Free Dancing Naked at the Edge of Dawn by Kris Radish Page B

anticipation at recess to see who will be next. Her voice sounds like the voice of God, not that anyone at St. Monica's Grade School has ever heard the voice of God, but they know because Father Geparski told them it would be deep and strong and full of power, and if Father says it, then that's it—it's true. That's Sister Aloysius for sure, because her voice is deep and strong and full of power and she is always ready to whack someone upside the head.
    Here is what she does. Every day it's almost always someone different, except you can pretty much count on the fact that John Blakeman, Stevie Black and Martin DeBuris will get whacked several times a day because they are such terrible sinners. Sister likes to back them into a corner or against a wall. A wall close to a good corner is like the best place of all. Everyone knows what she is going to do, but there is something about this nun that scares the living hell out of the entire world. She has a river of meanness that is so deep, there is no bottom. Her bottom does, however, edge out on the cliffs of Hell. That is one thing everyone at St. Monica's knows for sure—the cliffs of Hell.
    Sister likes to sneak up. Everyone knows that too, but no one is ready. How can you be ready? Jesus was not even ready. He knew, but was He ready? Well, maybe He was ready, but we won't know for sure until we ask Him. So she sneaks up and grabs her daily pick by the collar. Everyone had a collar back then, and this was in the days when you could get whacked or punched or, as we know now, sexually abused, and it was okay because they were teaching us the Fear of God, so violence, well, that was okay. It was okay to be violent.
    Sister grabbed them and then she always had a book in her right hand, a very hard and solid book, and she would smack them in the head. Right in the head. Honest. She would smack them in the head, and when they had their eyes closed and would place their hands on top of that now painful place, she would step on their feet. She wouldn't just step on their feet, she would STEP on their feet until an explosion of pain made these boys, and an occasional girl, forget about the awful ache in their heads and wonder if they would ever be able to walk again.
    Meggie Callie knew about this and she walked on a tightrope every single day she attended St. Monica's. One false move at St. Monica's and you could be a dead duck or possibly crippled for the rest of your natural born life. Meggie had straight A's and her best friend's mother was the volunteer English writing coach, which usually meant the boys got help to prepare them for the rigors of high school and the girls wrote poems, but sometimes the girls did boy things, but not often enough. Hardly ever.
    Meggie had no idea that Sister A had been listening to her talk on the playground, in the bathroom and everywhere else there was a place to hide and listen. What Sister heard Meggie Callie say was that she was going to college and she was not going to be a teacher or a nun or work at a grocery store. She heard Meggie Callie say that she was going to be a doctor or maybe an astronaut or someone who traveled, like an anthropologist, who could look at how people lived and study their habits and determine things that no one else knew.
    Once Margaret Joan Callie even had the nerve to say that maybe she would run for some kind of government office so that she could change the world. She didn't want to be President, Meggie said one day behind the old bleachers, but she did want to be a politician who listened to people and who was there one day when someone decided to call, and the Senator would be right on the phone, saying, “Hey, how are ya?” Meggie also had the audacity to mention the fact that she wondered sometimes if there really was a God.
    This was a horrible sin. It was the worst sin. Meggie was talking to Cynthia Ann Hanlon and she had questions about everything.
    “Would God want us to be scared like this all the