SCHOOL, 1964
By Bob Crespo / April 6, 2025
Today is going to stink. Not the way school always stinks, but even more. I hate that place. It’s a stupid stupid place I wish would get struck by lightning and toasted like that abandoned building on Bergen Avenue that time.
Bergen Avenue is the last block before the water in my neighborhood, Bergen Beach, and civilization stopped right there, because before you got to the water, there were swamps and woods and endless windswept fields of tall cattail reeds. There are houses only on one side of Bergen Avenue, mostly tidy well-kept Cape Cod-style homes, one of them full of my cousins, and in my mind, Civilization’s End. Across the street is where the boy’s paradise portion of the neighborhood begins, with all of that plus self-made baseball fields, boatyards tucked into sleepy inlets and Jamaica Bay with its horseshoe crabs and broken old abandoned boats and miles of sandy beach.
We also had what we unimaginatively called “The Sands,” a mysterious half-acre of pure sand that was at least 6 or 8-feet deep, because it was raised that high above street level, and no one knew how it got there on the corner of Royce Street and Avenue U. But there it was, ideal for wrestling or playing two-hand touch football, which were very similar when played Brooklyn-style. Getting tackled, or falling down after almost making a spectacular catch, never resulted in scrapes and bruises on The Sands.
This lousy morning, however, I am heading in the opposite direction, towards school and the alleged civilization of the city grid, the world that always seemed to take a little bite out of me every day, unlike the swamps and woods that my Mom warned me contained all sorts of slimy things carrying dreaded tropical diseases in every slimy bite of their dagger-like fangs (okay Mom was raised downtown like some of my cousins and their idea of “the woods” was Prospect Park). Other than mosquitos, nothing ever bit me in Bergen Beach, not even Ringo, our neighbor’s mean dog, and he bit everybody. It was the rest of the world that sunk its teeth into you.
The reason today is going to stink is simple, and has a name, Sister Eileen Theresa. She was my fire-breathing 6th Grade teacher who had given me the beating of my life the day before, punching me dozens of times with closed fists and banging my head against the blackboard twice for good measure. It was all I could do not to piss in my pants right on the spot, and was so dazed by the second head slam that I simply wandered out of the classroom and into the men’s room to relieve myself, the one place I knew she would not follow.
I’m pretty sure she did not forbid me from leaving the classroom or physically block my way was because she even shocked herself with the ferocity of her assault, and was completely out of breath and hissing at me to get out of her sight. Splashing water on my face and checking it for bruises (there were several), I thought about my predicament. The fact that I sustained such a beating without even defending myself was so unremarkable it never occurred to me to ask why. I knew.
This was my 6th year of being conditioned to getting beaten and not responding, since any sort of response, either anger or tears or begging them to stop, only incurred a longer and more vigorous beating. So you learned not to respond at all, swallowing your rage and helplessness to at least never give them the satisfaction of seeing you weep. Or rage. Or lash out violently. Or react at all. You just stared back at them.
Or at least that was my strategy. In a culture and a city where we boys fought each other like demons and cursed each other like sailors over even imagined insults, the teachers at Mary Queen of Heaven School could smack around the toughest of any of us for any reason they liked. And they did so frequently, picking on “tough kids” and “troublemakers” most of all, to cut them down to size and keep the other kids in line. As a skinny 11 year-old, I didn’t qualify as a tough guy, but somehow got labeled a troublemaker in our school.
She has actively disliked me since early in the school year, specifically the day that President Kennedy was assassinated, and the only time I saw her cry. Or any of our teachers for that matter, who were way more likely to be the cause of crying than victims. The good Sister didn’t think I was heartbroken enough, even though President Kennedy was my hero and I was very upset, because I did not shed any tears for the Catholic president we prayed to be elected. She actually struck me for not weeping before the class got sent home at noon on that dark day.
Was she nuts? I didn’t spend 6 long years in this crazy house training myself not to cry just to weep on command for one of my tormentors! No way I was breaking the code by crying inside this building, they could cut off my leg before I would utter a peep. I would save my tears for President Kennedy for my Mom and my Irish Granny, who had his portrait displayed like he was a family member.
Once, this same nun angrily demanded what I was doing at my desk, which was where I was supposed to be, and she then demanded to see the work in front of me, which was what she had just assigned us, and I showed her. Then she demanded to see my schoolbooks, which were all in order, and then insisted I produce my list of homework assignments for the evening, which I did, and that was fine too. Then she stared me in the eyes a good long while, blinked twice and then Whammo!, she slaps me hard across the face, saying “You’d have an answer for god himself!” Rang my bell good. You just couldn’t win with this one.
