A Catholic Nun’s Story

Chapter 3 Both of her parents had high expectations of Margaret Mary. She was a serious student popular among her peers. There was a group of her friends who all lived in other apartment buildings on the same street, East 209th. They attended the neighborhood Catholic school staffed by nuns. These particular nuns wore white robes and stiff black veils on top of their white covered heads. All one could see were eyebrows, eyes, a nose, and a dour mouth. Margaret Mary took piano lessons every week. The lessons started when she was five years old at the wishes of her musician father. Fear and nervousness plagued her at the Spring piano recitals. Margaret Mary was not very self-confident. There was an old ebony upright piano in the apartment that was tuned every year by the portly piano man, Mr. Ed. It was an ugly piece of furniture against gray painted walls. Margaret Mary had to practice new music pieces after school every day. Vincent came to realize that his daughter did not have the natural ability that he possessed. Vincent was able to play a song by listening to the melody (play by ear). Margaret Mary continued with piano lessons as well as practicing for ten more years. The greatest benefit of all those lessons was Margaret Mary’s ability to read music and play simple tunes for the rest of her life. In October, the young girls in the seventh grade were recruited to help in the sacristy of the Church affiliated with the school. The sacristy is the room behind the altar and sanctuary. The altar is where a priest says Mass. Margaret Mary and her friends volunteered. They would spend 30 minutes of their lunch hour “working” in the sacristy. They would gather and chat as adolescents do. Dusting the furniture and sweeping the floor took all of five minutes. The nun in charge of the sacristy and all of its contents was Sister Gertrude, a young, new nun who taught second graders. Sister Gertrude, tall and thin with long, black rosary beads hanging off her black belt, became a hero of sorts to Margaret Mary. Normally there was no outside contact with the nun in the classroom. This situation was different. There were conversations with Sister Gertrude about the weather, the basketball game, and the tests on Friday. Sister Gertrude always asked her these questions. Margaret Mary had found a substitute for the one-on-one attention she did not get from her parents. Very slowly she was developing a liking for Sister Gertrude. She looked forward to lunchtime every day and enjoyed talking with her new idol. Back at home, as the eldest of her siblings, three brothers, Margaret Mary reacted to the pressure of responsibility very willingly. She was in charge of dinner and bedtime for the two youngest – the three-year old and the infant. Seventh grade homework was not a challenge, just busy work. That left her with time for chores, such as washing the dishes and drying them and putting them all away. The oldest brother, John, was in fifth grade. He had a paper route that kept him away from the chores associated with dinnertime. That same sense of responsibility spilled over to the sacristy job. She was a keen observer and learned exactly what to do with the clothes, called vestments, that the priests wore for daily Mass. The chasuble, the stole, the amice, the alb became new vocabulary words for Margaret Mary. There were wide horizontal drawers about three inches deep to store the different colors of the vestments lying flat in the drawer. Some were everyday vestments and others were special occasion vestments. She kept the drawers very tidy and organized. It didn’t take long for her to learn the way the vestments were laid out for the priests, who lived in the rectory - a two-story building adjacent to the Church. Another task in the Church that took a lot of time was cleaning the brass candelabras that held five candles placed on either side of the altar. At the base of each candle was a round, clear glass dish that filled with the melted dripping wax. Margaret Mary and her friends cleaned those little glass dishes on Fridays. One side of the sacristy on the lower level was for the altar boys who wore cassocks and surplices. Some of these clothes were always thrown on the floor and the girls had to hang them up. A couple of the girls dropped out of the sacristy volunteer job by the time they reached eighth grade. There were new seventh graders that needed to be trained. Margaret Mary was given that responsibility. Conversations with Sister Gertrude continued every day throughout the second year. By this second year she became curious about the woman behind the veil. Where did she grow up? What was her real name? Did she have brothers and sisters? Eventually Margaret Mary actually recieved answers to all those questions. What a violation of boundaries! Sister Gertrude perhaps had no idea of the relationship she was forging with this impressionable teenager – or did she?