Life With Mother Superior Read Online Free

pale and wan and tell Miss Connelly, or her assistant—a tall and strong senior who undoubtedly to this day is in some swimming pool of a private school—that you were “indisposed.” We were bright enough to know not to go to the same person two weeks in a row, and with twenty young water sprites to cope with two or three times a day, it was difficult to remember who had been in the water and who hadn’t. After Miss Connelly dropped the hint that she hadn’t ever seen me in the pool—this after the first six weeks of class—I found that she kept her “indisposed” books in a locker in her office and I simply erased my weekly “X” and put a check there. Mary, who really was terrified of water, followed suit, only she never could leave well enough alone.
    For each top student—the ones we hated, like Ra mona Sapper and Lillian Quigley and Charlotte Sweeney—the kind that never skipped anything but dessert, Mary would see to it that the week they were supposed to stay out of the water was the week follow ing a large “X” sign. This made Miss Connelly wary of them after two or three times, and it positively delighted us. Our record, despite some memory mis givings on Miss Connelly’s part, was A-l. We simply never for a moment thought that Miss Connelly was going to insist on our actually swimming to get our credit. However, one day toward the end of the semester, she made that chilling announcement. It was a day, of course, when we had been excused for in disposition. Mary and I blithely went our way not knowing that anything except perhaps lifesaving rules would be demanded from us at our last swimming session.
    We arrived at this last session briefed on resuscitation and artificial respiration. Miss Connelly favored us with a blast of her whistle. The whistle actually was so powerful it could pierce your eardrums, but it produced a sort of hushed silence not easy to attain in a swimming pool. “Since this is our last session in swimming for this semester, I want to tell you how very much I enjoyed this class.”
    “How about that?” Mary whispered. The whistle blew again.
    “And I want to tell you just how we’ll conduct the examination.”
    We leaned nonchalantly against the cool tile waiting for her questions on the art of lifesaving.
    “Each and everyone of you will dive in the pool and swim the length of the pool and back. Then you’ll float, then you’ll be assigned a partner, and you will be responsible for saving this partner.”
    I looked at Mary aghast.
    “For those of you who have attended each swimming class this will be a simple test.” She seemed to aim these sentences at us.
    “Good God,” said Mary, who had never been in any water but the bathtub all her life, “what will I do?”
    The whistle sounded again.
    “Captain Finnegan will call the names and assign the partners. And,” she added, “for those of you who are indisposed today I will be happy to give you the test any time this week. Just be sure and make an appointment.”
    “What are you going to do?” 1 whispered to Mary.
    “What are you going to do?” she whispered back.
    I couldn’t see any way out. I had been indisposed last week on the chart and hadn’t removed the “X” since I figured that this exam wouldn’t call for much. I had to go.
    “I’ll try. If I drown, they’ll have to get me out.”
    The word had got around, due to our panic-stricken looks, I suppose, that neither of us could swim a stroke, and even though some of the first contestants who flipped into the pool and swam like seals were free to go when they passed, they hung around awaiting our doom.
    My name was called first. I could swim a little but I had never dived.
    The water the passengers of the Titanic looked at could not have seemed any more ominous than that green chloride water of St. Marks pool did to me.
    The whistle blew. I took a deep breath and dived. After I hit the bottom of the pool with my nose it seemed to me that I