The Women in Black

More than a reverie on the rosary

Nuns make a great subject for jokes.

During my seven years in a Catholic girl’s school, I discovered that real nuns are funnier than any jokes about them.

My introduction to nuns came from my sister’s need for special services. She had an autism diagnosis and had been non-verbal. My parents and aunt did a mountain of research to find the best school to help my sister continue her progress in social integration.

The Visitation Sisters

When my family moved to Minnesota, I attended the Convent of the Visitation school with my sister. We were the ‘non-Irish twins’ of grade 3 and they put us in separate classrooms.

My sister got the nice nun, a special education teacher.

I got the mean one who accused me of cheating for looking up math answers at the back of the textbook.

It’s cheating if it’s a test and your grade depends on it.

It’s not cheating if you are trying to understand the lesson. Math was a hard subject for me.

The order of the symbols and the word usage in a math problem makes a big difference. The concise descriptions at the back of the book were essential to my solving the math equations. I needed to know what I was doing wrong in order to solve the question.

Once I saw the actual equation, my math scores soared. They never accused me of cheating again.

The best thing about that first year was being in a Montessori classroom. We sat on the floor together for group lessons when we weren’t assigned an individual lesson.

I got to set up my materials and work through the lesson at my own pace. When I was done, I put them back on the shelf, and I could read until it was time for group work.

Sister John Deere

I never got close enough to learn her real name. During recess, I’d watch Sister drive the tractor as she tilled the fields and kept up the acres of grounds at the Convent. She wore a full habit with that striped apron, just like the nuns in The Sound of Music.

It got me thinking: if a nun can do that job, why couldn’t I?

The Hallway Monitor

We came together once a week for communion in the modern chapel. You could attend the service even if you weren’t the same religion. It was a special time to pray and celebrate communal life.

It gave us a chance to walk by the mynah bird, who acted as a hallway monitor. He sat in an enormous cage in the glass hallway between the lower grades and the middle school classrooms.

Someone had taught that bird to whistle, and it was no ordinary whistle. It was a catcall. The bird only did it for the women in black. It would call out phrases like “Looking good, Sister” or “Wow, what a babe!”

Any institution of learning that would allow such absurdity in their community had to be a great place for children.

Sister Cool Cat

It was Sister Cool Cat* who took me down to the school refectory to diagnose my mumps. She asked the cook (also a nun) to give me two pickles. I tried to swallow them and I couldn’t. They sent me home with the mumps.

She also oversaw the sewing class when she wasn’t busy being the school’s principal.

She didn’t bat an eyelash when I swore by saying “goddamnit.” I was making my first quilt.

My classmates went silent and stared from me to her.

“Is that absolutely necessary?”

“No Sister, it isn’t. I sewed the quilt up the wrong way and I’m too far along to fix it.”

“Life is full of disappointments. Your work will still be appreciated.”

Class went on.

*She earned her name on the soft ball field. She hit the home runs and picked a student to run the bases for her. I’m not making it up.

Sister Mary Raphael

Sister Mary Raphael left the cloister to teach us typing. She explained that God had called her to teach us typing.

At the beginning of each class, she would start us with this prayer.

“Oh God, let us use our hands and our fingers well. Amen.”

The exuberant Amen from the class made me think I was in a Pentecostal church instead of a Catholic school. Sister would smile, then the timed typing sessions began. The room was thunderous with the noise of pounding keys.

This was one of the Co-ed classes with Saint Thomas Academy. These students needed an easy grade and a chance to check out the opposite sex. The other Co-ed options were Spanish, French, Chemistry, or Biology.

We learned on Royal manual typewriters. If we improved we moved to the elite font typewriters.

The students who needed extra help got a session with Sister Mary Raphael. They got paired with a better typist to learn better typing techniques. There wasn’t any time for idle fingers.

The students who typed over 60 wpm got to use the electric typewriters with a daisy-wheel stationed at the back of the classroom. They were soon typing 100 words a minute.

The reason for their success? They had taken piano lessons.

My private meeting with Sister Mary Raphael was a revelation.

