Deja Vu In A Dream: A True Short Story Read online

  “It’s the same word, run, three times.”

  Here, probably, was the point where the Sister decided that I was a smart-ass and should be molded into decent society, smoothed over like clay into the desired shape.

  “Read the whole sentence.”

  “I read it .”

  She squinted at me, probably torn between smoothing me over and smacking me down, either technique helpful when molding clay.

  “What’s the first word?”

  “Run.”

  “What’s the next word?”

  “It’s the same.”

  “Say the next word!”

  “Run!” And you know so, I wanted to bark back.

  “What’s the next word.”

  “It’s run!”

  “Now, read the sentence!”

  No, I thought, that’s not something I would ever say.

  “Read the sentence,” she growled!

  “I’m not saying that,” I promised in a quiet tone, mostly to myself. It sounded just too silly.

  She told me to march right out of that classroom immediately and wait for her in the empty hallway, which I did, taking the opportunity to examine the paint chips flaking off the wall over the coat racks. They looked like they might fall all over our coats, and I wondered when it might happen. I checked the coats but didn’t find any flakes, then, aha, there on the floor near the wall were a few chips, and I scanned upward trying to figure out exactly where on the wall they had come from and what had dislodged them. I thought of pounding on the wall to see if any flakes fell, but I knew Sister Anthony would respond negatively.

  I was a compulsive explorer. My favorite new world at the time--at least during class time--was the huge restroom in the cavernous basement where I could be alone to think and wonder, down down down all those winding half-flights of stairs, down into a massive, dark space encased in concrete, with only tiny windows at the top of the walls to let light in. That’s where I discovered a gray concrete urinal four feet high and wall to wall, a community pee trench where a whole troop of boys could relieve themselves shoulder to shoulder in a flat two minutes of recess, shooting high for the fun of it, an interesting invention for someone who had always tinkled in the home toilets of middle-class America where you have to aim low. Not since I was introduced to the outhouse on my grandfather’s farm did I gaze upon anything so odd yet practical.

  But before I could go spelunking, I had to learn some French, which wasn’t very interesting to me. I had heard the language spoken often at my grandparents house, but it sounded like mealy mouthing to me, and I had no desire to speak it. The French language was not an exclusive part of every subject in the St. Louis curriculum, certainly not for Dick and Jane, but it was required by classroom etiquette. As often as possible, I raised my hand and requested a journey to the restrooms during boring parts of classroom instruction, those parts containing no new information, only drill and repetition--which means most of it--and I always garbled the French except for the “ah toilette” at the end of my request.

  Invariably, the Sister would correct my French, then ask, “Numero un ou numero deux?” Meaning, “number one or number two?”

  No way would I ever acknowledge in public that I had anything to do whatsoever with “numero deux,” that stinky phenomenon best not to mention.

  “Numero un.”

  The pronunciation of un in French sounded more like a grunt involving numero deux, but so be it. I had to say it to get to the basement, though my escapes from the classroom didn’t succeed for very long. One day, as I searched too long in the basement for the source of what sounded like a water leak, a trickle like a mountain stream, I heard footsteps and saw Sister Anthony coming down the stairs.

  “You! What have you been doing?”

  She didn’t wait for an explanation, which I probably couldn’t have provided anyway, since I knew I had overstepped my mandate. She slapped me on the side of the head a few times and directed me back up the stairs, following close behind and slapping all the way.

  And, so it went.

  After the Dick and Jane reading debacle, after I had satisfied myself concerning the paint chips, and as I examined the dark edges of the floor caused by wax build-up, so very much darker than the center of the hall, which had apparently been worn bright by traffic, the Sister came out of the classroom, and I looked up at her.

  Uh-oh.

  She grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me, pushed me away, then grabbed me again, shook me silly while she babbled in French, then pinned me against the wall. She bent her face very close to mine, and asked quietly in English, through tight lips, “What am I going to do with you?” Then she shook me again and told me to get right back into that classroom where I belonged--like it was my fault I wasn’t in there.

