In January, Joanne celebrated her eleventh birthday. A few weeks later, a blizzard cancelled school, and she and Iris forgot their new maturity in the knee-deep snowdrifts. Suddenly, Joanne felt cold and uncomfortable. She had pains in her stomach. A warm bath might help, she thought.
When she pulled down her pants, she discovered a black-red goo. Her stomach lurched with fear and disgust. Then she realized the thick, tarry stuff was blood.
"Well, I figured you'd be early," said Mother. "Here, we'll get you fixed up." She brought a belt and a box of pads and showed Joanne how to fasten them. "Now remember, Joanne, you're young for this. The other girls might not know about it yet; so don't mention it to them."
The next morning, Joanne wore her fullest skirt and sat rigidly at her desk certain that everyone knew her secret. There were no sanitary napkin machines in the elementary school; so she had buried an extra one in the bottom of a Kleenex box, piled tissues on top of it, and hidden it in her book bag. She hid the shameful burden under her desk.
Month after month, she followed the dreaded routine. During that miserable year, when the other girls called her "sweater girl" and she wore loose blouses with cardigans a size too big unbuttoned over them, no one ever mentioned the subject of menstruation. Joanne had begun to wonder if the whole thing were a hoax. "But that's impossible," she thought. "There's the booklet, and the boxes of sanitary napkins in the stores. Somebody else must buy them. Maybe they're only for girls like me, though, for dirty girls. Maybe they just say it's normal so we won't know they're laughing behind our backs. No. That's ridiculous. No one could carry a trick that far. I just wish it would happen to someone else."
She remembered what the booklet said about being old enough to have babies. "I can get pregnant now. I guess Iris was right about what people do when they're in love. And if I did that now, I could have a baby." She looked at her profile in the mirror. Her stomach protruded slightly. Mrs. Ferguson, her homeroom teacher said that was because she slouched.
"Stomach in," she ordered repeatedly. "Shoulders back!"
"What if I'm pregnant?" thought Joanne. "The book says I would miss my period, and I haven't. And I haven't even been close to a boy. But what if someone did it while I was asleep? What if Rick came in, or someone climbed that tree and got in my window? If I get pregnant, they'll send me away. They'll make up stories to hide it, but everyone will know."
Guilt was like that. It showed. And Joanne was guilty. She knew people were mocking her, though she was too dumb to catch them at it. That was why she stayed out of the games at recess and went off with a book. That was why she went up to her room at home, brooding and reading.
At night she dreamed about snakes. One monstrous one curled around the whole neighborhood, its head behind Joanne's garage. Joanne tried to run, but her legs wouldn't move. She awakened in terror. Then she thought about copperheads. They smelled like cucumbers, she had read. The odor of cucumbers lingered in her dark room.
Sometimes, she dreamed of airplanes crashing through her window. When it thundered, she could hear one, lost in the storm. She would lie there, paralyzed. "I've got to get up and crawl under the bed." But again, her legs wouldn't move.
Some night, with no chance to confess her sin, she would die. The snake or the airplane would get her, and she would burn in Hell. She tried to imagine burning forever. She could feel the heat and the blisters, see the flames, hear them snap. She knew the scorched smell of burning hair - once she had leaned to close to the stove while lighting the pilot and singed her eyebrows. When she thought of Hell, that odor stung her nostrils.
"But you can't burn forever. The flames would kill you again. And then you'd wake and burn some more. Die and wake forever. Eternal punishment. Eternal damnation. That's what the Catechism calls it. Eternal. Forever. How can anything last forever?" It was the scariest word in the English dictionary. "If only I could make a perfect act of contrition. If I could forget the part about dreading the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell and be sorry just because I offended God, then he'd forgive me. I am 'heartily sorry,' but how can I pretend I'm not afraid of Hell. I can't lie to God. And I can't tell the priest. How can I tell anyone that I've lived in sin almost my whole life? It's no use."
Maybe on her deathbed, she would have the courage. If she'd lived in Roman times, she could have been fed to the lions and gone straight to Heaven because she died for her faith. But there were no martyrs in 1951. She was doomed.
"Well, maybe I won't die," she thought, "but what if I have to repeat sixth grade? That's almost as bad."
That was one fear she could discuss with Mother. She brought it up in the kitchen, after she finished drying the dishes. Mother had sat down with a cigarette and a cup of coffee. Joanne pulled her own chair up to the oilcloth-covered table. "Mother, what will you do if I flunk?"
