Homage To The Dead

Sister Thorette wore a wedding ring she told us meant she was married to Jesus. In His name she ruled her kindergarten class at Saint John Cantius, the part of the kingdom of the Living God she had been entrusted with, with an iron hand. She held her big crucifix, dangling from her fingers, like a medieval prison guard holds his keys. She was a big ugly woman with a large hooked nose, a mole on the side of it with black hairs sticking out. Her face, pinched in white sat atop a tall black obelisk. Here eyes were quick, darting, searching out errant children.

You could not see her feet. She seemed to float slowly about the room with her ever-threatening yardstick. It was an all-purpose instrument, a pointer or an attention getter with a surprise rap on a desk. With it she meted out punishment, a rap on the knuckles, or ordered to hold out your hands, on the palms. Punishment was her forte. There was kneeling on your knuckles or bottle caps, the yardstick used on edge, and the mouth washed out with flax soap.

I’ve often called myself the original snot-nosed kid. A half joke is my nose has been running for fifty-eight years. To this day I don’t carry a hankie because my mother used to make me take them to school and within the first half hour the hankie would be used up and I’d have to pull it apart to find a clean spot, leading to much ridicule. As a child I spent winters with snot froze to my upper lip. Consequently, I was forever sniffing snot back up into my head, swallowing it when it got caught in my throat.

Sister Thorette played the piano. Every day at school she gave a little recital for us children. If the good sister believed anything, she believed that good little children should be seen and not heard, that if we were not called on to speak we were to be silent, especially during piano recitals. You know where this is going, don’t you? Enter the snot-nosed-kid.

Sister Thorette was convinced I was a willful, incorrigible, hell bound little troublemaker who refused to stop interrupting her piano playing by deliberately sniffing my nose. After several ignored warnings which I compounded my offence with preposterous excuses and lies, she took matters in hand, actually my ear. With a stern warning to my class mates she marched me out of the classroom to the long white porcelain sink out into the hall and began administered to me a daily communion of brown flax soap in an attempt to wash the devil from my mouth.

After a few weeks or so, she gave up in disgust. She had confirmed she was correct in her assessment. I obstinately refused to stop my sniffing. When I vomited, either from the soap or snot, it was further proof of my disobedient nature. Even the Lord was punishing me for my sins.

One day the oldest nun in the convent died and was laid out in Saint John's church. The whole school, class by class, was assembled and trouped over to the church pay our respects. One by one we were ushered to the shrunken corpse with garish, roughed cheeks, like shriveled apples. I think there was some kind of step stool over the kneeler. I could see her ruined face down in the coffin. I remember the thick smell of flowers, incense, and wax. I remember the pressure of Sister Thorette’s hand on my shoulder and neck.

“Kiss the sister on the lips and step down.”

I think I remember that, but what came next I’m unsure of. I know I didn’t want to kiss the corpse. I think I was forced. I don’t really know. One by one Sister Thorette motioned us forward, to where she stood besides the casket, to pay our respects to the dead, to the long line of black robed women who came before, to those yet to come, and to those present who tried to bare the weight of sacrifice and service as wives of the Most High God.