Great Kills Review
Winter 2005 – Volume I, issue 2
|
Terri Campion |
Boogers
I
was a very late bloomer. If there were
such a section, you’d find my name in the Guinness Book for being the very last
female of my generation to start her period.
And in another, related section, there I’d be for being the youngest
female ever to apply a razor to her legs.
My mother made me. That was the
one area I was blooming in - hair. Having all this hair without starting my
period or developing breasts - well, it scared me. I was beginning to think I was a
lesbian. I wasn’t entirely sure what a
lesbian was, but I’d heard it had something to do with not being entirely
female. And I feared that was my destiny
with my flat chested little body, its’ longer than normal legs, big feet and
freckled face. Life was cruel. And it kept getting crueler in the eighth
grade at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Grade School.
All
the other girls seemed to have grown up and become more beautiful during the
summer. Their freckles had faded, their
hair was silky and shiny and grew in just one direction - and they all wore
bras. I was still wearing an undershirt
and shared a bedroom with my little brother.
Sister
Rose was our teacher. Sister Rose wore
her habit like moisturizer. It was
absolutely form fitting, accentuating an hour glass figure with her big
boobs. Even she seemed to mock my
eternal pre-pubescent status. She just
loved strutting her holy package around, shaking her rosary like a maraca. She especially loved strutting it all in
front of Mr. McCullen, the janitor.
She’d deliberately knock a thermostat knob off the wall, a window shade
down or a door off its’ hinges, anything
to get Mr. McCullen into her classroom.
And once the poor guy was there, she’d stretch her vertebrae up to it’s
full five foot four, nudge her habit off her face, releasing a sprig of shiny
copper hair, and shove her bib to one side where one full, round, firm, C cup
was begging to be noticed under that
thick sheath of black nylon. She
was a woman underneath all those black robes, goddamn it! And she had urges. That was certainly obvious to us. Whose idea was it for her to enter the
convent anyway, I wondered? Was she in
it for life? If she was, she was sure to
go crazy. She already was, in a sense.
When she wasn’t flaunting her repressed sexuality in front of Mr. Mc Cullen,
she’d pick her nose. She’d give us huge
writing assignments, forcing our focus downwards, while she’d sit at her desk
and dig away with glee. I swear, she
must have had a G spot up one of those crannies.
It
was a real challenge to catch her picking without her catching you catch
her. If she did catch you catch her, you
were in for a fall. You’d think she’d be
ashamed of herself ─ but no. Sister
Rose was an angry, frustrated young woman and we were younger and more
interesting to Mr. McCullen (I think it is clear that it is her we are more
interesting than – not sure about this one) than she was. So, when caught with her finger up her nostril,
she was not going to accede - she was going to attack. God help you.
She’d squint up her tiny Irish eyes and tighten her dry, thin lipped
mouth and give you a look that said: “Just...you...wait...”
I
was really good at catching her. The
best. So of course, by the middle of the
school year she was almost as good at catching me catch her. But not quite. The
game had become very interesting. By
June we were knocking heads. One day she
caught me and gave me a look that was really disturbing. Her freckles turned a Jack O’ Lantern orange
and her breasts seemed to engorge, causing her bib to rise up almost parallel
to her desk. She didn’t even take her
finger out of her nose. She kept staring
right at me with a weird smile on her face.
I quickly put my head down and went back to the pointless assignment of
writing our favorite memories of Our Lady of Perpetual Help which I had
finished with one sentence. Every ounce
of blood in my body had rushed to my face and my heart was pounding so hard I
thought it was going to burst from my chest.
Embarrassment for Boogers, (her nickname) had somehow become
embarrassment for myself.
Later
that week, Boogers was distributing our school portraits and giving each one a
silent critique with her animated Irish face before placing an identity on
them. As if it were possible, she was
feeling more hostile than usual. Earlier
that day she had summoned Mr. McCullen into the classroom to fix a clothes bar,
which she had knocked down, in the cloak closet. God knows why. It was eighty two degrees. No one was wearing a cloak. Which was exactly Mr. McCullen’s sentiment
when he arrived, tool box in hand.
“There
are (I’m changing were to are) much more urgent matters to attend to,
Sister! A urinal on the first floor is
(changing was to is – putting sentence in present) overflowing, causing all the
water fountains to sprout hot water!
It’s eighty two degrees! Do you
want the children to dehydrate?!”
I
was door monitor that day and when I held the door for Mr. McCullen, he rubbed
my head and said “How ya doin Kooky?”
Kooky
was his nickname for me. I loved Mr.
McCullen, with his Irish accent and green janitor uniform. He was the only adult who understood me, who
got my jokes and seemed to enjoy my freckles.
I wished he were my father, brother and husband all at once! And on some
selfless Catholic level I felt sorry for Boogers when he played dumb to her
flirtations. But really, what was he
supposed to do? She was a bride of
Christ! And as much as it warmed me
through and through when he rubbed my head that day, I almost wished he
hadn’t. When I went back to my desk
Boogers and I caught each other’s eye.
War was declared. She would get
me back big time.
So,
as she came to one portrait, she stared at it a moment and smiled to herself
─ a scary smile that exposed her yellow eye teeth and bugged out her pea
green eyes, and set it aside on her desk, next to a box of tissues. She continued to hand out the photos until
the pile was depleted, except for that one lone picture next to the tissues,
which I knew was mine. I was sure of it
as soon as I saw those yellow eye teeth emerge.
