Life With Mother Superior (2 page)

Chapter Three: Water Babies

Although Mother Superior felt that the calisthenics of the mind and of the spirit were infinitely more important than that of the body, she gave into the Illinois state requirements and saw to it that we were properly exercised every which way. The only “out” to four years of varied gymnasium was a letter from your physician and this was extremely hard to come by in my family. My mother had distinct Christian Science tendencies and would not take an aspirin if she could help it, and my father only took pills that were administered by Michigan Avenue doctors to his friends—and the pills had to have accomplished miracles. The hope, then, of my ever obtaining a letter was out of the question. However, since there were five classes of students ranging in age from eleven to seventeen, the gymnasium offered a varied program. One had the choice, for instance, of swimming or fencing, basket
ball or volley ball, general calisthenics, golf or tennis.
The gymnasium and pool were adjoined and they were
ruled by an iron hand in a fencing glove—that tall dark monster who had met us the first day, Doris Connelly.

Since we wore uniforms to and for every occasion
at the convent, gymnasium was no exception. Where
Mother Superior showed a decided conservative streak
in our everyday uniforms, she showed a decided flair
in our gym suits. They were Kelly green knickers which
were allowed to hug your legs just above the patella. It
was really kind of a jump suit which buttoned down
the front, with elbow-length sleeves—which we “did
not roll up”—and which were a decided handicap in
throwing a ball anywhere. The shirt had a sailor collar,
under which we tied a white sailor tie. It doesn’t take
too much imagination to gather that the school colors were Kelly green and white. We wore our suits with
black full-length lisle stockings held up by garters and tucked nicely under our knickers. This, touched off with high white Keds, gave the opposing team a fright
if nothing else.

For swimming we had Kelly green tank suits, most
of which Mother Superior bought from the 1925
Olympic team of overdeveloped lady athletes—I tried
most of them on and they were simply not the size for
an underdeveloped race of teenagers. Over a period of
years, Sister Seamstress had taken up the shoulder
straps, but at the end of each semester the wool jersey
had stretched back to a very drooping affair.

With a choice of fencing or swimming for our first
semester, Mary and I quickly picked swimming. It was
the easiest class to get excused from. All you had to
do was appear looking pale and wan and tell Miss
Connelly, or her assistant—a tall and strong senior who undoubtedly to this day is in some swimming
pool of a private school—that you were “indisposed.” We were bright enough to know not to go to the same
person two weeks in a row, and with twenty young
water sprites to cope with two or three times a day, it was difficult to remember who had been in the water and who hadn’t. After Miss Connelly dropped the hint
that she hadn’t ever seen me in the pool—this after the first six weeks of class—I found that she kept her “indisposed” books in a locker in her office and I simply
erased my weekly “X” and put a check there. Mary, who really was terrified of water, followed suit, only
she never could leave well enough alone.

For each top student—the ones we hated, like Ra
mona Sapper and Lillian Quigley and Charlotte
Sweeney—the kind that never skipped anything but dessert, Mary would see to it that the week they were
supposed to stay out of the water was the week follow
ing a large “X” sign. This made Miss Connelly wary of them after two or three times, and it positively
delighted us. Our record, despite some memory mis
givings on Miss Connelly’s part, was A-l. We simply
never for a moment thought that Miss Connelly was
going to insist on our actually swimming to get our
credit. However, one day toward the end of the
semester, she made that chilling announcement. It was
a day, of course, when we had been excused for in
disposition. Mary and I blithely went our way not
knowing that anything except perhaps lifesaving rules
would be demanded from us at our last swimming session.

We arrived at this last session briefed on resuscitation and artificial respiration. Miss Connelly favored us with a blast of her whistle. The whistle actually was so powerful it could pierce your eardrums, but it produced a sort of hushed silence not easy to attain in a swimming pool. “Since this is our last session in swimming for this semester, I want to tell you how very much I enjoyed this class.”

“How about that?” Mary whispered. The whistle blew again.