“Margaret, you won’t improve your typing speed until you stop reading what you are typing, but I can see that you enjoy learning.”

She was absolutely right. Sister might be naïve, but she was observant.

“I want to you to try to get up to 50 wpm with no errors on a timed test. Look at the letters you are typing, not the word. If you get to 60 wpm, you can get a job when you leave here.”

Sister was thinking about a future I hadn’t even considered.

She wanted her students to have choices in what we wanted our lives to be.

Girl Guide

Later, I became the girl chosen to orient new students through their first week at school. It started in middle school when a new student with cerebral palsy came to our classroom. She was absolutely brilliant and got As in all her subjects except physical education.

She still had to participate in sports. Could she ever spike a volleyball!

Her speech deficit was minimal. Though she stuttered and was hard to understand, if you listened carefully her answers were right.

We were such good friends I invited her up to our family’s lake cabin.

Her parents were so certain something terrible would happen, they provided a special life vest that made her look like a pumpkin.

We had a great time paddling around. There was a minor hiccup when her sanitary napkin floated out on the lake. I retrieved it and put it in the trash.

In the 9th grade, I was paired with an upperclassman for the first month of high school. After a week, I was in tears when she gave me advice on how to pick up boys at the roller rink. I begged for somebody else.

The older girls confided in me: “It’s just for two weeks. You’re the only one who doesn’t freak out with weird stuff. Come on. She doesn’t have any friends in her grade.”

It really was only a month and most roller rinks were going out of business. No harm. No foul.

I loved the nuns. The girls — not so much.

I wasn’t the smartest girl in class, but I stood up for my sister. She said such wacky things that she had everyone laughing. She loved the attention and finally being part of a social group.

Once, in the locker room, I started screaming at the girls. They were staring at my sister in the shower and making fun of both of us.

I just yelled and yelled and yelled — loud enough for the PE teacher and the on-duty Sister to intervene.

We were taught to tell the truth, which the girls did when questioned.

“Girls, you know what you did was wrong. We will inform your parents.”

They asked no one to apologize.

“Margaret, we can understand why you are angry, but you will not always be there to fight your sister’s battles for her. She will have to learn to do this for herself. That is what our school is for; to prepare our students for life in the real world. Not to hide from its tribulations.”

The Nun on the Stairs

One nun taught us how to walk down the stairs in an evening gown without tripping. She wore the old habit and had vast experience.

We laughed when she suggested it.

“When we dress up we’ll be wearing miniskirts.”

She asked us to think about a special occasion where we would want to be in an evening gown. The other girls all said at the prom, but when it came to me I said when I win my Oscar.

“Alright. Get up there and show us.”

She had me begin at the top of the stairs and showed me how to lift up my skirt and hold the handrail lightly, as I walked down.

“Did you trip?”

“No, Sister.”

What a sweet way to prise out our special dreams. We gave her a group hug and Sister giggled along with us.

Sister Jean Charlotte

I named my daughter after my history teacher, Sister Jean Charlotte. She was tall and drop-dead gorgeous.

We liked to interrupt class to ask her if she had ever been on a date and if anybody had ever proposed to her. We couldn’t understand why someone that beautiful would have chosen convent life.

Finally, she relented. “Obviously, I will not get through this lesson today until I tell you all.”

“I did date a bit in high school and in college. I kept getting proposals of marriage too. All they saw was the face.”

“Girls, my vocation was to teach. You. Let’s get back to the lesson.”

Caterpillars into Butterflies

The Sisters’ attention to details made our lessons memorable.

I remember a science class out on the grass. The lesson was on the life cycle of the Monarch butterfly. She had a monarch caterpillar which was munching a milkweed leaf. She described the process and showed us the chrysalis where the monarch’s spots were visible.

She was teaching us more than a butterfly’s life cycle. She was helping us envision our own. The Sisters knew the world was changing and that women would insist on choosing their own destiny.

The Sisters were hilarious, compassionate, tough, and showed us how we could be too.

Margie Pearl enjoys sharing memories of the great women who led the way.