Month: May 2020

Holy Rosary School Part 2

When the dismissal bell rang at 3:00 on the appointed day and the rest of the class stumbled in their haste to flee the building, Lisa, Michele, Julie, and I remained smugly behind, excited at the prospect of following Sister Dorothy up that final flight of stairs. 

We took the staircase at the opposite end of the building from the frightening crucifix; on this shadowy landing a less frightening statue of the Blessed Mother stood beside the locked convent door.  Jangling through her key ring, Sister Dorothy found the one that opened the secret portal. Cautiously and suddenly timid, we followed her into the convent.

The brightly lit kitchen and the bracing scent of pine cleaner welcomed us, dispelling the gloom of the landing. We glanced around.  A long, sturdy table of pale, polished wood, with a large bowl of apples, oranges, and pears in the center, dominated the room.  Light from ceiling fixtures spilled across the buffed floor and dissolved down a hallway of closed doors—the nuns’ bedrooms.  With deep disappointment we learned we would not get to see them, but we understood.  A long school day had just ended, and we imagined the sisters savoring some solitary moments in their sacred space.

Whatever else we saw of the living quarters, nothing made more of an impact than the sight that gripped us as we stepped onto the rooftop patio—their backyard in the sky.

Looking eastward over rooftops and roadways into the distance, we were captivated by the sight of the Hutchinson River and a network of creeks and inlets, peaceful and still, reflecting the blue-violet of the dusky sky. Low stratus clouds floated over the scene, drifting patches of deeper violet. Sage green marsh grasses turning autumn gold arched sideways, their muddy banks exposed by low tide. 

Overarching this natural splendor stood a structural masterpiece: the Hutchinson River Parkway bridge. A section of the drawbridge was visible from my bedroom window, but from here at the top of the school we looked down on the breath-catching sight of its full expanse—seven spans, support columns, the control tower, and the yellow warning gates in their upright resting position.  Beyond the bridge and the trees of Pelham Bay Park lay Eastchester Bay, Orchard Beach, and the open waters of Long Island Sound—but these were lost in the purple dusk and the distance. 

Just south of the drawbridge, the towers of the New Haven Railroad trestle rose above the flat landscape like black steel filigree against the sky.  On the New England Thruway and the Hutchinson River Parkway, two ribbons crossing each other and slicing through the marshes, cars caught shards of setting sunlight and shot them into our squinting eyes. All was hushed; the speeding cars made no sound as they slipped along the highways.

Although 205 acres of those marshlands had been filled in a decade earlier for a short-lived amusement park called Freedomland, a good part of the land once occupied by the Siwanoy people was still the habitat of wildlife, birds, and sea creatures. But we knew that construction of a sprawling apartment complex called Co-Op City had recently begun. More of the coastal waterways were being filled in, and the development would not stop with Co-Op City. The marshlands would eventually disappear under a shopping mall.

 Later it occurred to me that the splendor we had been privileged to discover that afternoon was what the early residents of Westervelt Avenue had seen from their front doors every day, until the houses on the eastern side of the street were built. For me, seeing this vision from what, at the time, could have been the highest point in the northeast Bronx, was to discover a new facet of my borough’s character, another side to its asphalt personality.

And so our tour ended. What had started out as a quest to uncover the mysteries of convent life ended with another discovery.  My friends and I walked home, descending Allerton Avenue in the twilight. We faced east, just as we had from much higher up, and though we looked for the beauty of the landscape, our street-level view ended where the New England Thruway met the horizon. Headlights and streetlights became silver sparks in the violet dusk, creating a different kind of beauty enhanced by the rising round moon hovering above. 

Despite the strangeness of the walk home at this late hour, subdued without the usual crowd of other school kids, our spirits were high. We had spent the late afternoon in the private company of the teacher we loved.  We had seen that mysterious place at the top of the school, something no other kid in the class had done. Now we could picture where the sisters graded our test papers, where they ate their meals, where they stepped outside for fresh air and sunshine.

I think each of us must have had the same fleeting thought as we headed home that afternoon: Imagine being a nun.

