This is when Sister A sprang into action. She was so furious that the hair under her veil was soaked and sweat dripped down the back of her neck. If there wasn’t a commandment that said, Do Not Kill, she would have her hands around Margaret’s meaty and evil little throat in a second.
She came around the corner so fast that Meggie had no idea what hit her, and she was definitely hit. Sister A backhanded her across the face, and there was an instant welt on her right cheek the exact size of Sister’s knuckles. The slap took the wind out of her and for a moment she thought she would faint.
No words were spoken. Sister A grabbed Meggie by the arm and dragged her across the gym, down the brown-tiled hallway, and threw her, actually threw her, into the teacher’s lounge. No one Meggie knew had ever been into the teacher’s lounge, and this is where Meggie discovered that nuns go to the bathroom. This is where she also discovered the potential cruelty of the human heart.
The room was empty. Sister Aloysius backed Meggie against the concrete wall and pushed her face against Meggie’s. Meggie could see down her throat and she sensed something so horrible that she had a hard time breathing. Evil. She sensed something evil.
“Who do you think you are?” the nun hissed. “Do you really think you can be who you want to be? Do you?”
Meggie could not speak. She was afraid she was going to wet her pants. She prayed, because prayers were supposed to save you, but there was no saving her from Sister Aloysius.
“Girls are nothing, absolutely nothing. We are here to serve the men, the priests, the men who will be lawyers and politicians and who will always rule the world. We clean the bathrooms and take what is left. What makes you think you can have the kind of life you talk about?”
There was no answer from Meggie, who was crying like she had never cried before. What if Sister was right? What if she couldn’t be who she wanted to be?
“You’re A’s mean nothing and your talk means nothing. Until you humble your spirit, you will have and be nothing. Girls? You are crazy. We are dust on men’s feet, and it’s time you realize your sinful ways and beg God for forgiveness.”
Begging was something Meggie thought she could do just then. She did not want to be hit again, and she wasn’t. What happened next was worse than hitting.
Sister A opened the supply closet, the closet with no lights in it, no place to sit, no bathroom, and she pushed Meggie inside of it. Without a word, she locked the door and left.
Meggie stayed ion the room for five hours. She heard people moving outside the door and heard the bus leave, but Sister Aloysius knew that Meggie walked home. Meggie cried and she prayed and she begged God to forgive her and she promised that she would do whatever it was He wanted her to do. She didn’t have to go to college and save the world. She didn’t have to go to law school. She would cook and clean and do whatever she had to, if only she could get out of the dark and scary room. She promised over and over again, for what seemed the longest moments of her life.
When she heard the door unlock, she waited before she pushed it open, and then ran all the way home.
Margaret Joan Callie never told anyone about what happened that day. She never spoke to Cynthia behind the bleachers or anyone else ever again about what she believed or didn’t’ believe. She sat perfectly still during Mass and she slowly carved away the edges of her dreams until they fit into a box that was designed by someone else.
~Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn by Kris Radish
This doesn't have anything to do with being Catholic, or female, or a dreamer.
It has everything to do with the fact that everyone seems to have defining moments like this that shape who they become. Moments in childhood, moments in adulthood, moments that change the course of our lives, our expectations for how those lives will be lived.
Some of us never recover.
Some of us nurture unconsciously an invisible spark that ignites later, when the time is right, when we have had enough of the limitations we built ourselves, based on the thoughts we played over and over for decades about something that happened, something just like this.
The human spirit can only take so much. We either curl up, numb out and die to one degree or another, or one day find ourselves unable to proceed as usual. Rage may be the fuel that takes us over that expanse from impossible to possible. Whatever the fuel or incentive is, an amazing resolve appears seemingly out of nowhere that carries us through to the other side.
We make it through to the other side.
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