TWO MAD MIRIAM
"W
hat your daughter needs is a good spanking," snarled Mother Miriam as Kate Fitzgerald took Blake by the hand, hurried her out the kindergarten door and into the car. Even though Blake was still crying, she managed to raise her little fist in defiance at her teacher who stood framed in the doorway, glaring at her.
This was not the first time Mother Miriam had angrily told Kate that Blake needed "a good spanking." One day at the beginning of the school year, Kate was startled to see her child running to the car, sobbing, her chin bleeding.
"Oh, Blake, what happened?" she cried out, as her daughter climbed into the front seat of the car.
"I fell on the monkey bars," Blake told her, and her Mom lifted her chin to get a closer look. Taking a Kleenex out of her purse, she
wiped the area that was still bleeding. Seeing the cut was not serious, she told Blake to press the Kleenex against it to stop the bleeding.
"Does Mother Miriam know you hurt yourself?" she had asked, looking around the playground for the nun who was nowhere
in sight.
"Uh-huh. She called me a bad girl and said I was showing off and that's how come I got hurt."
"Did she take you to see the nurse?" Kate had asked, getting angrier by the minute at Mother Miriam.
"No, she just went back inside."
Today, as Kate drove her daughter home, her fury at Mother Miriam mounted with each passing mile. Mother had phoned her to come and pick up Blake before the school morning was over. Blake is only five years old, Kate was thinking. What on earth could she possibly have done to be sent home? At home she's a happy, playful child, inquisitive yes, and sometimes too much under her Mother's feet, but never enough that called for a spanking. Besides, Kate reminded herself, neither she nor her husband, Dan, believed in spanking the girls.
Minutes later, they arrived at the house and Blake hardly got the car door open before her puppy, Wiggles, jumped up on her lap. "I just took some cookies out of the oven," Kate said, and they headed straight for the kitchen with Wiggles barking after them.
Soon the morning's ordeal at kindergarten began to fade. In no time they were at the kitchen table, Kate drinking coffee and Blake curled up on a chair with cookies and milk.
"Feeling better?" Kate asked, as Blake finished off one of her yummy oatmeal cookies and reached for another.
"Uh-huh."
"What on earth happened in kindergarten, Blake? I couldn't imagine why Mother Miriam was calling me to come pick you up. She wouldn't say why on the phone."
Blake began to swing her leg, something she did when she didn't know how to answer a question. But her Mother always helped her.
"Mother Miriam told us to color a picture."
"So you did as she asked?"
"Mmm.Well, sort of."
"But she didn't like what you did?" Blake shook her head and stopped swinging her leg. She put down her cookie because she didn't feel like eating any more.
The morning at the kindergarten had begun normally enough, until art class. Mother Miriam had directed the children to color a scene of a brook with trees along a bank.
"Stay within the lines," she commanded, her voice cross, her face twisted from years of contempt. So the children set to coloring the scene, and Blake eagerly began doing the same. She imagined being there at that brook. Hadn't she played at the pond behind her house often enough? She rubbed her fingers, feeling the warts she had gotten from being there. She could hear birds singing and water babbling over rocks, see the frogs and turtles splashing in the water. Often she tried to touch the hard shell of a turtle swimming close to the bank but it always escaped her. She heard Wiggles barking, saw her tail wagging. So Blake eagerly drew them all in, coloring them with every conceivable color she could imagine.
"What did you do that made Mother Miriam so angry?" Kate asked.
"She said I didn't stay in the lines."
"Oh, there were lines on the paper?"
"Yep."
"And you drew outside the lines?"
"Kind of." And Blake started swinging her leg again.
"Maybe you added more things to the picture outside the lines?" Kate suggested, trying to understand. Knowing her five-year-old daughter's vivid imagination, Kate Fitzgerald had a good idea that Blake had added her own images to the picture. But why would that be such a calamity with Mother Miriam, she wondered. Is she mad? So she asked, "Blake, what'd you put in the picture?"
Blake brightened up, reached for another cookie and stopped swinging her leg. "Well, I put in some frogs-a whole bunch of 'em swimmin' and jumpin' around and a turtle upside down," which set her giggling just remembering what it looked like when one turned over on its back at the pond, "and his legs are all up in the air and a snake curled waaay up in a tree."
"Oh, Blake, I'm glad it was way up there!" her Mother cried out, and that set them both laughing because they knew that Kate was scared to death of snakes.
"And Wiggles, she's barking her head off at 'em," Blake said laughing, knowing how crazy her Scotty got when she saw things in the water.
"Sounds like you're over at the pond."
"Uh-huh." Blake rubbed her fingers again, feeling the warts she had gotten from playing there.
"Then what happened?"
"Mother grabbed me and pulled me out of my seat and crumpled my picture all up," and Blake began to cry just remembering the awful thing that she did. "And she pushed me into the cloakroom and said, 'See if you can learn to stay in the cloakroom!'"
Then Blake told her Mother how Mother Miriam had shoved her to the floor, slamming the door.
"She hollered at me to stop cryin' but I couldn't and she shoved me down on the floor and slammed the door. I was scared 'cuz it was so dark and when I looked around, I saw monsters hangin' on the wall like at Halloween. It was dark, Mom, and I was scared."
Blake could still see her classmates' jackets and scarves hanging on the wall that had suddenly looked menacing. Long and dark Halloween creatures they were as she crouched huddled on the floor, tears streaming down her face. The room was dark except for sunlight dimly coming through a window at the ceiling. And she felt afraid. For the very first time in her young life, she felt afraid.
"They must have been your coats hanging on the wall that looked like that," her Mother said as she lifted Blake on her lap. "Sometimes things can look scary in the dark until you turn the light on," and she gave her daughter a hug. "It's all right, hon. I'd have been scared, too, and look how much older I am than you," and she grinned at Blake who managed to grin back.
Blake realized that her Mother could make the most awful things feel okay, so she told her how she had cried even harder when the door opened and the dreadful Miriam appeared.
"Come out of there, young lady!" she hissed.
Mother Miriam never raised her voice. Her meanness was low-key and personal, directed only at her victim so no one else could hear. She was a nun, after all, so shouldn't she appear the kind and loving person she was supposed to be?
It was recess time and all the kids had run outdoors to play. The classroom was eerily silent. With her hands pressing Blake's shoulders, Miriam led the child back to her seat.
"No recess for you, you bad girl, you awful, awful bad girl!" she growled, oblivious that Blake was crying aloud and uncontrollably.
Blake started sobbing again because she could still feel Miriam's rough hands squeezing her shoulders. Kate pulled a Kleenex out of her pocket and wiped her daughter's tears.
"Here now, blow your nose."
"She said to stop my bawling and draw a picture again inside the lines. And she...