"Why would you flunk? If you did , you'd just have to repeat sixth grade. But you won't."
"I might. We had IQ tests in school. Yesterday the principal called me into his office and told me that if I don't start making A's and B's he'll keep me back. He thinks I'm smart, and I'm not."
"Why, Joanne, you are, too, smart. I always knew you were. You were the brightest baby, walking and talking at nine months. You just need to have some confidence in yourself."
"But I can't remember all those names and dates for history. There's no sense to them."
"Well, you don't do any homework, Joanne. You have to bring your books home and study. And even if they do keep you back, it won't be so bad. You're younger than the others, anyway. Sometimes I think I made a mistake letting you start first grade when you were only five."
"But I'm bigger than all the other kids, and they call me "sweater girl."
"Well, now, that's nothing to be ashamed of! You didn't get it from me, that's for sure. Some day you'll be happy to be so well endowed."
"It's no fun being different. I don't have any friends."
"What about Kathy and Iris? And Jean?
"They're all in junior high. They don't want grade school kids hanging around. Don't you see; I can't stay in sixth grade."
"You won't have to if you put your mind to it."
After that, Joanne brought home her history book every night. Spring came, and her anxiety mounted as she awaited the last day of school. "Promoted to seventh grade" was scrawled on the bottom of her report card. She hadn't failed. Maybe she wouldn't die and go to Hell, either. Maybe she would receive the Last Rites and sneak into Heaven by the back door. At least, in September, she would go to junior high and things would be different.
Now that she was officially out of elementary school, and since Kathy, Iris and Jean needed a fourth member for the club they were forming, they took Joanne back into their group. They learned to play Canasta, sunbathed, traded Nancy Drew books and giggled about boys. Finally, September brought the school bus to transport them to Coalton Hills Junior-Senior High School.
Coalton Hills was not incorporated with the city but held itself aloof. The valley below was black with soot, and the river ran red with waste from the steel mills. The city kids went to Central High, which was dirty, poor and overcrowded. Those who lived on the mountain looked down on them from their shiny, spacious school.
In the big, yellow brick building, Joanne and her friends from Lower Borough met the students from Upper Borough, the district just across the highway. The "uppers" resented the invasion and banded together in a clique.
"They think they're so special," complained Iris, "just because they live across the highway. They don't have any more than we do, but they think they're high society."
"I wouldn't be in The Clan if you paid me," said Joanne. Stupid snobs."
It was a lie, though. Joanne wanted nothing more than to edge in. A few from Lower Borough had managed to penetrate The Clan, but they were the prettiest, the most poised. Joanne, gauche, awkward, convinced of her inferiority, watched them with secret longing. "If only I could fit in. If only we had a house a little farther up. I'm sure Daddy makes as much from his auto shop as Anne's father does from his little bookstore, but she has a house in Upper Borough, and she's in The Clan."
In spite of her gnawing hunger to belong, Joanne was less lonely in the wide halls and fluorescent classrooms than she had been in the dark little elementary school. She discovered other girls in her class who lived on the outskirts of The Clan. By eighth grade, they had formed their own group, eating lunch together and calling each other about homework.
Between classes one morning, Joanne stopped in the girls' room. She entered one of the cubicles and came out giggling, then stopped when she noticed another girl straightening her skirt before the mirror. Michelle McCarthy looked curiously at Joanne, her gray eyes twinkling at the hint of a joke. "What's so funny?" she asked.
Joanne began giggling again, embarrassed to tell the truth, but unable to think of anything else. Finally, she blurted it out. "I pulled down my underpants and still had some on. I put on two pairs this morning."
Michelle threw back her head, her light brown curls shaking. "Now that's dumb enough for me to do," she laughed.
The two regained their composure and both faced the mirror, tucking in their blouses. Michelle frowned at her image. "Some days I feel fatter than others," she complained.
"You do? Me too. But, Michelle, you're not fat at all."
"Thanks, but I feel that way."
Michelle crinkled her tiny, thin-boned face in a grin. She was small, pert and attractive. Joanne knew she wasn't in The Clan, and she had always wondered why.
"Today is one of my fat days. By the way, please call me Shelley. My mother's the only one who calls me Michelle - and that's when she's mad at me."
"Okay, Shelley. But we'd better get out of here. It's time for health class, and I don't want to be late for that."
"Me, either."
