Life With Mother Superior (5 page)

Jessie was out cold on the floor. Her pale, thin, aristocratic lips were blue and she looked like a great
limp doll dressed for the Arctic.

“Poor darling,” Sister Mary William mumbled, and started patting her wrists and rubbing her hands.

“Oh if only I had some whiskey,” she moaned.

A few other people who had come in the washroom
just stood about and stared. One of them said, “She’s
having a fit.”

This really irritated Sister Mary William and she looked the woman right in the eye. “She is not having
a fit, but I’ll have one if you don’t leave.”

Finally Jessie moaned and moved and Sister propped
her up against the wall and sent us for some hot tea. “Oh if only I had a good cognac,” she kept saying.
Poor Sister couldn’t send us for one and she didn’t feel
equipped to seek out a brandy by herself. But Jessie seemed able to walk and we all shepherded her down
the steps and out into the knife blade cold. There wasn’t really anything else to see at the World’s Fair
grounds and so we boarded our magic, frozen, bad-humor bus and headed for home. We finally got back
to the convent, after dark, and six of the seven of us had influenza for ten days. The seventh was Sister Mary William, who simply couldn’t believe that we all caught it on our nice trip.

Despite the fact that Sister Mary William had other
outings planned, Mother Superior put a temporary ban on excursions. It wasn’t until Easter that she
allowed Sister Mary William to take us to Holy Hill, where we had the chance to climb up the seven thou
sand steps on our knees.

Chapter Eight: The Merry Month of . . .

May was a month with a lot to recommend it. Not only was it very near the end of the term, but there were assorted devotions that offered endless diversions from the daily routine. It always started out with a bang because of the homeroom May crowning which took place on the very first day.

Sister Rose Marie, my junior homeroom teacher, was beside herself with anticipation. She wiggled her thin little precise nose and nervously adjusted her glasses. Her voice seemed as if it was being piped, rather then spoken, as it came to us in wailing, reedlike chirps. Since little Sister Rose Marie was barely five feet tall and weighed about ninety pounds, we had tagged her “Roughhouse Rosie.”

“We should only sing two or three songs and then we will crown the statue of the Virgin.”

“Yes, Sister,” we chirped back.

No matter how naughty we were, or now we mimicked her, she never really seemed aware of it. Therefore, we left her alone most of the time to live in her aesthetic peace.

“Now who will be the May Queen?”

It took the entire hour to vote. My name was never mentioned, as it was taken for granted that only honor students would even be suggested, and it was preferable that the honor student also have a wide religious streak in her. Mary and I were eliminated on both strikes. It was bound to be between Lillian Quigley and Ramona Sapper, and Lillian spent more time on her knees, so she naturally would win hands down. She blushed and looked rather pleased, for she had all confidence that her vocation would stand out in the polling. Everyone in the junior class said Lillian was “roped.” This meant that she spent considerable time in the presence of one of the nuns talking about her future. It was fully accepted that she would join the convent right after graduation—everyone but her father fully concurred.

“She makes me want to throw up,” Mary whispered. “Look at that sickly saint’s smile.”

“Young ladies, do you have any objections to the poll?” Roughhouse asked patiently.

We both shook our heads.

“Then please refrain from speaking to each other.”

Ramona was picked as Queen of Honor, and Florence, a rather awkward, gawky girl, would carry the crown. This was so that Florence would think she was as well coordinated as any of us, which wasn’t saying much.

Now that the queens were chosen, the workers could come forth. I was immediately elected flower chairman and Mary my co-chairman. We invariably inherited the dirty jobs and the costly ones. It was typical that we would be behind the scenes always and never on the stage.

Every room at St. Marks had a statue of the Blessed Virgin on a pedestal in the corner. The teacher sat on a platform that was about a foot high and faced the class. For a May crowning, Sister’s desk had to be moved off the platform and put in the corner. The pedestal was placed in the center—and banked around it, vases which would hold our selection of flowers.

The procession of Lillian, Ramona and Florence would come in the back door of the classroom, go all around the room, while we sang hymns. Finally, they would stand in front of the statue until we hit the line, “Oh Mary we crown thee with blossoms today”—then the crown bearer would hand the crown to the queen and she would put it on the head of the statue.

“Where on earth will we ever get any flowers? I haven’t got any money, and it’s so cold, the bushes still have snow on them.” It was true that spring came later that year than I could ever remember.

At first Mary and I tried to get the rest of the class to chip in or at least pledge us a few pennies from their next allowance for some flowers. We couldn’t raise a penny. Roughhouse had cleaned out the entire class with her last chocolate éclair sale for the Missions. She had a sister who was a missionary in Tanganyika, and Roughhouse had it straight from the missionaries’ mouth that Africa and “the bush” was a depraved situation. Whenever she had a letter from her sister, she produced a boxful of éclairs and sold them to us any Religion period. We never minded this form of blackmail, as she usually read us her sister’s letters which were, to say the least, gory. Even at nine-thirty we would wolf down éclairs—and feel ill all morning over both the rich cream and the disgusting tales of tribal rites.

