way too big to go over it, and of course my mother didn’t think to at least hem up the skirt.
Another big misunderstanding. Months later, Sister Mercedes was hall monitor. She was the young sweet one who must have had a tragic love affair. He probably died in the war, a bombardier. As we filed past her, two in a row, she touched my hunchback and whispered, “Dear child, you have a cross to bear.” Now how was she to know that I had become a religious fanatic by that time, that those innocent words of hers would only convince me of my predestined link to Our Savior?
(Oh, and mothers. Just the other day, on the bus, a mother got on with her little boy. She was obviously a working mother, had picked him up at nursery school, was tired but glad to see him, asked him about his day. He told her all these things he had done. “You’re so special!” she said as she hugged him. “Special means I’m retarded!” the kid said. He had big tears in his eyes and sat there scared to death while his mother went on smiling away just like me with the birds.)
That day on the playground I knew that never in my life was I going to get in. Not just fit in, get in. In one corner two girls were twirling a heavy rope and one by one beautiful rosy-cheeked girls would spring from line to jump under the rope, jump, jump and out again just in time and back in line. Whap, whap, no one missed a beat. In the middle of the playground was a round swing, with a circular seat that spun dizzily merrily around and never stopped but laughing children leaped on and off it without a … not even without falling, without a change of pace. Everywhere around me on the playground was symmetry, synchronicity. Two nuns, their beads clicking in unison, their clean faces nodding as one to the children. Jacks. The ball bouncing with a clean crack on the cement, the dozen jacks flying into the air and caught all at once with the spin of a tiny wrist. Slap slap slap, other girls played intricate complicated hand-clapping games. There was a tiny little dutchman. Slap slap. I wandered around not only unable to get in but seemingly invisible, which was a mixed blessing. I fled around the corner of the building where I could hear noises and laughter from the school kitchen. I was hidden there from the playground; the friendly noises inside were reassuring to me. I couldn’t go in there either though. But then there were shriekings and hollerings and a nun was saying, oh I can’t I simply can’t, and I knew then it was okay for me to go in because what she couldn’t do was take the dead mice out of the traps. “I’ll do that,” I said. And the nuns were so pleased they didn’t say anything about me being in the kitchen, except one of them did whisper “Protestant” to another one.
And that’s how it started. Also they gave me a biscuit, hot and delicious, with butter. Of course I had had breakfast but it was so good I wolfed it down and they gave me another. Every day then in exchange for emptying and resetting two or three traps I not only got biscuits but a St. Christopher medal that I used later for a lunch token. This saved me the embarrassment before class started of lining up to exchange dimes for the medals we used for lunch.
Because of my back I was allowed to stay in the classroom during gym and recess. It was just the mornings that were hard, because the bus got there before the school was unlocked. I forced myself to try to make friends, to talk to girls from my class, but it was hopeless. They were all Catholic and had been together since kindergarten. To be fair, they were nice, normal children. I had been skipped in school, so was much younger, and had only lived in remote mining camps before the war. I didn’t know how to say things like “Do you enjoy studying the Belgian Congo?” or “What are your hobbies?” I would lurch up to them and blurt out “My uncle has a glass eye.” Or “I found a dead Kodiak bear with his face full of maggots.” They would ignore me, or giggle or say “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”
So for a while I had someplace to go before school. I felt useful and appreciated. But then I heard the girls whispering “Charity case” along with “Protestant” and then they started calling me “Rat trap” and “Minnie Mouse.” I pretended I didn’t care and besides I loved the kitchen, the soft laughter and murmurs of the nun-cooks, who wore homespun nightgown-looking habits in the kitchen.
I had of course decided to become a nun by then, because they never looked nervous but mostly because of the black habits and the white coifs, the headdresses like giant starched white fleur-de-lis. I’ll bet the Catholic church lost out on a lot of would-be nuns when they started dressing like ordinary meter maids. Then my mother visited the school to see how I was getting along. They said my classwork was excellent and my deportment perfect. Sister Cecilia told her how much they appreciated me in the kitchen and how they saw to it that I had a good breakfast. My mother, the snob, with her ratty old coat with the ratty fox collar the beady eyes had fallen out of. She was mortified, disgusted about the mice and really furious about the St. Christopher medal, because I had gone on getting my dime every morning and spending it on candy after school. Devious little thief. Whap. Whap. Mortified!
So that ended that, and it was a big misunderstanding all around. The nuns apparently thought I had been hanging around the kitchen because I was this poor hungry waif, and just gave me the mousetrap job out of charity, not because they really needed me at all. The problem is I still don’t see how the false impression could have been avoided. Perhaps if I had turned down the biscuit?
That’s how I ended up hanging out in church before school and really decided to become a nun, or a saint. The first mystery was that the rows of candles under each of the statues of Jesus and Mary and Joseph were all flickering and trembling as if there were gusts of wind when in fact the vast church was shut tight and none of the heavy doors were open. I believed that the spirit of God in the statues was so strong it made the candles flutter and hiss, tremulous with suffering. Each tiny burst of light lit up the caked blood on Jesus’s bony white feet and it looked wet.
At first I stayed way in the back, giddy, drunk with the smell of incense. I knelt, praying. Kneeling was very painful, because of my back, and the brace dug into my spine. I was sure this made me holy and was penance for my sins but it hurt too bad so I finally stopped, just sat there in the dark church until the bell rang for class. Usually there was no one in the church but me, except for Thursday when Father Anselmo would go shut himself in the confessional. A few old women, girls from the upper school, once in a while a grade school pupil would make their way, stopping to kneel to the altar and cross themselves, kneeling and crossing again before they entered the other side of the confessional. What was puzzling was the varying time they took to pray when they left. I would have given anything in the whole wide world to know what went on in there. I’m not sure how long it was before I found myself inside, my heart pounding. It was more exquisite inside than I could have imagined. Smoky with myrrh, a velvet cushion to kneel on, a blessed virgin looking down upon me with infinite pity and compassion. Through the carved screen was Father Anselmo, who was ordinarily a preoccupied little man. But he was silhouetted, like the man on Mamie’s wall in the top hat. He could be anybody … Tyrone Power, my father, God. His voice was not like Father Anselmo at all but deep and softly echoing. He asked me to say a prayer I didn’t know, so he said the lines and I repeated them, grievously sorry for having offended thee. Then he asked about my sins. I wasn’t lying. I really and truly had no sins to confess. Not a one. I was so ashamed, surely I could think of something. Search deep into your heart, my child … Nothing. Desperate, wanting so badly to please I made one up. I had hit my sister on the head with a hairbrush. Do you envy your sister? Oh, yes, Father. Envy is a sin, my child, pray to have it removed from you. Three Hail Marys. As I prayed, kneeling, I realized that this was a short penance, next time I could do better. But there would be no next time. That day Sister Cecilia kept me after class. What made it worse was that she was so kind. She understood how I would want to experience the church’s sacraments and mysteries. Mysteries, yes! But I was a Protestant and I wasn’t baptized or confirmed. I was allowed to come to their school, and she was glad, because I was a good obedient pupil, but I couldn’t take part in their church. I was to stay on the playground with the other children.