“And I want to tell you just how we’ll conduct the examination.”

We leaned nonchalantly against the cool tile waiting for her questions on the art of lifesaving.

“Each and everyone of you will dive in the pool and swim the length of the pool and back. Then you’ll float, then you’ll be assigned a partner, and you will be responsible for saving this partner.”

I looked at Mary aghast.

“For those of you who have attended each swimming class this will be a simple test.” She seemed to aim these sentences at us.

“Good God,” said Mary, who had never been in any water but the bathtub all her life, “what will I do?”

The whistle sounded again.

“Captain Finnegan will call the names and assign the partners. And,” she added, “for those of you who are indisposed today I will be happy to give you the test any time this week. Just be sure and make an appointment.”

“What are you going to do?” 1 whispered to Mary.

“What are
you
going to do?” she whispered back.

I couldn’t see any way out. I had been indisposed last week on the chart and hadn’t removed the “X” since I figured that this exam wouldn’t call for much. I had to go.

“I’ll try. If I drown, they’ll have to get me out.”

The word had got around, due to our panic-stricken looks, I suppose, that neither of us could swim a stroke, and even though some of the first contestants who flipped into the pool and swam like seals were free to go when they passed, they hung around awaiting our doom.

My name was called first. I could swim a little but I had never dived.

The water the passengers of the
Titanic
looked at could not have seemed any more ominous than that green chloride water of St. Marks pool did to me.

The whistle blew. I took a deep breath and dived. After I hit the bottom of the pool with my nose it seemed to me that I would never surface again. Instead of heading toward the center of the pool and then coming up, I steered a perfect course into one of the corners. This delighted everyone in the class. As I kept bumping into the corner—it seemed to me that I was under water light-years—and thinking I had completed the length of the pool, I was astonished finally to come up directly under Miss Connelly’s swim shoes from where I had just departed.

I surfaced much like a panicking baby elephant, splashing everyone near me. Miss Connelly had already yelled for the long “lifesaving” pole, which would have been a crushing blow to my ego. Once I got my breath I set out for the opposite end of the
pool. I was determined to swim it, since it was the last
time I ever wanted to get wet. By the time I reached the end of the pool and started back, there was a general tendency to bet on me. I had to be helped up the ladder and I fell exhausted onto the tile floor.
Nevertheless, the test was that you swam the length of
the pool and dived into it. I had, through some kind of
super courage, done both—not well—but I had completed the first part of the test.

Mary’s turn followed soon. She asked Miss Connelly
if the water was cold and that really began the nightmare. Her dive resembled nothing more than that of an acrobat who’d lost hold of the trapeze. She hit
the water with a resounding smash, which made every
one utter “Oooooh!”—at which point she just sank to
the bottom and stayed there. Miss Connelly was in the
water in a minute and I witnessed my first actual and
serious lifesaving event. By the time Miss C. dragged up
her inert body the entire class was on her team.

“Oh, let her pass, Miss Connelly, she’s just afraid of water terribly,” they cried and though Miss Con
nelly was tender and loving as Mary returned a good
portion of the pool, she said, “Well, we’ll practice, won’t we?”

My final test, the lifesaving test, was called and I
watched Ramona Sapper blanch when she realized I
was to be her lifesaver. Ramona swam, as she did every
thing else, with quiet perseverance. The idea was for
her to go out in the middle of the pool and pretend she
was drowning. And I was to jump in this time (since
the class was almost over, Miss Connelly felt Ramona
might well drown if I got in the corner again) and swim out and save her. The whole idea tickled me since Ramona had little faith in me. The charade
started and I hit the water—sank immediately to the
bottom, and came up choking and spitting and drown
ing. I pulled myself together arid started toward her, finally reaching her with such relief that I pulled her
right down to the bottom of the pool. Ramona quickly
surfaced and started swimming with me.