We simply hit a dead-end street with the class when we asked for money. Everyone agreed that Roughhouse had no right to expect flowers as she had held two Mission bake-outs in one week and we were not only broke, but we all had severe acne. She simply couldn’t have Missions and a May crowning in the same week.

“Let’s try Sister Gardener,” Mary suggested. “She might lend us some leaves or something.”

We sought out the only one at St. Marks who officially had a green thumb.

“Sister Hedwig,” we began tentatively, “would you by any chance have any old flowers that are going to waste?”

“No.” She was potting a pineapple.

She grew flowers mainly for the altar, and vegetables and herbs for herself—none of which, I am convinced, ever saw the student menu. She was enchanted with bromeliads and grew them in her spare time. The poor greenhouse of the Midwest had a strange tropical look.

“Don’t you even have any leaves?” we asked pitifully.

“What do you think this is—miracle time?” she asked sarcastically. “Look, it’s snowing.”

“Well, what on earth will we do for some flowers for the May crowning?”

“I’ll be happy to sell you some vegetables.”

“Oh Sister, couldn’t we just borrow some of these pretty things?”

“They wouldn’t last five minutes in her cold classrooms.”

It was true. Whenever Roughhouse Rosie couldn’t raise her Mission money, she opened all the windows. If we didn’t kick in on the next basket-passing, they stayed open. She simply got all our allowances by her own form of cold war.

We worried and fretted for the rest of the week and begged the day students to at least bring grass, if nothing else.

The morning of May first was one of the bleakest, coldest mornings I ever saw. We had lights on at Mass, lights on at breakfast, and all the halls were lit. And when Mother Superior turned on the hall lights, it was dangerously dark.

“We can’t just tell Roughhouse there aren’t any flowers,” Mary wailed.

“Wait,” I said inspirationally, “I have an idea. Come with me.” I slipped down the back convent steps three at a time and headed for the chapel with Mary at my heels.

I peered into the chapel. It was gloomy and dark, only the votive lights before St. Mark’s statue and in front of the Little Flower gave light to the altar. It was empty except for Sister Gertruda who was the oldest living member of the community.

“C’mon, let’s go around the back and come in through the sacristy.” By using this door, we could come in behind the altar. Though Sister Gertruda was deep in prayer, if she saw us sneaking up on the altar, she would be quite liable to either ask us “why” or send us away.

“All we have to do is get a couple of the vases off the altar from the back, take enough flowers for the crown and get back upstairs.”

“Thank heavens there are carnations,” Mary said. “The stems bend.”

We scooted around the back, went through the sacristy and crept through the priests’ entrance to the altar, staying behind it. Mary tried to reach for a vase.

“Wait a minute, I’ll find a stool or a chair.” The only chair on the altar was a great-grandfather chair that the priest sat in at High Mass. It had a medieval look and weight to it.

The sacristy had a prie-dieu in it and that would just have to do. Mary climbed up on the arm rest and handed down the vase. There were six vases in all across the back of the altar and in between the niches. We took a few carnations from each one. Poor Sister Gertruda, after the third vase had been lifted down and put back up, thought she was having a vision and fell to her knees. Before she came out of her trance, I felt it would be wise to take all the carnations from the last vase and get out as fast as we could. As we ran out we saw poor ancient Sister Gertruda peering over the altar rail, her half blind eyes trying to determine the veracity of the miracle or at least establish a motive.

We raced down the hall clutching the dripping carnations and flew into the bathroom.

“Here, put them here,” I said, pointing to the washbasin.

“Thank God, we at least have a crown,” Mary said.

We started tying the stems together and in ten minutes of silent therapy we had something round, something fresh and something resembling a May crown. By the time we raced to the classroom, Mary was so upset that she had both her hands wrapped in handkerchiefs—it was a bad attack of the drips.

We both blanched when we saw that Roughhouse had borrowed extra vases to house our bouquets and bowers.

“Sister, everyone let us down. There are no flowers. But we do have a crown,” I said.

“A fresh crown,” Mary added.

Roughhouse looked at us as if we were entirely responsible for bringing the Inquisition about. “Let us crown the Virgin, then, without any flowers.”

We went to the back door and filed into place. Mary put the crown on Florence’s pillow, where it tilted perilously.

“Hold on to it,” Mary shouted at her. Florence clung to the crown and the pillow as best she could.

We filed into the room—all except the three queens. They had to wait in the hall. The bell rang and the ritual started.

“Good morning girls,” the reedlike voice of Roughhouse cracked with sorrow.

