By Patricia White
When I was about to
start first grade in 1946, I lived with my Mama and Daddy and my two sisters in
an old downtown neighborhood in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, called Spanish Town. During the summer we neighborhood children
often ventured into the main business district which was near the Mississippi
Riverbanks, which we were told was off limits for us all. But back then, when you went
outside after lunch, no one really looked for you until supper time. We followed the older kids wherever they went..
Strange and scary things
happened down by that muddy old river. An old man who called himself the
Messiah lived down near the edge of the water behind the levee. He wrapped
himself up in a dirty old white sheet and hollered things at us when we went
down to the river to watch the Ferry come and go. Sometimes in freezing cold
weather the Messiah would walk right out into the Mississippi river up to his
neck. He walked right out into that water with his arms up in the
air, sometimes singing, sometimes quiet like he was thinking or praying. Everyone
was scared to death of him. He could see everything out of the corner of his
eye open or shut. If he saw you coming down the levee toward the ferry and he
would jump out of his cardboard shack and start running toward you mumbling something
that sounded like, I gonna get chooooo. He would spread his arms out with that white
sheet flapping in the wind as he ran. He looked like a big white rooster who
opened his wings to fly off the top of the chicken house. The Messiah stayed
close to the Ferry landing all the time just waiting to grab one of us as we
boarded the ferry for a Sunday afternoon ride. My uncle told me the Messiah
would steal my eyeballs right out of my head if he ever caught me. I
never knew for sure that he ever caught anyone.
I thought I was prepared
for what was to come when I entered St. Joseph’s Parochial School my very first
day. The school building had once been an old Victorian home. I heard that a
family had been murdered in the house and that certain rooms and closets of the
house were still haunted. The older kids in the neighborhood told me
there was a special room in the schoolhouse that children were not allowed to
go into. No one knew for sure why, but it had something to do with some of the
nun’s secrets. I thought that maybe it was the place they went to get all
their hair cut off.
There
were school buses for the kids who lived in the country. As for me, I had to
walk six long scary blocks to get to school. I was the oldest of three girls so
there was no one to walk with me on that first day. All the way to school, I
pressed down the little pleats in my navy-blue skirt with my hands. I was
so proud of my beautiful little new skirt. My Mama had made
me three of those little navy-blue pleated skirts, which were part of my
uniform, along with a white peter-pan collar blouse, a navy-blue bow tie, any
kind of shoes and white socks. Navy-blue scull-caps were required on
Mass Day.
Money was scarce in
those days. My parents sold war surplus soap out of the trunk of my grandma’s car to
get extra money for school clothes. Mama could sew very well and covered
lampshades for rich ladies, so making my school skirts was no problem. I had my
three-dollars tuition for my first month in my pencil bag and my lunch in a
brown paper sack. I was a little afraid, but I was ready for my
first day.
I
found my way to school and to my classroom that first day. As I entered, there
stood Sister Louise, slapping a wooden ruler on her open flat palm, welcoming
each of us to the first grade. “Hello, I’m Sister Louise,” slap, slap. I
couldn’t help but stare and wonder what the ruler was for and what she had on
under that long black dress. Not much of her head showed because she had
white material around her face. The white band came down on her forehead and on
the sides of her face covering up her ears. The band seemed to cut into her
cheeks and pinch her face together. The material was stiff and looked like
someone had ironed it right onto her face. Sister Louise wore a piece of black
silky material on her head that hung down to her shoulders. She swished it
around like it was long hair. That made me wonder where her hair was or if she
had any. I thought about the special room. Sister looked and smelled
funny. Mama had shown me a picture of a Nun on a holy card, but this
Sister Louise was scary. She reminded me of the Messiah in black clothes. I
missed my Mama.
I
learned on that first day of school that we prayed before and after everything
and that Jesus was watching and could see everything I did. I also
learned that my beautiful little navy pleated skirt that my Mama sewed for me
was too short. Sister Louise sternly announced in front of the whole
class, “Patricia, you should be ashamed, your skirt is too short,
and I can see your panties. Now, you march home and tell your Mama to
fix that skirt and don’t come back until it is longer.”
I ran out of the classroom and cried as I ran all six
blocks home in that short little skirt. Even the Messiah could not
catch me if he tried, I ran so fast. Mama and I practiced many times
during the summer, and I knew the way. Mama was going to be so mad. When I got
home, the front door was open, and I crept inside. She was sitting at her
sewing machine with a row of pins between her lips. She stopped, dropped the
pins into a dish and asked, “Patricia, what are you doing home? Are you sick?”