“Just keep paddling,” she whispered, “and hold me
under the chin. I’ll float. Just get yourself back.” I
could hardly believe this was the stiff-necked Ramona
who would share her secret homework—which was
always one hundred per cent correct—with no one. I
did what she told me and although Ramona must
have swallowed a good bit of the pool because of me,
I did drag her to home base.

Miss Connelly, never one to shower compliments
on a student, gave me the lowest mark she could—a C
minus, but I received my credit in swimming.

Mary tried all week to qualify for the swimming
test, but she simply couldn’t stay up in water and Miss
Connelly turned in an F. So, the next semester Mary
had to take two gymnasium periods and she picked
Interpretive Dancing and golf. I took golf with her.
She carried her clubs and balls in a large A & P paper
sack—needless to say, the local golf club people
charged us for tearing up the turf to bits. Mary flunked
Interpretive Dancing and got a D in golf. The follow
ing semester, she had to take three gymnasium periods.
One had to have eight credits in gym to get a diploma
and it was now up to Sister Registrar to work out a schedule that could cope with this number of active
sports and still give Mary a working class schedule. As
Mary said, gymnasium really conflicted with nothing
but her free time. By the time she was a senior we rarely saw her, as from eight in the morning to sun
down she raced from sport to sport. Obviously, Mary
simply didn’t have the knack, as I did, for active sports.

Chapter Four: The Contest

There were very few things that the Sisters left to Our
discretion—but Mother Superior, being of rather avant-
educational tendencies, left the choice of Home Eco
nomics or Civics up to us. It was a tough decision for
a fourteen-year-old to make. We knew that the Civics
class had five mornings away from St Marks to explore
such fascinating governmental installations as City Hall, the Governor’s home, the bank, a typical voting
booth. And last but not least, someone from one of the
hundreds of similar schools had a chance to be mayor
or mayoress of the city for the day.

This certainly was nothing to be overlooked lightly.
The temptation of Civics—and it seemed to me a pretty
boring subject—hinged on the brief periods of being
away from school. Home Economics, on the other hand,
promised much more temporal offerings—like baking
cakes and sewing up chic little numbers to wear right
then. Besides, Home Economics had a lay teacher and this in itself was an inducement. Miss McBride was a
tall, willowy, white-haired lady in her early forties. . . .
Her first name was Evangeline and she had a lisp. From
the first moment in her baking class we recited her own prayer, “Dear Lord, help uth to utilithze well
evewy moment thpent here.” We immediately adapted
her very own lisp and used it to disthinct advantage.

Our first hour each morning (it was a twice-a-
week event on Tuesday and Thursday) was devoted to
cooking. I purposely paid as much attention to this course as I could, until I realized that her cooking formulas were just as dismal as Mama’s. I had had something much more French in mind, like soufflés
and canard a l’orange. Miss McBride, however, wanted
to ready us for motherhood and spent most of her
time on new ideas on Jell-O. She was, at the moment,
involved in a Jell-O contest and we did everything but
burn it to achieve new effects.

The first hour I found bearable, as anything I could
learn in the kitchen would help improve the food at home, but the second hour for me was a nightmare. The second hour was spent with Butterick patterns learning to sew. I really had no desire in the world to
learn to make my own bloomers. Miss McBride called
them “panthies.” Our first project—Project Bloomers-
called for one yard of thirty-six-inch peach pure silk,
one half yard of ecru lace, and matching peach thread
for basting. These “panthies” were the first and the
last pair of home-sculpted bloomers I ever owned. The
whole idea was a leftover from Mother Superior’s dowry, when nice young ladies made their own trousseaus. Miss McBride promised that when we finished our panties we would graduate to slips, and
when we finished slips we would make a dress. What an
incentive plan—it was certainly working from the bottom up. My peach silk and ecru lace arrived from Marshall Field and I immediately lashed into my pattern. Miss McBride arrived just at the moment I zipped in with the pinking shears.

“Pleathe, Mith Twahey, contwol. . . or our panthies
will not come out the way we want them to. . .”

Miss McBride identified herself completely with the editorial “we.”

