What’s Woven Into a White Rosary?
by Abigail Houston
Most days I spent 8th period halfheartedly listening to debates
about things like the legitimacy of charitable taxation. Classroom 223
was at the very end of the hallway and gave its students an abundant
view of the school’s parking lot. A designated space, well organized with
geometric lines and numeric systems, decorated with two large black
dumpsters sporting matching forest green plastic lids: one for recycling
and one for the kind of trash that we had lost hope of repurposing.
I spent most of my senior year at St. Maria Goretti gazing longingly
at parking spot 57 where my used, 2009 purple Impala sat waiting
impatiently for me to slip into her old leather seat and maneuver her out
of the post-school lot.
That day was no different. I was hardly listening to Mr. Crossen,
wondering if I could set the car alarm off by pressing the button at this
distance, calculating the yards between myself and my sloppily parked
getaway vehicle when the door creaked open. The atmosphere changed
the way it did at a small catholic school when a new face appeared. As the
room hushed, I looked up to see a small group of nuns walk in. I think
there were about five of them, but two I can remember especially well.
One was a younger looking woman, probably in her mid-twenties from
Latin America. She had a heavy accent and a reserved smile that revealed
a few crooked teeth. A strange hat, square and black, covered most of her
head, revealing only a bit of her hair line and her face. Despite her stoic
attire she radiated happiness. Her face was bright and when she spoke,
her voice, though contained, held in it a strong passion, a deep love of life
that startled me. In all my years of Catholic school I’d never seen a happy
nun. I remember her quite well; she was one of the first people to make
me think that anything can be made beautiful with love.
The other woman was older, plump with dark hair. She had a
sort of pudgy, gentle face, but a strong voice and when she spoke she
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