By: Geralynn Maisano Night Child When I was very young, before I went to school and the Physicist appeared to explain the world to me, I hated to sleep. No matter what I did during the day, no matter how active I was or how hard I played, I don't remember ever feeling tired as a small child. Bedtime was a dreaded ordeal. I hated surrendering to it. I was convinced that I was missing something, hat all the familiar things would be gone the next day when I woke up and I would never get them back again. Bedtime stories or songs did no good. I was constantly up. I wanted the hall light on. I wanted the hall light off. I was thirsty. I had to go to the bathroom. There was a witch living in the closet. Eventually, my parents would be driven to exasperation and screams of "GO TO SLEEP". And I eventually would fall asleep after what seemed like hours and hours of boring, dragging wakefulness. But sometimes Night Child would appear. Night Child was full of possibilities. She had an agenda I didn't understand, but I knew it was important. She welcomed the night and loved to explore it. Unlike me, who was afraid of the dark andof disobeying my parents. In fact, I was afraid of just about everything. Getting out of bed without permission was absolutely forbidden and I had been threatened with all sorts of dire fates if I ever did it. But Night Child was afraid of nothing. I would listen for my sister to get into bed and for her light to click off. Next my father, who had to work early the next morning but sometimes stayed up late to watch boxing on television, would climb heavily up the stairs in his work boots. I would hear my mother shutting and locking the doors and letting the dog out and back in for the last time. Then she would climb the stairs and all the lights would be out. The house would be plunged into mysterious, beckoning darkness. Night Child would wait patiently for everybody stop turning and tossing in their beds. Then she would slide out from under the covers, ever so cautiously and carefully. Her eyes were used to the dark and she could find her way easily across the carpet and into the hall. My parents' door was usually open and passing their room on the way to the stairs made my heart skip with terror. Night Child would pause after every footstep and wait, listening to the house and the sleepers in it breathe before letting me proceed. The stairs were tricky. The floorboards were old and tended to groan and squeak. But Night Child knew each and every one of them by their feel on my bare feet. She knew which ones to walk on and which to avoid. There was a large, curtainless window set high above the steep stairway. Night Child never let me look up at the window. She knew that Things looked into it at night and that I would be frightened if I saw them. Better I didn't look. I would hold my breath all the way down and keep my eyes obediently downcast. The bottom of the stairs opening into the living room was the best part. Moonlight would come pouring in through the sheer curtains and our living room was transformed into a magical cave. Trees close to the house would brush against the windows and shadows dance across the floor and over our shabby furniture, transforming it with a cover of shining lace. I would stand there and drink in the beauty. Sometimes Night Child would be satisfied and she would allow me to go back up the stairs. Other times we would proceed through the house to the kitchen. First I had to tiptoe over to the cellar door. Our dog slept on the cellar landing and I had to tell him it was me in case he heard me. I would lean against the door, smelling the old paint, and whisper to him as softly as I could. I would hear him snuffling, whiffing in my scent and then he would snort and lay down again. I loved being alone in the kitchen. The windows were smaller and not as much light came in, so I would feel my way about. I would run my hands over the cold metal of the chairs and table, and the warmer wood of the cabinets, experiencing things so familiar in the day in an entirely different way. Sometimes, with great care, Night Child would deftly and silently unlock the back door. This was a very scary moment, leaving the safety of the house. I would creep out onto the back porch, trembling with terror but obeying Night Child's urging. She was looking for something. Something that was missing, but I didn't know what. The night smelled glorious. It smelled like a brand new world that never experienced before. I would inhale it over and over and drink in how deep the darkness was under the trees. And it would almost, almost be there. The thing that Night Child craved. Something unfamiliar to me but something she knew and yearned for. She remembered something that I had forgotten. At last, when the air changed and I knew that the night was leaving, I would creep back into the house, up the stairs and into my bed. My feet would burrow gratefully into the warm covers and my legs would ache from the long journey. Then, at last, Night Child pronounced herself satisfied and I could fall asleep at night. Penguin Hell The Catholic Church was a central part of my childhood. And its influence would both inspire and haunt me throughout my whole life. My parents were certainly not well-to-do and I am sure that it was a big sacrifice on their part to send my sister