Sister Thaddeus

The Passion of Mary-Margaret

Fiction

“although there are plenty of other challenges to take its place. And naturally, at that age, I wasn’t able to talk about how God uses his power for love and goodness and for our benefit because, unfortunately, I’ve never been quick at defending my beliefs. Ten minutes after the conversation ends, oh yes, my goodness, I’ve got all the right answers. It’s God’s way of keeping me from being a real boob, I guess. After calling me superstitious, he would proceed to remind me of the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Bloody Mary, and, because he was smarter than he pretended and snuck over to the library when nobody was looking, every single pope who committed homosexual acts, had sexual relations of the heterosexual variety, sired children, or was otherwise a scoundrel. Don’t even get started on the alcoholics. Oh yes. If you find yourself in the Church, you find yourself with some of the worst. But thankfully, God calls sinners, not the righteous, and our tradition is chocked full of the former, as any parish priest could tell you. From his perch on the step where Jude sat, his one leg following the contour of the stairs, the other raised up next to him, bent knee providing a rest for his thin but muscled arm, he whistled at us—a juicy, leering sort of whistle that lifted up our skirts like an unwelcome wind off the bay, demanding a peek. He would have seen the standard issue white underpants we all wore in compliance with our uniform policy, which was as stiff as our dresses, but that wasn’t the point. Even as a fourth grader I felt besmirched and yet a little bit excited at the same time. I asked Sister Thaddeus about it that night as I handed her the mugs she lined up on a shelf in the kitchen. “Is that really the way it works?”