Rose Saia - Paint it Black

 

It's the first day of school of fourth grade, and I am standing out in the playground, hot in my Catholic school uniform nervous with all the other kids, because we're waiting to find out who our nun is going to be as our teacher next year. Mother Superior comes out on the front steps in her long black habit, blows a silver whistle. We all come to attention and grade by grade we're called up to the front. A nun meets us, walked inside the school. This is really nerve wracking, because nuns were people to be feared. And at that point, I was just hoping I got one that smiled and not one that like threw erasers or hit kids with rulers. 

 

When my grade got called up to the front, I heard a boy shout, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she has legs.” And sure enough, standing in the front, there was not a nun, but there was a woman in a flower dress with her hair styled, and yes, stockings on. As we walked into the school, you could hear her high heels clicking on the floor. She went up to the class [unintelligible [00:19:29] chalkboard while we were sitting down to write her name in perfect palmer penmanship. 

 

She turned around, and one of the boys actually fell off of his chair [audience laughter] and swooned and said, “Ms. Egan, I'm in love.” [audience laughter] And she turned to him and I held my breath, all the kids were holding their breaths because we thought she was going to hit him. And instead, she put a book down in front of him and said, “Well, I hope you like reading, because that's what I want you to love.” 

 

So, Ms. Egan was really enthusiastic and loved teaching. That was clear from the very beginning. She once taught us about energy by pretending to be a windmill and she let us make papier-mâché volcanoes where baking soda lava came out. But her enthusiasm for teaching really wasn't able to break this malaise that had settled on me in fourth grade. I got to school late a lot. I would sit in the back of the class and doodle or just look out the window. I turned in quizzes, blank. Sometimes I didn't go down and eat lunch with the other kids, and I didn't go out to recess. 

 

So, Ms. Egan took each of these challenges one at a time. She brought me up to sit in front of the room, so I couldn't drift off. She tried to encourage me. And then, she just started asking me, why was I doing these things? Why were these things happening? And I didn't answer her. And one day, I turned in a spelling chest blank. So, she told me I had to stay after school. And after school, she said to me that since I hadn't taken the test, I could grade all the other tests. 

 

So, I waited for the answer key. And she said, “Oh, no, no, no, just grade them. You can do it.” So, I did. When I was done, she handed me a blank piece of paper and told me to write down every word from the test. And I did. She took the red marker and she marked 100 on the top. And she said, “Next time, if you take the test at your desk, I'll let you grade more papers with me.” So, I did. 

 

I graduated from grading spelling papers to English composition. And one day she said, “You're good at this. Do you think you might want to stay after school and tutor one of the other kids?” So, I said, yes. And then, the Saint Brigid's after school tutoring club was born. It started with me with one girl by my side, and then other students with other students by their sides. 

 

One afternoon, Ms. Egan said that we should just have some fun instead of working. So, she took out these big sheets of art paper and said, we could draw or paint whatever we liked. So, the girls started painting and drawing hills with flowers on them. And the boys started doing the same with hills with army men and tanks on them. I started coloring my paper with all different colors of crayon, and then I started covering it with black paint. Ms. Egan came up and sat down and said, “I don't understand. What is wrong here? Is this supposed to be you? Is this how you feel?” And I didn't answer her. So, she left the room, and came back in a long while with Mother Superior, and came in next to me and I think told me to stop, but I just put my arm around the painting I had. 

 

Mother Superior blew her whistle, and so everybody stopped and folded their hands on their desk, because it was Catholic school and that's what you did. When they looked down at my painting, they saw that I had taken the blunt edge of some kitty scissors and I scratched out a rainbow, and sun and flowers. And the crayon colors came popping out of the black paint. And Ms. Egan asked me, “Where did you get the idea for this?” And I said, “Well, I love the stained glass in the church. I love the pictures of the saints and Jesus shining through the colors of the stained glass.” 

 

When I looked at Mother Superior, she didn't look too happy with that answer. And I thought, I really thought in my nine-year-old brain, I'm in so much trouble now. I've desecrated stained glass. It's supposed to be saints in Jesus. And I've done flowers and a rainbow. Oh, my God, I am in so much trouble. I started to shake, and cry, and put my head down and my tears just fell on the paper making a river of black. And Ms. Egan picked me up, and put me in her lap and hugged me until I stopped. 

 

When I stopped, I saw all the other kids were gone. Mother Superior was gone. She told me I could just paint the black again, and carve out the flowers and no one would ever know. She stayed late, so I could do that, and that's when I gave her all the answers that she wanted. My dad was in jail in a state far away. My mom got up early for work in the morning and came home late at night. Sometimes she left me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, but sometimes there wasn't any bread, so I didn't go to lunch or recess on those days. 

 

The next day when I got to school, my painting was up on the cork board next to the coat room. Ms. Egan saw me and pulled me aside to the front of the room and she turned her back, so the other kids couldn't see me. And that's when she handed me a brown paper lunch bag. And inside, there was a big red apple and a fat sandwich that she had made just for me. Thank you.