by Jane Trahey
“Keep them shut and it won’t go in.”
“Okay; but you had better not let anything happen or I’ll scream my head off.”
We slipped into the art room. It was quiet, polished and sunny. Not a sound but the big wall clock ticking merrily away. We went to work. It took a good bit of plaster to get the amount we needed.
“Maybe we can sell statues of you, Marvel,” Mary said as she began to slap the plaster on Marvel’s forehead.
“Keep it out of her hair,” I whispered.
“It feels gooky.”
“It’s good plaster, that’s all.”
Then Mary, tired of the conversation, padded the plaster in and around Marvel’s mouth. She left holes for her to breathe and began the chin area. Marvel began to get restless, and Mary and I both began to hurry up the job. When we had her all done, the whole thing looked so amazing, we went completely to pieces.
There sat a great, white Frankenstein kind of mess, with bright orange hair sprinkled liberally with plaster blobs.
“Doesn’t she look too marvelous!” Mary said happily.
Marvel mumbled something. It was impossible for her to talk.
“Let it get good and hard, Marvel, so you won’t ruin the mold.”
“It will come off, won’t it Mary?” I asked less confidently.
“Of course it will.”
Mary reached for Sister’s chisel and began to chip away. After the first few blows that almost had Marvel off her stool, it began to be apparent that Marvel was in quite permanently.
Mary began to wipe her hands, as they were sweating quite freely.
“Hit her hard,” I suggested. This only made Marvel mad and she kicked out at both of us. By now, I was getting quite frantic
“Good God,” Mary said, “what will we do?”
“Stay here and I’ll see if I can find Sister Purity. She might help us. If Mother Superior catches us, I’m going to be sent home again.”
I headed out for the convent kitchen. Sister Purity had gone. Only the smell of the fresh bread told me it was getting close on to four o’clock. This left us a little over an hour to get Marvel out of her mold before dinner.
I asked the Sister Portress to ring for Sister Angela.
“Why can’t you leave poor Sister alone on her day off?” she scolded. “Poor dears, they get enough of you all week.”
It must have been the way I looked that made her ring.
“Ring it loud, will you, Sister?”
“Oh, you young ones are all alike. Thoughtless. Thoughtless.”
She rang Sister Angela’s code. Three rings, then four, then one. Finally, Sister Angela came into the parlor.
“Well, young lady, and what can I do for you?”
“We’re in a real jam, Sister,” I confided.
Her look was of dry ice. “Yes?”
“Mary and I have done Marvel in plaster.”
“Oh.”
“We thought we would just do a mask, but it didn’t turn out too well.”
“Where did you do the casting, might I ask?”
“In the studio.” I realized what this admission meant.
“Hmmm.”
She sat down and surveyed me much as a headwaiter in a fine restaurant might look at a worm in a salad.
“And just what do you think I can do about it?”
“Get Marvel out of the plaster.”
“But you got her into it.”
I began to get panicky. The only other alternative was to go to my homeroom teacher, Sister Dorothy, and she would just go directly to Mother Superior. She had followed this pattern too many times to be trusted on this mission. I felt that I could not face Mother Superior again this season.
I took one last fling. “I think Marvel Ann might not be able to breathe.”
That was the last and best straw. Sister Angela rose, grabbed me by the arm and off we glided down the hall to the art studio.
Mary was sitting perched up on the window sill staring out into the convent yard. Marvel Ann was sobbing, crying, and slightly hysterical.
Sister Angela started with towels wrung in hot water, then she grabbed out a jar of cream and began to work on Marvel Ann. After a few tense hours, she had lost only the top layer of her skin, her eyebrows and her widow’s peak. By chipping and picking, and clipping and cutting, and melting, Sister got most of it off. Marvel Ann still looked as if everyone in the free-form art class had pelted her merrily with plaster. Sister took her off to bathe and got her to bed with soup. It had been an exhausting day. She told us before she took quivering Marvel off that she would like to see the art studio really shined up. We shined it up.
