“I hope you trip and murder yourself,” I screamed.
But Corwin did not trip. For all of his recklessness, he managed to stay upright, and as I stood rooted in the center of the walk I saw him whiz from clump to clump of children, laughing and gesturing, filling the air with small and derisive sounds. Sister Mary Anita swept out the door, a wooden-handled brass bell in her hand. When she shook it up and down, the children who played together in twos and threes swung toward her and narrowed or widened their eyes and turned eagerly to one another. Some began to laugh. It seemed to me that all of them did, in fact, and that the sound, jerked from their lips, was large, uncanny, totally and horribly delicious. It rose in my own throat, its taste was vinegar.
“Godzilla, Godzilla,” they called underneath their breath. “Sister Godzilla.”
Before them on the steps, Sister Mary Anita continued to smile into their faces. She did not hear them…yet. But I knew she would. Over the bell, her eyes were brilliantly dark and alive. Her horrid jagged teeth showed in a smile. I ran to her. Thrusting my hand into my lunch bag, I grabbed the cookies that my mother had made from recipes she clipped from oatmeal boxes and molasses jars.
“Here!” I shoved a sweet, lumpy cookie into the nun’s hand. It fell apart, distracting her as my classmates pushed past.
MY FELLOW STUDENTS seemed to forget the name off and on all week. Some days they would seem to have passed on to new disasters — other teachers occupied them, or some small event occurred within the classroom. But then Corwin Peace would lope and careen among them at recess; he’d pump his arms and pretend to roar behind Sister Mary Anita’s back as she stepped up to the plate. As she swung and connected with the ball and gathered herself to run, her veil lifting, the muscles in her shoulders like the curved hump of a raptor’s wings, Corwin would move along behind her, rolling his legs the way Godzilla did in the King Kong movie. In her excitement, dashing base to base, her feet long and limber in black-laced nun’s boots, Mary Anita did not notice. But I looked on, helpless, the taste of a penny caught in my throat.
“SNAKES LIVE IN holes. Snakes are reptiles. These are Science Facts.”
I read to the class, out loud, from my Discovery science book.
“Snakes are not wet. Some snakes lay eggs. Some have live young.”
“Very good,” said Sister. “Can you name other reptiles?”
My tongue fused to the back of my throat.
“Yes,” I croaked.
She waited, patient eyes on me.
“There’s Chrysemys picta,” I said, “the painted turtle. And the Plains garter snake, Thamnophis radix, and also T. sirtilis, the red-sided garter snake. They live right here, in the sloughs, all around here.”
Sister nodded in a kind of thoughtful surprise, but then seemed to remember that my father was a science teacher and smiled her kind and frightful smile. “Well, that’s very good.
“Anyone else?” Sister asked. “Reptiles from other parts of the world?”
Corwin Peace raised his hand. Sister recognized him.
“How about Godzilla?”
Gasps. Small noises of excitement. Mouths opened and hung open. Admiration for Corwin’s nerve rippled through the rows of children like a wind across a field. Sister Mary Anita’s great jaw opened, opened, then snapped shut. Her shoulders shook. No one knew what to do at first, then she laughed. It was a high-pitched, almost birdlike sound, a thin laugh like the highest keys played on the piano. The other students’ mouths opened, they all hesitated, then they laughed with her, even Corwin. Eyes darting from one of us to the next, to me, Corwin laughed.
But I was near to puking with anxious rage. When Sister Mary Anita turned to new work, I crooked my fist beside me like a piston, then I leaned across Corwin’s desk.
“I’m going to give you one right in the bread box,” I said.
Corwin looked pleased, and so with one precise jab — which I had learned from my uncle Whitey, who fought in the Golden Gloves — I knocked the wind out of him and left him gasping. I turned to the front, my face clear and heart calm, as Sister began her instruction.
FURIOUS SUNLIGHT. BLACK cloth. I sat on the iron trapeze, the bar pushing a sore line into the backs of my legs. As I swung, I watched Sister Mary Anita. The wind was harsh and she wore a pair of wonderful gloves, black, the fingers cut out of them so that her hand could better grip the bat. The ball arced toward her sinuously, dropped, her bat caught it with a clean sound. Off the ball soared, across the playground boundaries, over into the yard of the priest’s residence. Mary Anita’s habit swirled open behind her. The cold bit her cheeks red. She swung to third and glanced, panting, over her shoulder and then sped home. She touched down lightly and bounded off.
My arms felt heavy, weak. I dropped from the trapeze and went to lean against the brick wall of the school building. My heart thumped in my ears. I saw what I would do when I grew up. Declare my vocation, enter the convent. Sister Mary Anita and I would live over in the nuns’ house together, side by side. We would eat, work, eat, cook. Sometimes we’d have to pray. To relax, Sister Mary Anita would hit pop flies and I would catch them.
Someday, one day, the two of us would be walking, our hands in our sleeves, our long habits flowing behind.
“Dear Sister,” I would say, “remember that old nickname you had the year you taught the sixth grade?”
“Why no,” Sister Mary Anita would say, smiling at me. “Why, no.”
And I would know that I had protected her.
IT GOT WORSE. I wrote letters, tore them up. My hand shook when Sister passed me in the aisle and my eyes closed. I breathed in. Soap. A harsh soap. Faint carbolic acid. Marigolds, for sure. That’s what she smelled like. Dizzying. My fists clenched. I pressed my knuckles to my eyes and loudly excused myself. I went to the girls’ bathroom and stood in a stall. My life was terrible. The thing is, I didn’t want to be a nun.
“There must be another way!” I whispered, desperate. The whitewashed tin shuddered when I slammed my hand on the cubicle wall. I decided that I would have to persuade Mary Anita to forsake her vows, to come and live with me and my family in our BIA house. Someone was standing outside. I opened the door a bit and stared into the great, craggy face.
“Are you feeling all right? Do you need to go home?” Sister Mary Anita was concerned.
Fire shot through my limbs. The girls’ bathroom, its light mute and brilliant, a place of secrets, of frosted glass, paralyzed me. I gathered myself. Here was my chance, as if God had given it.
“Please,” I whispered to her. “Let’s run away together!”
Sister paused. “Are you having troubles at home?” she asked.
“No.”
Sister’s milk-white hand came through the doorway and covered my forehead. My anxious thoughts throbbed against her lean, cool palm. Staring into the eyes of the one I loved, I gripped the small metal knob on the inside of the door, pushed, and then I felt myself falling forward, slowly turning like a leaf in wind, upheld and buoyant in the peaceful roar. It was as though I’d never reach Sister’s arms, but when I did, I came back with a jolt.
“You are ill,” said Sister. “Come to the office and we’ll call your mother.”
AS I HAD known it would, perhaps from that moment in the girls’ bathroom, the day came. The day of reckoning.
Outside, in the morning school yard, after Mass and before first bell, everyone crowded around Corwin Peace. In his arms, he held a windup tin Godzilla, a big toy, almost knee-high, a green and gold replica painted with a fierce eye to detail. The scales were perfect overlapping crescents and the eyes were large and manic, pitch-black, oddly human. Corwin had pinned a sort of cloak upon the thing, a black scarf. My arms thrust through the packed shoulders, but the bell rang and Corwin stowed the thing under his coat. His eyes picked me from the rest.