and then over the years, she'd slip and call me Howard Allen but it was never intentional, and probably she wasn't even aware of it, and I didn't mark it either.
But that recess where I encountered her in the alien school yard and she addressed me as Anne was decisive.
As for the building and the yard, they seemed ancient.
The highly polished steps in the school building were so old that they were worn concave and the nail heads were slightly raised though still sunk deep in the waxed wood. The stairs had beautifully carved banisters. As for the yard it was vast, sprawling, and plain with nothing much that I recall except a fig tree at one end surrounded by benches, and a chain-link fence along the street. There was an overhang under which we could play during the rain. And through the windows we could peep secretively into the sisters' dining room where they were ranged down a long table, saying their Grace Before Meals with folded hands, or actually eating their meal.
To see a sister eat her meal in those days was something that wasn't supposed to happen. Nuns went everywhere by twos, they did not drive automobiles, and they never ate or drank in public at all. So this peeping in the windows was quick when it happened, and all I recall were shadowy shapes.
Let me take this opportunity to say something about the nuns of this era. I went through four years with the Sisters of Mercy in this building. And later I went through four years with the Sisters of Mercy at Holy Name of Jesus School uptown. All these nuns, except for Sister Hyacinth, were older women, and they worked almost unbelievably hard. Some of them were ancient; all were extremely self-sacrificing with lives completely devoted to teaching; they took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. They wore heavy ornate black habits, with extraordinarily stiff white wimples, and negotiated every gesture and task in spite of voluminous deep black sleeves. They lived their whole lives in the convent buildings. If they had vacations I knew nothing about them.
And if they possessed anything for themselves I never saw any evidence of it. It was understood by us that they lived as celibate and dedicated religious because their work for God required this, and they were perceived as Brides of Christ in their purity and single-minded devotion. Their names tended to be otherworldly: Sister Annunciata; Sister Bernard; Sister Damien; Sister Francesca; Sister Beatrice; Sister Therese Marie.
Later in high school, I was immeasurably helped and guided by members of the School Sisters of Notre Dame.
These were younger women, highly educated, and extremely refined. They were from the North. And I remember them as extraordinarily patient with my eccentricities, rebelliousness, and general determination to be a great person, rather than a good student. These nuns were also extremely kind to my sister Alice, who, though she had a genius IQ, did poorly in school. They even sent her to a state competition in history, in which she placed second. And normally, a student as poor as my sister would never have been given such an opportunity.
They saw her abilities and they valued her for them. And when my sister placed high in that competition, she was overjoyed.
I remember particularly Sister Caroline, and the principal, Sister Caroleen.
All nuns of these years were exquisitely dressed. Almost every order had its distinctive soft fine black wool robes and its own particular and elaborate headdress. They were decidedly medieval in appearance, and effortlessly grand.
Even the Little Sisters of the Poor, who dressed somewhat more simply than others, wore beautiful white caps with ruf-fled edges, and lovely loose-hooded black mantles.
All nuns covered their hair entirely. And usually their necks were covered as well.
I recall them as an ebullient people, intensely interested in their charges and as having great authority. In sum, they educated the Catholics of my generation - male and female in the highly complex teachings of the Catholic Church, and they taught not only grade school but high school. The Dominican sisters taught college.
There were teaching brothers and teaching priests, most notably the Jesuits, but the nuns staffed the countless parish schools of the country, and to them fell the responsibility for thousands of Catholic minds. When I look back on it, I have only the deepest respect for their remarkable self-discipline and the difficult life that they had chosen, and their full commitment to it. The example they set for