Damien The Demented

Sister Mary Damien taught the babies’ class. She was extremely tall and thin, with a swarthy complexion that had the apparent texture of worn leather. Both her face and hands were covered in dark brown moles of various sizes and shapes. The largest were the dimension of a sixpence, and sprouted an assortment of thick, greyish hairs. I had never previously enjoyed a first hand meeting with Sister Mary Damien, but I already knew that I found her penchant for smiling incessantly, with what I imagine she thought was winsome charm, rather irritating. She also happened to be just about the most hideous-looking human being I had ever seen.

Having knocked on the door, and been invited to enter, I walked over to Sister Damien, who was sitting at her desk, and handed her the envelope. “Thank-you, dear,” she said, in a breathy, cherry-sweet voice more appropriate to a child of five than a full-grown woman.

I waited as she tore open the envelope, and, smiling iridescently, cast her eyes over the contents of Sister Mary Vincent’s missive. I wonder if they like one other, I mused, Sisters Damien and Vincent. Do they perhaps go shopping together? Or sit curled up alongside one another on the sofa, drinking cocoa, and chortling at Bewitched, The Dick Van Dyke Show, or The Flying Nun?

Or did they endeavour to avoid one another at all costs, addressing one another with studiously manufactured politeness, through serried teeth, whenever communication was unavoidable?

Having read the note, Sister Damien screwed it up into a tight ball and dropped it into the metal waste paper bin at the side of her desk. She sighed, presumably with pleasure, for she was smiling even more pronouncedly, like a Cheshire Cat, or a four and a half year old boy collecting ants on a sunlit Liverpool side street.

When she struck me across the head, it was with such force that, for a split second or two, I actually lost consciousness, coming ‘round just in time to prevent myself from falling over. By then, Sister Damien had grabbed me roughly by the collar, and was herding me towards the corner of the classroom nearest the door. “You can stand there quietly and face the wall,” she breathily informed me, “until I decide that you’re ready to join us.”

Then, addressing the forty or so confused looking five and six year olds in her class, she announced, “We have a new boy with us today, children. I hope you’ll help him feel at home. Sister Mary Vincent sent him to join us because he’s been finding the work in grade four too hard. Please be kind to him – it isn’t his fault he’s so stupid.”

The children dutifully giggled, albeit with some apparent uncertainty, while I stood gazing at the wall, battling intensely with a torrent of debilitating feelings, of which humiliation, stupefaction and anger were foremost. I was forced to remain in the corner until after recess, when I received my formal induction into the multifarious delights of Sister Mary Damien’s quaintly surreal approach to education.

“A is for apple – yum yum!” I reluctantly recited, all the while attempting to ignore the intrigued stares of my temporary classmates. “B is for bird – tweet tweet!. C is for cat – meow! D is for dog – woof woof!”

All the time, sharpening and polishing her knife with palpably iridescent glee, Sister Damien appeared to be focusing all her attention on me, her God-given talisman of hope. She smiled, of course, and continually, luxuriating in the glitteringly idiosyncratic mirage of redemption she had concocted. From time to time she sought to reassure herself, as well as to remind me of my status, by stabbing at me, half playfully, half in earnest, and grinning with gratification as I flinched.

“If I have ten grapes, and eat three, how many grapes will I have left?”

“Seven, sister,” I replied, sullenly.

“Good boy!” Her merry, lilting voice a cat-o-nine-tails.

During both recess and lunch time none of my friends, other than Arthur, would have anything to do with me, and even Arthur seemed subdued as he gazed with thinly concealed longing at the rest of the grade four boys playing ringy-up, or brandy on the wall, or kick to kick. I stared at them too, vicariously enjoying the sudden, sharp pain as the fiercely flung tennis ball rebounded off a leg, or back, or arm, or buttock.

Mental pain was worst I began, if tentatively, to understand.

According to my school diary, the ensuing three week period saw me demoted for the day, mostly to grade one, but once or twice to grade two, no fewer than half a dozen times. Sister Mary Vincent, it appeared, was fully aware of the crushingly demeaning nature of the punishment she had conceived, and derived explicit solace from administering it. It might indeed have been an act of worship, with the seraphic host endorsing it by igniting the majestic candle into which Sister Mary Vincent’s luminescent face had seemingly, one might have believed miraculously, transformed.

At night, in bed, I lay curled up in a ball, like a threatened caterpillar, wide awake, denuded and confused. Escape seemed quite unlikely, but I somehow realised that, unless I made at least a gesture of defiance, I ran the risk of consigning myself to a lifetime spent squirming at the end of a hook.