Free Life With Mother Superior by Jane Trahey Page B

been told that this made “a beautiful tableau.” When this part had been accomplished, pairs of us started marching. As we reached a marker Roughhouse had hidden, the pair split and headed each toward the last girl in the honor section, who stood single file in a long row. Every “bead” was instructed to fan out a bit each time, so that our Rosary had rather a fat, rounded look. We were marching along beautifully to “All Hail to Dear Mary” when something happened up in the first Mystery. In my bones I knew that Mary was up there, and chances were that she was causing the disturbance. I was completely right. It was just her luck to get her foot in the ninth hole. Roughhouse had never taken the function of a golf course into consideration. As Mary got her foot in, she fell down and the Our Fathers in back of her fell on top of her, and so on, until the next “Glory Be” realized that she had better detour.
    Roughhouse almost fainted. Mother Superior looked most hot and most displeased. The audience was sympathetic and all the girls quickly got back on their feet, except Mary, who took a little longer as she had to get her foot out of the ninth hole. By the time she got up, she was red as a beet with anger, and somewhat confused. Where on earth she belonged, she couldn’t tell, since the Living Rosary had gone right on living without her. She ducked into the nearest place she could find, crushing herself between an “Our Father” and a first “Hail Mary.” As a “Glory-Be-to-the-Father,” the entire school wondered just what she would do. If she switched and became a “Hail Mary,” there would be eleven to that decade.
    When the hymn ended, Lillian began, in her golf-course voice, to shout her message. It was a hot, windy day—the spectators clustered under the trees, but we stood in the sun. It was certainly not as pleasant as the cool park across from the Cathedral. By the time we worked our way around to Mary, even the audience was wondering what would happen. When her moment arrived, she merely shouted “Amen.” The crowd was delighted. Even Mother Superior was said to have laughed—but Roughhouse Rosie did not take it so lightly.
    Roughhouse gave Mary a good shake when Benediction was over. I think she would have cracked her, but Mother Superior stepped in and said, “I don’t think Mary put her foot in the hole on purpose—and it turned out beautifully, Sister, just beautifully.”
    Roughhouse didn’t believe this at all and sulked all the way home. It wasn’t really until the newspaper gave it a glowing review—due largely to the fact that the editor and the mayor and the citizens preferred the Living Rosary out on the golf course—that Roughhouse felt that all her effort was not in vain. The devotions had come off, if she said so herself, “rather well.”
     

Chapter Nine: Sister Liguori
     
    We knew something had happened. No one rang the morning bell; only Sister Ethelreda, the tall postulant, came and wakened us, one by one.
    “Hush, wake up,” she whispered, “get dressed and try to be quiet.”
    “What’s the matter?” we all asked.
    “Get up, get up, be quiet, I haven’t time for questions.”
    “What’s up, Sister Ethelreda?”
    The place was either on fire or we were at war with China, as Sister Mary William had predicted.
    “It’s Sister Liguori, she’s dead,” she whispered, and tears flooded her pale gray eyes.
    “Dead,” we all breathed back, shocked by the very word.
    “Yes, God rest her soul, she died in the night.”
    Mary and I sat back on our beds and contemplated this totally unexpected news. Sister Liguori was the only “nice” teacher we had. She taught geometry and she was so bright and nice to us, we simply felt it pointless to pull any of our tricks on her. Without our even realizing, we had become not only fond of her but fond of geometry as well.
    “Does this mean we won’t have geometry today?” Florence asked. She seemed saddened, not so