“My pattern looks all right. There are only two pieces—look.”

Miss McBride studied it and explained that I could save a whole piece of peach silk were I to lay it out a different way.

“What will I do with it?”

“There ith no excuthe for waitht.” It was a difficult sentence at best.

Finally I got my front and back basted together. They were the kind of panties show dolls on beds wore. The crotch hit somewhere near my knee cap, but that was the way the pattern went.

“I’ll trip over them.”

“There ith no need for vulgarity, my dear,” said Evangeline.

It was with my boudoir doll pants I learned to do the French knot, the slip stitch, and baste. And, I learned to rip out all that Miss McBride didn’t like. By the end of the month, my peach silk panties were getting worn and tattletale gray from handling. I didn’t think they would ever be
worn,
let alone finished. Each stitch had to be perfect or out it came,
but finally one morning Miss McBride let me get my
lace out of the locker. Each of us had her own tiny
little locker which Miss McBride called lovingly “our
thewing kits.” I neatly applied the lace, with my
famous slip stitch, to the waist, and one leg, then Miss McBride neatly ripped it off the leg. Meanwhile, the
class had graduated to slips and some of the group were already laying out handsome silk prints for blouses. I remained edging and lacing my pants.

I suppose the contest really did it. It roused me
from my pantargy and lethargy. I adored contests and
I was convinced that whether it was an award of dog food for naming the puppy, or a prize for twenty-five
words or less on why I loved Clorox, I was certainly
going to get first prize, and perhaps I’d settle for second
prize. The thought that I would win a trip for two to some far distant land intrigued me. Would Mother
Superior take Sister Agatha and be gone according to my wishes, or would Mary and I go to Incaland, then
on to the jungle? I had once been awarded a case of
dog food as one of the ten thousand who had won the
thousand prizes of a case of dog food. Sister Ligliori’s
dog, Buttons, would have no truck with canned chow—
since he ate nothing but Hershey chocolate—still and all, it provoked a change from our boring existence; and Mother Superior, not too keen about announce
ments on my contests, did say that she would certainly
have liked to see my twenty-five words.

The sewing contest was held by one of the lesser
magazines in the galaxy of fashion books and it was open to anyone between the ages of twelve and eight
een—I thought I had a fair chance, since there wouldn’t
be any boys competing—boys always outspelled me and outthought me—well, at least they wouldn’t out-stitch me. The contest forms were put in a container on Miss McBride’s table and as I slipped up on her
platform to take mine, she almost fainted.

“I do hope, Mith Twahey, that you are not going to thend in your panthies.” This was the needle, of course, and it went right to my ego.

“I’m going to finish them this morning and get right
on to my blouse.”

“And what about your thlip?”

“Oh, Miss McBride, I don’t want a slip. Can’t I start on my blouse?”

Miss McBride, anxious to have me off her platform
and back to my sewing machine, agreed’ that she thought I’d had enough of the peach silk, and I was
off on my bumblebee-print blouse. Actually, it wasn’t
difficult to do the blouse, as I bought the simplest
pattern I could find—the most that could be said for it
was that I applied my thimble fingers and my un-
nimble brain and for that week, at least, Miss McBride
had peace. I had to finish the blouse, make the dress and win that contest Even Mother Superior was placated by my behavior and remarked one evening that she was certainly surprised at my diligence in sewing.

“Miss McBride says that you have made quite nice
progress in sewing. Perhaps you might apply yourself
to equal advantage in all of your other subjects.”

“I’m going to start in on the dress next week—as
soon as I finish my blouse.” I was running light-years behind the class in the contest. I sewed and sewed and
sewed and then I got the green light to buy my dress
fabric Unfortunately, it was Friday night when Miss McBride said, “Forge on,” and the contest closed at
midnight on Monday—how on earth would I ever get it finished? I rushed to the store on Saturday morning
and bought my pattern. It was a pleated skirt, long sleeve ascot-tied middy top. I fell in love with it
completely. I searched for an hour for the right fabric; even Mary who was taking Civics instead of sewing
tried to help.