I
was sniveling and breathing so hard I thought my heart would pop the buttons on
my new white blouse. It was so quiet in the house. Mama was waiting for an
answer. “Sister says my skirt is too short,” I managed to
force out between gasps and sputters.
I
wanted Mama to take me in her lap and hold me and rub my back. But she was mad
as a hornet.
“Who
does that ole battle-axe think she is?” Mama
walked over to me and pulled on the big silver hook and eye at my waistband and
my too-short skirt fell to the floor. I stood there in my panties and white
blouse and bow tie as tears streamed down my face. My eyes burned
and I felt like a jack’s ball was caught in my throat. There was no
doubt Sister Louise has been mad, now Mama was mad too. And, I just knew she
was mad at me. I must have moved when she was pinning the hem of my
skirt with that clanking ruler thing. I was the oldest and should
have known not to move. She told me not to move. I crawled up on the
couch while she worked on those little skirts. My lunch was still in
Sister Louise’s classroom, under my desk getting moldy and rotten. Potted
meat was going to waste. I was hungry, but I guess Mama
forgot. Mama called Daddy at the plant and told him the whole story.
Then she called my grandmother and two of her friends. I wished Daddy would
come home, he would know what to do. I hated being the
oldest. Three white, Irish, Catholic girls. The Three Musketeers. Big,
Middle and Little. The guilty one who could not be still, next was the precious
one, and then the baby who Mama let eat Mayonnaise right out of the jar with
her hand.
That
September afternoon I sat on the smooth, warm, concrete front steps of our
apartment and waited for my Daddy to come home. The iceman came by in his truck
making deliveries. Every day all summer, we sat on the same steps and hollered
to the iceman, “Please throw us some ice, Mister,” and
he would toss three of four chunks over the wooden side of his truck. But on
that miserable day, I did not want any of his old ice. The ice cream man also
came by on his bike with the funny little box hooked on his handlebars. He
shouted, “Popsicle, Fudgesicle, Biggie Benny Bar.” No
ice cream for me today either. Mama was too mad. No Siree. No ice, no ice
cream, and no lunch. Mama was so mad she just forgot about me.
Mama
walked me to school the next day and found Sister Louise and sassed her really
bad. Mama was a convert to the Catholic religion, and she was not afraid of
those Nuns, not even Sister Louise who was huge and had a funny mustache. My
Mama wasn’t afraid of anybody, not even my Daddy. After she
told Sister Louise off, she marched to the principal’s office and told Mother
Roberts about the short-skirt problem. Mama said, “I hope you are happy now
that her skirt is longer, and she looks like an orphan.” Mother Roberts
listened, nodding her head up and down as she fingered some long black beads
that hung around her waist as Mama continued to threaten her within an inch of
her life if anyone ever said a word about my skirt again. She said she would snatch them bald.
“I
must ring the bell,” Mother Roberts interrupted. Our talk was over. She
had never said a word, but she knew my Mama meant business.
Mama
took me back to my classroom. Sister Louise smiled at me like she had a secret
and said, “come, my child,” and told me to take my seat
then turned and frowned while nodding good-by to my Mama.
My
desk was third from the front by a window and way far away from the door my Mama
was leaving out of. My skirt was long enough because Sister Louise
didn’t say another word about it. I watched Mama out the
window walking toward home and I put my head on my desk and cried silently as
whiffs of yesterday’s potted meat sandwich drifted up to my nose.
In the one day I had
been gone, three more girls named Patricia entered St. Joseph’s Parochial
Elementary School and into my class. Sister said she could not have so many of us
with the same name, and so she changed
our names to Pat, Patsy, Patty and Patricia. She named me, Pat, just like
snapping her fingers and it was done. My Daddy was going to be so burned up.
Aunt Shirley had already tried to nickname me Patsy and Daddy said, “NO. Her
name is Patricia.” This nun is going to cause so much trouble
in our family.
Sister led the class in
a prayer to God the Almighty before we went home that horrible, second day of
school. I secretly prayed to Baby Jesus that tomorrow would be better. Maybe
tomorrow I would hide in the secret place under the house and just play school
with my sisters as I had done all summer. I could tell them all
about Sister Louise and I might even tell them about that scary old Messiah.
.
