Blessed are the Sneaks

An autoethnographic story by Karla Scarff

In the beginning, there was Mexico, where I was surrounded by a drowsy sort of Catholicism featuring a benign yet vindictive version of God we called Diosito, “Little God.”  One moment he was making tequila at your quinceañera, but the next he might condemn you to eternal damnation for raising your voice at your parents.  My grandmother wielded the brimstone of a puritan preacher, using stories from the apocalypse as lullabies.  She had me convinced that I was likely to be dead meat after the rapture, left behind to contend with the Four Horsemen because I didn’t wash the dishes properly. 

Now, in the second millennium of our Lord, there was a famine upon my household after I was laid off from teaching twice in a row.  Only that level of desperation made me take the art teacher position at a Catholic school.  Nestled in the hills of the one percent, Our Perpetual Lady of the Carillon Catholic High School looked suspiciously ostentatious, and I often wondered how many poor souls may had been swindled of their cash to raise such a magnificent bell tower and rose gardens that bloomed year long.  It was a modern-day miracle.

And so it came to pass that my year of penitence at the Pernicious Lady of the Carrion would have an inauspicious beginning when a few students mistook me for a cleaning lady on my first day.

“Oh,” two boys had stopped at the classroom door, startled, “Do you know where the teacher is?”

I stood there for a moment, kicking myself for not dressing more professionally.  But the classroom was a mess, and I had chosen comfort over style.  I raised a black trash bag in greeting and said, “I am the teacher.  How can I help you?”  And I wondered if this would have happened if my skin were as white as the Virgin Mary, who blessed my classroom wall in a life size portrait.  It did not matter what was said after that, I felt irredeemably dirty.

My Mexican heritage was a point of interest when it came time to build resumes.  There were constant missions across the border to help those poor Mexican orphans, and I was asked more than once to head one of these ventures because I spoke Spanish. 

“Would you be interested in helping us lead a mission down to Tijuana to help at an orphanage?” a student had asked a few days into the school year.

I considered the offer for a moment, but realized that having already been mistaken for a cleaning lady on my first day at work, it was likely assumed that I had been raised in one of these orphanages myself.  “I am not sure…” I said after a moment.

Sensing my hesitance, the girl continued cheerfully, “see, my maid taught me Spanish, and I thought I could practice while I did some good in the world,” she finished sincerely as if writing a college entrance essay. 

I stretched an insincere smile on my face, something I got really good at during that year, “I don’t think so, Mary.  I am raising two young children and cannot commit to something so important…” so important as padding your resume, I finished in my head.

I often got the feeling that much of what when on at the Incontinent Lady of Carrion had little do with Diosito and more to do with appearances, and I struggled with my need to feed the family and the need to keep my self-respect. As paid employee, I had the unfortunate position of holding up these appearances

The word of the Lord had come to the headmistress, Ms. Lucy Fern that daily uniform checks had to be performed at the first ring of the carillon each morning.  I had noticed her at the morning meeting, sitting near the front row of the cafetorium.  She was discreetly taking attendance as the staff walked in like sheep into our pen.  She did not trust us to sign in and had to count us like children each and every time. 

Standing primly on the stage in her squarish, shoulder-padded suit, Ms. Lucy Fern explained the appropriate length of a skirt: “Two inches below the fingertip” she demonstrated, her fingertips well above the hem of her modest skirt. It was alarming to picture her panty-hosed thighs flashing from under a plaid skirt, and I was glad that she was such a beacon of propriety.

“As for the boys, hair must not grow past the earlobes,” she pointed at her tight curls, and I wondered if she chose this very style so she could demonstrate how a young man ought to look.  It suited her well.

And so, I had to pretend to care about such inconsequential things as the proper length of a plaid skirt or a shaggy haircut.  I lined up all thirty of my students every morning and did my best imitation of an evil Mother Superior from the movies.  After all, it was true that the girls took to pulling their skirts high up to heaven as a form of rebellion and that the boys wore comical pigtails or contraband hats to avoid detection.  I found all this rather amusing and secretly celebrated their rebellion, but I had to keep up appearances.  I took to nodding up and down like a bobble head, occasionally lifting an eyebrow at a particularly fluffy head or a scandalous show of knees. 