and me to a private Catholic school, St. Brigette's. I yearned for school, REAL school. The school my big sister and her friends went to. Not insipid kindergarten with naptimes. I played school passionately and the fact that I had no playmates did not bother me at all. My dolls and stuffed animals were the "students" and "teachers" and I acted out all sort of exciting academic scenerios with them. I was not talkative, but when I did talk it was about school and all the wonderful things I was going to do there. I wasn't sure what those wonderful things were, but I couldn't wait to do them. My parents, who had been worried by the fact that I had no friends, were reassured by my eagerness to get to school. Surely I would become a normal child then! On the first day of school the first graders were permitted to wear "civilian" clothes. I wore my favorite yellow dress with a satin flowered collar that I considered the height of beauty. I spent most of the day admiring the flowers on my collar than anything else. Since I was a very pale, thin and rather old looking child with eyes that already had bags under them, I don't think yellow was a good choice. My first grade class had eighty children in it. Yes, I kid you not. Eighty. The town I grew up in, Woodgrove (as good as name as any) had a large Catholic population. Neighboring towns without the blessings of a Catholic school sent their children to St. Brigette's also. Huge classes were considered the norm and even a source of pride. Wimpy public school teachers could handle classes of 20 or 25, but a teaching Sister with God behind her could teach unlimited masses of children. My first grade teacher was Sister Anunciata. She was small and round and pudgy faced with spectacles. I remember she was so tiny that she was only a bit taller than me. She smiled a lot at the parents leading us into the classroom. She looked liked somebody's doting grandmother. In actuality she displayed the quiet, dedicated nastiness of a KGB interrogator. As soon as the parents left the classroom after depositing their little darlings in her care, the smiles disappeared until they were pasted on again for the next encounter with parents or visiting priests. The school was staffed by the Felician Sisters, an order of Polish origin. They wore black habits with white bibs in the front and starched headdresses that rose into two points, giving the appearance of horns. Many of the Sisters were Polish and English was their second language. Sister Anunciata spoke English with a thick, almost impenetrable Polish accent. St. Brigette's School was an old red brick building that had once housed the public high school. The town was probably very glad to unload the place before it became condemned. It was finally torn down, I think, about twenty-five years ago, and I was glad to see it go. It was three stories with two flights of stairs in the front leading up to a life size statue of the Blessed Mother, who stood before the big entry doors. The eighth graders were always putting various disrespectful objects in her folded hands or on her head, but I never got to see any. I was glad because I was fond of the Blessed Mother. The first and second grades were in the basement and as you moved up through the grades you moved up to the top of the building. Towards heaven, as it were. I had my doubts that eighth grade was heaven. There was a large dent in the blackboard of the eighth grade classroom. Sister Cecelia, the eighth grade teacher, had (according to rumor) tried to put a boy's head through the wall for some forgotten trespass. Whether it was true or not, we all believed it and the Sisters did nothing to deny the story or fix the dent. The dent with cracks radiating out from it was a must-see attraction on the tour given to all the first graders by the eighth graders. The first day of school Sister Anunciata had a record player going as we filed into the classroom and said goodbye to our parents. I guess the music was supposed to make the parents feel that we were in a happy place. I was not reassured because we had the record at home and I recognized it. It was Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf". After the parents left, Sister Anunciata quickly informed us of the rules. No talking, no getting out of your seat, no looking around. And your desk had to be absolutely straight at all times. Sister Anunciata was obsessed with having all eighty little desks in absolutely straight rows. Any feet, lunch boxes or bookbags that stuck out into the aisle were subject to confiscation for the day. Well, feet couldn't be confiscated but I'm sure Sister put some thought to it. Of course the rules did not sink in all at once. We were, after all, just six years old and fairly new to the idea of any kind of rules. Much less sitting still for hours at a time. We only were allowed two bathroom breaks during the day. Of course some of our tiny bladders were unable to wait that long and accidents sometimes occurred. Fortunately, this was one of the few humiliations that never befell me in my school years. Bodily functions were an annoyance to me and I had lots of practice in ignoring them. The recitation of the rules went right over my head on the first pass. I learned what to do and what not to do by observing my classmates. For the life of me, I couldn't