Sister Donna

I was transferred kicking and screaming to Catholic School when I was 10. I had to leave a slew of friends, all I knew, and the close by school to be bussed across hither and yon to go to school with starched nuns, black cloaked priests, and an entire school of kids that were already established in friendships. No room for me. I was the picture of misery. I didn’t want to start over. I liked the world I had.

The glittery walls of decorated classrooms with wall to wall carpet, new desks with bright primary colored plastic bins attached, and flamboyant teachers were replaced by stark rooms… one clock and one crucifix, rows of ancient wood desks on white tile floors scrubbed without mercy. There would be no music class, no marching band, ( I was learning the sousaphone and earned a place on the school band) no wood shop and no art classes.  I was in for a bare bones education where all the fun and comfort was GONE! And my parents were paying a hefty fee for this too, where as public school was free! I thought my parents were NUTS! Did I say no art class!

…Found out years later, my parents couldn’t afford it at first, so my local parish priest Fr. Jack Hillmann created a scholarship program for me to attend. If I would have known about this I would have changed my mind about how much I loved Fr. Jack. But luckily for him, the full measure of my wrath was focused on my parents.

Someday I must write about Fr. Jack. He was an absolute character! I would meet none like him until I entered High School and found his dark twin, Fr. Tepsic. But that is another set of stories all together.

Back to my woe.

Here I was a stranger in a this religious place where teachers were dressed like the Virgin Mary ( except some of them had hips they were trying to hide having)  the classrooms were barren, and the students barely concealing their hostility.  It was a low point and continued to be for a  year. The workload was fierce. Years skating by in public school convinced me to aim for the middle. In this school there wasn’t one. There was no joy in my life.  Only the whipped frenzy of other students eager to please. Not a rebel in the lot. Every day after a long bus ride, I got home long after all my old friends and soon they stopped calling. Gave me up for dead.

It all was spiraling down, down, down.

Then, Sister Donna brought out her guitar. She had me at the first strum. When she started to sing I was hit by the way her voice bounced off those blank walls and came dancing back to me. My first surround sound. I don’t remember what she sang. I don’t remember why she brought out the guitar, but I know it was a Martin with rich inlays and a needlepoint strap in mossy green with California Poppies in various poses running up and down the length.

When she moved around the room more poses from the other side. Someone has spent some serious time educating themselves about all the moods of poppies. Just like I had as a child in California before I could even talk right. I LOVED California Poppies and since it was illegal to pick them I was only allowed to watch them blow in the wind. I burned the way they moved into my brain.

I found out she did the needlework on the strap. Then I knew, Sister Donna for all her practiced nun-like actions was a hippie flower watcher just like me. A fellow rebel was found, but only when she sang. The rest of the time she was a stolid nun, with dark evil eyes that saw my every mistake, a crow like voice who wanted nothing more than my eyes to front, a skirt pulled down tightly over my knees and my nose buried in a book. Results were her wish and she would remove them from my hide if I didn’t gladly offer then up. I did NOT gladly offer them up. I adopted her frightening one eye half squinted glare as my own and she and I would stare each other down like gunfighters. She always won. I couldn’t send her to the office, but she could me and did so with glee.

I would be in her scholarly care for 3 years and learned there was more to her than a skin shrinking stare.  As she was also known to draw, sculpt, and made copper backed enamel jewelry with a hippy flair. She kept these other artistic tendencies tightly bottled and I only saw proof of them at fundraisers for the school she herself never attended, just her wares. My mother bought a few of these copper enamel pieces and I have one somewhere buried in a jewelry box I never open. I am sure the silken cord  has broken so the sea glass beads along with the tiny pieces of driftwood to either side of the copper triangle of enamel asters are swimming free in a sea of 80’s era stick pins, bangles, and those giant earrings so popular at that time.

Interesting… a nun who did not wear jewelry would be so good at making it.

I once saw a long, golden brown hair peaking out from her cap and forever was pondering (and still do) the mystery of why someone would have such glorious wavy hair and it never be seen.  Why not chop it off? If it were her hair I saw, it must have fallen in a shimmering curtain past her saintly bootie! Alot of trouble to hold onto, right? Why keep it?  Yet she never chopped it!

I still hated being torn from all I knew. I even hated her when she got into her spiels about attention to detail, toning down my loopy handwriting, and doodling in the margin. She was harsh at times as I was lazy at times. I always wondered why she never spoke about art, music or sculpture, why she from time to time would pick up the guitar for apparently no reason and just sing and play! Standing in front of  ancient rows of desks crammed with shocked students and one who admired the finger work so much I can still remember the shape of her hands on the strings. Why didn’t she stand proudly behind her wares on sale day? Was she shy about it? Or was it pride that kept her away?

I think of her now knowing she has long retired from teaching and wonder on these things. I remember so few of my teachers names. Is the fact I remember her’s and so clearly can see her face and hands, testaments to the artful way she taught? Was she so gifted a teacher I just didn’t notice how much she meant to me?

Once in a unguarded moment she told the class she and her brother once fought so viciously that the fight only ended when she broke her mother’s prized platter over his head. In those moments all the mystery of her being a nun fell away and she became real to me like when she would sing. Not a nun, but a real person. More real to me than any flamboyant public school teacher with a lime green poly pantsuit and teased silver bouffant, who’s coffee cup was ringed with red lipstick kisses, smelling of stale cigarettes… and who’s name I can’t remember. 

Hidden, hostile,  and controlled Sr. Donna was all the more intriguing. I never wondered what other teachers did when they left school. I never wondered about the secret lives of teachers, until then. Maybe having a bit of mystery is the key to being a good teacher, not revealing too much and freaking the kids out now and again. It sure worked for her. I still wonder about her. 32 year later. When I am in my garden and the poppies get to rustling from the breeze I think of her and imagine she might still be playing and singing somewhere, I hope she is… now just for herself. 

I imagine her reading this and objecting to my use of the word “bootie”. I feel her eyes narrowing like a hawk on the back of my neck. I smile with satisfaction, a tickle of revenge and a tiny twang of fear.