The Left Hand of the Father: Kindergarten

In Childhood, Creative Nonficiton, Family, Narrative on 30 November 2009 with 2 comments

Most adults were amused and bewil­dered by my pre­co­cious ways at only four years old, but by September 1st, 1981, my mother had enough of my con­stant ques­tions and demands for expla­na­tions and decided it was high time I went to kinder­garten so she could have a break. Trouble was, most schools required that chil­dren be five years old by September 1st to begin kinder­garten. But one local Catholic school had a cut-off date of December 1st.

Seeing as how my birth­day wasn’t until the 16th, you’d think that would have posed a prob­lem. But my mother was a resource­ful woman, and she sim­ply got a hold of my birth cer­tifi­cate and erased that 6 in 16 right off the page, mak­ing my birth­day effec­tively December 1st. That’s prob­a­bly the first thing I really remem­ber learn­ing: forgery.

And that’s how I came to be enrolled at St. Francis de Sales Catholic ele­men­tary school under the tute­lage of Mrs. Parker and Sister Conrad.

Sister Conrad was about a hun­dred years old and as mad at the world as a blind man at a wet t-shirt con­test. Her favorite pas­times were whap­ping kids with a ruler and pray­ing loudly for our ever­last­ing souls when­ever we dared behave like chil­dren. I was ter­ri­fied of her and avoided her as much as pos­si­ble, which I’m sure she appre­ci­ated. Nevertheless, as fate would have it, Sister Conrad and I were to be together engraved in the annals of time and St. Francis de Sales, because she believed in tor­ment and I believed in per­sonal assault.

My par­ents and I played a game every school­-day morn­ing; as soon as I was out of the car, I’d race my father’s black Cadillac down the street. I’d run with all my might along­side the chain link fence that sep­a­rated my school from the street while my father drove as slowly as he could so I could beat him to my class­room door. I didn’t know that at the time of course. I pumped my lit­tle legs like all the demons in Hell were chas­ing me, and all I knew was that I was the swiftest girl in the world; I could out­run the fastest slug and my daddy’s black Cadillac. And when I arrived at my class­room door, once again the cham­pion, I’d be out of breath and full of con­fi­dence because if I could out­run a car, I could do any­thing.

This par­tic­u­lar morn­ing, how­ever, Sister Conrad was stand­ing at the class­room door when I got there. She fetched me by the ear and dragged me into the room scold­ing me, for there was no run­ning allowed in school! Treacherous! Horrible! Disobedient girl! There is noth­ing worse to an old, Irish Catholic nun than dis­obe­di­ence, and break­ing school rules was just about the most brazen thing one could imagine.

Only, there was one thing the Irish Catholic nuns at St. Francis de Sales hated worse than dis­obe­di­ence, and that was left-handedness. Being left-handed was a mark of Satan; we weren’t sup­posed to use our left hands for any­thing at all if we could help it. I wasn’t left-handed, thank the Lord, but the small­est boy in my class, Clippy, was, and boy did he ever catch Hell for it.

Every time Sister Conrad saw Clippy writ­ing with his left hand, she’d sneak up on him and smack his hand with a ruler. Humiliated, Clippy would switch the pen­cil to his right hand, head ducked low, and try piti­fully to write. After a lit­tle while, though, he’d always switch back to his dom­i­nant hand. Learning to write was hard enough when we were four and five; I can’t imag­ine how hard it must have been for Clippy to have to learn to write with his off hand.

The same day as my unfor­tu­nate morn­ing run-in with Sister Conrad, I for­got my lunch at home. Kindergarteners did not go to the cafe­te­ria, and if we for­got our lunch, we were shit outta luck. Luckily for me, my best friend Jaimie offered to save the day and share her peanut but­ter sand­wich with me. We sat next to each other, happy as clams, munch­ing on our sand­wich halves.

Clippy appeared from the class­room with a mis­chie­vous grin on his face. “Hey Amber,” he said, “you wanna see what I can do?”

The answer to that ques­tion is always yes. “Sure,” I said, mouth full of peanut butter.

Clippy pulled from his brown lunch sac a plas­tic sand­wich baggy, to which he had tied a GI Joe fig­urine. Eyes wide as saucers, he threw the sand­wich bag into the air and we watched in rapt joy as the sand­wich bag mag­i­cally bal­looned into a para­chute, gen­tly float­ing the GI Joe to the ground.