The next morning, we went to visit Marvel Ann. She was definitely still in a state of shock.
“We’re sorry, Marvel, we didn’t mean to get you stuck. I thought it would come right off like it does in clay.”
Marvel was totally forgiving. She said, “Get out of here, you slobs, you witches, you creeps!”
Sister Angela, however, kept her mouth shut. No demerits, on her part, went on the scoreboard. We were so subdued by the whole incident that we never did a thing that whole week, and when Friday rolled around, we were quite eligible to go to town. We thought, as a matter of fact, that Sister Angela was one hell of a good sport, until she handed us, that beautiful, sparkling, crisp, clear Saturday morning, a sheet of paper. It was captioned, “The Permanent Saturday Help Sister Angela List.”
It kept us so occupied that we rarely noticed the bus leaving for town, or, for that matter, its coming home.
Chapter Eleven: The Birth of Aurora
After one of Mother Superior’s educational summers, we returned to St. Marks to find out that she thought we were singularly ungraceful, ungainly, clumsy and awkward. To counteract this physical handicap, she felt we needed more than just active sports.
“I have found the perfect answer. I have been fortunate enough to be able to secure, for just two afternoons a week, the services of the famous danseuse, Mrs. Mabel Dowling Phipps. She will teach you how to walk and how to dance.”
No one I knew had ever heard of the famed Mrs. Phipps, but if Mother said she was renowned, she must have been.
Since we all considered ourselves fairly apt at walking—getting to and from chairs with a certain amount of ease—we couldn’t understand what more she could teach us about walking, but dancing was another kettle of fish. We all wanted terribly to learn to do the Big Apple and the Carioca. Even though it seemed unlikely that Mother Superior wanted us to do the Carioca, we were excited.
“Now, since our program is very crowded for this semester, I have decided to give up two study periods and let the seniors learn to dance.” She looked at us and smiled. “If all goes well, Mrs. Phipps promises an exciting program for all of you in June.”
“Mrs. Mabel Dowling Phipps,” Mother said, holding out her hand. Mrs. Phipps came forward and danced around Mother Superior. I don’t think Mother Superior quite expected this and looked a little embarrassed.
“Oh, my darlings, I know we will have the most graceful-looking group. Now”—and she grabbed Lillian—”let me see you dance.” Lillian almost passed out with embarrassment.
“That’s all right, my love, I’ll see to it that you are the best of them all.” It was obvious to all of us that Mrs. Phipps was not only a dancer, but one fine saleslady. Mother Superior smiled graciously and left the room. I had only seen her smile three times, and obviously Mrs. Phipps either owned the mortgage on the school or she was a practitioner of hypnosis.
“Now, my darlings, I’m going to ask you all to write home and ask for ten dollars for your costumes.”
“What will they look like?” we begged. I hoped it would be sequined.
“That’s a surprise. Next time we meet, have your ten dollars.”
And she was gone.
My father sent a sarcastic note to Mother Superior about costumes. Obviously, she had received a good many of them, as she delivered one of her
“I’m trying to prepare her for a gracious life” answers. We all had our ten dollars ready for Mrs. Phipps.
She took them and was gone—but before she went, she said, “Today, I want you all to just walk up and down the gymnasium, pretending you are a leaf . . . a leaf that is just drifting down from a tree. First you flutter,” and she shook her arms in fluttering movements, “now, quietly, you descend to your death. You have left your Mother Tree and you are dying. You get weaker and weaker” (and she got weaker and weaker), “and now, finally, you return from whence you came.” She was now writhing on the gymnasium floor. For writhing, she wore khaki-colored tights with a sleeveless overblouse and soft dancer’s shoes. As she writhed, we gathered around her, fascinated. I could hardly wait to writhe. I fell to the floor almost instantly.
“No, no,” she shouted. “You have to come down from your Mother Tree,” she admonished me, “never just do the end.”