“Pull it down,” I would say and move on, not stopping to check if Magdalene did indeed pull her skirt down to earth. “That hair looks awfully ungodly,” I would later say to Samson, “it might be time for a haircut or a nice beret.”

My grandmother would have sentenced me to ten Holy Marys had she known that I was letting students out of my classroom with long hair and short skirts proper of an Aerosmith video. 

In those days of false prophets, it was likely that word of my heretical behavior got out to Ms. Lucy Fern, but I did not care.  Not after the classroom she had placed me in.  I was given a room in the Hall of Penitence.  It had no windows, a brown carpet, and a notable lack of a sink or storage.  It was totally insufficient as an art classroom, and no amount of praying or cursing would change that.  I soon asked the fifth period twins, Cain and Abel, to take down the life-size portrait of Mary.  Its placid countenance had begun to feel judgmental, as if she disapproved of me and was secretly snitching to admin about my sins.  Henceforth, she graced the hallway instead, facing the unused lockers.  As revenge for the lack of sinks, I began dumping my buckets of paint water into the nearest toilet so that the stalls looked like some apocalyptic clown had exploded.  To remedy the lack of storage, I used the empty lockers to house student artwork, and they were soon filled with ceramic abominations that would make Father Facundo cross himself.  Lastly, I commandeered a large shelving unit from the teacher’s lounge that had housed encyclopedias from the dark ages.  I stacked the old tomes on top of each other like bricks on the carpeted floor and dragged the metal unit to my classroom, leaving telltale tracks on the plush carpet.  This did not please Madame Lucy Fern, but I ignored her request to return the unit to its former home.

In my time at Lady of the Carry-on, there was a warrior, one Joan of the Art Department, who belonged to the esteemed group of alumni and who was a descendant of other staunch Catholics.  The hand of the Lord was on Joan of Art, who was determined to return the art department to its former glory.  Her diminutive form walked with purpose on sensible shoes, her Dora the Explorer hair shining like justice on her way to the HR office, complaint in hand.  She was a tireless fighter in the name of Righteousness with a surprisingly dirty mouth.  Her particular target of holy war was Ms. Jessie Bell, the art department chair and well-dressed villain. 

“There she goes,” Joan would hiss as we ate our lunch in the courtyard. She squinted her eyes with malice, watching Ms. Bell float her way amid the perfectly manicured roses to Crucifixion Hall.  “That pretentious cunt hasn’t worked a day this year!” She eyed Ms. Bell’s starched white linen shirt and chic hair with disgust and pulled at the rosary around her neck with barely contained rage.

Joan and I would eat our lunch while listening to the recorded sound of hawks occasionally punctuating the air, and we pondered the mysteries of Lady of the Carry-on.  It was a mystery how Jessie Bell could keep her clothing so immaculate when she taught ceramics all day and how she could be so vicious and incompetent while holding a leadership position.  When I taught ceramics, I was often mistaken for a homeless person who had wandered onto campus.  It was a mystery to me how Joan of Art could spit both hell fire and Hail Marys out of the same mouth.  As for the hawks, we soon discovered that like many things at Lady of the Carry-on, they were fake.  Their job was to scare seagulls away, as they often stole food out peoples’ mouths and would shit on anyone—in short, they acted the same as Ms. Jessie Bell.  

“I’m gonna fuck her shit up!” Joan promised more than once, her eyes glinting from behind cheap plastic lenses with the zeal of a puritan preacher. 

“Do you think she drives that pussy-ass pink Corvette?  I’m going to slash her goddamn tires with a box cutter.”

I would listen with amusement and alarm, for I was not particularly interested in being roped into any one of Joan’s zany schemes.  It hadn’t taken me long to decide that Lady of the Carrion was but a detour in my un-illustrious teaching career. 

“Tell me about your study of the Virgin Mary,” I might inquire to lead Joan’s mind into gentler, less criminal pastures.

“Oh, the Marian Devotional is an active study where one tries to imitate the virtues of Mary, Mother of God.”

Now, I might not have been the best Catholic back in the day, but I could not recall any mention of Mary slashing anyone’s tires.  This might have required me to revisit the Bible.

