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told us we could offer up our suffering if we ever had any.
    “They nail Jesus on the cross.” If you offered up your suffering, you got out of purgatory sooner.
    “Jesus dies.” Mama had added up for me (based on estimates Sister had provided us) the number of years I would suffer in purgatory for various weaknesses of the body and spirit. According to my calculations, I would spend nearly forever in purgatory unless I was lucky enough to die a martyr’s death. Then, if I understood correctly, I would go directly to heaven.
    “They take Jesus down from the cross.” But surely Sister didn’t have to worry about spending millions of years in purgatory, so why refuse Jergens lotion?
    “They put Jesus in the tomb.” I had turned all my fingers under once, and four of them had gone down twice. Fourteen stations in order, none left out.
    Without the smallest congratulatory notice, Sister Mary Frances began again at the opposite end of the pew. “Beverly, the Act of Contrition, please.” Sister never congratulated us. Why would one make a fuss over a child learning that which was needed in order to be spared the tortures of hell, torments so heinous they could only be devised by a God of infinite ingenuity and love?
    The morning crawled forward on the bloodied knees of martyred saints. Sister Mary Clair took over, and Sister Mary Frances opened the lower portion of the windows. These stained-glass panels bore the names of departed members of the parish, departed members whose families could afford a window in their memory.“In Memory of Our Beloved Mother, Edna Ripath,” or “Our Beloved Baby Daughter, Evelyn Shelton.”
    If I were cut down in my childhood, I hoped that Mama and Papa would buy a pretty stained-glass panel for me. “In Memory of Our Beautiful Lark,” it would read. Every time someone opened my window, I would smile and blow the perfume of peonies and wet earth through the opening. The nuns had assured us that in heaven we would have no interest in Earth’s pleasures, so paltry were they beside the delights of God’s home, but I was sure that I’d be interested.
    At ten o’clock we were herded out the door to sit on the broad front steps for ten minutes, and we fell apart into twos and threes. Although we were admonished to study, the nuns usually disappeared for a few minutes, leaving the boys to argue and shove and sometimes roll on the ground, getting grass stains on their clothes. Bleeding noses and scraped elbows, full of grit, were also not uncommon. We girls sat on the wide, cement balustrades—country girls on one side, town girls on the other—watching with horrified satisfaction.
    This morning a grudging quiet hung over the nine of us. I needed to study. Arvin Winetsky, like me, was poring over his
Baltimore Catechism
, a holy and absorbed expression on his face. Beverly Ridza hastily flicked pages as if searching for pretty pictures, of which there were none. Sister Mary Frances had said that one or two of us might not be ready for Communion next year and might have to take the lessons over. She had stared along her sunburned nose at Arvin, who was slow-witted, and at Beverly, who repeatedly missed the Saturday morning classes and when she appeared, wearing her brother’s clothes, was half-asleep.
    Leroy Mosley and Ronald Oster were looking at a Big Little Book. With three of the four boys bent over books, the break was peaceful.
    My thoughts returned to Mama and poker. I would like to be able to go home at noon and assure her that Sister had said gambling wasn’t a sin.
    The two nuns emerged before ten minutes had elapsed. Pleased to find things peaceful, they showed their pleasure by engaging in bits of conversation with us, an almost unheard of occurrence.
    “Do you ever help your mother bake cookies?” Sister Mary Clair inquired of Beverly.
    Beverly’s mother didn’t have a stove. What the Ridzas cooked, they cooked on an old hot plate.
    “Sometimes,” Beverly lied