They arrived at the door, breathless, just as the bell rang and Miss Packmore, in dark skirt and jacket, marched in like a Salvation Army General. In this class, listed on the report cards as "Girls' Health," the students sat stiffly, looking down and waiting. Miss Packmore would tolerate no giggling, whispering, or sideward glances as from her thin lips sprang words Joanne had never before heard pronounced - semen, sperm, erections, wet dreams. "Old Packmule," as they secretly called her, taught them the half that had been missing from the booklet Joanne had read, that boys, too, were undergoing internal changes. Today, the topic was masturbation.
"It's something boys do. It's a bad habit, like picking your nose, but it does not lead to insanity or sterilization, no matter what you may have heard."
Joanne had heard nothing except what her mother had told her years ago, but she wondered why Old Packmule said that boys did it. And if it was just a bad habit, how could it be a mortal sin? Well, Packmule wasn't Catholic.
Now she was telling them how weak boys were. "When you wear your skirts too short or your shoulders bared, you are teasing them. You're asking for trouble. And they might date you if you neck and pet, but they won't ask you to marry them."
Joanne did not date, nor did her friends. A few girls from The Clan had boyfriends, but none of the commoners did. A third group, who wore their hair in DA's (duck's asses) and were called "kittens" dated boys from other schools and were rumored to be loose.
Joanne had been gazing out the window, lost in her own musings when the bell rang. Shelley waited for her in the hall and accompanied her to lunch. Proudly, Joanne led her to her usual table, joining Lynette, Claire, Bonnie and Eileen. They were serious girls, shy, but they responded with animation to Shelley's bouncy presence. "These are good friends," thought Joanne. "They accept me. Sometimes they even feel the same way I do. Maybe I am not so different."
She felt almost secure. As usual, though her eyes roved across the cafeteria, watching the Clan members, still yearning.
CHAPTER IV
It was Thursday, Catechism day. Joanne had cramps. She got off the school bus, hurried into the house, exchanged here school books for her Catechism and ran up to the highway to catch a public bus to the church.
St. Theresa's was downtown, in the Sixth Ward. It stood on a hilly street, flanked by old duplexes with doors on either side of their fenced wooden porches. Like the houses, the church was made of stone, with concrete steps leading from the walk. Unlike them, it was narrow in front, with its much longer sides stretching into the lot behind. Wide arched double doors took up half the front. Smaller side doors led in from the back. These were used to enter the church from the rectory or parochial school, more modern buildings of red brick behind the church.
She opened the front door and stood a while, adjusting her eyes to the perpetual dusk. Inside, the front of the church became the back, with three long aisles leading toward the altar. She dipped her hand into the holy water font attached to the wall and blessed herself, smiling as she remembered how she had reached toward the wall-mounted ashtray the last time she had entered a darkened theater.
Sister Edward stood in front of the first pew, facing her charges, the poor half-heathen offspring of mixed marriages, whose parents denied them the privilege of parochial education. She had only one hour a week to put them on the road to salvation, and now she faced the Herculean task of preparing them for Confirmation. The Bishop was coming to administer the sacrament, and they must know every answer in the Baltimore Catechism, every prayer, every hymn.
"Who made you?" Sister fired at them, turning her head to see around the rims of her brown bonnet.
"God made me," chorused the confirmation class.
"Who is God?"
"God is the Supreme Being who made all things."
Since first grade they had parroted the answers to the same questions. Each year the words got a little bigger, the answers a little longer. This year, they reviewed every question, recited the ten commandments, the seven sacraments, the six commandments of the church, the Creed, the Confiteor. They examined each commandment in detail.
"What is forbidden by the sixth and ninth commandments?"
Those two were always paired. Joanne had thought that maybe that was why the boys smirked over the number 69, but Iris said no. "Just write the numbers and look at them," she explained. Joanne thought there must be something obscene about the figures' position, but she still wasn't sure just what.
She did know what was forbidden by the two commandments, though - adultery, fornication, impure thoughts and deeds. Masturbation wasn't mentioned by name, but she knew it was included in impure acts.
Joanne's cramps were becoming miserable. She wanted to leave, but the Confirmation class had to stay an extra half-hour to practice the hymns and procession. She turned to "Come Holy Ghost, Creator Blest," but the words swam on the page. Her stomach lurched. Edging out of the pew, she genuflected quickly and dashed out the side door. Behind the church, she retched.
