The Confession Read Online Free PDF

quick mastery of alphabet andvocabulary, and I believe I also courted her attentions with polish and politeness. But beyond that I recall little; the year has slid, as Maya Angelou once wrote of her own experience, “into the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood.”
    Mrs. Jones was the only African American on faculty at Pvt. Nicholas Minue Elementary School in Carteret, and in all these years she has never failed to send a holiday card, addressed in her magnificent calligraphy. Today she is in a nursing home, where I write to her regularly. When I asked her to help me remember our year together, the first thing that came to her mind was my fastidious presentation. “You were always dressed so neatly,” she said. “The shirt, the tie, the trousers; your hair was combed nicely. I used to think to myself: There’s a future president or something.” In truth, future presidents haven’t always stood out for sartorial splendor in kindergarten; Bill Clinton admits in his memoir that he avoided wearing crisp new outfits because they drew attention to his unwanted girth, and Jimmy Carter, child of the Depression, was lucky to show up in overalls, one dollar a pair. By contrast, I never appeared in school without a necktie, and seldom without a jacket.
    My kindergarten class was in a public school. After that, I attended only Catholic schools, where uniforms were required. Earning the admiration of the nuns and priests at St. Joseph’s Grammar School was my main objective. I was never teachers’ pet—I wasn’t the sort of kid who would tattle on other kids. Nor was I ever the top grade-getter. But I can say without hesitation that I was the hardest working child at St. Joe’s. I was the kind of kid who loved Monday mornings, racing to school and working diligently to prove myself to the nuns and priests with quick answers and rapt attention.
    By far the most difficult challenges there were our two principals, Sister Imelda and, later, Sister Eugene, a Servants of Mary nun who changed her name to Sister Patricia after Vatican II allowed such liberties; eventually we even got to see her hair. But in 1963 the sisters still dressed the same way they had in the thirteenth century, in flowing habits with floor-length robes and veil and collar wimples that pinched their faces into swollen expressions of discomfort. Sister Imelda, my principal until the fifth grade, was an omnipotent figure. She moved through the polishedhalls soundlessly and without sign of effort, as though propelled on muffled skates. Sister Eugene was the fearsome nun of legend. Without warning, a stealthy hand could shoot from her sleeve and pin any boy against the lockers, his feet dangling off the floor. She was nearly indiscriminate in her disciplinary zeal. The slightest provocation would call her to action. But she never once turned her attentions to me. In these eight years at St. Joe’s, that was my major accomplishment.
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    THE CHURCH AND HER DESIGNATES WERE AN IMPORTANT FEATURE of my childhood. I am blessed to know only honorable and decent clergy, not the embittered nuns or child-abusing pastors of the sort who fill newspaper articles and fuel lawsuits these days. I believe my excellent experience is shared by all my relatives, going back many generations and continuing through the present. I do not think we were simply lucky. I believe the overwhelming majority of men and women who heed the Lord’s call are exceptional human beings.
    Outside of school we had little interaction with the nuns, who seemed to disappear back into the convent as soon as the last child had mounted his bicycle and left for home. Their secret lives were a cause of great fascination for us. Over the years, as Vatican II progressed, we watched with astonishment as they hemmed the black robes of their habits, lifting them to show their ankles and later their knees; then one day their transformation was