Life With Mother Superior

by Jane Trahey

“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.

  Actually, there was no reason for praying for sunshine; Roughhouse lit candles, demanded it and got it. The Living Rosary day dawned beautifully. The sky was cloudless—a deep blue. And when I say dawned, I mean dawned, because that’s when we got up. Despite the knowledge that the Living Rosary would be formed at 3 p.m. we were ready to board the bus by 9 a.m. Mother Superior insisted that we not put our uniforms on that early and stay in our cotton play dresses as long as we could since the weather had changed abruptly and the thermometer was hovering around 90 at that very moment.

  Roughhouse, a complete wreck by now, acquiesced to Mother Superior’s firm command, but she had no faith in it. She was sure we’d be late and the bus would break down.

  “Now, now, Sister,” Mother Superior cooed, “the bus isn’t going to break down.”

  She acted as though the Lord Himself was going to pilot us into the city instead of shuffly Roger, the janitor.

  At last, Mother Superior said it was time to dress. This necessitated almost an hour of buttoning and clasping and hook-and-eying, as our uniforms were anything but easy to get into.

  First of all we put on a starched white waist that had sleeves in it. Since it was summer we had cotton sleeves—but the main part of our habit was a twelve-pound pleated jumper of white flannel which one put on and snapped at the right shoulder. The garment was equipped with thirteen snaps at the neckline to which we attached the equivalent of an old-time man’s starched collar, except it was shaped to look like two white pearl shells in front and, under the collar, when you finally got it to stay down, went the red altar-boy bow. The collars were the real problem. They were so starched that they were inclined to snap up, hitting you on the chin at the least provocation. Roughhouse did not want any snapping collars at her spectacle. Finally after a complete inspection and several trips for handkerchiefs we boarded the bus. We were not only exhausted mentally, but the heat was doing its own job. Mother Superior made us all take salt tablets to prevent fainting, and Roughhouse would have put a lettuce leaf under our veils if she thought the effect would have been artistic.

  By the time we arrived and lined up, most of the parents were lolling around the golf course. I didn’t see either of mine. They were always late, due to my father’s unerring sense of wrong directions and the fact that he would only drive on the shady side of the road.

  The boys’ band from St. Giles arrived and lined up. They were at least in white ducks and white shirts; we were literally steaming by now. The nuns, however, encased in more than we wore, seemed peaceful and cool, except for Roughhouse, who mopped her upper lip with a crumpled linen handkerchief and by this time could hardly speak at all. The band began with the St. Giles song, which was composed by a mathematics professor, and then they launched into an old favorite, “’Tis the month of our Mo-oth-er, blessed and beautiful days.” We were brought to attention and Roughhouse cued us into our marching position-General Patton could have used her. Even Mary and I paid attention to her: “Now . . . now . . . Lillian . . . begin . . . beeeeeeeeeegin. . . .” The top students included two from other classes that I didn’t know, but just their being there gave me a rundown on their way of life.

  They walked out single file onto the green to form the cross and the first six beads of the Rosary. The idea was to form the same shape a Rosary would form if you laid it out flat on a table. We had been told that this made “a beautiful tableau.” When this part had been accomplished, pairs of us started marching. As we reached a marker Roughhouse had hidden, the pair split and headed each toward the last girl in the honor section, who stood single file in a long row. Every “bead” was instructed to fan out a bit each time, so that our Rosary had rather a fat, rounded look. We were marching along beautifully to “All Hail to Dear Mary” when something happened up in the first Mystery. In my bones I knew that Mary was up there, and chances were that she was causing the disturbance. I was completely right. It was just her luck to get her foot in the ninth hole. Roughhouse had never taken the function of a golf course into consideration. As Mary got her foot in, she fell down and the Our Fathers in back of her fell on top of her, and so on, until the next “Glory Be” realized that she had better detour.

  Roughhouse almost fainted. Mother Superior looked most hot and most displeased. The audience was sympathetic and all the girls quickly got back on their feet, except Mary, who took a little longer as she had to get her foot out of the ninth hole. By the t
ime she got up, she was red as a beet with anger, and somewhat confused. Where on earth she belonged, she couldn’t tell, since the Living Rosary had gone right on living without her. She ducked into the nearest place she could find, crushing herself between an “Our Father” and a first “Hail Mary.” As a “Glory-Be-to-the-Father,” the entire school wondered just what she would do. If she switched and became a “Hail Mary,” there would be eleven to that decade.

  When the hymn ended, Lillian began, in her golf-course voice, to shout her message. It was a hot, windy day—the spectators clustered under the trees, but we stood in the sun. It was certainly not as pleasant as the cool park across from the Cathedral. By the time we worked our way around to Mary, even the audience was wondering what would happen. When her moment arrived, she merely shouted “Amen.” The crowd was delighted. Even Mother Superior was said to have laughed—but Roughhouse Rosie did not take it so lightly.

  Roughhouse gave Mary a good shake when Benediction was over. I think she would have cracked her, but Mother Superior stepped in and said, “I don’t think Mary put her foot in the hole on purpose—and it turned out beautifully, Sister, just beautifully.”

  Roughhouse didn’t believe this at all and sulked all the way home. It wasn’t really until the newspaper gave it a glowing review—due largely to the fact that the editor and the mayor and the citizens preferred the Living Rosary out on the golf course—that Roughhouse felt that all her effort was not in vain. The devotions had come off, if she said so herself, “rather well.”

  Chapter Nine: Sister Liguori

  We knew something had happened. No one rang the morning bell; only Sister Ethelreda, the tall postulant, came and wakened us, one by one.

  “Hush, wake up,” she whispered, “get dressed and try to be quiet.”

  “What’s the matter?” we all asked.

  “Get up, get up, be quiet, I haven’t time for questions.”