Life With Mother Superior (8 page)

Chapter Twelve: Who’s Who

It had finally arrived. The last day of the school year.
Everyone had that unmistakable, traumatic feeling—
a combination of relief from duty and pressure with a
nagging feeling of being totally displaced. We spent
the entire second term waiting for June so that we’d be
free of St. Marks. We longed for summer days of lolling
and tennis and sunning and yet, when the day arrived,
we missed each other before we left school and all sum
mer we missed the magic formula of being told what
to do and when to do it.

“This is the summer to grow up,” Mother Superior
announced to us confidently. “For next year you’ll be
seniors.”

She looked us over like a French farmer looking over
his stock. Prodding here, weighing there, wondering
if she had given us the right diet for maximum growth.

There was no doubt about it, we had changed since our first interviews.

Mary’s hair had calmed down and she kept it brushed softly in a page-boy style that was quite the Ginger Rogers rage. Kathryn had turned from a scraggly, willowy little boy to a rather buxom well-developed girl. I was taller, not quite so pale, and I had completely given up candy, which was unkind to my skin, the day I fell in love with Robert Taylor.

“You don’t need all those trappings of the heretics,” Mother Superior lectured, “to be attractive.” She meant, of course, lipstick. We all owned lipsticks but wearing it was simply not allowed.

“It’s a pagan sign, a pagan sign.” We’d heard it over and over.

“Go right on living like you do here at St. Marks, praying as you do. It would behoove each and every one of you to attend daily Mass,” she added. “What a wonderful gift that would be to me, if each of you returned in September and told me that you had been to daily Mass.”

With one fell swoop, Mother had dissipated our year-long desire to never get up in the morning by asking for this little gift.

“Well, students, have a good Christian summer and come back recharged spiritually as well as physically.”

We were dismissed. Of course, we all had the rest of the day (depending on train or bus time) to bid good-bye to each other and finish up business of any kind within our own clique. At the moment our life centered around Sister Constance. She had been our major interest from the beginning of our junior year when she came to St. Marks from China. She, I might add, was our idol much against her will, but she had little choice. We adored her, bothered her, followed her, confided in her. There weren’t enough presents for her, there wasn’t enough of anything for her.

She had been returned to St. Marks from China, where she had been a missionary teacher for ten years. She probably was all of thirty when we met her. The rumors that preceded her arrival and stayed with her that whole year ranged from her having fallen in love with a Chinese overlord to the fact that she was dying of a rare disease.

She was the prettiest nun I had ever seen in my life. Slight, fragile, straight, Sister Constance had flawless beauty. Her eyes were violet, shadowed with the longest black lashes I ever saw. Her smile was made for a dental convention. Her skin was golden tinged with pink. She was not only the rage of the school but a great favorite with Mother Superior and the Sisters. The most interesting thing about her was the fact that she had lost one arm. The rumors about this mishap progressed from the story Lillian Quigley’s mother had heard from her cousin, a Chinese missionary also, that the Communists had cut it off when she was trying to save a girl baby from being thrown into the garbage pail, to the truth—that she had caught it in a mangle in the laundry room in the convent of the missions. Sister Constance never seemed to let the matter bother her at all, and was quite as deft with her one hand as most of us are with both.

She taught us religion and it was certainly the year of vocations for my group. Never before did the Faith get such a going-over for all concerned. Even Mary was reading Sister Constance’s own copy of St. Thomas More and quoting it to us for hours on end. If Sister Constance smiled at us our day was made. For my part she could do no wrong.

We walked her to the cloister door at prayer time, we carried her books, we opened doors, we brought her sweets, flowers, four-leaf clovers, lucky pennies, magazines. We waited for her to come out of the cloister, we fought for places next to her at chapel. If she asked for “a wee bit of air” we crushed each other trying to get the window pole. Her magic ingredient was no different as a nun from what it would have been had she been a secretary, a mother or an actress. It was simply sheer beauty. She was, as Mother Superior told Mrs. Clancey, “as nice as she was beautiful.”

“And what are you going to do this summer, love?” Sister Constance asked Kathryn Murphy as she tidied up her books and cleaned out the drawers of her desk. We were all washing the blackboards for her. As far as we were concerned the “maxims” that were printed on the blackboards of the entire school could rot before we’d offer to take them off, but Sister Constance’s room was washed by noon that day.

“I’m going to Europe, Sister.”

“How wonderful, Katie. You must keep a diary for everyone to read next year.” Kathryn, who had been to Europe three times already, was so lazy she would never even send us a card, agreed completely.

“And you, Mary, what about you?” Mary was perched on the window sill, her legs dangling to and fro.

“I’m going to read and get a sun tan that won’t quit.”

“Oh yes, you’d be good with a tan, and you must not let me forget that list of books for you.”

It was my turn. “What about you, pet?”

“I don’t know, Sister, I don’t know what I want to do. I never do, in the summer.”

“Well, your sister is home, isn’t she? Can’t you pal with her?”

“She’s no fun, she’s always in love.”

Sister Constance was delighted. “Well, what’s so bad about being in love? You just wait till it happens to you, then see how happy you can be.”

“Were you ever in love?” I asked innocently, and then felt terribly embarrassed that I had dared pose the question. Mary blushed. Katie looked away.

Sister Constance leaned over her desk and her eyes sparkled violets. She pretended to shut her eyes and think.

“Let me think,” she said; “let me see—was I ever in love?”

We cringed with embarrassment on the one hand and were thrilled to pieces on the other. Perhaps we’d know her secret now.

“At least a dozen times.”

“Then why are you a nun?” Mary asked.

“Well, my little dears, because this is where I’m happiest.”

“How do you know that if you didn’t get married?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I guess you just know in your heart what’s best for you. I did.”