understand a thing Sister Anunciata said for the first few weeks. Being one of the tallest girls, I was banished to the back of the classroom in the very last desk. So not only did I have trouble understanding what she was saying, I had trouble hearing what I couldn't understand. I had always had difficulty understanding what people said to me. I could hear the words, but they often made no sense. Meanings shifted for me. Spoken language was a quagmire of unstated, hidden meanings. Up, down, later, perhaps, sometimes. Words were slippery for me even when spoken clearly. Spoken to in a heavy Polish accent, I reacted with mute incomprehension. I wasn't even sure she was speaking English. And I had another problem. From the back of the room, the blackboard turned into a dark blob with white squiggles that faded in and out as I squinted my eyes at them. My eyes weren't tested until I was in the fourth grade and then it was discovered that I was extremely nearsighted. It never occurred to me to tell anybody that I couldn't understand the teacher most of the time and that the blackboard was almost invisible. I thought it was supposed to be like that. Do you remember the scene in the "Thorn Birds" were Meggie's hand is ruler-whipped by the sister before she is saved by the intervention of Father Ralph? Sister Anunciata didn't bother with a little ruler like that. She had a yardstick and was not shy about applying it to bottoms. She probably went through a half dozen or so a year as they tended to snap with vigorous whacking. We all became acquainted with the window hook. I guess that is what it was called. It was a wooden pole about six feet long with a curved metal hook on the end. The sisters used them to open and close the high top windows in the classrooms. They also used them to extend their reach. All the sisters had developed eyes like birds of prey that could spy any illicit activity going on in the middle or back of the classroom. Rather than waste time summoning the miscreant to the front of the room, they would simply hook him with the window hook and reel him in. It was like the Gong Show, only the loser got dragged ONTO the stage and paddled. Sister Anunciata had a terrific pitching arm. She could nail somebody ten seats down with an eraser without even a wind up. No eraser in reach? No problem. Books or pencils did as just as well. The air was always full of flying objects whizzing over head. We never knew when Sister Anunciata was going to erupt or what was going to set off her fuse. Within a short few days I was faced by the depressing fact that school was not the heaven I had looked forward to so eagerly. I found |
myself trapped in a hell ruled by a short, mad, incoherent penguin
wielding a ruler instead of a pitchfork.
Alice and the Angels Sister Anunciata taught us to write first off. We did not learn to print-we learned to WRITE. She would write the letters on the board and sound them out "AAAAAAA." Then little "aaaaaaaaaaa" next to it. "BBBBBBBB" and little "bbbbbbbb." And so on. We would copy the letters onto our papers. Our paper had wide lines divided in half by dotted lines to give us a perspective. It was just one more source of confusion to me. The paper became an undecipherable sea of lines and it was hard enough to figure out where to put the letters to begin with. The letters themselves were a confusing mass of circles and lines that had to be either "above or below" the dotted lines and I had terrible times with "above or below". Above or below WHAT? One incident with above or below stands out in my mind. Toward the end of the year, I started to be able to identify words more successfully than write them. Maybe I was starting to recognize them again after having lost them to the confusion of learning to write. After all, the letters I was learning to write didn't look much like the printed letters in our book. Toward the end of the year Sister Anunciata decided to test us to see how much we could read. We were summoned individually up to her desk. Sister worked her way up and down the aisles, calling out our last names. None of the Sisters addressed us by our first names, only our surnames. During school my identity changed from the ordinary Alice to that of a stranger. Somebody named O'Hara. I waited, frozen with fear, as the children in front of me were summoned. My turn came closer and closer and finally Sister barked out "O'Hara!" The terror of approaching "The Presence" so closely probably froze the few neurons in my head that were working normally to begin with. I remember that she suddenly looked immensely huge as she loomed over me in her chair. I was terrified of most adults and especially of the sisters, who were wrapped up in black robes and headdresses. I approached slowly and timidly, which probably annoyed her even more as she would have to do this a total of eighty times. A copy of our reader was open on her desk and Sister Anunciata would take a pencil and point to a word at random for us to read. I recognized the word she pointed her pencil to and managed to say it. Another word. I knew it! I said this one more loudly and surely. And I knew the rest of the words she pointed to. I was weak with relief. I had done it! But Sister Anunciata was looking at me with an expression of disgust. "Go Over There," she commanded with loathing