  In answer to her question, what was she going to do with me? I had no idea, though I wondered about it. I never imagined that anybody was supposed to “do something” with me, as if I was an object, like stuff. I did things with stuff all the time, put books on a shelf, played with toys, put on mittens, ate food, because I had learned that everything had its place, its usefulness--but, did people “do something” with… people?

  They certainly did. Sister Rose shut a little blonde girl into a closet until the poor thing cried and cried and finally banged around and screamed hysterically until she was released, then fell on her knees at the nun’s feet, abject and begging, pleading and promising tearfully never to neglect her homework again, which was a very embarrassing scene--poor girl. I wondered what could be so horrible about a small closet in a classroom, and I got my chance to find out, probably because I habitually paid more attention to the little blonde girl sitting behind me than to readings in Dick and Jane, Volume One Thousand Forty-two, it seemed, which was pretty much the same as Volume One.

  The horror of the closet amounted to exactly nothing. Maybe that’s why I was intrigued with the little blonde girl who kept me wondering. When my turn in the closet arrived, I spent my time exploring it, but I couldn’t see anything in the blackness, so I had to use my sense of touch and my nose to satisfy my curiosity. It was apparently used for storage of papers and cleaning supplies, which I had originally suspected. Also, it served as the repository for the nun’s outer garments, which I sniffed and wondered if the scent was common to all Sisters. Was it Sister smell? Was it some kind of exotic soap scent unknown to the rest of us? I stayed in there as long as the Sister pleased, finally getting bored and sitting on a vacuum cleaner, until she opened the door and abruptly ordered me back to my seat. She was disappointed, I think, that the punishment had no discernible effect, and I gazed at the little blonde girl with increased wonder.

  In addition to physical punishment and such fright tactics as the closet, the Sisters doled out lots of shame and humiliation to wayward pupils. The Sisters had especial veneration for the “Holy Mother, Mary, Mother of God,” assuring us that “The Holy Mother would be ashamed of you” if you chewed Bazooka gum in class. I didn’t think that the Holy Mother would care in the least about me chewing Bazooka, but I guessed that it may be just my personal point of view. “Jesus will punish you,” was a common refrain, though, most often, the Sisters didn’t wait for Jesus to do it; they did it themselves. Sometimes, humiliation could be accomplished by turning an offending pupil into an object of ridicule, as when the Sister ordered you to spit your bubble gum into the palm of her hand, then lodged it on the tip of your nose and ordered you to leave it there until after recess, kind of like Clarabelle the Clown’s bulbous red nose. Indeed, some kids tried to join in the punishment, standing in solidarity with the Sister, the highest authority in sight, by pointing and saying “Ha-ha.” Some kids just turned away, embarrassed by the scene. Others watched from the background, thanking God they weren’t you, the target of disapproval. As for me, whenever I was the culprit, I thanked God I wasn’t one of them, one of those conformist mockingbirds who sang, “ha-ha,” like little chicks in a row, trailing behind mamma b
ird’s ass much too closely. Meanwhile, my buddies and I had fun with the gum fiascos. I made some funny faces for them, crossing my eyes and rolling my head as though trying to see the gum on my nose, and it was good for a few laughs--surreptitious, of course.

  My aversion to school, once begun, never ceased. I loved learning new things, but how many times can you learn to spell cat before you get fed up? First, you had to prove you learned it, then, before they would give you any new information, you had to cool your heels while every last idiot in the class learned it, which could take quite a while. The process made me want to scream.

  “It’s C-A-T, you idiot! Let’s go! Let’s move on!”

  The repetition was torture, and if you were driven to distraction, like resorting to watching your idiotic buddies make funny faces, you could be singled out and punished. It was so tedious that anything, any distraction was welcome, even those absurd “duck and cover” drills of the fifties, when we were instructed to crawl under our desks and cover our heads with our hands in defense of atomic bombs which may, at any moment, come raining down from the bomber planes of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  More down to earth, a regimented, mid-morning snack break was a welcome reprieve, when you could stand on a special step along the side wall to eat an apple or an orange that your mother had tucked into your lunchbox. I always had to sit out these breaks because my mother never prepared my lunch. She worked in the office of a factory near the center of town and disappeared from the house before my siblings and I scrambled into the kitchen for breakfast, which, for me, often consisted of leftover coffee from the table, both cups of which I would grab and gulp, wads of soft white bread, and a tall glass of water, spiked with several heaping spoonfuls of sugar, which was delicious, though perhaps a bit too stimulating. My father, as the owner of a gas station business around the corner, popped in and out of the house each morning to ensure that we were on our way, and he sprinkled a handful of coins into my big sister’s hand, so she could watch over her little brothers and buy us lunch at a diner near the school. That’s how our first two meals of the day were accomplished.