Yea, as though my tribulations were insufficient, the Lord chose to test me yet through compulsory weekly mass. The Perspiring Lady of Carrion had tried to appeal to its young population by enlisting a young, inexperienced priest, one Father Facundo who could make Job himself weep with boredom.  Once a week on Wednesday, we teachers led our sheep down to the unholy gymnasium to perform the strange calisthenics of Catholic mass.  I believe all the switching between sitting and standing was merely to keep us from falling asleep.  Ms. Lucy Fern kept a watchful eye, counting each of the staff members present like St. Peter at the gate. 

At first, I tried to be good.  I tried to listen to Father Facundo’s message with an open heart, but I found the spectacle of preaching under a basketball hoop rather ridiculous.  I watched the altar boys file in, including Saul, who smelled of pot a few days ago solemnly carrying a cross, shoes squeaking.   A few girls came in next bearing incense, and I could see Magdalene’s red hair blazing, her micro-mini skirt hidden under some frilly abomination gilded with crosses.  It was a circus performance, and after three Wednesdays of Woe, I resolved to find an escape.  It would do no good to skip out under the watchful eye of Ms. Lucy Fern.  I would need to sneak out after delivering the students to their designated place.  My plan was this: I would escort my third period to mass and be accounted for.  I would participate in the first prayer and pretend to make my way to the restroom when we were asked to stand.  Over the next few days, I brought a blanket and a pillow stuffed in a bag and planned out my route of escape.

And so it came to pass that on the next Wednesday of Woes, Father Facundo droned on about the beatitudes in his usual monotone.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” he pontificated as I made a beeline for the hallway leading to freedom, noticing that Ms. Lucy Fern was busy talking to one of my students, a loudmouth named Peter.

Outside the hawks screamed ominously, but I hurried past the Hall of Self Flagellation as nonchalantly as possible.  The plan worked beautifully, the only hitch being Mary’s glare of disapproval as I walked past her into my room.  Once inside, I derisively crossed myself and turned off the lights, resolving to leave the door open so that I would not have to get up and unlock it when students returned half-dazed from mass.  I set my alarm for 45 minutes and curled under my desk to take a well-deserved nap.

I was asleep and dreaming of a better job when the lights blazed on like judgement day.  From the gap under my desk, I opened my eyes in a panic and considered my limited options.  I could stay hidden and hope that the intruder might not notice the blue comforter peeking out from under my desk.  I could emerge from my hiding place and feign illness, though the blanket and pillow might be hard to explain.  I lay on my side for a moment, praying to the Virgin Mary, but I knew she was not likely to intercede on my behalf.  Damn! I thought, cleaning the drool that clung to my wrinkly cheek. 

Two feet walked with purpose toward a corner of the room where I would surely be spotted. 

I hoped Ms. Lucy Fern wouldn’t fire me on the spot.  And then I noticed that the shoes were not Ms. Lucy’s sensible kitten heels.  These were Vans that had been through hell and back.  A student!  A fellow sneak in need of asylum! The shoes stopped near my desk.  My hiding place had been discovered.  I prayed that perhaps my lax enforcement of the rules might pay off.  Perhaps my heathen status might excuse my current behavior.  I crawled out from under the desk on all fours like some supplicant.  Standing there with a look of horror turned to confusion was Peter, resident stoner, his sheepdog hair partially obscuring his vision.

“Hi Peter,” I said, coming to a stop and casually rolling onto a sitting position in front of him. 

Peter stood frozen, looking as though he had just seen Jesus rise from the dead.  

“You may stay,” I said, trying to muster as much dignity and authority as I could in this ridiculous situation. “But,” I continued, clearing my throat, “We will never speak of this,” I said with finality.  Peter nodded in a daze and slunk off to the furthest corner and laid his head to rest.

I sighed.

Outside my room, the Virgin Mary rolled her eyes in disgust and the hawks sang their song of deceit.  In the gymnasium, Jane of Art and Jessie Bell shook each-other’s hands wishing one-another the peace of Christ while Ms. Lucy Fern scanned the gymnasium in search of Peter, who had been gone for far too long. Maybe she had noticed my absence as well.  

Blessed are the sneaks, I thought, sat down at my desk, and pretended to grade for what seemed like forever and ever.  Amen.