The International Writers Magazine: Book Extract

Sister Mercedes and the Temple of Doom • Brian Petti I had a college professor who once said, “Catholicism gives you something infinitely complex to rebel against for the rest of your life.” Being a rebellious Catholic I said to myself, “What the hell does he know?” Notice I didn’t say it out loud.

 

But as I look back at my 12 years (!) of Catholic school, I have to say he had a point. No one taught me the true meaning of wretched, bilious hate better than the nuns.

 

In the 1970s, there were two reasons to become a nun: morbid fear of sex and latent lesbianism. I mean, if you didn’t get laid during the summer of ’69 what chance did you really have thereafter? Oh, I

suppose there were some authentic Brides of Christ, but in 12 years I met precious few. Certainly not

my principal Sister Mercedes. That was her name, I swear. She hated me.

 

A little background. I wasn’t a troublemaker. Quite the contrary, I was boringly, stupefyingly good–

good grades, never caused trouble, barely spoke, actually. My younger brother, however, was an

absolute hellion in gray uniform pants and a maroon sweater. A classmate of his was running full out to

line up after recess and my brother casually stuck out his foot and tripped her. Sister Jeanne saw this

and responded as any reasonable adult in a position of authority would–she beat the hell out of him. A

closed-fist, old school, Mass in Latin massacre.

 

Amen, Hallelujah!

 

My mother’s cousin lost a promising high school basketball career in the 50s because a nun broke a

yardstick over his calf. He was asked what he had done to provoke the poor woman. But the 70s were a more civilized, groovy decade. Nothing was bad enough to warrant an attack on a mere child (even

though the poor girl did go sprawling headlong on the concrete parking lot, and by all reports my

brother laughed his ass off while she did).

 

My father was not going to kowtow to the Catholic hierarchy, especially post Vatican II. He went to

Sister Mercedes and demanded that Sister Jeanne apologize to my brother, which she did, tearfully, in

front of my brother’s class. Sister Mercedes, like John Gotti or Tony Soprano, never forgot that

humiliation and dishonor. She needed a scapegoat, or in more appropriate religious doctrine, a

sacrificial lamb.

 

Enter a fat, sensitive, 7th grader with pants a slightly lighter shade of gray than everyone else (we had

to find them in the husky section, often in corduroy). And enter The Hobbit.

 

I loved The Hobbit. I was one of those nerdy kids who actually enjoyed reading on his own. The

Hobbit had it all–dragons, dwarfs, elves, short creatures with hairy feet, a magic ring, no mystical,

pseudo-Christian ax to grind (I’m talking to you, Prince of Narnia). The fat kid with the ripped pantcrotch was entranced.

 

Christmas break ended and we were scheduled to take our Hobbit test. I was actually looking forward

to it. The tests were passed out, along with our scan tron answer sheets (an amazing invention that

insured that teachers didn’t have to waste their time on anything as menial as grading–unless you

counted the time spent hand-feeding the little buggers into the machine). No sooner had I raised my #2

pencil than all the tests were immediately re-collected and we were asked to take out a piece of looseleaf numbered 1-10. We were then given ten short answer questions roughly along the lines of, “What was Bilbo’s second cousin’s dog’s name and on what page did he appear in the standard Penguin edition?”

 

Two of my classmates, apparently, had stolen the answer key out of the teacher’s cabinet and

distributed it to every kid in the class except me. Such was my anonymity among my peers. One of the

pilferers came from a family of 19 children that had such a squeaky reputation that nuns and priests

would frequently genuflect in the presence of their mother. She barely noticed, busy as she was trying

to avoid tripping over her uterus.

 

But I digress. The fuzz had caught on. The nuns had played the old switcheroo game with our tests and

waiting in the hallway to extract information from the defendants was Sister Mercedes. She was

ruthless. Within minutes she had the kid from the big family awash in tears of guilt and announced to

the class that because of his larceny none of us would be having recess for a month…unless we had

passed the 10 question sham test (nobody did–I was closest with 6 correct).

 

While we were sitting inside during recess, relegated to whispered conversations, an idea occurred to

me that I should have dismissed immediately and without any further internal discussion. The idea was

“this is unfair”. I know, right!  Stupid, naive fatty.

 

I tested the idea with my fellow classmates and found 100% agreement. Emboldened, I timidly

ventured that someone should bring said unfairness to someone’s attention. This time I was soundly

congratulated, not only for my otherworldly perceptive abilities, but also for possessing the courage…

nay, the hubris…to attempt such discussion with so formidable an antagonist as Sister Mercedes.

 

Excuse me, what?

 

I was volunteered by popular demand.  In short work I had become their voice, their hope, their

backbone, their unwitting fool. I sucked in my substantial stomach and asked my teacher if I could

speak to Sister Mercedes. The dear woman tried to talk me out of it, but I was single-minded in my

determination to slit my own wrists.

 

I marched into the school office, waited courteously behind a mother who was signing her kid out sick

while my heart pounded in my chest, and found myself face to face with destiny. In between my

stammer and spittle I think I managed to squeak out that I thought group punishment was unfair. I’m

sure I meant to back up my argument with like injustices throughout history (WWI pogroms, Native

American reservations, letting peers pick sides during flag football), but I never got that far.

 

Sister Mercedes’ eyes narrowed and, I think, turned red. She cocked her habit at a jaunty angle to her

white hair. “And what makes YOU so special, Mr. Petti, that you think you deserve to go outside and

play while all your friends stay inside!”

No, no, no…there were others…I’m their champion…I’m their hero!…they practically nominated me Pope just now in that classroom! How dare you try to sully so pure a comradeship as I have with my fellow classmates. I was practically carried to this office on the wings of companionship and civic pride!

 

So, steeled in the adoration of my fellow man, I replied approximately…

 

“Uhhhhhh.”

 

I never spoke so eloquently.

 

“Get back to your classroom immediately. I’ll be up in a minute.” Unluckily for me, she didn’t break an ankle on the way. As soon as she entered the room, she demanded that I stand up.

 

“Mr. Petti thinks that HIS punishment is unfair. He thinks that HE should be allowed to go out and play while all the rest of you stay here in your classroom. Do any of YOU feel the same way?”

 

(Cue crickets.)

 

“I thought so. Do you know what that makes you, Mr. Petti? A parasite. Do you know what that

means?”

 

“A person who’s taken a vow of poverty, yet lives quite comfortably on the money squeezed out of her lower-middle-class congregation when the plate is passed every Sunday?”

 

Is what I should have said. “No” was my actual reply.

 

“You should look it up, Mr. Petti. It perfectly describes you.”

 

And here I am years later on disability. I guess she had me nailed.

 

But I learned some important lessons, character building lessons that followed me throughout my life.

Lessons like, might is right, power is meant to be exploited, and “fairness” “is” “a” “relative”

“concept”. And most importantly, if you plan on taking a stand on moral grounds, don’t look over your shoulder. You’re better off not knowing how few folks are back there.

Download the e-book by Brian Petti here

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