“Good morning, Sister.”

“Let us pray.”

We all knelt in our seats—facing the back of the room. Roughhouse had had Margaret O’Shaughnessy, the top artist in the school, do the scenes of Our Lady’s life. Other than the fact that all the animals far outscaled the human figures, it wasn’t a bad mural.

“We will now sing the Mission song and then proceed with the May crowning.” Roughhouse’s voice absolutely broke on the word
crowning
.

Kaifang, East Honan, China, Oriental Providence,
Kaifang, East Land of Promise, to you our best we send.
Kaifang, East Honan, China, may the Lord keep you in love.
Kaifang, East Land of Promise, the Mission’s own white dove.

It was quite a song—the lyricist, of course, had been French Indo-Chinese, and her idea of English was not necessarily as good as it could have been. Nevertheless, we sang it in true Chinese rhythmic chant.

I began to feel terribly depressed about our failure when the May songs began.

Bring flowers of the rarest,
Bring flowers of the fairest,
From garland and woodland and hillside and dale.
Our young hearts are swelling,
Our glad voices telling
The praise of the loveliest Rose of the Dale.

Throughout this song, the procession of the three queens in white had entered the back door and proceeded to stand in front of the empty vases. The whole song was accompanied by the high weeping of Roughhouse Rosie, who stood in the back of the room. It must have been too much for Florence. She tripped and the crown went sailing—straight out of the open window.

The whole class gasped. Florence looked death-like, Lillian looked as if she was going to jump into the burning fagots and Roughhouse Rosie left the room sobbing.

News of our flowerless, crownless celebration spread throughout the school and it didn’t take long for Sister Gertruda to understand what her vision had been. However, before she could muster her ancient forces to track down the culprits, Mother Superior, in one grand sympathetic gesture put Roughhouse Rosie in charge of the school crowning. If this was the biggest
succés-fou
the school ever had in the way of May crownings, Roughhouse, in some way, might erase the insult Room 109 had given the Virgin. She tackled it with a fervor we had never recognized in her. Up till this May, St. Marks had been invited by the Cathedral in town to form the Living Rosary in the park adjacent to the Cathedral. This was all well and good, but there were two disadvantages to it—one which irritated the city’s devout Catholics and mothers and fathers of the students, the other just irritated every driver in the city.

The first disadvantage to it was the park was small and no one could see the Living Rosary through the trees. Which meant that if Florence’s parents came to see her flounder through the Living Rosary, chances were, unless they were lucky, and on her side of the park, they wouldn’t lay eyes on her. The second disadvantage was that the streets around the park had to be closed and the pressures upon the mayor, who was Irish and Catholic, were anything but pleasant—so he made a proposition to Sister Rose Marie, who thought the idea was simply wonderful. He suggested taking us to the Municipal Golf Course on Sunday afternoon. This might have thrown the members, except they were almost all Irish and Catholic too, and this seemed little enough for them to sacrifice for the Living Rosary.

The whole idea was that each child in the school became one bead on the Rosary. Since there were about seventy-five students in the school, this meant nine had to be sick or nine had to be flower queens. Roughhouse came up with a marvelous suggestion—the six honor students would recite in between each decade of the Rosary the story of the Joyful Mysteries. We could see the reciting written on the wall already. Lillian Quigley would do the First Joyful Mystery, which was the Annunciation; Ramona, the Visitation; Dede Riley, the Birth of Christ; Florence, the Presentation, and Ginger Wertheim, the Finding in the Temple. The rest of the beads would be made of seniors and juniors who would do Our Fathers, and the sophomores and freshmen would do Hail Marys. And, idiots like us were, without fail, going to do Glory-Be-to-the-Fathers, since that was the shortest prayer. Mary was a Glory-Be-to-the-Father at the end of the First Mystery and I was a Glory at the end of the Third Mystery. This way, we were not even within shouting distance of each other. The date was set, sunshine was consistently prayed for, and Roughhouse Rosie became a nervous wreck.

We practiced daily on the school grounds, with hands clasped carefully in prayer position against our uninspiring bosoms. We were to wear our Sunday uniforms, which were white flannel instead of navy flannel, with red bow ties instead of black under the starched white collar. Of course, we would have starched white veils pinned in our limpid locks. There was something about St. Marks water that made my hair always seem a little lanker than usual. And it was hard to attach anything to my hair to make it stay. We would wear white stockings and white oxfords. We only wore these uniforms on special occasions like the Band Concert, Graduation, Foundation Day. Holidays in the convent are vastly different than in the outside world—for instance, Columbus Day and the founding of America did not merit a holiday, but Foundation Day and the founding of the Order of our Sisters did merit a holiday. Memorial Day, no; Ascension Thursday, yes. Armistice Day, no; All Saints, yes.