Read Wishin' and Hopin' for Free Online Page B

trade you something in his lunch for something in yours and you say no. NAACP means National Association for the something of Colored People. I mean black people. Except why don’t they call it the N.A.A.B.P.?
    Exiting the classroom, the thirty-four of us clomped in thunderous silence down the two flights of stairs and out the front door. With Madame clucking and clapping behind us, we slogged past the holly bush we’d planted for all the poor kids around the world who weren’t lucky enough to live in a democracy. We passed the statue of Martin de Porres,the Afro-American saint from Peru or someplace who, Sister Dymphna told us, used to glow when he prayed and could be in two places at once, and could communicate with animals using ESP. We ambled past the Blessed Virgin’s grotto where, each May, an eighth grade girl was chosen to dress in a bride’s gown and veil, climb the step stool, and put a crown of flowers on Mary’s head. (Simone had been chosen as the bride in her year; Frances had not been in hers but had insisted she wouldn’t have done it, even if she had been picked over Bryce Bongiovanni, who was a brown-noser at school but a chicky boom-boom out of school, and who, Frances knew for a fact , had shoplifted at Rosenblatt’s Clothiers and made out in the indoor show with “Jesse” James Bocheko.) My classmates and me rounded the corner, made the sign of the cross, and mounted the church steps, accompanied by Madame’s “Dépêchez-vous! Dépêchez-vous!” And I was like, jeeze, all right already, relax.
    Inside, we faced a vestibule inspection conducted by the aforementioned skin-twister, Sister MaryAgrippina. We boys were lined up, eyeballed, and ordered to tuck in our shirts, check our zippers and shoe laces, and, if necessary, spit onto our hands and pat down our cowlicks. Girls who had forgotten to bring a hat or mantilla to school that day were assigned detention and ordered to cover their heads with bobby-pinned sheets from Sister M.A.’s roll of paper towels—or, if a girl happened to be wearing a cardigan sweater over her St. Aloysius Gonzaga uniform, she could put her sweater on her head and button it beneath her chin. Two Final Fridays ago, I had noted to one sweaterhead, MaryAnn Vocatura, that with her sleeves drooping down the sides of her face, she looked like a basset hound. MaryAnn’s response had been reasonable enough, I thought; she’d socked me in the arm. But Rosalie, whose business it wasn’t , had ratted me out to Sister Mary Agrippina, who, in turn, had grabbed the back of my neck and squeezed hard, dropping me to my knees on the vestibule floor.
    Declared acceptable, we fifth graders were given the go-ahead to enter the church proper, where wewere met by St. Aloysius’s vice-principal and Final Friday traffic cop, Sister Fabian—not to be confused with Sister Elvis, Sister Ricky Nelson, or Sister Bobby Rydell, this being a standard joke among the St. Aloysius student body. “You to the right,” Sister Fabian decreed. “You to the left. Right. Left. Right. Left.” Confession, absolution, and penance under these circumstances was, as Pop would say, a crap shoot. That morning my luck was crappy. I got Monsignor Muldoon.
    “You’re next, Felix! Get the lead out! Let’s go!” Sister Fabian ordered, loudly enough to be heard by the angels in heaven, let alone by my father-confessor. Reluctantly, I detached myself from the boys’ line and approached the confession box. I parted the curtain, entered, and knelt.
    Like a life-sized shadow puppet, Monsignor shifted behind the confessional screen. I waited while he unwrapped a Life Saver and popped it in his mouth. Butter rum, the same flavor my father liked; I couldsmell it through the gray-silk screen that separated us. For a month or more during morning exercises, our class had been asking God to help Monsignor break his smoking habit. Doctors’ orders: emphysema. I heard the crunch of hard candy. The Monsignor’s