Returning by the front door, she sank quietly into the last pew, shivering and mopping her wet forehead with the back of her arm. Her stomach stopped quivering, but she felt too weak and embarrassed to rejoin her class. She watched as they filed to the altar rail, still singing. The class knelt there while Sister explained that the bishop would stop in front of each candidate, administer a gentle slap on the cheek, and repeat the new name each had chosen.
"You will be a soldier of Christ," Sister reminded them, "with special strength to fight for your faith. Confirmation will leave an indelible mark on your soul."
Then the organ vibrated; they began another hymn and walked in procession out of the church. Sister Edward followed them, stopping at the last pew to whisper to its white-faced occupant, "Come with me." She took Joanne's hand and led her down the steps.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
Joanne looked up at the fleshy face shadowed by its bonnet. The tight strap supported several chins. The catechists' irreverent nickname for Sister Edward was "Sister Pepsi Cola - more bounce to the ounce." It was part of a commercial jingle they heard daily on the radio.
"It's just cramps," mumbled Joanne apologetically. She flushed at the indelicate word, wondering if Sister knew what it meant. Surely, this holy creature didn't bleed.
"What you need is a good hot cup of tea," she responded briskly. "Is someone picking you up?"
"No, I catch a bus."
"Do you have time to come into the convent for a minute?"
"I guess so. The busses run every fifteen minutes."
"Come with me, then."
Joanne had never dreamed that she could actually see inside the nuns' house. She didn't know that ordinary people were permitted to enter their domain. She and her friends regarded the convent as a haunted house, and the robed inhabitants as dark ghosts. They all looked ancient. She thought of the morning Sister Pepsi Cola had lectured them on modesty. "When I was a girl, we rode horses, and we didn't have to wear dungarees. We climbed trees, and we didn't have to wear dungarees. We ran races, and we didn't have to wear dungarees."
They had sniggered behind their catechisms at the image of this stern figure indulging in any of those activities. Joanne couldn't believe that Sister had ever been a girl. She imagined her as having sprung, already grown and garbed in the dark habit.
The convent, a few doors form the church, was sterile and stiff. Sister Edward led Joanne to a small, formal parlor. It was hushed, polished and uncluttered. She sat rigidly in a straight-backed chair until Sister brought the tea in a pretty china cup. She sipped the sweet, weak liquid. Its warmth spread from her throat to her stomach, and she began to feel drowsily comfortable. She relaxed a little as Sister Edward talked to her.
"You know your catechism very well, Joanne. Have you ever thought about the religious life? A vocation is a very special gift, you know. You're young now, but you should be praying that God will show you what to do with your life."
For a moment, Joanne pictured herself gliding in and out of church, eyes down, hands folded. "The nuns weren't born that way," she realized. "Once they were just regular girls. Special girls, though, girls that Christ called to follow him. How could Sister think that I am one of them? God doesn't choose sinners.
She nodded as Sister talked, wishing she could shout, "Yes, that's what I want," but saying nothing. She finished her tea, thanked Sister, and went to catch the bus.
On the way home, she thought of the picture of St. Michael the Archangel, dressed in armor and wielding a sword. He was the symbol of Confirmation, the Christian soldier, ready to do battle for his faith. Angels couldn't die, of course, but people who died for their faith went straight to heaven. She thought of Joan of Arc, just a girl, leading an army for Christ, then dying in flames. There was another saint - which one was it? - who had joked with his tormentors while being roasted alive, "You can turn me over now. I'm done on this side."
How happily the martyrs had faced their fates, the hungry lions, the hurled stones, the crucifixions. Joanne thought she would be happy, too, to trade a few hours of agony for eternal bliss. Surely she would welcome a redeeming death.
"No," she thought. "I didn't even run when the carnival man touched me. Maybe if he'd had a knife and I'd fought him, he'd have killed me. Dying so you won't sin is the same as dying for your faith. Saint Maria Goretti was murdered because she wouldn't give in to that boy. Buy how could I be brave enough to die if I didn't even tell the priest what I did. It isn't fair. I could be so good, so holy. But I can't be brave."
Three weeks later, the bishop came to St. Theresa's. Joanne answered more questions than anyone else in the class did. Still, her Confirmation was a sacrilege, for she was not in the state of grace. So even though the bishop slapped her on the cheek and pronounced her new name, "Marie," she was not a soldier of Christ. She repeated the name to herself: "Marie. Joanne Lynne Marie Curry," but under the white dress and veil, her soul was still black.
