Lucia Berlin - A Manual for Cleaning Women - Selected Stories

As the children grew older they prayed more quickly, so that gradually the voices began to blend, to merge into one sudden joyful chant … In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

I taught Spanish in the new junior high, which lay at the opposite end of the playground like a child’s colored toy. Every morning, before class, I went through the grade school, to hear the prayers, but also simply to go into the building, as one would go in a church. The school had been a mission, built in 1700 by the Spaniards, built to stand in the desert for a long time. It was different from other old schools, whose stillness and solidity is still a shell for the children who pass through them. It had kept the peace of a mission, of a sanctuary.

The nuns laughed in the grade school, and the children laughed. The nuns were all old, not like tired old women who clutch their bags at a bus stop, but proud, loved by their God and by their children. They responded to love with tenderness, with soft laughter that was contained, guarded, behind the heavy wooden doors.

Several junior high nuns swept through the playground, checking for cigarette smoke. These nuns were young and nervous. They taught “underprivileged children,” “borderline delinquents,” and their thin faces were tired, sick of a blank stare. They could not use awe or love like the grade school nuns. Their recourse was impregnability, indifference to the students who were their duty and their life.

The rows of windows in the ninth grade flashed as Sister Lourdes opened them, as usual, seven minutes before the bell. I stood outside the initialed orange doors, watching my ninth-grade students as they paced back and forth in front of the wire fence, their bodies loose and supple, necks bobbing as they walked, arms and legs swaying to a beat, to a trumpet that no one else could hear.

They leaned against the wire fence, speaking in English-Spanish-Hipster dialect, laughing soundlessly. The girls wore the navy-blue uniforms of the school. Like muted birds they flirted with the boys, who cocked their plumed heads, who were brilliant in orange or yellow or turquoise pegged pants. They wore open black shirts or V-neck sweaters with nothing under them, so that their crucifixes gleamed against their smooth brown chests … the crucifix of the pachuco, which was also tattooed on the back of their hand.

“Good morning, dear.”

“Good morning, Sister.” Sister Lourdes had come outside to see if the seventh grade was in line.

Sister Lourdes was the principal. She had hired me, reluctantly having to pay someone to teach, since none of the nuns spoke Spanish.

“So, as a lay teacher,” she had said, “the first one at San Marco, it may be hard for you to control the students, especially since many of them are almost as old as you. You must not make the mistake that many of my young nuns do. Do not try to be their friend. These students think in terms of power and weakness. You must keep your power … through aloofness, discipline, punishment, control. Spanish is an elective, give as many Fs as you like. During the first three weeks you may transfer any of your pupils to my Latin class. I have had no volunteers,” she smiled. “You will find this a great help.”

The first month had gone well. The threat of the Latin class was an advantage; by the end of the second week I had eliminated seven students. It was a luxury to teach such a relatively small class, and a class with the lower quarter removed. My native Spanish helped a great deal. It was a surprise to them that a “gringa” could speak as well as their parents, better even than they. They were impressed that I recognized their obscene words, their slang for marijuana and police. They worked hard. Spanish was close, important to them. They behaved well, but their sullen obedience and their automatic response were an affront to me.

They mocked words and expressions that I used and began to use them as much as I. “La Piña,” they jeered, because of my hair, and soon the girls cut their hair like mine. “The idiot can’t write,” they whispered, when I printed on the blackboard, but they began to print all of their papers.

These were not yet the pachucos, the hoods that they tried hard to be, flipping a switchblade into a desk, blushing when it slipped and fell. They were not yet saying: “You can’t show me nothing.” They waited, with a shrug, to be shown. So what could I show them? The world I knew was no better than the one they had the courage to defy.

I watched Sister Lourdes whose strength was not, as mine, a front for their respect. The students saw her faith in the God, in the life that she had chosen; they honored it, never letting her know their tolerance for the harshness she used for control.

She couldn’t laugh with them either. They laughed only in derision, only when someone revealed himself with a question, with a smile, a mistake, a fart. Always, as I silenced their mirthless laughter, I thought of the giggles, the shouts, the grade school counterpoint of joy.

Once a week I laughed with the ninth grade. On Mondays, when suddenly there would be a banging on the flimsy metal door, an imperious BOOM BOOM BOOM that rattled the windows and echoed through the building. Always at the tremendous noise I would jump, and the class would laugh at me.

“Come in!” I called, and the knocking would stop, and we laughed, when it was only a tiny first grader. He would pad in sneakers to my desk. “Good morning,” he whispered, “may I have the cafeteria list?” Then he would tiptoe away and slam the door, which was funny, too.

* * *

“Mrs. Lawrence, would you come inside for a minute?” I followed Sister Lourdes into her office and waited while she rang the bell.

“Timothy Sanchez is coming back to school.” She paused, as if I should react. “He has been in the detention home, one of many times — for theft and narcotics. They feel that he should finish school as quickly as possible. He is much older than his class, and according to their tests he is an exceptionally bright boy. It says here that he should be ‘encouraged and challenged.’”

“Is there any particular thing you want me to do?”

“No, in fact, I can’t advise you at all … he is quite a different problem. I thought I should mention it. His parole officer will be checking on his progress.”

The next morning was Halloween, and the grade school had come in costume. I lingered to watch the witches, the hundreds of devils who trembled their morning prayers. The bell had rung when I got to the door of the ninth grade. “Sacred Heart of Mary, pray for us,” they said. I stood at the door while Sister Lourdes took the roll. They rose as I entered the room, “Good morning.” Their chairs scraped as they sat down.

The room became still. “El Tim!” someone whispered.

He stood in the door, silhouetted like Sister Lourdes from the skylight in the hall. He was dressed in black, his shirt open to the waist, his pants low and tight on lean hips. A gold crucifix glittered from a heavy chain. He was half-smiling, looking down at Sister Lourdes, his eyelashes creating jagged shadows down his gaunt cheeks. His black hair was long and straight. He smoothed it back with long slender fingers, quick, like a bird.

I watched the awe of the class. I looked at the young girls, the pretty young girls who whispered in the restroom not of dates or love but of marriage and abortion. They were tensed, watching him, flushed and alive.

Sister Lourdes stepped into the room. “Sit here, Tim.” She motioned to a seat in front of my desk. He moved across the room, his broad back stooped, neck forward, tssch-tssch, tssch-tssch, the pachuco beat. “Dig the crazy nun!” he grinned, looking at me. The class laughed. “Silence!” Sister Lourdes said. She stood beside him. “This is Mrs. Lawrence. Here is your Spanish book.” He seemed not to hear her. Her beads rattled nervously.