in her voice, pointing toward the blackboard. Go "Over There"? "Over There" was in front of the blackboard. Children who displeased Sister Anunciata for whatever reason had to stand in a straight line in front of the side blackboard. It was a place of shame. A Devil's Island for first graders. I had never before been ordered to go Over There. Probably because I had kept such a low profile in the back of the room out of the line of fire. What had I done? I thought long and hard throughout the rest of the day as I sniffed back tears and furtively shifted from foot to foot along with the other criminals. We were supposed to stand at attention, but we slumped and leaned whenever Sister Anunciata turned her back. I had plenty of time for reflection. Then it hit me like a bolt of lightning. The pencil had been pointing above the words. At least that was how I saw it. But it had also been pointing UNDER words. The words above the words I read were probably the ones she had wanted me to read. I had been reading THE WRONG WORDS. There was a clap of thunder in my head as I realized for the first time that I saw the world in a different way from other people, that my senses and assumptions about the things around me could not be trusted. I had awakened in the Desert of the Real. I think this was the moment "The Physicist" was born. I didn't call him the Physicist at first, of course, because I didn't know what a Physicist was. Later, like many others with Asperger syndrome, I would give my secondary personalities names. Back then I only knew that something or someone was reassuring me that I was not alone, that we would figure this out somehow. Not to despair. I didn't hear voices or see visions. I just felt a sense of, well, comfort and curiosity. This is extremely hard to explain, but from that moment on I had a driving need to decipher the world around me, to translate it into a language I could understand, that there was a key somewhere to all this and a meaning. The Physicist and I would spend the rest of my life trying to find it. St. Brigette's School taught not only reading, writing and arithmetic, but also religion. Religion, in fact, was the reason we were sent there. The Church admitted that children who went to public school could be Catholic. But that kind of Catholicism was suspect, lukewarm and watered down. We were fortunate enough to receive the real stuff. Religion was the first subject taught in the day. We learned the Baltimore Catechism by brute memorization. This was made up of questions and answers. Sister Anunciata asked us the questions, and we had better have the right answers. Failing at arithmetic and reading branded you as stupid. Failing at Catechism was a one way ticket to Hell. I did better with memorization than anything else, and I actually got fairly decent grades in religion. I was very good at parroting things back to people. Comprehension was not a requirement. The Sisters, probably with good reason, believed the less we understood the better. Faith had to be blind or it was not real faith. I hated religion class, but only because it was boring, not because it was terrifying like the rest of my subjects. The goal of religion class, in fact the true goal of first grade, was to prepare you to make your First Confession and First Holy Communion the next year in second grade. This was an enormous milestone in our young lives. As soon as we hit the age of seven, the Catholic Church considered us to be at the age of reason and therefore able to Sin. We had to be ready for the coming of Sin by being able to receive the Sacraments. Sister Anunciata and the rest of the Sisters prepared for First Holy Communion the way Cecil B. DeMille directed the Ten Commandments. In other words, it was a BIG production. Costumes, music, flowers, and a cast of thousands. Or as many as St. Brigette's Church would hold. It also led to my first crisis of faith. A cute idea that could have been thoughtup by a Hollywood producer was the notion of "Angels." The Angels were six first graders chosen by the Mother Superior to act as extras in the First Holy Communion Production. Angels escorted the Second Graders in and out of the Church and stood on the altar while they received communion. They wore pastel satin robes embroidered with colored sequins and halos made out of pipe cleaners spray painted with gold gilt. The most wonderful detail of all was--they had wings! Big white gossamer wings covered with glitter. I knew the part of an Angel was written for me. I loved Angels. It was best part of the Catholic Religion, this concept of invisible winged heavenly beings. It fit in with my favorite book, a huge picture book about fairies. They had wings, too, and I was sure they must be related. And Sister Anunciata told us that we each had our own Guardian Angel, personally assigned by God to watch over us. Cool! I set out to get the part of an Angel with all the cunning and dedication of a starlet trying to land her big career break. I went straight to the Top. I prayed fervently every night to be made an Angel. And every day too. I even tried to be that incomprehensible thing called "being good." Not fighting with my sister, not eating candy, cleaning the dishes off the table, and so on. This enormous effort drained me. And then every night I went down the list from God The