Saint Training (2 page)

“May I have your attention, please? Saint Maria Goretti School will begin selling World’s Finest Chocolate Bars starting Monday. Each child is expected to sell a minimum of twenty chocolate bars to help pay for school supplies. So tell your parents and start thinking of people who will want to enjoy these delicious chocolate treats. Next week begins our annual campaign to collect money for pagan babies. Remember that saving a pagan baby is saving a soul. The boy or girl from each class who contributes the most money will be given a scapular blessed by the late Pope John XXIII. Remember that by wearing a scapular every day, you are protected at the time of death. So take your allowance or offer to do extra chores around the house to collect money for this worthy cause. A reminder that all children are expected to attend daily Mass. I have been advised that a few of you are congregating outside Sentry Foods instead of attending. In the future, anyone missing Mass will receive detention and parents will be notified. Also, the sixth grade Camp Fire Girls will have a bake sale on Monday after school. Finally, will Mary Clare O’Brian please report to the office.”

“Mary Clare’s in trou-ble,” Tommy said. A few kids snickered but stopped when Gregory chimed in.

“Well, I’m sure she’s not going to get spanked by Father Dwyer for breaking a window, like some people I know.” Now
everybody laughed except Tommy, whose face matched his red hair. He was the first kid out of the room.

Mary Clare’s heart sank. The only time she ever got called to the office was because of money. At least she wouldn’t have to let Kelly know that she couldn’t go out for the chocolate Coke. She shrugged at Kelly. What could she do? Nice of God to take away the temptation.

As all the other kids rushed out of the classroom, heading to their lockers to exchange books or clamoring down the two flights of stairs to the main entrance, Mary Clare walked slowly in the opposite direction. She dreaded going to the office of Sister Agnes, or, as the students called her behind her back, “Sister Agony.” When she was halfway down the long, dimly lit corridor she could make out the image of Sister Agony sitting behind her desk in her office at the end of the hall.
Lord,
she prayed,
please help me be sweet like Mary. Please help me not show Sister how much I can’t stand her.

S
ister Agnes was the shortest adult Mary Clare knew. At eleven, Mary Clare already towered over the nun. Sister Agnes was looking up into her face, the wimple on her neck stretched so far you couldn’t see the pleats. It looked like it was about to choke her.

“Sit,” she said, pointing to a chair.

“Yes, Sister.” Mary Clare sat. Sister remained standing. She reached into a basket on top of the dark wooden desk that was so large it took up most of the office. Behind it, a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and another of the Virgin Mary looked sorrowfully down at Mary Clare. A corner window overlooked St. Maria Goretti Church and the front of the school where 350 kids were scampering, their uniforms a blur of black, white, and red.

When Sister Agnes found the envelope she was looking for, she held it out to Mary Clare. But suddenly reconsidering, she jerked the envelope back, opened the flap, and licked it so it was securely sealed.

“Give this to your parents—and don’t open it. It’s none of your business.” She pursed her lips for emphasis. Stamped in bold red letters on the outside of the envelope were the words
FINAL NOTICE! The names of her parents, Paul and Grace O’Brian, were centered in neat cursive.

Mary Clare could feel the heat rising in her face. She managed to keep a straight face, reminding herself that if she were going to become a saint, she must offer this humiliation up to Jesus.

“You have to understand that I have a school to run, Mary Clare. I have bills to pay. Good Catholics pay their bills on time. I’m tired of having to get after your parents for tuition, books—and now this. If your parents don’t want to see Gabriella be the only one in her First Communion class to walk down the aisle without a missal and rosary…”

Mary Clare stood. She turned on her heel and crammed the envelope in her uniform jacket. “Good-night, Sister.” She knew her eyes were as cold as her voice in spite of her efforts to the contrary.

“Good-night,” Sister said. Her voice held no mercy.

Mary Clare made her way through the long empty hallway and down the two flights of stairs to the antiseptic smell of Mr. Gordon’s bucket. He was already mopping the entrance.

“Careful not to slip,” he said. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Mary Clare only nodded, too angry to make polite conversation, even with Mr. Gordon. She expected the girls to be on the front steps, but instead it was Gregory leaning against the wall. Mary Clare looked past him to search out her sisters.

“They’re playing on the merry-go-round,” Gregory said. He pointed to the side playground. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine,” Mary Clare lied.

