The Diocese of Rochester wouldn’t hear of kids being denied a Catholic education for lack of money, and so they helped families like mine, chipped in some of the tuition, asked mothers to work Bingo or sell chocolate bars to their neighbors, friends, and relations to raise money.
Nazareth Academy was a fine high school, and all my girlfriends from Corpus Christi chose it over Mercy (or at least pretended to choose, claiming that Mercy’s recruiter, their brochure, and their teachers were dykey, though in reality, Mercy was the finer school, but sat on the edge of a wealthy suburb and cost more to attend, and very few girls from inner-city schools transferred there.)
Trading in plaid jumpers and a walk from my house for navy blue pants, a crisp white blouse, and a bus ride across town, I started high school.
At Nazareth, poor kids helped out.
We were given buckets and rags and shown to desktops and chalkboards directly after school. It was just a bit of work, and no one seemed to mind.
Except me.
The work itself was nothing, but I was an odd mixture of pride and shame those days. Though I still used my mouth to gain attention from time to time, there were whole stretches of time when I wanted nothing more than to disappear. I was overly emotional. Too sensitive, according to my mother.
“You get so worked up over the tiniest things,” she said. “You’ve always been that way.”
I hated being called sensitive. She may as well have called me crazy or stupid. But because I didn’t want to add fuel to the fire, I didn’t tell her how much I disliked cleaning after school. I didn’t tell her that the reason I wasn’t in chorus or soccer was because those groups met after school, while I cleaned. Instead, I said that I hated singing and soccer—that I’d rather do nothing at all than sing or kick around a ball.
Still, my mother began to make a point of my sensitivity over other things. When people so much as looked at me, I turned pink and lowered my eyes.
“I don’t know how you’ll get through life letting every little thing get to you,” she said and she was probably right, because as I dipped my rag into the bucket of chalked-up water and ran it up and down the blackboard in the Latin classroom, my face turned from white to red. My shame flowered like a large bruise, with its eggy yellows and blues—it spread itself out and lived like a shadow just under my skin.
The Latin teacher had black hair and wore fitted skirts. She leaned against the corner of her desk, twirling strands of slippery hair between her fingers, flirting lightly with the only male teacher at school.
Mr. Berke-Collinge taught theology. He was as thoroughly modern and as thoroughly open-minded as his hyphenated name implied. He flipped up his collar, infused discussions of premarital sex into religious instruction, and thought he was accomplishing something by getting ninth-grade girls to giggle about intercourse. He was handsome though, and a good match for her as the two bent into each other and talked topics other than the usual Latin and theology.
I lifted the soaked rag to the top of the board and let it come down over loops and lines of Latin, wiped away lessons from earlier that day.
I was not enrolled in Latin class, was told by a soft-faced Sister of St. Joseph that the class was popular that year and no seats remained. I’d have to take Spanish.
“How were the students selected?” my mother had asked, knowing how much I’d wanted Latin, knowing my placement scores were high. It was unlike her to speak up, so I knew it must have been important, and waited for an answer.
“She’ll do just fine in Spanish,” replied Sister So-and-So, avoiding the question altogether. She smiled and told my mother that Spanish was an important language, after all, and I could always try to get into Latin next year.
I looked over the column of words before I washed them away:
dies
terra
fides
mater
I wondered what the words meant and wondered who’d be studying them tonight. I liked Spanish, but had learned plenty already, just by sitting with my friends, listening to their mothers sing in the kitchen while stirring rice or grinding platanos. Latin, I’d imagined, would take me places. Transport me to the lands of Athena and Persephone, Isis and Eve, and all those stories I’d stuffed myself with for years.
“Latin is for blancas,” my friends from Corpus Christi said, and they may have been right, except that I was white, and the only time I ever spent in Latin class was after school, with bucket and water.
Streaking sponge-width columns until the entire board glistened, I looked back at the Latin teacher, whose hair was so black it looked blue as she ran it through her fingers. She caught my eye and smiled wide, which caused the theology teacher to turn and throw a charitable smile my way.
I turned back to the board, wishing the teachers would end their after-school chatter and leave the room. I hated being seen. Especially with a rag in my hand. And in my shame, I cultivated that part of me that wondered whether Latin class was ever full for girls whose parents paid 100 percent tuition.
And what if it wasn’t?
“Life’s not fair,” my mother said. It was a statement she’d repeated frequently of late. She said it after I complained about something, while she watched the TV news or stood on the back porch, looking out over nothing. Her hair was short now and graying, and she’d push it in chunks behind her ear.
“Nope, life is certainly not fair.”
She’d punctuate her proclamation with a shake of the head and a pop of a laugh that showed pity for those foolish enough to believe otherwise.
I should have known better. Should have cared less. But instead I cared more, and as I wiped away lines of conjugated verbs, it seemed to me that Latin was only for the best kind of girls.