Sister Eileen Theresa was one of the most brutal nuns in a very brutal school, and it was just my bad luck to land in her 6th grade class instead of one of the other two 6th Grade teachers of marginally gentler reputations. Mary Queen of Heaven School had 24 classrooms with 3 classes each of grades 1 through 8, and you stayed with the same classmates for the entire 8 years with very few changes, when a kid would move away or a new kid would move into the neighborhood.
So you weren’t even embarrassed to get hit in front of your classmates, or screamed at, or humiliated, or suspended from school, it was just part of going to Catholic school and it happened to all of us in our turn, except for a precious few kids who were either too scared to speak up or who had figured out how not to provoke our teachers. We were not bad kids, nor did most of us have any sort of chronic behavioral problems, but being a Catholic meant you were supposed to feel like a terrible person worthy only of being punished for all the sinful things you did and thought, even if you really didn’t feel that way about yourself. One more thing you had to learn to pretend about.
Being that I’m still too young to properly sin, I can’t wait for my chance to do some real sinning since I’m sure paying so much for them in advance. I’m also very curious about those thoughts they said would be so sinful, since the bazillion thoughts I already have running through my mind all the time don’t seem sinful at all, more like fun and interesting, and sometimes scary. Or maybe they are sinful and I have yet to learn why. I sure hope not.
It’s already hard enough as it is to keep track of all the rules, and sorting out the real rules from the religious ones, the ones that make sense no matter if there is a god or not, stuff like don’t be a burglar or kill people, rules that have real consequences when you break them, like people getting hurt or getting yourself sent to reform school or prison. Not the jaywalking rules either, they were for slowpokes anyway, but the real right and wrong issues like hurting people.
Breaking religious laws, on the other hand, didn’t seem to hurt anyone at all but the nuns who taught us those rules, or certain regular people who believed in them so strongly that they kind of appointed themselves permanent behavior judges of every person they see, like crazy old Mrs Caruso the big mouth widow who lived on E 70th Street and rarely left her porch where she prayed the rosary and yelled at people all day long, and reminded us wild boys that whatever it is we were doing at the moment was a sin that would land us in Hell to burn for all eternity. Which was puzzling even coming from the neighborhood crazy lady, since we were never doing anything but boy stuff, maybe a little loud and sloppy, but we weren’t hurting anybody or stealing anyone’s stuff.
As far as I can tell, the only sinning I do is the lies I tell the priests and nuns in my life just to get them to leave me alone. To priests, it’s in the Confessional Booth, since that was just about the only personal contact you had with them if you weren’t an altar boy, and I’m not interested in being an altar boy. But you have to tell them something in Confession, so you make up stories about cursing or disrespecting your grandma or some silly crap just to shut them up and get the hell out of there with a light penance, maybe just a couple of those quick little prayers they loved to make you repeat so often that they were just meaningless noise. The priests seemed happy to play their part in this game so I guess it’s all okay in the end, the little lies I mean.
I lie to the nuns all the time about things like being willing to take a bullet to my head from Fidel Castro or some other godless Commie rather than deny Christ, or telling them you loved Jesus more than your Mom and Dad (fat chance!). I figured the Lord will understand. All this Communism Scare stuff and the Cuban Missile Crisis seemed to have affected the nuns a lot more than everyone else, and the Cold War and Catholicism seems like a match made in heaven for these ladies in Black & White to deliver their weird challenges to 60 kids whose main objective was to go home unslapped that day. That’s basically all we want every day we’re here, not to get slapped around, and if we learn some math or cool Geography facts during the day, that’s just a bonus. I’ll never understand how the nuns don’t know that and just teach us cool things all day without all the threats and the drama.
Truth be told, I’m still a little woozy from yesterday’s beating and very disappointed that my suspension only lasted half a day, which I was now reviewing how I earned it. I skipped taking the bus this morning and walked the mile to school, recapping yesterday’s events in my mind and trying to prepare for an unpredictable day, the unpredictable part referring to my personal safety. I already decided that if she started punching me again I would just leave the school and walk home and let them expel me. I have plenty of friends in the local public schools and they seemed pretty happy, unlike the kids from Mary Queen of Heaven School who walk to school about as cheerful as coal miners half the time.
Anyway, I was trying to figure out my new approach to 6th grade after yesterday’s disaster because I know nothing will ever feel the same in that classroom, starting with a review of how the day began: The season was changing from Winter to Spring, so Sister decided it was time to change the classroom decorations yesterday morning, assigning several girls to the task of pulling down the little pictures above the blackboards that lined the front and one side wall of the classroom, and taping up Spring-themed drawings.
