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Constance
Alexander
Constance Alexander is a writer from Murray, Ky. Her books are available at the Murray State University Bookstore or through Amazon.com. Contact
Constance Alexander
"A Long Way from St. Lucy"
Listen
to the audio of this commentary here.
Nine years old. First day of fourth grade. I have barely mastered Double Dutch and long division. Our classroom is on the third floor of St. Francis School, not the first level like last year. After grade three, the girls have classes separate from the boys because males are deemed “near occasions of sin,” whatever that means.
Grade 4 – Girls is the room right across from the principal’s office. On the first day of school it is she, Sister Philippa, who greets us.
You will have two teachers this year,” she announces, quick to add how lucky we are. “Sister Eulalia and Sister Johannes are among the finest teachers in the Diocese of Trenton.” She pauses long enough to glare, as if daring one of us to disagree.
“Fourth grade is important – too important to be entrusted to one teacher,” Sister continues. “You girls don’t know how blessed you are. Make sure you appreciate your good fortune.”
The Sisters Eulalia and Johannes may well have been among the diocese’s finest teachers – 50 years before. By the time they are led to the gentle pastures of St. Francis School, neither one has the strength to teach a full day.
Eulalia floats into our classroom each morning at 9, or thereabouts. She arrives with a bulging black book bag, but they are never the right books. She twitters and chirps, a plump, black sparrow, talking as earnestly to the statue of the Virgin Mary as she does to us, her bewildered students.
Every day, she regales us with cautionary tales from 9 until noon. We learn that flames will erupt from the soles of our oxfords if we ever enter a non-Catholic church, and girls who push to the front of the line at recess will be last at the pearly gates. The most horrifying tale is that unbaptized, dead babies are banished to a cloud between Purgatory and Heaven where they become little heads with wings sprouting from the place where their shoulders are supposed to be. They spend eternity there, always struggling to see the face of God, but only permitted to hear His voice.
Sister knows all this because she has a hotline to heaven, just like President Eisenhower had to the Kremlin. She tells us the end of the world is held in abeyance because, seated next to her son at the throne of God the Father, Mary holds Jesus’s hand in her own.
“If she ever stops doing that,” Sister drops her quavering voice to a whisper, “the Russians will drop the bomb and the world will end like that!”
Her fingers are too arthritic to manage a click, but we get the idea all the same.
Sister Johannes takes charge of our class after lunch. She is so frail that, on windy days, two eighth grade girls are dispatched to the convent so they can be her anchors as she makes her way across Library Place to the school.
Johannes tries to teach us whatever Eulalia misses – which is everything. We memorize all the countries of Central and South America; learn to add and subtract decimals; master the diagramming of sentences with compound subjects and verbs.
As the year progresses, we witness Sister Eulalia’s decline. Her stories become scarier, her behavior more erratic. She has it on good faith that the Red Chinese are planning an attack on America. When they land on our shores, they will head straight for St. Francis, where they will slurp holy water right out of the marble fonts and wipe their slimy, pagan hands on the silken vestments of the priests. After they pocket all the candlesticks and make a bonfire of hymnals and St. Joseph’s Daily Missals in the middle of our playground, they will torture all of us in the hope we will renounce our belief in the Trinity.
With that, I abandon hope that there will ever be a St. Constance of Metuchen.
The whole class is terrified, but we do not tell our parents. We are loyal even in our fear. But the day Sister Eulalia knocks over the statue of the Blessed Virgin and it crashes to the floor and breaks, we know things cannot go on this way. Before she releases us for lunch, Sister hides the pieces under her desk and makes us swear, to a girl, we won’t tell.
The next morning, Sister Philippa sweeps in at nine to tell us that our bad deportment has so exhausted Sister Eulalia that she needs to take a rest and will not be coming back to our classroom for the rest of the year.
I do not recall who tended us in the mornings after that, or if Johannes managed to muster the strength to spend the whole day. In any event, I finished the remainder of fourth grade without further incident and even won first place in the diocese writing competition.
My prize was a brand new silver dollar and a portrait of Lucy, the patron saint against hemorrhages and blindness. Her eyes had been ripped out because she rejected her pagan bridegroom. In the picture, she held her eyeballs on a silver platter, her empty sockets cast heavenward.
After all these years, I am a long way from St. Lucy, but still have vivid recollections of grade four. Who could ever forget the grisly tales told by Sister Eulalia? And Sister Johannes, her skin fine as Irish linen, patiently explaining how coffee was grown and harvested in Brazil.
It is the year I became a poet.
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"No
Daughter of Mine…"
Listen
to the audio of this commentary here.
"No
Daughter of Mine…" In my house when I was growing
up, any statement beginning with those words meant that a girl
was not going to get permission to do something she wanted to
do. Like staying out after midnight on New Year's Eve, or riding
in cars with boys before she was 25. You get the idea. My parents
were strict. Unreasonably so. I blame it on my sister, Pamela,
the middle child. When she was a teenager, she came home when
she was good and ready, braving the sturm und drang that resulted
when she sashayed in hours late and unrepentant. As the youngest,
I was supposed to be the one who could get away with anything.