“Is being a nun any fun at all?” Mary wondered out
loud.

“It’s quite the nicest thing that could ever happen
to you.” She picked up her skirts and literally whirled
out of the room.

“Isn’t she wonderful?” Katie breathed. “Just wonder
ful!”

We all raced to the door to shout good-byes.

Sister Constance shouted back, “Have fun, have fun!”

“See you next year,” we called back. It was the white
hope of our senior year that we would have Sister Constance for our homeroom teacher. It had been
rumored around that she would be here at least another year before returning to China.

We all looked lonely after Sister Constance slipped
into the cloister.

“Isn’t she a peach?”

“The best nun here.”

“What train are you going to catch?” I asked Mary.

“The four. My father will meet me on his way home
from work. Otherwise it’s another two hours by bus.”

I could have left at noon since my house was near the train, but I decided to wait for Mary. I would
leave my luggage at the station and Papa could get it
that evening.

Kathryn and Mary and I lolled back to the dormitory and Katie packed in earnest. She had to catch a
one o’clock train but it went in the opposite direction.

“Well, I’m off,” she said, and looking at us seriously,
she said in a wailing Mother Superior voice, “and
come back spiritually recharged, my dears, spiritually
recharged.”

We watched her run for her taxi. Most of the students had gone as soon as Mother Superior dis
missed us. Especially the ones that lived close by, as
either an aunt or uncle or cousin or friend had picked
them up. A few stragglers like Mary and me were left
but the school had already taken on a vacation sound.
An occasional footstep could be heard going up the
hall or the familiar sound of the Sisters’ beads splash
ing back and forth, but most of the rooms had been
closed up now, the windows carefully locked with the
poles, and some of the Sisters had gone on to other cities that very day.

Mary and I decided to prowl about a bit after lunch.
We climbed to the very top floor where there were all
the old music practice rooms and the storage closets for trunks. And where all the insane nuns were supposedly kept. We knew better, but it was always a good story for the freshmen.

Mary was looking for some old sheet music to keep
her reed from getting rusty. She had decided to play her clarinet an hour a day all summer and if she
didn’t have something besides the clarinet part of the
John Phillip Sousa Marches she would drive her father
mad.

“If just once,” he had said, “I could identify a melody instead of that toot-tooting she does.”

So Mary had decided to get sheet music for “Whis
pering Hope” and “Just a Song at Twilight.” Most of
the rooms were locked but I remembered where Sister
Portress kept the keys. So I had climbed the stairs again plus the additional flight to the turret and I was dead.

Mary opened the big practice room and peered in. “Look here,” she whispered, “someone’s giving a party.”

“I’m too tired to look now, let me get my breath.”

She went into the room. And in a split second came
running out. “Sister Constance is leaving. Sister Con
stance is leaving!”

“I heard you the first time,” I added breathlessly.
“What do you mean, she’s leaving? She would have
told us.”

“Come see. It’s a farewell party for her.”

I poked in the room with Mary. There must have been seven or eight tables with four places at each table. There were red-and-white-checked cloths and a pretty bouquet at each table. The windows were
open and the summer breeze flopped the tablecloths
and kept the room cool and pleasant. The view from
here was the prettiest in the school. It overlooked the
whole valley which was now green and splendid in the afternoon sun.

Occasionally, the mothers’ club or the band would have a party up here but they never looked like this. Then I noticed the stage with a large banner strung across it that Mary kept pointing at It spelled out
our doom in large gold letters: “Good-bye Sister
Constance.” A huge poster with faces of young
women made a bouquet—the heads were the flowers
and obviously Sister Angela had put the stems on with her inimitable modern Cubist touch. The faces all looked familiar to us, and then Mary whispered,
“Do you know who these faces belong to?”

“No, who? And what are you whispering for?”

Mary seemed to feel that anywhere we were not
allowed was whispering territory.

She whispered back, “They’re the nuns.”

“What nuns?”

“Our nuns. See, that’s Mother Superior.”

I peered at the sleek dark face of Mother Superior—
it could have been a picture made by Cecil Beaton—
very posed and handsome.

“That one is Sister Helene, and this is Mary William.”

I couldn’t believe it. The bottom fell out of my stomach. It was like discovering two people kissing or reading other people’s mail.

“Dear God,” Mary said, “this beats all. Look, here’s
their real names.” And she began to chant. “Teresa Wrigley, Ann Stone, Patricia O’Brien, Geraldine
Smith; Mother Superior is Teresa Wrigley. Can you
beat it?”

“Yes, and I’m going to.” I finally summoned the
courage to put my feet down on the ground and start running.

“Oh, come back, you coward, this is marvelous.” But I had already started down the steps. The picture
of Sister Helene with all her hair was more than my psyche could bear. I heard Mary locking the door and
I waited at the next landing.

“What’s the matter with you, it’s a riot!”

“I don’t know.” Now that we weren’t in proximity of the hideous truth that nuns were people, I could breathe again. In a funny way I would have liked to go back and study all the faces and names but I simply couldn’t.

“Well, I have to pack,” I lied to Mary, “it’s getting
late.”

But no one ever lied to Mary. “You’re chicken,”
she said, “just chicken.”

“I’m not. I just don’t think it’s any of our business.”

“Well, if it isn’t Miss Goody One Shoe.”

I didn’t care whether I just sat at the station and
stared—I wanted to get out of St. Marks. The thought
of never seeing Sister Constance again was unbearable
and the weight of knowing all those names was more
than I could carry.

I packed as quickly as I could and threw books and
my clock and bits and pieces on the top of my clothes and raced down the stairs, Mary after me.

“You’re mad,” she wailed.

“No, I’m not!” I shouted back and practically fell
into Sister Constance who was coming in through the
side door as we were going out.