one

I looked over to see her smirking and shaking her head, in digust.

She looked like a nymph, slight and tiny with a Dorothy Hamill haircut and ears that came to a fairy-like point. She was delicate, graceful and soft-spoken.

“What are you doing?”

I was busy trying to steady a chair under the convent window. I was everything she was not. Clumsy, loud, large with curly red hair that lent itself to the theory I was off.

“I’m doing research.”

“We’re ten.”

“So what! I want to know if nuns have hair. I think it would explain why they were so mean. Being hairless would make me mean.”

“They are mean because you make them feel stupid.”

“Whatever. You gonna help or what?”

“Fine,” she complained, as she steadied the chair I had procured from her neighbor, Salami Legs.

“Did you rob this chair from Mrs.Wayda?”

“Borrowed.”

Lisa tried to keep the chair steady. It wasn’t high enough. After the acquisition of a milk crate, it was perfect, albeit
perilously unsteady, but an ideal view. I peered into the window.

Lisa prattled on, like she did, assuring pending disaster and called parents.

“Lisa, shush! We’re gonna get caught because they are going to think they hear a trapped cat out here. Stop moaning.”

“Trapped cat, that’s funny.”

Finally able to look in the window, I was flabbergasted. Sister Jacinta, crammed in her girdle and habit, dancing to the Bee Gees. The shock knocked me flat on my ass. The noise could have “woke the dead” Sister Jacinta would tell the Monsignor, my parents, Lisa’s parents and Ole’ Salami Legs.

We were sent to confession.

Lisa went first to save time, three Hail Mary’s.

Me?

I should have packed a lunch. An entire rosary, pew polishing for a week and I had to make good with Salami Legs by “helping” her after school for two weeks. Everyday I prayed as I walked up her porch that she had finally broken out a pair of pants. It never happened. She must have been proud of those big, swollen, red, salami-looking legs.

They disturbed me.

I was grateful that when I left I would always find Lisa waiting at the corner.

“Pants yet?”

"Nope, but she caught me staring at them.”

“She get mad?”

“Nope. She asked if I wanted to touch them."

"Did you?"

"Good God, no!"

"That's what you get for staring."

“Whatever.”