Saint Training (14 page)

T
he heat was sweltering in what Dad called “the dog days of summer,” and it was only the first day of August. But Mary Clare was going to walk the mile to the pharmacy anyway. She had to. Not only did she finally have the money to buy herself the Curl Free permanent, but she had a fistful of invitations to her party to drop into the mailbox in front of the store. She had even filled in a few extra invitations without names. She carried these in her pocket in case she ran into someone she had forgotten. Besides, she wanted to look good when she met Sister Monica the day after tomorrow.

Dad was home today, so she could get away to the store without dragging the little kids along. And Joannie was going with her. She often came over when Mary Clare was knee-deep in laundry and housework. They’d get talking and Joannie would simply pitch in. Mary Clare had also invited Kelly to meet them at the drugstore, and Kelly had actually said yes. It would only be the third time she’d seen Kelly this summer. But Mary Clare missed her old friend. She secretly hoped that if Kelly got to know Joannie, she’d like her and they could all be friends. Besides, she was really nervous about the perm and felt she could use both girls to help her with it. She had made
them both vow to keep the perm top secret in case something went wrong.

“Who would I tell?” Joannie had asked. “You’re the only person I hang around with.” Mary Clare had given her a quick hug of appreciation.

Now Joannie joined her on the walk to the pharmacy. They started out down the hill, ignoring the heat and walking at a strong pace. But by the time they turned onto Madison Avenue they were so hot they had slowed way down.

“I wish I’d brought enough money to get a Coke,” Mary Clare said. “I just sweated out every bit of liquid in me.” She looked at Joannie, who was still dry and fresh looking, and rolled her eyes.

“I can’t help it,” Joannie said. “I just don’t sweat.”

“Well, if I ran into any guys,” Mary Clare said, “I’d absolutely die.”

When they finally reached the pharmacy Mary Clare was relieved not to see any familiar faces at the soda counter. She and Joannie searched the aisles themselves after Mary Clare told a clerk they didn’t need any help.

Then Mary Clare saw it. The box lay under an orange “on sale” sign at the tail end of the hair product aisle. Mary Clare held it like a prize in her hands. The box featured two pictures: a “before” picture, in which a girl with horrible hair just like Mary Clare’s was looking mortified, and an “after” picture, in which the same girl’s perfectly straight hair framed a radiant smile.

Mary Clare and Joannie were reading the back of the box intently when they were interrupted.

“Hello, girls.” It was Sister Charlotte holding a small bag.

Mary Clare swung around, knocking three more Curl Free boxes off the shelf. Sister immediately bent down to help the girls pick up the fallen products. As soon as she read the label Sister
laughed, a hearty laugh that wrinkled her nose and showed off her dimples.

Mary Clare felt herself tense defensively, but she relaxed when she saw that Sister Charlotte was not laughing
at
her. Sister wasn’t like Mark and Luke.

“If I’m not mistaken this is for you, Mary Clare,” Sister said, running her hand lightly over Mary Clare’s curls. “I’ll definitely have to see the end result.”

“Oh, you will!” Mary Clare blurted.

Sister nodded, but Mary Clare saw a brief change in her face—a flash of something—sadness maybe—in her eyes. It was there for a split second, then disappeared. She wondered what had made Sister react like that.

“Mary Clare’s having a party with a band and everything,” Joannie said.

“You are!” Sister said.

“Yes, Sister. You
have
to come to my party,” Mary Clare said. “I’m having my brother’s group play and everybody in the whole class is invited, even all the boys.” Mary Clare handed her one of the extra invitations. “Mom said it would be okay to have boys since we’re going into seventh grade and the party will be chaperoned.”

“I know. Your mother asked me my opinion, and I told her I thought it would be fine,” Sister said as she opened and read the invitation. “Oh,” she paused. “We don’t usually…” She paused again, but steeled herself. “I’d love to come to your party. I’ll do my best to be there. It would be wonderful to see you kids—how you’ve all grown over the summer. Thank you, Mary Clare.”

“You’re welcome, Sister,” Mary Clare said. She was dying to ask Sister if she knew her mother would be teaching at Maria Goretti in the fall. She also wanted to ask Sister which of the
lay teachers was leaving and who Mom was replacing, but she couldn’t ask. She had kept Mom’s confidence and hadn’t said a word to anyone. Instead, Mary Clare peered at the little brown paper bag Sister was holding. She tried to imagine what a nun would need from a drugstore.

