I Kicked a Nun and I Liked It

I can’t blame Sister Rose of Lima. She had no idea how ferocious I was at seventeen. Raised to slap, punch, pinch, and sit on top of my siblings when necessary, I had a working class right hook and the grin of a junkyard dog.

My Archbishop Prendergast High School jumper clung to teenage curves in ways that the nuns didn’t anticipate. They hoped to neuter us; but the outfit was a schoolboy’s fantasy and we girls knew it. We strutted around like boiling water pushing the lid off a pot. We looked for ways to turn up the heat while the nuns tried to keep us on simmer: shirt sleeves buttoned at the wrist, socks to the knees (even it if that meant a rubber band around your leg) and saddle shoes polished daily. If our uniform appeared too short, we were forced to kneel to calculate the measurement—the hemline must hit the floor. If it did not, we were hit with a ruler, given demerits, and forced to drop it overnight. I resewed my hem with white thread in bold stitches in an act of rebellion that earned me pursed lips from those pious nun faces. While in poor in taste, my transgression was technically not punishable, so I slipped through their net.

We changed classes five times a day in silence. The nuns stood outside the classrooms, rosary beads hanging like machine guns at their hips. While twelve hundred girls moved through corridors; we looked one another in the eye, sometimes challenging a fight, acknowledging a friend or keeping our eyes down with arms around broken hearts, just following the saddle shoes in front of us.

That past spring, I’d slept with Jim Hurley after months of a courtship that demanded artful skills to distract him from what he was determined to do.  I eventually succumbed under our dining room table, my bare ass chafing against the cheap red carpet while my parents slept upstairs. Later, when he hugged me, I compared my experience with the sex I’d read about in Harold Robbins novels. I watched Jim’s taillights fade, and knew my mother was right when she warned me he was a loser. I tucked that pain inside my fist and lashed out on Jim’s desertion in letters to my cousin, Colleen. 

Study hall was a time to catch up on homework, to quietly read Bible passages, to prepare for exams. But I preferred to mourn Jim and share my latest weekend exploits across a stack of loose leaf paper. Last weekend we’d guzzled Miller High Life, listened to Springsteen’s, “Born To Run” blasting from a car parked alongside the railroad tracks that promised Philly just twenty miles away. One guy had a joint; we laughed, danced and ignored the couple making out on the hood of a car. The weekend before, we’d been chased by the cops with spotlights but our run through the woods was surefooted. We bested the lazy cops and emerged into backyards of families we knew. I loved sharing the details with Colleen—especially emphasizing the use of the word ‘pigs’ whenever possible.

I was describing how the new moon had given us the advantage when I noticed those familiar shoes—part orthotic, part gender neutral fashion—just inches away.

I sat up straight, covering my pages with my left hand.

“Kathleen, what are you doing?” Sister Rose asked.

I heard the swish of ponytails as girls turned to watch.

“I’m working on my English essay, Sister.”

“What is it about?”

“Shakespeare, Sister.”

“Lovely. Let me see it.” Her outstretched hand crossed my desk.

“No, Sister.”

It was my worst trait, something I could never control. When I lied, I blushed. I did everything possible to fight it—shook my head, pinched myself, changed my thoughts—but the more I did, the more my face turned beet.

Sister Rose was no fool.

“Give it to me.” She covered my pages with her hand, which resembled my grandmother’s translucent skin, wrinkly joints, old freckles turned to spots.

My hand was also on the pages; we both had a firm grip. Her grip was stronger, she tugged. Seventeen years of battling my seven siblings gave me incredible instincts. I matched her strength and simultaneously kicked her in the shin.

Someone gasped. She smiled, then pulled the sheets from me, victorious.

“Off to Sister St. Martin’s office. NOW.”  The battle had flushed her, those white eyebrows more prominent than I’d ever noticed before.

My mind raced through the sins of my siblings, measuring my level of trouble: Billy had been tossed out of school for fighting in ninth grade, Karen got pregnant and married, I was slapped in the face ineighth grade for wearing makeup.

This was bad.

Too soon, the discipline nun stood before me; six-feet-tall with bulging eyes that swelled with each passing year.

“Kathleen, did you know you are a very fresh girl?”

“No sister, I did not.”

Who knew that was a rhetorical question?

She controlled her anger while I waited for the slap that never came. “Head home. Your parents have been advised. You’ve earned ten demits for your vile behavior.”

I imagined punching Sister St. Martin the way Billy taught me. “Girls will pinch you, punch you and pull your hair,” he advised on his knees, looking me in the eye while he laced up my boxing gloves. “Punch a girl in the face. They aren’t expecting it.” 

Instead, I turned in that tight pirouette I had learned from dance, letting my hair fly behind me like a middle finger. No doubt my parents would be disappointed, but I didn’t care.

I’d kicked a nun in the shins—as hard as I’d have battled anyone. No punishment could match that achievement. They would never break me.

-Kate Farrell

Kate Farrell is a TV producer. Her credits span the Olympics, reality TV and documentaries. She is currently attending Hunter’s MFA and writing a memoir about growing up in a Catholic household with her seven siblings. She finds gardening, bike riding and screaming great ways to inspire her writing.