Free Life With Mother Superior by Jane Trahey

procession of the three queens in white had entered the back door and proceeded to stand in front of the empty vases. The whole song was accompanied by the high weeping of Roughhouse Rosie, who stood in the back of the room. It must have been too much for Florence. She tripped and the crown went sailing—straight out of the open window.
    The whole class gasped. Florence looked death-like, Lillian looked as if she was going to jump into the burning fagots and Roughhouse Rosie left the room sobbing.
    News of our flowerless, crownless celebration spread throughout the school and it didn’t take long for Sister Gertruda to understand what her vision had been. However, before she could muster her ancient forces to track down the culprits, Mother Superior, in one grand sympathetic gesture put Roughhouse Rosie in charge of the school crowning. If this was the biggest succés-fou the school ever had in the way of May crownings, Roughhouse, in some way, might erase the insult Room 109 had given the Virgin. She tackled it with a fervor we had never recognized in her. Up till this May, St. Marks had been invited by the Cathedral in town to form the Living Rosary in the park adjacent to the Cathedral. This was all well and good, but there were two disadvantages to it—one which irritated the city’s devout Catholics and mothers and fathers of the students, the other just irritated every driver in the city.
    The first disadvantage to it was the park was small and no one could see the Living Rosary through the trees. Which meant that if Florence’s parents came to see her flounder through the Living Rosary, chances were, unless they were lucky, and on her side of the park, they wouldn’t lay eyes on her. The second disadvantage was that the streets around the park had to be closed and the pressures upon the mayor, who was Irish and Catholic, were anything but pleasant—so he made a proposition to Sister Rose Marie, who thought the idea was simply wonderful. He suggested taking us to the Municipal Golf Course on Sunday afternoon. This might have thrown the members, except they were almost all Irish and Catholic too, and this seemed little enough for them to sacrifice for the Living Rosary.
    The whole idea was that each child in the school became one bead on the Rosary. Since there were about seventy-five students in the school, this meant nine had to be sick or nine had to be flower queens. Roughhouse came up with a marvelous suggestion—the six honor students would recite in between each decade of the Rosary the story of the Joyful Mysteries. We could see the reciting written on the wall already. Lillian Quigley would do the First Joyful Mystery, which was the Annunciation; Ramona, the Visitation; Dede Riley, the Birth of Christ; Florence, the Presentation, and Ginger Wertheim, the Finding in the Temple. The rest of the beads would be made of seniors and juniors who would do Our Fathers, and the sophomores and freshmen would do Hail Marys. And, idiots like us were, without fail, going to do Glory-Be-to-the-Fathers, since that was the shortest prayer. Mary was a Glory-Be-to-the-Father at the end of the First Mystery and I was a Glory at the end of the Third Mystery. This way, we were not even within shouting distance of each other. The date was set, sunshine was consistently prayed for, and Roughhouse Rosie became a nervous wreck.
    We practiced daily on the school grounds, with hands clasped carefully in prayer position against our uninspiring bosoms. We were to wear our Sunday uniforms, which were white flannel instead of navy flannel, with red bow ties instead of black under the starched white collar. Of course, we would have starched white veils pinned in our limpid locks. There was something about St. Marks water that made my hair always seem a little lanker than usual. And it was hard to attach anything to my hair to make it stay. We would wear white stockings and white oxfords. We only wore these uniforms on special occasions