Sister shifted the bag from her right hand to her left uncomfortably. She seemed to know what Mary Clare was thinking.

“Well, girls, I’ve got to get back to work,” Sister said.

“What work?” Mary Clare asked. She knew immediately that the question was rude and could feel the heat rush to her face. But she’d often wondered what the Sisters did when they weren’t teaching. How else could she imagine her eventual life as a nun?

Sister flashed a knowing smile. “Nuns have to do housework like everyone else, girls.” She held up the bag. “We even need things like toothpaste and shampoo. This afternoon I’m doing several loads of laundry and then cooking dinner.”

“Oh,” Mary Clare said. “Well, good-bye Sister.”

“Bye Sister,” Joannie said.

Sister waved a quick good-bye and left the store.

Since the Curl Free was on sale, Mary Clare had just enough money to get chocolate Cokes for herself, Joannie, and Kelly, who arrived just as they were about to sit down at the counter. While Joannie and Mary Clare drank the refreshing drinks greedily, Kelly took tiny sips and seemed ill at ease about something. But neither Mary Clare nor Joannie could get her to admit what was going on.

By the time they were halfway up the Jackson Street hill, all three girls grappled with the heat in silence. When they reached Becky’s house, Mary Clare could make out her own. She noticed several kids sitting on the porch stairs. At first she assumed they were friends of Gabby or Anne, but as they
drew closer she recognized Jen, Sandy, and Tina. They were all waving.

Mary Clare turned to see Kelly shrugging her shoulders, her face scrunched and eyes watery. Joannie looked puzzled.

“What’s going on?” Mary Clare asked.

“I didn’t mean to, but I did it. I told Jen. About your hair, I mean. It just slipped out.” Kelly said.

Mary Clare couldn’t think of anything to say. She hurried past Kelly, her heart racing. They’d been best friends since second grade and Kelly had never, ever broken a confidence before.

Kelly raced in front of Mary Clare and stopped, facing her. Mary Clare stopped, too, but only because she was out of breath. She looked past Kelly to the girls waiting on the porch. Had they knocked on the door? She hoped nobody in her family was fighting. She hoped her dad was in a good mood and wouldn’t embarrass her.

“Wait!” Kelly said. She turned Mary Clare’s face toward hers. “I’m really, really sorry. I knew they’d be excited. I wanted you to be part of the group again. If you want me to go home I will.”

For a split second Mary Clare considered telling her to go, but then she melted into a smile. “C’mon, let’s give me the greatest hair in Littleburg. It looks like we have a lot of help.”

“Hey,” Sandy said when they reached the front porch. “Are you gonna let us watch?”

“We couldn’t let you do something this big without us,” Jen said.

“Let me see if my dad’s okay with you all coming in.”

“I don’t think anyone is home,” Jen said.

“Yeah, we knocked and rang the bell but nobody answered.” Sandy said.

They were right. When Mary Clare looked for her father and the kids, she found a note on the kitchen table instead.

Mary Clare,

Went to Janesville to run some errands. Have all the kids with me. See you around dinnertime. Have fun with your uncurling project and be careful.

Dad

Mary Clare let out a yelp. She couldn’t remember another time in her life when she’d had the whole place to herself. She read the note to her friends.

“It’s a party,” Joannie yelled. Kelly helped Joannie select some singles they could play on the living room record player while Mary Clare pulled out the Curl Free directions. She and Joannie read them together, gave each other a look of surprise, then read them again.

“It’s so easy!” Joannie said.

“I know, I thought it would be like a complicated math problem,” Mary Clare said.

The strong smell of ammonia had both girls holding their noses while trying to mix the two solutions together in the plastic bottle. Mary Clare placed the pointed top on the bottle and slipped into the plastic smock that was included to protect her clothes. Kelly ran to the bathroom for towels. Everybody was making noises about the bad smell, so Jen and Sandy opened the windows to air out the room.

The perm only included one pair of gloves, so the girls took turns squirting the stinky solution into Mary Clare’s hair and combing it through. When her hair was saturated, Sandy set the timer.