Big Boss, through Jesus, then the Blessed Mother and all the Saints I could remember. I took special care of my own Guardian Angel, since she was going to have to report to the Big Guy. I knew My Guardian Angel was a girl. She had to be. It only made sense. A boy angel couldn't watch you get undressed or go to the bathroom, after all. I talked to her all the time and I was careful to leave space for her to sit in my desk or in the pew with me when our class was taken over to the church for Mass. All the other poor Guardian Angels had to squeeze themselves in with their charges. Just because nobody could see you doesn't mean you aren't real. I wanted my Guardian Angel to be comfortable. This last eccentricity of mine drove Sister Anunciata absolutely nuts. On her patrols up and down the isles, she would see me huddled on the edge my seat, leaving a large, angel-sized space. "O'Hara, Move over", she would yell in her Polish accent, grabbing me by the arm and yanking me into the middle of the seat. "What is the matter with you? Why are you leaving all that room?" I couldn't understand this at all. Sister Anunciata was supposed to be an intimate of God. An initiate of the Mysteries of the Catholic Church. Why didn't she believe in Guardian Angels? She should have known that I was making room for mine. What was the matter with her? Now, I knew that I was not an especially attractive or appealing child. I was not cute. I was skinny and my knees were always covered with scrapes and bruises, and my uniform hem was always hanging down, despite constant attention from my mother. My hair was already approaching unmanageable thickness and ponytails or braids stayed tidy about ten minutes, on average. I was generally mute, hunched and never looked at anybody directly. I disliked being touched. It was an invasion. Since touching was necessary to bathing and grooming, I wanted no parts of those activities. I was like a dog who, at the first sign of soap and water, high tailed it for the nearest hiding spot. My poor mother was reduced to chasing me around the house at bath time and dragging me out from underneath beds. Often, exhausted by yelling, running, threats and bribes, she just gave up. So I am sure that my personal hygiene, or lack thereof, did not endear me to others. I couldn't have cared less. But I knew I had a crack at the part. Because of the Sisters' obsession with symmetry, Angels were chosen by height. A very short Angel was required to lead the procession and they had to increase in height geometrically with a very tall Angel bringing up the rear. I was one of the tallest girls in the class. My rival in height was a girl named Susan who sat across from me. She had a plump round face and light brown curly hair pinned in a little bun on the top of her head. I remember Susan as being very serene and placid. She did her work calmly, with her tongue peaking charmingly out of the side of her mouth while she wrote. I thought maybe this tongue business helped you write better and I tried it once. I only got very odd looks from my classmates and it certainly didn't improve my writing. Susan seemed relatively unperturbed by the "Reign of Terror" going on around us. I could usually ignore the Terror because I was off in another world. Susan merely considered it all beneath her notice. Yes, Susan was a definite threat to my Angelhood, epecially since the Sisters smiled at her in a way they never smiled at me. But I knew that God would pick me. He had to. I had done everything by the book, unlike Susan who probably didn't even believe in Guardian Angels. Then, the Day of Judgment came. It was time to select The Angels. Sister Cecelia, the Mother Superior, descended from the eight grade classroom up on the third floor and ordered all the girls to stand. For the first time in my life, I stood up tall, secure that God was on my side. Sister Cecelia moved through the classroom, pointing as she chose the lucky girls. "You," she would call out. "And you." The Chosen would line up in the front of the classroom in preparation to being taken to some Holy Spot to be measured for their wings. Finally, she had five Angels and was searching for a tall sixth. "You," she called out, and the finger pointed in my direction. Overjoyed, I started toward the front of the room. Sister Cecelia flapped her arm in annoyance at me. "No, NOT YOU! Her!" And she pointed toward Susan. I was heartbroken. I knew there was no God. Or if there was, He wasn't playing by the Rules He had written Himself. Very unfair of Him. And from that day forward, I ignored my Guardian Angel. She could sit on the floor for all I cared. The Physicist tried to talk me out of my Angel slump. He was usually able to cheer me up. He pointed out that maybe there was a reason I didn't get to be an Angel. Maybe there were rules I just didn't know about right now. Maybe people who got to be Angels down here on Earth didn't get to be REAL Angels when they died. I just had to wait and get the real thing. But I didn't buy it. For a long time I firmly believed that religion was a cheat, a stacking of the deck that allowed only the Chosen to win. As I came to understand the difference between spirituality and religion, I would slowly come to have a better opinion of God Himself, but I am afraid my opinion of organized religion never improved. |