Life With Mother Superior (10 page)

I tried to pursue Mother Superior, but she was on her way—and once she started, no one stopped her.

And then I spied my true love. His hair stood Up as it always did. He wore his white jacket, just as everyone did, and a red carnation budded from his lapel. It was his face that held fast my stare.

“My heavens, Stephen, what’s that you’re wearing on your face?” I asked, fascinated.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. There stood my dream, my fabulous Stephen, wearing a great metal mask over his nose and mouth; it strapped on the back of his head, like a gas mask. His watery pink-shot eyes stared mournfully at me. He lifted up his iron mask just long enough to try and speak to me; instead, he sneezed. He slapped it back down.

He tried again to explain. Nasally, he spewed out these words: “I have hhhhhay fever and rrrrrose fever and I hhhhhave to wwwwear this in May.” He had been out too long and the hundreds of little nosegays the school wore didn’t help. He snapped his mask and looked sad.

“Oh, Stephen,” I said, “and tonight I was going to fall in love with you.”

He looked miserable and pointed to the dance floor. We danced and dipped and dipped, but Stephen obviously was under the weather. Over his mask, his eyes flowed with rose tears and finally, out of sheer empathy, I suggested we just go home.

Mother Superior met me at the door and sympathized with Stephen, who left for his school immediately in the taxi he’d hired. Home to his inhaler and medications. I sat on the steps and watched my new love, my true love go, too sick to even wave. Mother Superior, delighted to see that the duckling who was out to capture the drake was home safe and sound, protected so magnificently by modern science, said, “Well, don’t you worry, he’ll probably be fit as a fiddle when the flowers are gone.”

Chapter Fifteen: Jackpot

Graduation time was certainly not restricted to the month of June. In fact, from the day we returned from Christmas holidays, everything was aimed, more or less, at our official departure from St. Marks. It took three meetings to decide what exotic garb we would wear for the big event. The Mothers’ Club favored caps and gowns, but Mother Superior, a sentimentalist, felt strongly about long dresses with large white garden hats. This had undoubtedly been what she had graduated in, and this was to be what we would wear.

The dress, apparently designed by Charlie Chaplin, was of a striped organza. It had several synthetic ruffles that were really not sleeves, but merely a device dreamed up by Mother Superior to cover our upper appendages. Under no circumstances would St. Marks girls ever be seen publicly with the full arm showing. The effect was a pale watered-down Carmen Miranda dress and, for most of us still firmly entrenched in adolescence, we looked like frilled toothpicks that are used on hors d’oeuvres. The dress was sashed with a satin tie and we wore white shoes and our first nylons. My father said, “Oh, my God, not another white dress! This time she looks like she’s fallen in a bucket of white paint.”

“Well, that’s what Mother Superior wants.”

“Does she pay for it?”

It was a fairly typical conversation, completely pointless, since they both had had enough experience in four years to know that what Mother Superior wanted, Mother Superior got.

“Well, maybe she can dye it and wear it next year to a dance.”

“What, Halloween?”

“All right, Dave, that’s enough.”

It wasn’t until I put the hat on that Daddy really went to pieces.

“She looks like Irene Castle.”

Deanna Durbin might have carried it off, but on me it was unbelievable. I took on the complete personality of someone in a nut house. The closest I could come to describing my look was a young Edith Sitwell.

After the dresses were fitted and made ready to be sent to the school in time for last-minute details, the next step began. Mother Superior briefed us on all the various college scholarship exams open to St. Marks girls, for none of which I qualified. These exams were open to the top intellectual ten, or to the most religious, or to the most athletic, or to the most artistic. I could qualify for little except for the student who was most troublesome. However, there was one exception, and I read about it in the local paper. I seemed to have all the qualifications. I was a girl, I was between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, and it looked as if I would complete high school. The only catch, and it was one I qualified for, you had to be a Camp Fire Girl. I had been a Camp Fire Girl—and once a Camp Fire Girl, always a Camp Fire Girl. Granted, I hadn’t lit a fire since I had been at home and in grammar school, but I had been a fully qualified marshmallow roaster and I had tied knots in everyone’s shoes from the time I joined.

I wrote off asking for the application blank. When it came in, I noticed that Mother Superior hadn’t even opened my letter. I suppose she thought it was a game or a contest I had sent for, and she was fairly used to my trys at winning a jackpot. The application called for the usual information, troop number, etc., which I faithfully filled in on a typewriter. My penmanship was so terrible that my Palmer certificate had never been issued. Even though I could copy anything and make the most authentic circles and fine-line ups and downs exemplified in the Palmer book, I simply could not write a line that was legible.