“So are you planning to win the diocesan essay contest?”

“Yup,” Mary Clare said.

Gregory laughed. “You’re so conceited.” He folded his arms in front of himself and raised one eyebrow. “You know, I just might be the big winner.”

“I doubt it,” Mary Clare said. It felt good to get back into the regular banter she and Gregory shared.

“We’re over here,” Anne hollered. She was the only one of the kids with blonde hair. Everyone else had varying shades of brown.

Mary Clare backed up toward Anne, saying her final words to Gregory. “You’d better start writing. It’ll take lots of revisions if you want second place.”

Mary Clare could hear squeals of laughter from Margaret and Gabriella as she turned onto the side playground. Anne, the third grader, was pushing Gabriella and Margaret—second and first grade—making the wheel go faster and faster. The little girls were holding on and giggling. Mary Clare took over for a few minutes to give Anne a turn to enjoy the ride before they started on the mile walk home.

“How come you got called to the office, Mary Clare?” Anne asked. Her blonde pigtails bobbed as she walked.

Mary Clare shrugged. She didn’t have to answer because Margaret was pulling on her blazer sleeve to get her attention.

“Lookit! Lookit!” Margaret held out her hand to show Mary Clare the four pennies she was holding. Her bright smiled showed a mouth minus two upper teeth and two lower, right in front. “Can we stop at the pharmacy to get Pixy Stix? I can get one for all of us!” Margaret puffed up her chest proudly.

Gabriella skipped backwards ahead of them, her chocolate eyes wide with excitement. “I want cherry,” she said. Her white
blouse had a large red stain on it…probably from the raspberry Jell-O they’d had at lunch.

“I want grape,” Anne said.

Mary Clare slowed down to consider the idea. They weren’t near a crosswalk and the pharmacy was coming up on the opposite side of the street. “Okay, but we’d better be careful and hold hands.”

Mary Clare led them across the busy street past Sentry Foods and into the pharmacy, where the usual swells of school kids had dwindled to a few seventh and eighth graders sharing french fries and Cokes at the counter. When each girl had picked out her Pixy Stix and Margaret held out her pennies, she let out a squeal. “There’s only three pennies!” she cried. Mary Clare helped the girls look on the tiled floor and on the sidewalk outside, but the penny was gone.

Mary Clare knelt next to Margaret and wiped her tears on the hankie she had taken to sticking up her sleeve like the nuns did. “It’s okay, Margaret. I put mine back already.”

“But I wanted to treat you,” Margaret sobbed.

Mary Clare hugged her little sister close. It really was okay. Margaret’s gesture took away some of the sting from her encounter with Sister Agony. Mary Clare ushered the girls out of the store and back across the street to resume their walk home. Home was eight more blocks, but Mary Clare counted it as eleven because the two blocks on Jackson Street were so long. She divided the walk into three sections in her mind. The first three blocks on Madison Avenue constituted the commercial section of the walk. They passed the Clark station and the Frosty Freeze where two men were optimistically washing the windows—a sign that they were getting ready to open after the long winter. That brought them to the second section; four blocks of Victorian houses, some of them huge, interspersed with a few
smaller modern houses. Jackson Street was the third and hardest section. It consisted of two very long blocks up a steep hill. Their home was at the top, the outer edge of town. It overlooked acres and acres of cornfields. By the time they reached Jackson Mary Clare could count on complaints from the younger girls, and today was no exception.

“Margie Cook gets a ride home every day,” Margaret said.

“She lives in the country,” Anne said.

Margaret turned toward Mary Clare. “I want to live on a farm with horses and cows and pigs.”

Mary Clare stopped when she saw that Margaret’s face and blouse were smeared with the powdery purple from the Pixy Stix. “You
guys,”
she complained, looking at Margaret and Gabriella’s blouses. “We’ve got to get you changed before Mom sees you, and I’ll have to try to get those stains out. That’s
all
Mom needs.”

The girls looked stricken. They followed a little way behind Mary Clare in silence, which hurt Mary Clare far more than her outburst was worth. The last thing she wanted was to make them worry about Mom.

God, please help me to be more patient with the kids.