“Is it normal for it to sting my scalp this badly?” Mary Clare asked.

The friends all looked at each other. None of them had experience with permanents except Joannie, whose mother gave her a regular perm last summer.

“It doesn’t say anything about it on the box,” Joannie said.

“You only have to keep it on for sixteen more minutes,” Sandy said.

“Sixteen minutes is a long time when your head’s on fire,” Mary Clare said.

“Just think how cool you’ll look,” Kelly said.

“We’ll all have to teach you how to manage straight hair,” Joannie said.

“Is it really bad?” Sandy asked.

“No,” Mary Clare lied.

“You have to suffer to be beautiful, you know,” Sandy said, her perfect flip bouncing as she shrugged her shoulders.

Mary Clare opened her mouth to say that whoever started that saying should be shot, but the phone rang and she got up to answer it instead. She motioned to Joannie to turn the music down, but apparently Joannie didn’t hear because The Supremes continued to sing out so loudly that Mary Clare had to ask who was calling three times before she could make out the words from the other end of the line.

“Mother Monica?” Mary Clare asked, stunned. She could hear the needle scratch the record on the phonograph and then the music stopped.

“Yes, am I speaking with Mary Clare?”

The voice sounded very professional.

“Yes. It’s Mary Clare. I didn’t expect…I’m just so surprised you called.”

“Yes,” Mother Monica said. “I
had
to, really. I suppose you know by now that we’re going to have to cancel our appointment in Milwaukee.”

“No, I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything about you canceling our appointment.” Mary Clare looked up to see that her friends had made a circle around her. They were all listening intently. Now they would all find out that she planned on becoming a nun. Well, they couldn’t be too surprised.

“I thought that by now you’d have heard about the Negro uprising in Milwaukee. It’s all over the news. The National Guard’s been called in and the city’s on complete curfew. We can’t have a conference in that environment.” She sounded irritated.

“No, Mother Monica, I didn’t know anything about it.”

“We’re hoping to reschedule as soon as we can travel safely. I don’t think Milwaukee residents are feeling good about Religious right now.”

“Oh,” Mary Clare said. She wasn’t sure what the situation in Milwaukee had to do with Religious.

“I hope it won’t be too much trouble for you and your parents. I would enjoy meeting you.”

“Me too,” Mary Clare said.

“I’ll call you as soon as we have a date,” she added.

“Thank you, Reverend Mother,” Mary Clare said.

When she hung up, she could see that her friends had a million questions. But Mary Clare couldn’t stand the burning on her scalp for another second. “Wait!” she screamed. She ran to the sink and started rinsing.

“You’ve still got ten minutes,” Joannie said.

“You’re probably wrecking it,” Jen said.

Kelly leaned over the sink to help Mary Clare rinse. “Oh, your poor head,” she said.

The tepid water was the only thing that stopped the burning. Mary Clare rinsed for a long time. Then she lifted her head out of the sink and accepted the towel someone handed her. She patted her hair gently, not wanting to rub against the raw scalp.
Joannie handed her the mirror she’d retrieved from Mary Clare’s room.

When Mary Clare took one look at herself in the mirror, her painful scalp was forgotten. She was looking at perfectly straight hair.
Thank you God!

Her hair was wet, of course, but there wasn’t even a hint of curl. Her friends took turns combing it and watching it dry in the sweltering heat. Mary Clare felt pampered. She felt beautiful.

When her friends asked her about the call from Mother Superior, Mary Clare admitted she was considering the convent. But she made light of it. “Meeting her will give me good material for my diocesan essay addendum,” she said. “I thought it might give me an edge.”

“Great idea,” Kelly said.

“You’ll win that fifty bucks,” Joannie said.

Mary Clare heard the telltale thump of the afternoon newspaper hitting the front door. She scrambled to the door to find out what the paper had to say about the riots in Milwaukee.

There it was, the headline of the
Daily Jefferson County Union:

Mary Clare switched on the television. She had to wait for the commercial on Lux soap to end before the 5:00 news started on NBC. One by one her friends joined her in the living room to see the clips of National Guardsmen wearing helmets and driving jeeps down desolate Milwaukee streets. The footage showed the aftermath of the angry mobs from the previous night: broken glass from store windows, shattered windshields, debris in the streets, fires here and there.