In a few weeks I got my notice, again unopened, notifying me of the place and time the contest would be held in our little city. Mother Superior usually opened only mother and father letters—simply to see if we had said anything that was completely untrue. It was her way of keeping tabs on the happy family.

The thought of asking permission to go to town on a Saturday in March wasn’t going to be easy and the exam began at ten o’clock in the morning. There didn’t seem to be any real reason for my not being allowed to go. It merely meant that I would have to ask Mother Superior and probably tell her why, and then she would put her foot down and insist that I certainly wasn’t the ideal person she would like to see represent St. Marks; there would be other Camp Fire Girls at St. Marks that were.

I kept thinking and thinking and then I got a brilliant idea. I would write home and have them get me out. There was no other way. Then, it seemed to me that this would get me nowhere, as Mama wouldn’t think of letting me go off to town by myself if Mother Superior didn’t think it was right. So I wrote Daddy a special letter and asked him to please take a sheet of Mama’s special green stationery and, without getting it dirty, send it to me as I was going to do a very special Spiritual Bouquet for her for Easter, and I thought it would be nicer on her very own stationery. My father was not only gullible, he probably cried a bit over my dear thought and sent me, neatly wrapped inside his own letter, two sheets of Mama’s special monogrammed stationery. I now could complete the first step and I could even make one mistake.

I took several of Mama’s past letters which I kept, and, by Palmer Method and a bit of tracing, I was able to simulate a letter that looked exactly like Mama’s. I merely wrote a letter that said, in effect, that Sister Lucy was going to be home in Chicago for, three days and if Mother Superior thought it was all right, Mama would like me to come home on Friday. I then wrote to Mama and told her we were going to have a Saturday in the city to go to the stacks of the Public Library for research. I mailed this one myself by stealing one stamp out of Mother Superior’s desk drawer and walking a half mile to the mailbox. Anything was really possible at St. Marks if you used your head.

My next strategic step was to get the mail before Mother Superior did. Sister Portress was going to be my unknowing accomplice. My mother wrote once a week. She wrote on Sunday, my father mailed it on Monday, and her letter arrived on Tuesday. I would have to get my hands on the Tuesday mail. The whole affair, which had me sleepless for nights, was simply too easy. I hung around the main gate looking for botany samples, I said—as if there was anything but dead leaves and snow. I was frozen, but it had to be—time was running short. The mailman arrived and I slipped out the gate. I suppose I must have looked authentic as I said, “Sister Portress is sick and I’m to take the mail.”

Since he was human and cold too, I felt a sense of sympathy go out to me.

“Poor little orphan,” he said.

I looked tearful and he handed me a tied package and drove off.

The moment to me seemed precious, much as a jewel robber must feel when the safe opens at the first try. I merely tucked the packet into my coat and headed for my room. I prayed that Mama had not failed me, as getting to the mail truck on just
any
old morning was not easy. As it was, I would have some explaining to do for missing my library period.

I put the mail packet under my pillow and hurried off to Sister Nurse.

“Well, and what’s the matter with you?” She looked sympathetic, since my nose was running and my eyes were bleary with the cold. This plus a distinct flush of victory made me feverish.

“Feel terrible,” I mumbled, anxious only for her to record my emotions so Sister Library would not go beyond Sister Nurse’s check.

“Come here, I’ll take your temperature.” I was eager to please so that I could get back to the mail.

My temperature seemed high to her and she gave me two aspirins and told me to go lie down. It was all according to plan.

I took the mail packet from under my pillow and went to the toilet to comfortably peruse the mail. It was the only place I knew, in the whole convent, where no one was ever interrupted.

Sure enough, there was Mama’s stationery. I put the rest of the mail in my lap and picked out the letter. It was not hard to open the envelope. I did it from the side, taking out her letter and substituting the forged version.

I quietly slid down the stairs of the cloister (since. I knew no one would be about), past the refectory, the recreation room and the guest parlors. I could-hear Sister Portress on the phone. This would not do. I slipped into one of the, parlors and waited. Before long, I heard her go down the hall toward the kitchen. I quickly sped out to her desk, which was at the front
door, and left the packet of mail. By the time I got back to my bed, I was exhausted and perspiring. Sister Nurse came by and made me get in bed.

“But I feel all right, Sister, honestly I do.”

“Into bed. You’re feverish and perspiring.”

I spent the morning reading, and at lunchtime Sister Nurse brought me some soup and Jell-O. I was starved. It was simply the price I had to pay for robbing the mail.

