Sister Calista
by Sharon E. Cobb

After supper, Liz followed Eddie out the back door on the pretense they were going across the street to play marbles with the Heinz kids. Instead, Eddie, with Liz on his heels, ran to the bottom of St. Aloysius hill and, avoiding the usual path, crawled through the leafless scrub. At the top, they crouched as they ran past Father Columbine's house, around the brick school, across the cemetery which made Liz shudder, and stopped at the Convent.

"You gotta hush, Liz. And walk quiet. We have to sneak up these iron steps. Walk soft."

"What are we doing, Eddie. I'm scared."

"Pretend this is the bunkhouse. Remember? You weren't scared then. Besides, I've scouted this all out. Just do as I say."

"Here it is. Calista's room. Duck! There she is." Eddie shoved Liz's head below the sill of the second story window and put his finger to his mouth. "Okay, now just peek."

Sister Calista was not only cruel, she was fat. Liz hated the way her jowls puffed out from the white cowl of her headdress lending her a comical air, but she was not one to laugh at. The black habit barely hid her obese midriff which moved up and down as she called Eddie and Liz dirty little farmers and whomped them with her ever-present fifteen-inch ruler. She was the principal of St. Aloysius Academy which was built in 1898 as a boarding school for wealthy girls from Chicago and Omaha and eventually earned a reputation that attracted students from as far away as the West Coast and New York. The Academy had stood on the top of the highest hill in town for fifty years. It was a mystery why the Catholic Church picked a cow town like Whitewood in which to build an important boarding school, but there it was, the Church, the cemetery, the Priests home, the convent for the Sisters of Mercy, two school buildings, and the dormitory that housed the boarders. The red brick and stone of the buildings lent the school an air of timelessness and large trees and mature gardens, a look of permanence and stability. The boarders, as the live-in students were called, came from all over the country � children of wealthy parents who wanted to give them all the benefits bestowed by "The Good Sisters of Mercy." And the Sisters didn't disappoint them, the boarders were treated in the manner worthy of their families' wealth.

However, the local population was another matter in the eyes of the nuns. Most of them were hard-working German ranchers, with lots of offspring and little cash. When the ranch children �graduated' from the one-room country school in which they learned to read, write, and cipher, the family would build a town house at the foot of St. Aloysius Hill so their children could also benefit from the teachings of the Good Sisters. Eddie and Liz's family was no exception.

On the second floor of the building, Eddie squatted below the window of one of the rooms. "This is Calista's room. Scrunch down and be quiet. I'll tell you when."

"When what?"

Eddie raised his head just enough to see through the window. "Okay, now. Peek."

Liz lifted her head just enough to see inside Sister Calista's room. The Sister had removed her cowl to reveal a few thin gray hairs plastered to a pink scalp. The skin under her chin hung against the white starched under-piece of her habit and her jowls formed a flap under her ears. "Ugh," thought Liz. "She gets worse."

Sister Calista moved toward the window and Eddie shoved Liz down. As they huddled against the red brick the light from the room dimmed as the window shade closed.

* * * * * * * *

"Eddie, you gotta be good," Liz had scolded earlier that day. "It hurts Mama when we get beat by the Sisters."

"Hurts Mama. What d'ya think it does to us?"

"You should talk. Look at my hands. Sister Calista really gave it to me today." Liz had held out her red blistered knuckles that had been beaten raw with a ruler. "And all because I begged her not to hit you. Sometimes I think my life would have been easier if I didn't have you for a twin."

"You oughta run and hide instead of just standing there taking it like a dummy," was Eddie's answer. "They forget after a while. I'll show you some places where they'll never find you."

"But they tattle to Mama, and I can't stand to have her mad."

"I'll show you how I get even with old Calista. Just wait Come with me tonight, Lizzy," Eddie had whispered."

* * * * * * * *

"What we gonna do now, Eddie?" Liz was tired of hugging the cold brick. She rubbed the painful welts on her right hand. "She could have swatted the left hand" she thought. "I don't use that one much.

"Just wait. You'll see something you'll never forget. And she'll never be the wiser. At least it'll give you something to laugh at while she's beating you."

"Laugh. Ha! It hurts too much to laugh. I have all I can do not to cry."

"You'll laugh inside. I do."

"You mean you've done this before?"

"Yeah, a few times. All us town guys do it. None of us has ever been caught."

"Okay, now. Take another peek." Eddie nudged Liz into the present.

Sister Calista had pulled the window shade down, but it didn't come all the way to the sill so the twins still had a good view of the tiny room. There was a cot against the right wall, with a scratched chest at the foot, a small wooden bureau on the far wall, and a straight chair against the left wall. The nun stood beside the bed and had untied the strings that held her habit around her middle. She pulled the black garments over her head revealing a pair of bloomers the size of a tent and black cotton stockings stretched tightly around her huge, bulging legs.

"I'm not sure I want to see this," Liz whispered.

"Just remember how nasty the old bitch is," Eddie whispered back.

"Eddie, that's not nice to call her that."

"That's just what she is. A witch-bitch. So there. I said it again."

Sister Calista had spread out a sheet-sized cotton nightgown over the bureau and was pulling off the camisole that had covered the top half of her body to let lose two watermelon-sized breasts that laid heavily on her stomach.

"Oh God," Liz breathed. "They're bigger'n old Bessie's teats."

"Yeah, and uglier too." Eddie breathed back.

The nun then picked up the hem of the nightgown, put it over her head and stood up with her arms up. The gown slid over her body and a pair of chubby white hands appeared miraculously out of the sleeves. Before the garment fell to the floor, she caught it around her hips and pulled the elastic waist band of the bloomers and the black elastic of the stocking down simultaneously and the gown followed the bloomers and stockings to the floor but not before the twins caught sight of a wad of graying hair between her swollen thighs. She picked the discarded clothing from the floor, put them in the top drawer of the bureau, picked up the rosary that lay on top and grudgingly knelt beside the cot for her evening prayers.

Liz crouched low on the staircase and pondered what she had just witnessed. She had never seen anyone naked. Not her sisters; not her mother; not even herself. And she wondered that Eddie had figured this was getting even with Sister. "It's me that's been punished," she thought. "But I'll never see Sister Calista the same way again."