puberty

 Sun 1.16.22         

Sister Stanislaus of the Order of the Sisters of Charity was the Superior in charge of us convent girls.  She along with two others managed the lives of 120 girls ranging in age from 6 to 16.  But we French girls did not call them Sister, but Mère, (Mother, and pronounced mare) Mere Stanislaus.  The kids shortened it to Mère Slaus.  To my adolescent eyes, she was a big woman, tall with plain features and a big nose; she was strong, reserved, dignified, evenhanded, strict, the Superior. 

      Then there was Mère Therese, a tall skinny, dark featured woman who, once she found out I was spreading a story about how men and women copulate, made my life miserable thereafter.  On this particular occasion in the middle of our supper, she reprimanded me in front of everyone in the refrectory for something or other.  And she added. That's to be expected from a girl who has bad thoughts.

      Abruptly, I screamed out, You fat cow!  You could have heard a pin drop in that refectory.  Then slowly kids started eating again and the clatter of dishes and silverware resumed.  Mère Therese came over to me and told me to go upstairs where Mère Stanislaus would see to my punishment.  I had done it this time.  Unpardonable behavior.  I went upstairs and, as I was told to, swept the floor in the Salle de Jeu, the playroom, while waiting for my punishment.  I was pushing the big broom around the hall when a friend dropped by.  She was taken aback at what I had done, and admired me for it.  I was looking at the large stripes of late afternoon sunlight coming from the windows in back of me and landing on the floor like Roman columns.  I couldn't control it, I told her, it just came out of my mouth.

      Then Mère Slaus appeared and motioned me to follow her into the infirmary where the shades were drawn.  On the other side of those shaded windows was a large balcony and beyond that the play yard.  She took me to a secluded corner of the room, where she  sat in a straightback chair, brought me down on her lap, dropped my underpants and proceeded to smack me with a strap.  Now you have to realize that the body was not something nuns cared to focus on in the convent.  Girls were not allowed to touch, to hold hands; we were not allowed to appear nude.  One had to undress in the evening under one's nightgown and bathe with a skirt on. 

      When I first had my menses, Mère Slaus told me where to get the napkins, what to do with the soiled ones, and no more than that.  Now here she was smacking my bare ass!  The room had a powerful effect on me, a dark womb with several beds and an adjoining balcony that I could see from partings in the curtains reflected the warm glow of sunlight.  Just the two of us, Superior and I in an act of intimacy.  That incident more than the advent of my menses was my initiatory rite of passage into puberty.

The favorite post this month has been, Monopoly Experiment