We adored Mrs. Phipps and looked forward to the hour. It was pure insanity and we had nothing like it. We fluttered and fell, we rocked with laughter, we imitated her; it was heaven. Was it possible that Mother Superior realized how much fun Interpretive Dancing was? Our initial saddened mood over not learning more up-to-date dances was dispatched by Mrs. Phipps’ moods. She flew into class much as Peter Pan did, only she didn’t have invisible wires. Actually, I think she might have had some form of levitation, as she could actually stay up in the air quite some time, her little body fluttering, her legs wildly flailing the air.
When our costumes arrived, we must have looked quite terrible, for Mrs. Phipps tried to adjust some of them. They were khaki-colored togas over khaki-colored leotards, and we wore sandals with our toes hanging out, and little laurel wreaths in our hair.
“You’re all too fat—too, too fat!” she wailed. “Just look at you.” We all looked down at our protruding stomachs and our just budding bosoms. All in all, it was no corps de ballet.
“I’m going to speak to Mother about your diet.”
And she did. School food is institution food. Anything cooked for a hundred simply doesn’t taste like food. The gravy was canned and it went over lumpy mashed potatoes. We were so hungry most of the time that we would eat anything. The menu varied from day to day, but not week to week. On Sunday, we had meat of some kind. It was usually rather stringy roast beef and we ate it with mashed potatoes and gravy. If we had a salad (none of us liked them), we had a Jell-O mold that was lime green filled with canned chopped fruit. On Monday, we had roast beef, chopped up. We called this Puss’n Boots on the Half Shell. Wednesday, we had beef stew made with dumplings of Spackle. Thursday, we had corned beef and cabbage—which none of us liked; Friday we had Tuna Fish a la King, which was a good bit more a la than King. Saturday was baked beans and ham with Jell-O mold, and Sunday the cycle began again. Only in this cycle, we had chicken and leftover chicken as the pivotal point.
Mrs. Phipps gave the cook a hard time and we found ourselves munching salads and more Jell-O, and fewer sweets were served. We all began to lose weight, which made Mrs. Phipps overjoyed. By this time, we were getting used to our togas and laurel leaves—only an occasional outburst of hysteria came up when someone fluttered to the ground and crashed on an elbow or arm. We were preparing for the May Day dance, which was to be held on the lawn if the weather permitted, and the parents were to be asked. This was to be combined with solo concerts of the students who studied violin or piano or voice privately.
Mrs. Phipps was in a wild fury of perfection. We practiced being little blades of grass blowing to and fro in the wind. We practiced being flowers peeping op on the first spring day. We simulated a Maypole, but Mother Superior said Maypoles were communistic and there wasn’t to be one. “Where she got that idea,” Mrs. Phipps asked, “I don’t know.”
The big program was planned to be in three parts: (1) Dawn and Sunset; (II) The Birth of Aurora; (III) The Marriage of Apollo.
Naturally, it rained and we had to take our program to the gym. The parents sat upstairs and after the music concert, that had lasted a good hour and a half, my father could think of nothing but a drink. I saw him pacing up and down the top row of seats in the gymnasium. Smoking was not allowed.
Mrs. Phipps brought some green turf to simulate the spring mood and we did Dawn and Sunset on it. The parents didn’t know when to clap, or whether to clap, for we waved to and fro in utter silence, occasionally knocking into each other. I’m sure, if there had been no program, they would never have guessed it was Dawn or Sunset. At the end, we fell to the floor in a bow. There was feeble applause.
Mother Superior seemed pleased that no one understood—it gave her a distinct edge over smart parents.
The second act, The Birth of Aurora, which seemed quite innocent to us, must have seemed anything but to the audience. When the actual scene of child labor began to take place, there were several snickers from the fathers. The audience was shocked into silence as Aurora finally got born, and there was less applause. The Marriage of Apollo must have knocked Mother Superior right off her chair—it was quite spicy, as I remember. My father laughed through the whole thing and said it was the only thing at St. Marks he’d ever seen that he wouldn’t have missed for the world.
Mrs. Phipps was last seen with Mother Superior heading for her office. Her grass was returned the following day. We started gradually going back to fuller and fuller meals, and we never did have another dancing teacher, at least not while I was at St. Marks.