It was prob­a­bly the coolest thing I had seen in all my five years of life on Earth, and Clippy was absolutely beam­ing he was so proud. I was about to clap when Sister Conrad snatched Clippy by the ear. “Clippy, what do you think you’re doing? Is that garbage you just threw on the ground?”

“No ma’am!” Clippy pleaded. “It’s not, it’s not, it’s — ”

“I know per­fectly well what it is, boy! Should we add lying to your list of offense for the day? Shall we?” And she swat­ted him with her ruler, accus­ing him of littering.

“Now you pick that up and throw it in the trash where it belongs,” she said, eyes hard as stones. “And don’t ever let me catch you lit­ter­ing again.”

“But Sister Conrad — ”

She swat­ted him again for inter­rupt­ing her and for gen­eral inso­lence. Defeated and on the verge of tears, Clippy picked up his GI Joe fig­urine and makeshift para­chute and deposited them into the trash.

“And what is going on over here?” she asked, turn­ing to Jaimie and me. “Are you eat­ing Jaimie’s food?” she asked me, incredulous.

I knew bet­ter than to argue or explain; I’d seen Clippy get hit enough to know how use­less it was. I merely nod­ded. “Yes.”

“Horrible lit­tle girl!” she cried. “Get out of here! Give Jaimie back her sand­wich! Go out to the play­ground; I can’t even look at you! Stealing other people’s food. I won’t have it!”

I handed Jaime back her sand­wich; I couldn’t look her in the eye. I had only taken three bites of sand­wich, and I was so hun­gry. I turned and walked off toward the play­ground, my mind filled with thoughts of Clippy and his poor toy in the garbage, and my ears filled with the sounds of my stom­ach rumbling.

I hated Sister Conrad. I hated her, and wished she would die. As I walked out to the play­ground, I found myself pray­ing with all my heart for the good Lord to snatch Sister Conrad from the surly bonds of earth and whisk her off to Heaven where she could sit at the LEFT hand of God the Father Almighty (just because that would have burned her up real good) and to keep her far away from Clippy and his wicked­ness and glo­ri­ous friends who share their peanut but­ter sandwiches.

But appar­ently it wasn’t enough for Sister Conrad to embar­rass me and send me off to the play­ground half starv­ing; I was no more than twenty paces away when I heard her behind me, fol­low­ing me, yelling at me in her hor­ri­ble, raspy, old hag voice.

“Back in my day we’d have got­ten a good spank­ing for steal­ing other people’s food! ‘Thou shalt not steal’ the Bible says! And don’t think I didn’t see­ing you encour­ag­ing that hor­ri­ble Clippy to lit­ter our beau­ti­ful school! I just don’t know what is wrong with chil­dren today. Nothing a good pad­dling wouldn’t cure, I tell you what, you spoiled brat!”

And at that, I’d had it. I’d had enough of Sister Conrad. I’d had enough of her ear-pulling, hand-swatting, garbage-spewing, tor­tur­ous, hate­ful ways. I was so angry, so humil­i­ated, so hun­gry that I did what any hot-blooded lit­tle five-year-old child would do.

I turned around and punched the liv­ing day­lights out of her. I got her right in her gut with all the strength my tiny lit­tle body could muster.

And a week later, Sister Conrad up and died of a heart attack.

We found out at chapel, and when my class­mates heard the news, sev­eral of them turned to me and made chok­ing sounds, or drew their index fin­gers across their throats in a slic­ing motion. “You killed Sister Conrad,” boy whis­pered to me.

The idea that I killed Sister Conrad left me in a tizzy. Could I really have killed her? Was it pos­si­ble? For days on end kids came up to me on the play­ground and called me the witch-killer, the nun-slayer. I could get no relief. I was marked.

My mother noticed some­thing strange about my man­ner and after a few days she asked me about it. When I could hide my ques­tion no longer I blurted out, “Mom, did I kill Sister Conrad because I punched her?”

My mother drew me to her chest, stroking my hair, shak­ing her head. “No, baby,” she assured me, her voice sooth­ing. “Sister Conrad was an old woman, and it was just her time to go. Now, you shouldn’t have punched her; that was a very bad thing to do. But you had noth­ing to do with her dying.”

I pulled away and looked up at my mother. “I didn’t?” She shook her head. Crestfallen, I turned away. “Darn.”

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