  One day, though, I thought it might be a good idea to take advantage of one of those snack breaks, and I stepped into the line-up at the side wall among the fruit and cookie eaters. I had a box of licorice wrapped in papers resembling a pack of cigarettes, so I hopped up alongside the other kids and began unwrapping and chewing.

  The Sister, ever vigilant, perked up. “Tommy St. Laurent, what are you eating there?”

  “It’s licorice.”

  “That’s candy. Candy is not food. Candy is not a snack.”

  I begged to differ. Candy is something you eat, as in, you chew it and swallow it and it gets digested, not to mention that it reappears as numero deux at the other end of the line. “Candy is food,” I said uncertainly, fearing that my logic may be flawed.

  “Candy is not food. Give me those. Now get back to your seat.”

  So, fine. Within the Halls of St. Louis, candy was not food, but why did she have to confiscate my licorice--and never give it back?

  I couldn’t always get away with my schemes, though I succeeded often enough to be encouraged. One day, I had a store-bought cupcake left over from lunch and I decided to save it to eat during class. I would conceal it in my desk, one of those old-time desks without a hinged lid, just an opening above the lap, a hole in the top corner for a jar of ink, and a groove for a pencil (a perfect landing pad for my imaginary rocket ship, which exactly resembled a pencil). I could eat the cupcake a pinch at a time without getting caught, I was sure. But, not long into the session, even before I took the first pinch, I heard a clicking sound coming from the hallway through the open door of the classroom. I knew the sound and recognized the pattern. It was a dog exploring the hallway, it’s claws clicking on the tiles as it went along. I knew, too, what the dog was doing, as all dogs did; it was looking for food. As the clicking came closer, the Sister turned to look at the doorway, and I followed her glance. Within a few clicks, we saw a large dog in the doorway. It stopped there and tossed its nose in the air repeatedly, sniffing.

  Oh no, I thought.

  But yes, I was caught. The dog could smell my cupcake all the way from the classroom door. As the Sister and the rest of the class watched, stunned, the dog clicked into the room, up the aisle and directly to my desk, sniffing excitedly above my lap. What lame luck! Of all the few stray dogs in the world, and of all the buildings they might have snuck into, and of all the classrooms in the building the dog might have wandered into, this dog managed to find its way directly to the scene of my crime. I pushed its head away repeatedly, whispering, “”Get. Go away. Get, get,” but I couldn’t deter the intrusive nose, and the Sister piped in, “Tommy, do you have something to eat in your desk?”

  Caught!

  “A cupcake,” I confessed.

  “You know very well you’re not supposed to have food in your desk. Take the cupcake and lead the dog out of the building, then give it the cupcake and get back to class.”

  I did as instructed, except that, face to face outside the doors of the school, I scolded the ignorant dog, wagging my finger and trying to give it a lecture, which it paid no attention to (which only made me like the excited pooch the more). I assured the mutt that it would not get the whole cupcake, no matter how much I sympathized with it, regardless of Sister’s orders, then I gave the hungry comrade half of a cupcake and stuffed the rest in my mouth before heading back to class.

  The Sisters seemed to disapprove of all unofficial pleasure. You could smile and feel good when they patted you on the back, or gave you a holy picture as a reward for learning a lesson, or even when you sang Frere Jacques joyfully, but God forbid you and your pals enjoyed a private joke. They demanded to know, right now, right this minute, what was so funny. “None of your business,” was not an acceptable answer, though it would be an honest one, so you had to invent some harmless triviality and take your punishment. As the Sisters would no doubt agree, they were not in the classroom to generate happiness. They were there to mold us, to fit us seamlessly into society, and they preferred soft clay to hard heads full of fun ideas. I was surprised at their disapproval of me, but I disapproved of them in turn, so I guess we came out even.