© Barbara Cole 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Holy Rosary School, Part 1

The Neighborhood

By third grade my friends and I were old enough to walk to school by ourselves.  We headed for Allerton Avenue and turned left, climbing the gentle incline to Woodhull Avenue. There we turned right, crossing Allerton.  In the distance, looming above the houses at the end of Woodhull and tucked between the side streets of Arnow Avenue and Schorr Place, stood a five-story, orange brick building—Holy Rosary School.

Holy Rosary School, 1500 Arnow Avenue, Bronx. This is the back of the school with the schoolyard in the foreground. This side faced Schorr Place and Woodhull Avenue. The front of the school faced Arnow Avenue and looked out onto Gun Hill and Eastchester Roads. That’s the clothesline on the roof.

Most of the kids on Westervelt attended Holy Rosary. The nearest public school, P.S. 97, was way down Mace Avenue on the other side of Eastchester Road, not within easy walking distance for elementary-school kids.

Once the school came into view, I instinctively sought out my classroom windows.  Then my gaze rose higher, to the two floors at the top. These floors comprised the convent.  The rooftop patio was easy to spot by the clothesline in plain sight, frequently festooned with the sisters’ long white underwear gliding ghostlike on the breeze.  What about their habits and veils, I’d wonder?  Did they send them out to be dry-cleaned?  And what was it like on those mysterious floors, where none but the veiled were allowed?

It didn’t seem likely or even possible that one day some of us students would actually set foot in the upper sanctum which was so close and yet so far removed from our daily lives.  At times, one could accidentally—and frighteningly—get too close to the convent.  It didn’t happen often, but it happened to almost everyone.  As you mindlessly assaulted flight after flight of the broad staircase on the auditorium side of the school, or the narrow staircase on the opposite side of the school, you’d miscalculate. 

Although such miscalculations were rare, disorientation resulted from momentarily forgetting which floor you started on. If you were a sixth, seventh, or eighth grader, you would be used to running up three flights of stairs, and you could do it accurately without thinking.  But if you’d been sent to a third, fourth, or fifth grade classroom on the second floor, and your mind is elsewhere during your return trip, you might find your gallop slowing.  Something’s not right, you think, as your feet grow heavy.  It’s the light—the light is diminishing here on this staircase.  Why?  As you turn in confusion toward the landing above you, your heart leaps with fright at the sight of the large-as-life crucifix at the top.  It materializes out of the shadows and sends you bounding toward the landing you just passed so lightheartedly a moment ago, back to the safety of the third floor.

That was the closest any of us ever got to the convent until the autumn of our eighth-grade year—November of 1967.

A small group of us often stayed after school to spend time with Sister Dorothy, our young teacher who was new to Holy Rosary that year. While the other sisters still wore the traditional habit, Sister Dorothy wore a modified headpiece that struggled to control her thick, wavy blonde hair. No wimple enclosed her neck; instead, her long black dress was trimmed with a simple white collar. That her name did not include Mary was another novelty. But on the first day of school that year we had to learn new names for all of the sisters; inexplicably they had reverted from the names given to them at profession to their baptismal names. Sister Mary Pauline became Sister Josephine, for example, and Sister Mary Judith was now Sister Florence. We couldn’t have known back then that these small changes foreshadowed monumental (and for us, unimaginable) changes for sisters everywhere. For now, the sight of a nun’s hair and neck was enough to get used to.

After years of having nuns for teachers, we were acutely aware of Sister Dorothy’s authority over us.  But, perhaps as a fortunate combination of our increasing maturity and her cheerful youthfulness, she approached her students less as a drill sergeant and more as a mentor or counselor.  With us she was upbeat and kind.  While many of these Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary were intelligent women as well as good and fair-minded teachers, others had been more difficult.  Corporal punishment was a thing of the past, but heavy-handed threats and humiliating and hurtful words too often were not.

So, at dismissal time, Lisa, Michele, Julie, and I were in no hurry to leave our beloved teacher.  With wit and an abundant supply of patience, Sister Dorothy answered our endless questions and advised us when the inevitable adolescent difficulties arose.  We liked to think she looked forward to our after-school sessions as much as we did. 

During one such gathering the topic of our obsession with the convent came up, and our curiosity about those living quarters finally found a person willing to satisfy it. Sister Dorothy set a date to give us a tour. 

© Barbara Cole 2020. All Rights Reserved.