The old illustrations were piled on my desk, and I asked the girls what would happen to them. They were little inspirational messages with pictures of little cartoon angels smiling at us, more appropriate for younger grades and not sixth graders in my opinion, and I was informed they would be thrown in the garbage. Say no more, I’m thinking, and took out my pencil and began altering the little angel drawings, adding little mustaches and dogs to walk and cars and airplanes and birds and such, and in one case a set of devil’s horns on one of the little angels, the doodle that got my ass kicked.
Before discarding last season’s decorations, however, one of the girls thought Sister would be amused by my artwork, and I watched her as she flipped though the pages, her face turning from her usual milky white to an almost crimson red, before throwing them in the air, then barreling, not around, but straight through all of the other desks in the classroom to get to me, upending their occupants as she came, then grabbed me by the necktie (a favorite nun gambit) and dragged me to the front of the classroom to deliver that public beating, knocking over another half dozen desks and children in the process. I was being made a spectacle, and they were meant to watch, and they got their money’s worth.
While I was in the men’s room recovering, she had summoned the principle, and they sent another boy in to summon me back the classroom, where I was informed I was suspended until both my parents came up to see the principal and Sister Eileen Theresa. Great, that means my Dad has to find out about this, and I never told him anything about all the other times when I got beaten and punished in school. This was the school that he sent me to, so I figure he was okay with the beatings, and for the most part, I was right. He can be every bit as unpredictable and violent as my teachers, so it had long been my habit to tell him everything is going just fine. My report cards showed good marks and I didn’t get angry notes sent home, so why tempt fate?
Until now, that is. A suspension can’t be ignored, and talk of getting expelled inevitably followed. Getting expelled from Catholic School was considered the blackest of marks, certain to stain your “Permanent Record” for life. No one has ever shown me my Permanent Record yet, and I’m starting to wonder where they keep those things or if they even exist, because my nuns assure me mine must rival Al Capone’s by now. Mom or Grandma never say a word about my Permanent Record and they were the only 2 adults I trusted, or at least as far as any adult can be trusted.
After all, they thought Catholic School was a splendid idea for us kids too, both of them being products of Catholic educations, Grandma back in Ireland and Mom in Brooklyn. I don’t think their schools were as rough as mine, though, because they never discussed any beatings they got in school, and neither one of them hated themselves like I was taught a good Catholic is supposed to.
I give them the benefit of the doubt because they’re the only grownups that are always nice to me. Plus, I don’t think they really know what goes on in this school, and I’m afraid to tell them in case Dad finds out and kicks my ass too. He always thinks I need “toughening up,” and I suspect that’s why he sent me to Catholic School, but all the beatings I’ve taken don’t seem to be doing the trick because he still thinks I’m a little shit who doesn’t measure up.
Then last night I had to tell him I can’t return to school unless he and Mom meet with my teacher and the Principle, that frightening twin of the Grim Reaper, Sister Mary Hyacinth, the one who took away my school bus privileges in second grade for “hooliganism” and set me on a course for being labeled a troublemaker for the rest of my 8 years in her school, and it is the troublemakers who get most of the beatings. I was hoping Dad had to work or go bowling or something last night so I could stay properly suspended from school for a couple of days and have more time to think this thing through. No such luck, though, he was eager to see my teacher after hearing my tale, and had surprisingly little to say to me about it before heading off to my school after dinner.
The tears and the rage had finally came to me when telling Mom and Dad what happened; the suddenness of her attack, how other kids and school desks were just tossed aside like sticks, the ferocity of her punches and the humiliating spectacle I was made into, then the stunning finale of crashing my head into the blackboard with a loud thump not once but twice. Surprisingly, they have very little to say about ‘the attack,’ as I think of it now. This was more than getting slapped or even a regular classroom beating, and I think my parents were both a little stunned.
I thought they would be furious about the suspension and the disruption of the household it involved, since both of them had to go to the school, which left my older brother John and I in charge of our little sisters, not a big deal considering that our grandparents lived right upstairs in case we set the house on fire or something. John, a year older than me, was eager to hear from me what happened in class today.
He’d heard rumors from other kids since ours was a small school with zero secrets, and my beating was a loud affair heard in the adjoining classrooms. Not from me, I never made a sound the whole time, but from the Sister shrieking at the top of her lungs as she pummeled me, joined by some of the girls in the class who were shouting and crying for her to stop. Her tantrum really was a showstopper it seems, far worse than anything any of us had witnessed, and I don’t think I’m the only who’s going to remember that day for a long long time.
My brother said that was all everyone was talking about at lunchtime and then after school, with some rumors saying I was hospitalized, others saying I was under arrest and someone saying Sister Eileen Theresa had to be sedated afterward. Well, I was not arrested, and got home around 10:30 in the morning to a thankfully empty house, so I changed out of my school uniform, made some lunch and waited for Mom to come home. I don’t now how Sister Eileen Theresa conducted the rest of her day or how she felt and I don’t care one bit.