Chapter Twelve: Who’s Who
It had finally arrived. The last day of the school year. Everyone had that unmistakable, traumatic feeling—a combination of relief from duty and pressure with a nagging feeling of being totally displaced. We spent the entire second term waiting for June so that we’d be free of St. Marks. We longed for summer days of lolling and tennis and sunning and yet, when the day arrived, we missed each other before we left school and all summer we missed the magic formula of being told what to do and when to do it.
“This is the summer to grow up,” Mother Superior announced to us confidently. “For next year you’ll be seniors.”
She looked us over like a French farmer looking over his stock. Prodding here, weighing there, wondering if she had given us the right diet for maximum growth.
There was no doubt about it, we had changed since our first interviews.
Mary’s hair had calmed down and she kept it brushed softly in a page-boy style that was quite the Ginger Rogers rage. Kathryn had turned from a scraggly, willowy little boy to a rather buxom well-developed girl. I was taller, not quite so pale, and I had completely given up candy, which was unkind to my skin, the day I fell in love with Robert Taylor.
“You don’t need all those trappings of the heretics,” Mother Superior lectured, “to be attractive.” She meant, of course, lipstick. We all owned lipsticks but wearing it was simply not allowed.
“It’s a pagan sign, a pagan sign.” We’d heard it over and over.
“Go right on living like you do here at St. Marks, praying as you do. It would behoove each and every one of you to attend daily Mass,” she added. “What a wonderful gift that would be to me, if each of you returned in September and told me that you had been to daily Mass.”
With one fell swoop, Mother had dissipated our year-long desire to never get up in the morning by asking for this little gift.
“Well, students, have a good Christian summer and come back recharged spiritually as well as physically.”
We were dismissed. Of course, we all had the rest of the day (depending on train or bus time) to bid good-bye to each other and finish up business of any kind within our own clique. At the moment our life centered around Sister Constance. She had been our major interest from the beginning of our junior year when she came to St. Marks from China. She, I might add, was our idol much against her will, but she had little choice. We adored her, bothered her, followed her, confided in her. There weren’t enough presents for her, there wasn’t enough of anything for her.
She had been returned to St. Marks from China, where she had been a missionary teacher for ten years. She probably was all of thirty when we met her. The rumors that preceded her arrival and stayed with her that whole year ranged from her having fallen in love with a Chinese overlord to the fact that she was dying of a rare disease.
She was the prettiest nun I had ever seen in my life. Slight, fragile, straight, Sister Constance had flawless beauty. Her eyes were violet, shadowed with the longest black lashes I ever saw. Her smile was made for a dental convention. Her skin was golden tinged with pink. She was not only the rage of the school but a great favorite with Mother Superior and the Sisters. The most interesting thing about her was the fact that she had lost one arm. The rumors about this mishap progressed from the story Lillian Quigley’s mother had heard from her cousin, a Chinese missionary also, that the Communists had cut it off when she was trying to save a girl baby from being thrown into the garbage pail, to the truth—that she had caught it in a mangle in the laundry room in the convent of the missions. Sister Constance never seemed to let the matter bother her at all, and was quite as deft with her one hand as most of us are with both.
She taught us religion and it was certainly the year of vocations for my group. Never before did the Faith get such a going-over for all concerned. Even Mary was reading Sister Constance’s own copy of St. Thomas More and quoting it to us for hours on end. If Sister Constance smiled at us our day was made. For my part she could do no wrong.
We walked her to the cloister door at prayer time, we carried her books, we opened doors, we brought her sweets, flowers, four-leaf clovers, lucky pennies, magazines. We waited for her to come out of the cloister, we fought for places next to her at chapel. If she asked for “a wee bit of air” we crushed each other trying to get the window pole. Her magic ingredient was no different as a nun from what it would have been had she been a secretary, a mother or an actress. It was simply sheer beauty. She was, as Mother Superior told Mrs. Clancey, “as nice as she was beautiful.”