Thursday, March 16, 2006

The Nun and The Left Handed Child


She rode the small elevator up to the 18th floor. She was uncomfortable, she felt trapped. She hoped that the elevator wouldn’t be making anymore stops. She didn’t need a crowd of people riding with her in that itty bitty shoe box suspended by a cable. No such luck the shoe box was going local. As the elevator filled with people she focused her eyes on her left hand twisting her wedding band around her finger. My mother is claustrophobic; she blames it on Sister Bernadette’s habit of locking her in the closet for imagined misbehaviors.

When she was nine years old in an attempt to save the left handed child’s soul Sister Bernadette began tying the child’s left arm behind her back. She informed the child in her thick Irish brogue that the child would have to learn how to write with her right hand; every time she reached for something with her left hand it was slapped. For several weeks this was the routine. In time her left leg became part of “the save the soul party” too, the nun tied the child’s left leg to her desk’s wooden leg. The child had developed the nervous habit of softly bouncing her leg up and down and Sister Bernadette found this distracting. The child only did this when her arm was tied behind her back and she struggled to write her lessons. Unable to hold her pencil properly in her right hand, the child’s once beautiful penmanship had now taken on the look of a toddler’s illegible scrawl. The child would sit with her head bowed down, eyes lowered, long hair covering her face. Her hair became her veil, hiding her tears as she struggled to write.

The nun felt that the child was being stubborn, that she was able to write with her right hand but simply refused to do so. Her punishment for being stubborn was to be locked in Sister Bernadette’s small coat closet every couple of days when the nun was extra irritated with the child. Afterwards the nun would wipe the child’s tears away telling the child this was for her own good anything having to do with the left hand was evil, it was a sign of Satan, God would not permit her into his kingdom if she was left handed. The Catholic Church held for over a thousand years that being left handed made you a servant of the Devil and that anything left-handed was evil. it never occurred to the child to complain to her parents about Sister Bernadette’s treatment of her.

Then one day during art class the child rebelled. Everyone agreed the child was a gifted artist. While those around her were drawing ram rod straight brown lines with green circles for trees this child would sit pen in hand and sketch out forests with rivers running through them. Creating shadows and ripples by warming the lead on the paper with her finger tips as she rubbed blending it in with the ink on the paper. She would draw portraits of people she’d never seen, and paint places on her canvases that lived within her imagination. The child stood in front of her easel. The child who had not picked up brushes or drawn since Sister Bernadette began tying her left arm behind her back looked at the canvas and brushes lovingly. Her left hand instinctively reached for the brushes. She looked up at the nun’s disapproving face expecting her hand to be slapped away and quickly let it drop. She ran the fingers of her right hand along the canvas feeling the texture keeping her left hand at the side of her jumper her fingers curling and uncurling longing to feel the canvas too. She felt the tips of all the various sized brushes, these were her brushes. No one else was allowed to paint with them they had been a gift from the principal to her. She looked at her right hand a distressed look coming over her face. Sister Bernadette warned her against using her left hand to paint. That made something in the child snap, she refused to paint. Sister Bernadette had her sit in a corner until she was willing to apologize for being insolent. The child sat facing the corner all morning. She closed her eyes and in her mind painted beautiful spring flowers.

After lunch it was back to lessons, the child’s left arm and leg were once again tied. Only now the child was angry and rebellious. She began bouncing her leg up and down causing the desk to bounce with it. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Sister Bernadette yelled at the child to stop, the child continued with a defiant look on her face. THUMP! THUMP! THUMP! Sister Bernadette stood in front of the child an imposing figure in her nun’s habit. THUMP ! THUMP! THUMP! She untied the child’s hand and leg and brought her to the front of the room. She grabbed a wooden ruler from her desk. She ordered the child to put out her hands the child refused. Sister Bernadette then leaned over and grabbed the child’s face in her hand squeezing the tender flesh, leaving finger marks that would later turn to bruises on her cheeks. The child held out her hands and was hit with the ruler a total of ten times. Five on the palm and five on the back of her hand scraping her knuckles with the metal trim of the ruler.

At dismissal time Sister Bernadette deposited them in the yard to wait for their parents. The child stood next to her best friend Delilah waiting for her mother to pick them up. Delilah was coming over to her house, her mom had to work late. Several minutes later the child’s mother La Negra came into the yard apologizing to the girls. She’d gotten stuck in midtown traffic; they were going to stop at Carvel’s for a ice cream before heading home. Her daughter didn’t dare look at her; La Negra asked her daughter what was wrong. She picked up her daughters face and saw the bruises on her face; she saw the scrapes on the back of her daughter’s hands which were slightly swollen and red. “Who did this to you?” the child said nothing. She was afraid to tell her mother she knew La Negra’s temper. Her mother ran to the school entrance but it was locked. She picked her daughter up cuddling her, “Baby tell mommy who did this to you please.” The child said nothing she laid her head on her mother’s shoulder. Delilah spoke up telling La Negra all that had been going on in class. Just then Father Byrne emerged from the school and La Negra thrusted the child into his face explaining what Delilah had told her. As he inspected the child’s bruised face and hands, a sad look came over his face this child had always been his favorite student. She had never been a discipline problem he couldn’t imagine her doing anything that would warrant this type of punishment. He promised he would get to the bottom of it in the morning.

The next day when the child was dropped off at the school yard Sister Bernadette was not there to greet them instead Sister Katherine escorted them to their class with Sister Bernadette arriving in the middle of third period. She didn’t tie the child up on this day or place her in the closet but seemed to find fault with everything she did that morning. After lunch there was a knock on the door, it was La Negra accompanied by Father Byrne and the principal. Sister Bernadette stepped out into the hallway closing the door behind her. The child anxiously watched the scene through the glass window in the door. At first the children couldn’t make out what the adults were saying. Sister Bernadette and La Negra were angry. Their voices got louder. All of a sudden La Negra grabbed Sister Bernadette by her face and slammed her against the door making it fling open. Father Byrne attempted to pry Sister Bernadette free from La Negra’s hands, but the more he tried the tighter her grip became. Finally La Negra yelled at Father Byrne “Padre let go of me! I promise I will go to confession later pero primero (but first) i’m going to fuck this bitch up!” and proceeded to give Sister Bernadette the beating of her life.

To this day my mother doesn’t know how she escaped being kicked out of school after my grandmother beat up the nun. For the longest time however she was certain her mother was going to go to hell for giving the nun a black eye.

Labels: family

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1 comment from:  Just Jane,