From My Grandmother's Files: Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart
by Shirley A. Littleford Johnsen
Just barely five, I should have been put in the kindergarten, but that had folded the term before. Having no time sense, and caring less, I was late for school every morning. My mother was unable to hurry me or instill a feeling of urgency.
The classroom was segregated into two aisles for the girls and two for the boys, with a middle aisle that divided the sexes. Each morning when I tardily entered the classroom, all the pupils pointed their left forefingers at me, rubbing them with a stroking motion, which meant "shame, shame, shame.” I didn't care, for I sauntered to the back of the room where I hung up my outer garment and went to my seat.
Even though I was too young for the class, and taunted by my classmates, I loved my teacher dearly. Her name was Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart. I always called her by that full name, liking the sound of it, though I didn't know the meaning.
The primer was not so baffling as repetitious. I had lots of books at home, so the printed word was acceptable. The contents of the school primer, however, were almost entirely religious. Instead of Dick and Jane, Spot and Puff, running and playing, these same characters were made to interact with Jesus, whom I thought was just another character in the script.
It was the Holy Ghost that really stumped me. If I forgot to shut my closet door on nights of the full moon, and if the small high window in it was open and there was a breeze, I could look through the closet doorway, and there it was! The Holy Ghost!
My father was away from home for as much as six months at a time. He was a mining engineer and he had long distances to travel by train or boat. A few months after I had started school, he returned. One of the first things I did when he returned was to climb into his lap, pick up my primer and start reading page after page of dull prose. "Mama loves Jesus, Jesus loves mama, Papa loves Jesus, Baby loves Jesus, Jesus loves Spot..." I seem to remember that my mother hovered anxiously in the background, but I thought it was because maybe she wanted to read to Daddy.
The next morning, Sister Mary of the Sacred Heart asked me if I had read for my daddy.
"Yes'm" I replied,
“And what did he say?”
"He said, 'Jesus Christ! '"
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