My
parents were old, for goodness sakes, and should have been weary
of enforcing an array of rules about when I could go out, what
time I had to be home, and what hours of the day I was allowed
to be on the phone. Conforming to their code was bad enough
in high school; by the time I went away to college, I hoped
they might give me some slack. Nothing doing. I solved the problem
by staying on campus all the time, refraining from visits home
only when there was dire necessity. Thanksgiving and Christmas
were tolerable, but spring break presented a quandary because
everyone I knew went to Florida. While they cavorted on beaches
and sautéed themselves in baby oil and iodine, I was home helping
my mother with spring cleaning. By the time I was a junior in
college, I was sick of it.
I
knew I was not going to get to Florida that year either, but
when Kathy, a sorority sister, suggested I spend the summer
with her in Vermont, waitressing at a resort where she had worked
the summer before, I said yes without consulting my parents.
I rehearsed my speech to my parents over and over in my mind.
I was going to be 21 that summer. They knew Kathy was a nice
girl from a reputable family. I had already been accepted to
the University of Copenhagen for my senior year, so soon I would
be on my own in Denmark. They just had to let me go. As these
discussions always happened, this one began at the dinner table.
I cleared my throat, made my announcement and waited for someone
to begin the dreaded speech: "No daughter of mine..."
At
first there was silence. Then my mother's mouth tightened into
a thin line of disapproval. I knew she hated the idea of one
of her daughters being a waitress, even at a pricey resort.
In the end, it was my father who said it wasn't a bad idea.
I had permission. A miracle! But that was not the only divine
intervention of spring break. Most awesome was that my father
and I somehow went into New York one day to go to the museums.
Daddy and I took the train to the city, went to the Guggenheim
and the Met, and ate lunch somewhere on Central Park West. He
actually talked to me, told me what it was like in Manhattan
when he first got there from Canada, in the 1920's. He spoke
of going to shows up at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, drinking
bathtub gin at speakeasies down in Greenwich Village.
He
described midnight on Broadway in that golden era, when men
in top hats and tails strolled arm in arm with elegantly-gowned
and jewel-bedecked women after the shows let out and the after-theatre
parties were done. My father, who was over 50 when I was born
and pretty detached from all five of his children, amazed me.
Before that day, the two of us had never really had a conversation.
I marked the milestone by purchasing two prints - a Picasso
Blue Boy and an etching by Durer. I lost track of the artwork
over the years, but I will never forget that day. My summer
in Vermont was filled with happiness, fun and Sergeant Pepper's
Lonely Hearts Club Band. In early August, my father was suddenly
taken ill and died. I flew home and stayed there until the funeral.
Then
I went back to Vermont to finish up my commitment to my employer,
which lasted to Labor Day. At this time of year, when so many
are heading south to sun and fun, I remember my last spring
break at home. How fortunate it was to have one close encounter
of a rare kind with my father. If not for that, he would have
been almost a total stranger to me.
Please
note: This commentary is from Constance
Alexander's book Who Needs June Cleaver? -- slated for publication
on Mother's Day, 2007.
My
Mother's Bones
Listen
to the audio of this commentary here
My
mother's button box is a simple round tin - an old candy box
- where the family buttons have been stashed for safekeeping
as long as I could remember. Though now it's chipped and faded,
the box was originally blue-bordered and decorated with a street
scene of swank turn-of-the-century ladies and gentlemen.
They
appear to be on an old-fashioned walk, strolling casually against
a pale yellow backdrop. The men are carrying shiny walking sticks
and the ladies, ruffled parasols. When I was a child, being
sick and staying home from school a day on the living room sofa,
at sea among blankets and pillows. That's when Mother let me
play with the button box. I remember lying on those satiny cushions
for hours, sifting through the smooth buttons as if they were
a universe of many-sized moons. There were buttons from all
our wardrobes: my sister's spring coat with the pique collar;
my brother's military school uniforms; those tiny, tiny buttons
- no bigger than a sigh - from our christening dresses. But
most of all there were buttons that my mother'd saved from her
own past, buttons from dresses she wore when she was still single,
those glamorous-sounding years she seldom discussed with us.
The
years before she met my father. There was an orange button in
the shape of a sailboat, the color of a flaming summer sunset.
That was from one of mother's sundresses. There were buttons
from the fur-collared coat she wore as a young bride. There
were lots of those smart cloth-covered buttons from assorted
frocks and blouses. The fabrics were lush and romantic - chiffon,
challis, crepe de chine. Mother kept them, even though the chances
of using such exotic buttons on another garment were virtually
non-existent.
Those
buttons were not at all practical, and we children loved the
glamorous secrets each one seemed to whisper. After some coaxing
and wheedling, Mother might divulge some details about a button,
or the outfit it came from. She'd mention a matching feathered
hat, or a special pair of sling-back shoes. Sometimes she recalled
a particular event - a date with a boy from Dartmouth, or a
party in Greenwich Village during Prohibition. Of course, it's
been years since I've heard the stories, and I'm not at all
sure of the details anymore, but I treasure the memories more
than any expensive family heirloom. Before her stroke, Mother
gave the silver, china, grandfather's clock, desk and piano
to her offspring. "No use waiting 'til I'm dead," she said cheerfully.
She
passed on countless smaller treasures to her progeny, but she
kept the button box to herself. And rightfully so. Besides a
few fading pictures, the button box is the only family possession
I know of that contains something special of my mother, of the
young girl she once was, and the woman she became. It is the
essence of my mother before she was a mother herself. It is
her history, her bones. |
