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.
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.