School Dazed

With one telephone call the Dominican Sisters turned our practically normal household into a state of bedlam. Sts. Simon & Jude School was preparing for Mission Sunday and every classroom had someone chosen as a representative for the diocesan pageant. The phone rang early Saturday morning and when Ma hung up she happily announced that I was going to be a nun. Chaos. Concetta started to cry. As an eighth grader this was her last chance to participate. I immediately became hysterical. “I don’t want to be a nun and cut off all my hair. I want to get married and have babies,” I wailed. Such was my career plan as a first grader.

Concetta actually wanted to join the convent. She was really very religious except when she was tormenting me or any number of boys at the CYO dances. Our job as siblings was to fight like cats and dogs but defend one another to the death against any outsiders; we were peas in a very tight pod. Not only did we share a room but we slept together, head to foot, in our parents’ old full-sized bed until the night before Concetta got married. Being a sneaky younger sister, I’d pretend to be asleep and knock the hell out of her when I was pissed off. Of course, I waited several years before I shared this tidbit with Kenny, just in case I was tempted to give my newlywed husband a shot in the middle of the night.

Mission Sunday was filled with all the pomp and circumstances our Brooklyn diocese could muster. Each Catholic school dressed selected children in vestments representing their respective religious orders. There were even kids as diminutive bishops, cardinals and a pope. All participants marched through Park Slope to St. James Cathedral for a solemn high Mass. Afterwards, were we were treated to an Abbot and Costello film and given some cool junk food to eat during the movie.

Four Sisters helped me put on my miniature Dominican habit. I was poked and prodded for nearly forty-five minutes. Each time I complained the garb was binding me, I was told to say a prayer and offer it up for the souls in purgatory. At least two dozen folks in limbo crossed over that morning. When I privately grumbled to Ma that I looked like a devout penguin, she informed me that I committed a venial sin and insisted I go to confession. There was no way to be sure, but I didn’t think the nun who pulled my hair through the ordeal planned to confess that guilty pleasure to our pastor. Life just wasn’t fair.

My hair. People generally went nuts over my hair. It was long enough for me to sit on even when pulled up into a pony tail. When we travelled cross country by train, a porter had to take apart the Murphy bed because my hair fell between the wall and the piano hinge. He assured me he would bust the bed rather than cut even one shiny strand.

For special occasions, Ma tightly wrapped strips of old muslin sheets around thick sections of hair and created banana curls. It didn’t matter to me. I loved wearing it any style to show it off. Nana had a special brush she used on it as she told me wonderful Sicilian fairy tales and stories. The star of her narrative was a little kid, royalty, a saint or some kind of woodland creature but always had long beautiful hair. She primped and curled it whenever her paisans came to visit and then called me downstairs to recite, pray or sing in their dialect. I was Nana’s long-haired attention monkey and I loved every minute of it.

Once I began school, Ma would firmly braid and wind my hair on top of my head like a crown. It was a long grueling process that left me with a sore scalp, a headache and fifty bobby pins which ensured not a hair was out of place. By the end of the school day it was usually filled with spitballs. After considerable pleading and whining, Ma finally allowed me to wear my hair in a pony tail one Spring afternoon. It caused such a disruption with my classmates that Mrs. Fiore immediately called and complained. That lunch period, Ma came to school armed with her nylon brush and a bag of hair pins. Problem solved.

During Second grade, the week before I received First Communion, Ma brought me to Alberto’s Beauty parlor for a trim. The beautician tied my hair with a piece of clothesline and my Rapunzel tressesses were history. Nana cried her eyes out and safely stored a lock of hair in a special pouch. She left it to me with her cameo when she finally joined Vincenzo. The nuns, on the other hand, said it was a good change because long hair was a sign of vain glory.

That may have eased Ma’s apprehension; that was not the case with my sister or father. Concetta’s tears matched Nana’s. If I wasn’t already self conscious about how I looked, seeing their sorrowful reactions made me look for a bag to put over my head. Poppie didn’t say a word. He stormed out of the house, marched over to the beauty salon and demanded my severed mane. “I threw it away. It was in the dumpster when they collected the rest of our garbage,” Alberto frostily claimed. That was the day I became the invisible daughter.

Catholic school was filled with all kinds of rituals; some of them were major productions like Mission Sunday. Others were ingrained in daily life, like using a cartridge ink pen as opposed to ballpoint---supposedly a mainstay in Public Schools. Sister Immaculate was Gestapo of penmanship. She handed out short white paper for the weekly penmanship tests to those she deemed worthy. Anyone with sloppy writing was forced to use brown paper until their script sufficiently improved. I was bestowed the dubious honor of completing all penmanship tests on Packard’s grocery bags as navy blue ink bled through the paper and down my arm.