“Maybe I could help you cut it up,” she offered.

“Look, Mary, just look at this linen.” It was a wild plaid, basically gold and red and brown on white. I thought it was smashing. I could see it on the cover
of
Vogue—
a chic model leaning against a whitewashed
building. I could see me in it accepting the prize. Perhaps instead of being an explorer, I’d be a designer. It
was all very exciting indeed.

On Saturday, the sewing room was deserted except
for a few of the farther-advanced contestants who were
putting finishing touches and wrapping up their
entries in colored tissue—which Miss McBride had
provided. The tissue was shocking pink, which I didn’t
think had too much to offer for my plaid. I unwrapped my six yards of plaid and laid it out on the
cutting table. It was absolutely scrumptious and Mary
agreed that even though the saleslady had done her best to tout me off the plaid, the plaid alone would certainly attract a good bit of attention.

It took me a good hour to get the pattern pieces laid out, and Mary tried pinning them down, but her hands sweated so she was ruining the pattern; that paper just didn’t take to heavy perspiration. At noon, Evangeline poked her head in and couldn’t believe
her eyes. Was it possible the unholy two could be so lawfully engaged and so quiet? Mary held the fabric down while I cut it. Finally, we had all the pieces and
I began to frantically pin the pleats in.

“Oh, God, why did I get a pleated skirt?”

“Well, it looks like more work.”

“It is more work.”

As the sun slowly crossed the room and silently
began to set, I had the skirt done—it really was a chore,
as all the lines in the plaid had to miter. Now it was
time to get the top basted. We heard the nuns go off to
prayers and I frantically raced against the dinner bell.

“I’ve had enough of this place,” Mary said.

“Go get a book and at least stay here and read.”

“Wish I could help you, but I get everything so soaked.”

I had to stop for supper.

“How is your dress coming along?” Mother Superior
asked. It was simply too much to ask her to believe that
I was really trying to do something right.

“It’s going to be extremely beautiful,” I answered proudly.

“Well, I’m sure with your artistic flair that you will have an extremely beautiful dress to wear home for Easter.”

“Come see it,” I offered magnanimously. It wasn’t
often Mother and I had such civilities between us.

Poor Mother really didn’t know what to say and
for a moment she just stared at my dress. I was slip-
stitching the hem and pressing in the pleats each time.

“How did you do it?” she asked bluntly.

“Do what?”

“How did you ever get each piece cut in a different
plaid?”

She was irritating me now. “I don’t have each piece
cut in a different plaid. It’s all the same.”

Mother held up the dress by the shoulders and
studied it carefully and then studied me.

“Didn’t you have any idea that the pattern on a plaid must be laid out a different way?”

Inured as I was to her sarcasm, tears of fatigue welled in my eyes. “I think it’s pretty.”

“Do you have any fabric left at all?” she asked, pick
ing up my shears.

“A few pieces,” I mumbled.

Before I could take a deep breath, Mother had the pattern pieces out and I went to work at what I did best—ripping. The night bell rang and the convent noises subsided into peaceful communion with the night. Mother sewed like a dream.

“I used to work in a dress house,” she offered, “in
France. . . . My, this is a pretty plaid.” Mother hummed and whistled and sang. I could not believe that this was our ogress.

It was only a few hours before my dress was pressed
and packed. Mother didn’t see the pink tissue as an
asset to my plaid either and offered to give me some
white tissue.

Miss McBride couldn’t believe that I had won honorable mention and ten dollars, with the additional bonus of a lifetime membership in the Coats and Clarke Thread Company and a pair of pinking
shears. I was completely carried away and immediately
made plans for the wild spending spree I planned to go on with my ten dollars. Then Mother Superior made an alternative suggestion.

“I really think Miss McBride would love to have
the pinking shears for the class, so why don’t you give
them to her, and the ten dollars I thought would just make our quota to the missions—but I do feel you ought to keep the thread for your very own.”