Mom and Grandma had gone to the A&P with their shopping carts, a long walk they liked to take together when the weather was nice, rather than wait for their husbands to drive them on the weekend. This was one of the first nice days of Spring, so they probably made a leisurely stroll of it, stopping here and there for a chat with neighbors. Neither one knew how to drive, and when Dad and Gramps weren’t home, we all walked or took buses everywhere we went.
Grandma, a native of Ireland, liked to shop often like she did in the old neighborhood, where her refrigerator was an icebox supplied with real blocks of ice, while in Ireland the only cooler they had was a root cellar dug into the earth. She would tell us stories of her life on the farm and how very different she found New York City, and I liked hanging around her. While shopping often was not so easy in sparsely populated Bergen Beach, the daughter of farmers had no problem walking a mile to the shops.
I wish I’d had time to talk to Grandma about all this, she always had a soothing effect on me, but maybe she’s not the best person for me right now because she is the most religious one in the family, and thinks nuns and priests walk on water. For someone so smart and wise, Granda has a real blind spot when it comes to all things Catholic.
When my parents came home from meeting the nuns last night, I figured I would be in for another beating from Dad, and then being grounded for weeks. Instead, they sat me down in the kitchen and told me they were not mad at me at all, and did not think I did anything wrong. There was not even a “but” involved. You know, like when a grownup tells you did well, “except for” a long list of things you did poorly.
I was very curious about the meeting, but my Mom only said that my father first laughed at the drawings Sister Eileen Theresa showed him, and then that Dad “scared her,” but they would say no more about it. My mind was screaming with questions but I knew not to press my luck and so quit while I was ahead. How can I not be in trouble after all this? I understood nothing about grownups, and trusted them even less now. Why don’t they explain things? I’ll understand. I understand long division, don’t I?
So now here I am walking to school with all these conflicting thoughts in my head, like being shocked that Sister Eileen Theresa could be scared by anything, even my scary Dad, and wondering what he said to her and Sister Hyacinth. And if they were scared of Dad, would I get expelled soon (I sure hope so), or, more likely, singled out for more beatings at every opportunity?
All the kids assemble in the schoolyard every morning before lining up grade by grade to be admitted to the school, unless it’s raining or snowing, then we go right to our classrooms. This morning being another fine Spring day, the schoolyard was crowded, and much to my surprise, I got a hero’s welcome, with kids quietly cheering for me (loud displays of defiance would have earned them a beating too), giving me high-fives and even getting encouraging slaps on the back from some of the 7th and 8th graders, the “big kids” of grammar school, especially my fellow “troublemakers” who had endured this place even longer than I have.
None of them, however, had a “topper” story to what happened to me like boys always do when they hear a dramatic story, the “Yeah, but let me tell you about the time so-and-so did such-and-such” factor. There was none of that, and now what Sister Eileen Theresa did to me was deemed the worst student beating in living memory at Mary Queen of Heaven School, which was really saying something.
I sure did not feel like a hero since all I did was get beat up, but I guess everyone figured what the heck, he’s still standing and still defiantly here, so I guess that’s something, even if it feels like stupidity to keep coming back to this place. The only thing I felt good about was that I did not crack the whole time, making not even one sound or shedding a single tear. Some hero. Some winner, when that’s all you can claim.
The more time I spend in this school, the less that feels like winning and the more it feels like I should just react like a normal person would when crazy things happen to them; to hit people back when they hit you, tell them they are crazy liars and jerks when they feed you crazy stories that make no sense, and tell them to keep your stupid religion. 6th Grade is almost over and that means I have 2 more years of this crap, and that is not what they call a happy thought.
Now it’s time for class so I line up and we file in like every other morning, taking our seats and waiting for our teacher to waltz in and take charge. But this was no ordinary morning, and just like in the schoolyard, I felt all eyes were on me, wondering what would happen after yesterday’s drama. As usual, Sister swept in and the class rose as usual, saying “Good Morning, Sister” in our usual unison before delivering a short prayer and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as always, waiting for the teacher to begin the day’s lessons.
I was most interested of all how the day would proceed, and was not surprised when she addressed me as the first order of business.
“Mister Crespo, please rise.”
I stood up, half expecting her fists or at least a vicious verbal assault.
“Yes, Sister?”
“You and I will have a brand start from this day forward, and put yesterday behind us. I do not like you, but you have been an excellent student. Be seated.”
“Yes, Sister.”
And that was as close to an apology as I will ever get, and the school day is proceeding as if nothing happened yesterday, so I guess I’m not getting expelled from Catholic School after all, at least not today. What a crazy place this is, and what a crazy world.