The afternoon Sister Immaculate relented and allowed me the privilege of white penmanship paper, I was beside myself with joy. She removed the desirable short pack from her supply closet. Delores, our class monitor, portioned a stack to each row with the decorum of a pallbearer. It was my turn to pass out the sheets to the last row. I carefully doled out the paper, sat down at my desk and promptly threw up. Sister never forgave me.

“Camille, what the hell made you sick at school. Did you trade lunches with someone?” I tried to explain to Ma how keyed up I was about finally using the immaculate penmanship paper. “That’s just silly. I memorized and recited poems in front of my entire school and I didn’t throw up.” Ma said with reserved pride. While in grade school, Ma committed to memory “The Raven”, “Annabel Lee” and “Lenore” by Edgar Allen Poe. She won medals for public speaking from her school, her district and the borough of Brooklyn. Ma did all that and didn’t vomit or sweat or even fart. She was a superhero.

That night, I asked Poppie about his school accomplishments. He told me he played drums and earned varsity letters in two sports: football and baseball. Nana confirmed Poppie’s musical talents. “Aye, aye, aye. Mi fa mali a testa.” Nana held her head as she mimicked Poppie banging on pots and pans with gusto. Vincenzo agreed; his middle son loved drumming like no other. There wasn’t a drum set available but that small detail didn’t stop him. Poppie would carry a pair of drum sticks wherever he went and just ripped a beat. The original Biggie Smalls---he was gangsta.

Public school sounded amazing. Here I was, stuck being a Catholic School creep and my parents conquered the world when they attended public school. My music classes were filled with church hymns; Poppie was drumming to his heart’s content. We had to memorize the Baltimore Catechism and Latin prayers; Ma learned narrative poems for fun. She actually liked school. Luckily that was an ailment that only afflicted Concetta.

I asked Vincenzo to explain why there was such a difference between Catholic and public schools. “Ah Camilla, it’s about advantages. In America, parents put their children on a gold street of education. It’s up to the children how far they walk, if they want to run or just sit down.” So, that was it. Ma and Poppie couldn’t give us the same advantages they had so we were stuck in Catholic school. Well, I was stuck; my sister flourished.

By the time Concetta was established at St. Edmund’s, she created quite an impressive résumé. Her activities included the Latin club, the French club, Yearbook, regional president of Young Christian Students, president of the Math club and Student Council representative. She was a straight “A” student, member of the local and national Honor Society, a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize and nominated for sainthood. I knew that if I followed her to the same school I was in deep trouble. Concetta made such an indelible mark at St. Edmunds that when I attended seven years later, teachers asked me if we were sisters. At first, the question was posed with a broad grin and a touch of delight. By the end of the semester, teachers would ask this same question with a look of disbelief, an exasperated sigh and total reverence for the wonders of genetics. I still hated school.

Ma, on the other hand, had been an attentive student with a bright future. Unfortunately, she was forced to leave at the end of her sophomore year to help support her large family. Ma’s love of learning, inquisitive nature and self confidence kicked into overdrive as she moved from shop floor worker to Supervisor in a government defense plant during World War Two. Despite the lack of a high school diploma, Ma was a substitute teacher at Sts. Simon & Jude and helped Poppie complete all his humanities courses for his Associate degree at Pace University.

When it came to her children, Ma insisted Catholic school education was the way to go. I fought her tooth and nail but it was definitely the right decision for me, although I never admitted it to her. The classroom size was significantly larger than those in the public schools but the teachers easily maintained order and discipline. That was no small task when so many schools erupted into storms of violence as race riots overtook Brooklyn in the early ‘70s.

Although I bitched about the uniforms, dressing for school was a snap. There was no pressure to dress to impress. As Ma so eloquently advised, “Don’t be like the monkeys and the chickens.” I just reserved my platform shoes and elephant bell bottoms for dances or hanging out.

The inane research and assignments were scrutinized by faculty ad nauseam. But in the end, many of those “pointless” lessons put me well above the grade curve in college. At Kingsborough, my Freshman English professor asked if anyone was familiar with Iambic Pentameter. Out of a class of twenty-three students, only two of us raised our hands. He called on my classmate. “Yeah, wasn’t he one of those old English poets?”

Almost twenty-five years after I first became a Catholic school kid, Ian clipped on the dark blue tie of St. Mary’s. He wasn’t jazzed about it. His cousins attended public school, wore what they wanted and enjoyed considerably more freedom in their classrooms. I stood firm over all his complaints and objections regarding Catholic school. “It’s a terrific education, you get to wear a cool uniform like daddy and one day you’ll have some great stories to tell your own kids.”

Sister Immaculate would be proud.