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Fiction

Sister Claudia

Sal Difalco

issue three

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As principal of St. Lawrence Elementary, Sister Claudia prided herself on keeping a tight ship. No more than five feet tall even in her thick-soled black shoes and towering nun’s coif, she stalked the hallways and airwaves of the school like a peevish penguin—her tight face framed by starched white wimples, her speech punctuated by spitted plosives and fricatives—and no one, no student or staff member, challenged her authority. When she appeared, often unexpectedly, materializing as if out of thin air, reactions were twofold: prompt retreat, or total paralysis.

During Sister Claudia’s morning intercom pronouncements, often a mix of Catholic maxims and naked menace, no one dared not listen for fear of being reported. Sister Claudia tolerated zero dissent from staff—deriding them openly with abandon—and her favorite instrument of student terror and control was a fiendish little item called the Black Doctor: a stiff leather strop fashioned from a beavertail and designed not to sharpen straight razors, but rather to traumatize the tender palms of students who’d misbehaved or drawn Sister’s Claudia’s wrath.

In the sixth grade, I chummed round with tough guy Gus DiNardo and Patty Sullivan. Gus often wore a fedora and always dressed in crisp dress shirts and high-waisted pants. He said his mother wouldn’t let him leave home unless he was spruce. According to him, his family had connections to the Buffalo mob. While not a classic bully—he didn’t go around tuning up kids for no reason—nobody messed with him. And Gus never went anywhere without his sidekick, Patty Sullivan, a doughy, ginger brute who claimed to be devoid of pain receptors.

Of course, Gus despised Sister Claudia. He called her Sister Hitler. “I bet ya she wears swastika underpants,” he’d joke.

One day, after Gus was caught gooning a fifth-grader who owed him money for a box of firecrackers, Sister Claudia suspended him for a week. Of course he threatened to involve his family. “My Uncle Vinnie’ll fix her wagon. Just one phone call. One phone call and Sister Hitler is toast.” But Gus never called Uncle Vinnie. He returned to school after a week with bruises under his eyes and swollen lips. Said he didn’t want to talk about it.

One afternoon Gus approached me with Patty, all smiles. Gus hated this kid, Joey Varga, his explanation straightforward. “Number one, he’s a pinhead. Number two, he’s a freakin albino. And three, his whore mother’s divorced.”

Joey wasn’t albino. Not quite. But he wasn’t the brightest kid and had few friends. Personally, I thought he was okay but smelled like pee. As for his mother, I disliked that Gus had dissed her. From what I’d heard, Joey’s old man used to beat her up. Anyway, Gus had the bright idea to dose Joey with Ex-Lax. He’d actually melted down two boxes of Ex-Lax and re-formed them into chocolate bars. I didn’t like the sounds of it. But Gus was resolute.

At recess one morning, Gus, Patty and I approached Joey, playing with a yellow yo-yo in a corner of the schoolyard.

“Hey Joey,” Gus said, chomping on a regular Jersey Milk. “Wanna hang out with us?”

Joey shrugged, but he wasn’t about to squander an opportunity to hang with someone as cool as Gus DiNardo.

“Wanna wear my hat,” Gus offered. “Here. It’ll look boss on you.”

Joey took the fedora and plopped it on, but it dwarfed his head.

We all had a good chuckle, even Joey.

“Want some chocolate?” Gus offered at last, and of course Joey, seeing the Jersey Milk, accepted a chunk of the re-formed Ex-Lax. Indeed, Gus coerced him to eat almost all of it.

When recess ended, Gus and Patty laughed themselves into hysterics. I laughed but knew we’d messed up.

Next day after the morning announcements, we were called to the office. All I could think of was that my mother would kill me for this.

Sister Claudia was waiting with a plump blonde lady wearing a sad expression. “I have no words,” Sister Claudia said. “Joey’s mother here had to take him to Emergency last night.”

We said nothing and stood there staring at our feet.

“You’ll be punished for this,” Sister Claudia said to us, then turned to Joey’s mother and said, “They’ll be punished for this.”

“Joey shit his pants?” Patty Sullivan asked.

Gus and I burst out laughing.

Smiling mirthlessly, Sister Claudia removed a purple velvet sheath from a desk drawer and slid the Black Doctor out of it. She ordered us before her. She took my right hand first, clenching the wrist, lifted the strop above her head and whipped it down on my palm. The searing pain shocked me. I thought I might faint. Ten strokes on the right, ten on the left.

Shattered, I wept fullthroatedly and shook my scalded hands. Patty was next, flushed and sweating. Sister Claudia cracked his hands with zeal, lifting her heels with each blow. Whether Patty felt pain or not, he blubbered like a toddler.

When Gus’s turn came, he glared at Sister Claudia defiantly.

“You can’t hurt me,” he said. “You can’t make me cry.”

Her face dark with rage, Sister Claudia grabbed Gus’s right hand and delivered ten percussive blows, then worked the left hand, literally jumping each time. But Gus just smiled at her. She continued strapping his hands, over and over again, yipping with each stroke, her eyes inflamed. I thought Gus would collapse, but he hung in there. The nun kept at it until Joey’s mother said something. Finally, she stopped, panting, sweat beading her brow. But Gus didn’t cry. He held his trembling hands at his sides and shook his head, but shed not a single tear.

Joey’s mother looked on red-faced.

Patty and I wiped our tears and watched a spent Sister Claudia slump behind her desk.