Mother Superior brought the mail herself and was very solicitous. It was the first time in four years that any ache or pain of mine had been recognized.

“Well, so you have the pip?” she asked, feeling my forehead.

“No, really, Mother, I’m all right.”

“Well, Sister Nurse recommended the day in bed, and that’s where you’ll stay. I didn’t know you had an aunt who was a nun,” she said softly. Her voice was considerably more gentle than usual.

“Oh, yes, indeed.” I had an aunt who was a nun, like she had a brother who was a rabbi.

“Where is she stationed?”

I was speechless. “I don’t know, Mother Superior, I think she’s been in China.”

If Mother Superior had had any doubts about letting me out, they were dispelled now.

“Well, your family would like to have you home on Saturday, March tenth. I think you can write them and tell them you’ll be able to come.”

The day in bed was pleasant. I had outwitted Mother Superior, and that wasn’t easy. Perhaps, I was getting older, or perhaps she was getting older.

The morning train left at seven and there were three girls going to the city that day as well as two nuns. We rode silently in the bus to the station.

I wondered what the exam would be like and hoped the train would be on time.

“Is your family meeting you?” Sister Elsa asked as the train came bumbling into the station.

“No, I have cab fare,” I said and flashed a dollar bill at her. I hoped against hope that the place where the exam was to be held would be near the city, as I only had two dollars to throw around. The taxi took me to a large school building where at least two thousand little Camp Fire Girls were burning lights, in hopes that they would win one of the prizes.

I filled in the necessary papers, presented my admittance card, and was assigned to a room number. A tall, white-haired lady gave me a book of tests and I retired to one of the window seats so that I could be cooler. I was used to being in rooms where the temperature never rose above 65, and the boiler of this building was keeping the room much too warm for my veins.

It was one of those tests that I liked. My favorite problems were all there—the kind that said, “If it takes three men twenty days to lay three miles of track, how many days would it take ten men to lay twenty miles of track?” Thanks to Sister Liguori and her racing track, I had learned the trick of thinking that one out. There were twenty-five variations of this question.

The vocabulary looked as if it had been aimed at the lower classes. Other than Civics questions, at which I just took guesses, I finished my book by noon.

The white-haired lady said, “You have another hour, if you want to go over anything,” but I knew from experience that once I began to change things, I went sour. I was much luckier with my first hunch.

I left. It was blowing and snowing and raining—I was hungry. I thought I knew about where I was, so, instead of taking a taxi, I took the bus. With a little economy, I might be able to have lunch and see a movie. The driver told me where to change for downtown, and as I stood on the corner, wind blowing through my hair (which was held down by our school hats, resembling the type worn by visiting nurses), I must have seemed a sorry specimen.

The Oriental was showing
Kitty Foyle
with Ginger Rogers. This was to be my choice. I decided to go to Harding’s Cafeteria and have just what I pleased for lunch. My favorite meal that year was mashed potatoes with gravy and chocolate milk. I had two helpings. Then I cried through the entire movie, including the credits.

Just the two Sisters were on the train back. They paid little attention to me, as they both seemed to prefer their prayerbooks to my company. The snow seemed to be in earnest now and our train was a good hour late. Roger met us—he must have warmed his heart with bourbon while he waited. It was quite a ride back. I was totally exhausted. Sister Cook fixed me some soup and sandwiches and I was delighted to turn in.

Mother Superior did want to know all about my aunt and I told her she was going right back to China. As far as I was concerned, she should. I didn’t need her any more.

In fact, I almost forgot about the whole Saturday, what with the Laetare Sunday, Founder’s Day, and the other exotic events that St. Marks held for us. It wasn’t until the middle of May that I was called to Mother Superior’s office.

“Sit down,” she said, not looking up from a letter she was reading.

“Yes, Mother.”

“Do you know about this?” she handed me the letter.

I wondered what on earth kind of a complaint this was.

“Read it,” she said sternly.

I started. It said briefly that the Camp Fire Girls) were delighted to announce that I was “one of the ten winners of scholarships to a college of my choice.”

I handed the letter back to Mother. I might have made one of my usual smart remarks, but I learned over the years that it was better to let her cue you in than vice versa.

“And would you mind telling me just how you won that scholarship?”

“I took a test.”

“Where?”

“In town.”

“In this town?”

“No, in the city.”

“When.”

“On March tenth.”

“The day you went home to see your aunt.”

Now I knew the worst would come, but evidently Mother simply couldn’t believe that I could create a missionary aunt for myself.