Life With Mother Superior Read Online Free Page B

and still give Mary a working class schedule. As Mary said, gymnasium really conflicted with nothing but her free time. By the time she was a senior we rarely saw her, as from eight in the morning to sun down she raced from sport to sport. Obviously, Mary simply didn’t have the knack, as I did, for active sports.

Chapter Four: The Contest
     
    There were very few things that the Sisters left to Our discretion—but Mother Superior, being of rather avant- educational tendencies, left the choice of Home Eco nomics or Civics up to us. It was a tough decision for a fourteen-year-old to make. We knew that the Civics class had five mornings away from St Marks to explore such fascinating governmental installations as City Hall, the Governor’s home, the bank, a typical voting booth. And last but not least, someone from one of the hundreds of similar schools had a chance to be mayor or mayoress of the city for the day.
    This certainly was nothing to be overlooked lightly. The temptation of Civics—and it seemed to me a pretty boring subject—hinged on the brief periods of being away from school. Home Economics, on the other hand, promised much more temporal offerings—like baking cakes and sewing up chic little numbers to wear right then. Besides, Home Economics had a lay teacher and this in itself was an inducement. Miss McBride was a tall, willowy, white-haired lady in her early forties. . . . Her first name was Evangeline and she had a lisp. From the first moment in her baking class we recited her own prayer, “Dear Lord, help uth to utilithze well evewy moment thpent here.” We immediately adapted her very own lisp and used it to disthinct advantage.
    Our first hour each morning (it was a twice-a- week event on Tuesday and Thursday) was devoted to cooking. I purposely paid as much attention to this course as I could, until I realized that her cooking formulas were just as dismal as Mama’s. I had had something much more French in mind, like soufflés and canard a l’orange. Miss McBride, however, wanted to ready us for motherhood and spent most of her time on new ideas on Jell-O. She was, at the moment, involved in a Jell-O contest and we did everything but burn it to achieve new effects.
    The first hour I found bearable, as anything I could learn in the kitchen would help improve the food at home, but the second hour for me was a nightmare. The second hour was spent with Butterick patterns learning to sew. I really had no desire in the world to learn to make my own bloomers. Miss McBride called them “panthies.” Our first project—Project Bloomers- called for one yard of thirty-six-inch peach pure silk, one half yard of ecru lace, and matching peach thread for basting. These “panthies” were the first and the last pair of home-sculpted bloomers I ever owned. The whole idea was a leftover from Mother Superior’s dowry, when nice young ladies made their own trousseaus. Miss McBride promised that when we finished our panties we would graduate to slips, and when we finished slips we would make a dress. What an incentive plan—it was certainly working from the bottom up. My peach silk and ecru lace arrived from Marshall Field and I immediately lashed into my pattern. Miss McBride arrived just at the moment I zipped in with the pinking shears.
    “Pleathe, Mith Twahey, contwol. . . or our panthies will not come out the way we want them to. . .”
    Miss McBride identified herself completely with the editorial “we.”
    “My pattern looks all right. There are only two pieces—look.”
    Miss McBride studied it and explained that I could save a whole piece of peach silk were I to lay it out a different way.
    “What will I do with it?”
    “There ith no excuthe for waitht.” It was a difficult sentence at best.
    Finally I got my front and back basted together. They were the kind of panties show dolls on beds wore. The crotch hit somewhere near my knee cap, but that was the way the pattern went.
    “I’ll trip over