The fact was I never took a good picture because I refused to
smile. I was an existentialist. I was trying to make a point. Life stunk.
There was a lot of angst building up in my little thirteen year old body
and I wanted the whole world to know that through the subtle signs I was giving
out. Not smiling for grade school
photographers was one of them. What did
I care about a stupid picture? It was
what was inside a person that was important.
Wasn’t that part of the Catholic doctrine? Wasn’t vanity a sin?
I
was giving ‘ol Boogers a game face as I walked up to her desk. I wasn’t going to wait for her to call on me. I was taking the initiative, attacking first.
“Is
that my picture?”
“I’m
not sure who this person is.” She snipped back.
“Well,
it’s probably me, since I’m the only one who didn’t get their picture back.”
“You
tell me, is this sour looking girl, you?”
Sour?
I hated how adults used that word in the sixties and seventies to describe
unhappy children. By now the whole class
was watching. It was a showdown that had
been waiting to happen since the fall, when Mr. McCullen had given me my nickname. A nun, a bride of Christ, was insulting a
student on something she could do nothing about, her face. More than that, her essence, her very being,
and that was not very Christian! It was
not a good picture. The guy must have
had a magnifying glass on his lense, there were things on my face not visible to
the human eye. To make matters worse, my
mother had insisted on setting my hair the night before with dippity do and
spoolies. It looked like I had a spare
tire incubating on my head. And the contrast
between my black hair, white skin and brown freckles was frightening. But all that was going through my head at
that very moment was: Is this how the
world sees me? It was not what I
intended to show them. My mother’s
friends insisted I looked like Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet. Okay, I
know they were pumped up on coffee and having a hot flash when they said that -
but this picture! It couldn’t be
me. It couldn’t! Tears were running down my face. Boogers was silently chuckling to herself. She had won without even lifting a
finger. What was God thinking about all
this? He couldn’t be too happy with this
kind of behavior in one of his clergy.
It just made me want to be an existentialist even more. I could hear whispers and giggles coming from
the class. Whose side were they on?
“Your
nose is running.”
Boogers
was holding out a tissue to me. I took
it and began to mop up the fluids that were pouring from my face. One tissue was obviously not enough. Boogers saw this and noisily yanked another
out of the box. I continued to dry my
eyes, blow my nose. My face was still
wet, but this time I had to appeal to her for another.
“Still
not finished? Would you like another?”
“Yes
please.”
This
time she slowly, seductively, drew the tissue from the box, as if she were
pulling a sheet off a lover, gently waking him.
The scenario had now become about tissues.
“Tsk,
tsk, tsk , such a messy girl.”
Okay,
that was way below the belt to be legal.
Game over! I was going for the
kill. “Sister Rose, if you have this big
box of Kleenexes on your desk, why don’t you use them instead of your fingers?”
A
sheath of ice encompassed the room.
Everything froze. Time. Space.
Dust bunnies. She looked like she
was going to implode. There was nothing
else she could do to me. Vatican II was
in session ─ corporal punishment was no longer an acceptable outlet for
sexual frustration among the celibate clergy.
Mr.
McCullen rapped on the door and entered at the same time, practically taking
the door with him as he ambled over to the desk and picked up my picture. “Why, you got the map of
My
eyes? I hadn’t even looked at my eyes in
the picture. But Mr. McCullen had. This man had radar. He was my superhero. I wanted a Monkey’s song to play now. I wanted to be lifted up by several handsome
men like Mickey Dolenz and Mr. McCullen and carried along the sands of
“Mr.
McCullen?” Boogers called.
Damn! Boogers’ nasty, higher than usual pitched
voice brought me back to Our Lady of Perpetual Help and the east coast. “Mr. McCullen?!”
Boogers,
now in the role of jilted lover, her well of flirtations run dry, there was
nothing left to fix or break. “Why are
you here?” Not only jilted lover - a
superior being grasping to maintain an ounce of dignity.
“Oh. Didn’t I leave me tool box here?”
“No
you did not.”
“Oh well then, I’ll be off. As soon as I see Kooky here give us a
smile. She looks like she’s been
crying. Maybe she needs a cold
drink. The blasted fountains ain’t
workin’ properly, so why don’t I take ye down to the cafeteria and get ye some
orange juice.”
“Okay!”
We
were out the door before Boogers could object.
The grades were in. We were just
biding time in that stuffy classroom, heeding to the state’s regulations. Although I was grateful for Mr. McCullen’s
interception, I’m still curious as to what Boogers would have done. I think Mr. McCullen’s rescue was meant more
for her than for me. I think he was
saving her from herself. I didn’t ever
have to go back to that classroom. But I
did. A hero. I think my breasts might have sprouted that
day.
About the Author
Terri is an actress, playwright and
Teaching Artist. She is co-artistic
director of American Renaissance Theatre Company and a published playwright
with Smith & Kraus. Currently she is
developing a solo show titled: Following the Yellow Brick Road Down
the Rabbit Hole. You can reach Terri at TARRIECAMP@AOL.COM
“Boogers” © 2005 by Terri Campion
*All rights reserved by the author – no work
may be reprinted without the express consent of its author.