  Yet, I could never reach the conclusion that all nuns were just ill-natured sourpusses. Though they rarely smiled, I had seen it happen on occasion. Not only that, but my father’s sister was a nun, a Sister of the Order of the Presentation of Mary. Her headdress differed from the Sisters of the Holy Cross whose adornments I thought looked ridiculous because they wore huge white circular fans around their heads, almost as big as manhole covers, maybe to resemble the halos of light in religious paintings, although, to me, it made each face look like a pork roast on a white plate--if not the center of some grotesque flower. The sisters of the Presentation of Mary wore only a white band like a barrette on the top of the head trimming a black veil (not covering the face). My Aunt’s official name was Sister Albert, after my grandfather, but I knew her only as Aunt Yola, her given name at birth. During her family visits, she was all smiles and pleasantries, and she seemed very tolerant of children’s wild behavior, even pleased by it. On one of her visits, she showed up at the edge of a pond where a bunch of my cousins and brothers busied ourselves skimming rocks on the water, unsupervised. We were surprised to see her and, somehow, got into a playful tussle with her, six boys between the ages of 6 and 10 against one nun. She invited us to keep attacking her and we obliged, even after she upped the ante by tossing one of us, fully clothed, into the pond. Several of us eventually took the plunge as she kept up the challenge, and it was outrageous fun. What could our parents say when we squished into the house soaking wet, ordinarily an occasion for a stern lecture? Hey, we objected, Aunt Yola did it, so what were they going to do? Lecture her? Ha-ha. Besides, I thought, it just goes to show you that God is on our side.

  Anyway, after the Sisters of the Holy Cross sl
apped me, pulled my hair, whacked my knuckles with rulers, stood me in corners, pinched my ears to drag me around and shook me by the collar for three years, I graduated to Sacred Heart Academy.

  I was coming up in the world.

  As a reluctant pupil of the Sisters’ school I had spotted the Brothers often, usually alone, crossing the schoolyards with their heads lowered, black robes kicking up around their legs, or leading silent ranks of boys to the Academy building. After my experience with the Sisters, I was not eager to join their ranks. From the third grade of the Sisters’ school, with Sacred Heart Academy looming, watching the Brothers occupy this dark city block, I knew this was no Doodyville, and Froggy would not be welcome.

  So, I had reservations about the Brothers of the Sacred Heart from the beginning. Their identifying symbol, their logo, as it were, was a human heart bound tightly by a braid of thorny vines, most often squeezing out graphic drops of blood. I remember it as a large lapel pin, rendered in silver, but it was often depicted in religious paintings on black velvet, glowing colorfully from the chest of Jesus Christ or, even more graphically, in the tattoos of bikers who hung around within two blocks of our school, tattoos which sometimes included flames erupting from the top of the heart. The symbol was a bit shocking for children, as were the graphic depictions of Jesus nailed to a cross, blood and all in full color, but it was part of the curriculum. At the Sisters’ school, they gave us religious pictures which included such images, like playing cards as rewards for good work, and St. Aloysius Church included a life-size crucifix painted in flesh colors and vivid streams of red blood, so that we had to wonder what kind of evil bastards would do such a thing to a profoundly decent man. We had no idea that the powerful forces of government were accustomed to murder when it comes to rival moralists, or rivals of any kind. To us, government was just a remote reality. It existed--like the sun and the moon and the tides. Dwight Eisenhower was the President, but the only thing I remember about him was that he once had a heart attack and the television told us what he had for breakfast in the hospital--as if anyone was interested in such masterful reportage. That, and once when a classmate handed me eight matchsticks (in those days, it was easy for kids to have a pocketful of wooden matches from the shelf over the gas stove) and challenged me to make them into a bald-headed golfer on the tabletop. The answer was IKE, Eisenhower’s nickname.