Mary Clare turned to face her sisters who were marching in perfect step in a straight line, oldest to youngest, behind her. Mary Clare had to laugh. She stood tall like a commander. “Okay, troops, are you ready to go to war?” Margaret and Anne marched forward proudly, but Gabriella immediately stepped out of formation and raised one fist in the air. “Hell no, we won’t go!” she shouted. She backed up and looked surprised at the shock on her sisters’ faces. “Well, that’s what Matthew and his seminary friends say all the time,” she argued.

“You know better than to say that word. When those guys say it it’s to protest the war in Vietnam.” Mary Clare wasn’t sure protesting made it okay to say “hell” either.

Gabriella twirled around defiantly and pretended to hold a sign in the air. “All we are saay-ing is give peace a chance.” The other girls joined in, singing it loud and proud right in front of the Turner’s white-pillared house. They were Southerners and some kind of Protestant. Becky was the same age as Mary Clare so they played together sometimes, but Mrs. Turner always seemed to regard Mary Clare suspiciously.

The girls protested past the Andersons, who were another kind of Protestant with only two kids in the family. Mary Clare was glad nobody was outside. But when they passed the Healy house, some of the kids were playing on the porch and two of them joined the protest. By the time they got home, even Mary Clare was humming along.

She ushered Margaret and Gabriella straight through the house to the upstairs bathroom, where they handed over their blouses to Mary Clare. She used bar soap and cold water to work the stains, all the while thinking about Sister Agnes and the bill she dreaded showing her parents.

No! She stamped her foot, though no one was near to appreciate the effect. She wouldn’t,
couldn’t
burden her parents with another bill. She had to figure out how to get the money herself.

Mary Clare locked the door and ripped the envelope open. It was not only a sin to disobey Sister, but it was probably a crime to open someone else’s mail. The image of her standing behind bars in a striped uniform made her hesitate for a minute. A jail cell was not the image of a saint she’d had in mind. But, she reasoned, she wasn’t going to get caught, and as far as the sin went—well, it was for the good of her family. A sin that was for the good of the family shouldn’t count.

The bill was straightforward, but the note penned in red ink made her want to scream. “We do not have the means to provide
charity for Gabriella’s First Communion supplies. This must be paid by Monday or Gabriella will have to go without.”

Mary Clare ripped the bill into little tiny pieces and dropped them in the toilet. She flushed twice. Watching the last of the pieces swirl in the toilet bowl, she stopped, paralyzed. Where was she going to get the money? She pictured the look on Sister Agony’s face—disgust. Disgust that her family didn’t have the money! The image vanquished all anxiety and brought back angry determination. She’d give up the money she’d been saving to buy a transistor radio to take to the lake this summer: all $2.94. She’d throw in the two cents from her penny loafers. She’d sell her angel collection. Well, maybe not the kissing angels her dad gave her when she was five, but everything else.

Mary Clare checked the bathroom floor to make sure she’d left no evidence. She braced herself. She didn’t know how, just yet, but she was on a mission to collect every penny for Gabriella’s First Communion.

Mary Clare O’Brian

188 Jackson Street

Littleburg, Wisconsin 53538

Saint Mary Magdalene Convent

1123 Good Shepherd Road

Minneapolis, Minnesota 55199

April 2, 1967

Dear Reverend Mother,

I bet you just got my first letter and you haven’t had time to respond to it yet. I know that mother superiors are very busy. But I wanted to write another letter right away because I have more questions. I hope you don’t mind. I’m also kind of scared that you’ve gotten a bad impression of me from my first letter. I’m really not a conceited person, but my mother always says “Mary Clare, recognize what you’re good at, and the things you’re not good at.” I think she’s right. That’s why I told you about the things that will make me a good mother superior.

Anyway, the question I have is about having babies. Don’t worry, I know all about the birds and the bees—which is one of the reasons I want to become a nun! I know babies are a gift from God, but if a family already has more kids than they can afford, shouldn’t they stop having babies? I overheard Mom and two of her friends saying that the Church won’t let them take the new birth control pill. Why not?

Very Sincerely,

Mary Clare O’Brian

P.S. I’ve been thinking about the name of your convent. Did you name it Mary Magdalene because she was a prostitute who reformed, and you want the unwed mothers to reform like she did?

P.P.S. My parish is St. Maria Goretti. She died for her virginity. I don’t know any mothers who became saints, so why does the Church want married women to have so many babies?