I Was a Dancer - Jacques D'Amboise [28]
Laughing John lost his smile and his weight, but kept his life, 1945 (image credit 3.4)
Madeleine and I, this time with Pat, were taking daily ballet classes every day at SAB. My eldest brother, John, escaped my mother’s dream of having “cultured children,” but into horror. Having been drafted into the U.S. Army, he ended up in Okinawa, in mopping-up operations against the entrenched Japanese. John left home a good-natured, pudgy boy with buckteeth. After Armistice Day in 1945, he returned to us, bone thin, his skin green. Once, at the dinner table, I accidentally dropped a fork, and the sound had John on his feet, screaming. For months after, I whispered around him. Pop returned to running the elevator at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.
NUNS
Nuns! Their outfits made them magical. Their actions seemed malevolent. Their bodies hidden, breastless, hands always under their habits, fiddling with their rosaries. What were they doing? Their ears were covered, bandaged tightly as if they had head injuries, and their stiff, hooded headdresses prevented peripheral vision. Still, they had super hearing and somehow could see sideways and behind. Magic. They lived in a mysterious, impenetrable fortress called the convent. We never saw them use the bathroom at school, so the fortress was the only possible place they could have relieved themselves. I never thought about the fact that they were women, until someone said that they were, and then I thought, “What do they do with their hair?” Jimmy Comiskey told me they shaved their heads, or had crew cuts, like marines, and they wore gold wedding rings that Jesus had given them. Christ had women in His Special Forces, and was married to them!
Sometimes they punished our infractions by beating the palms of our hands with a ruler. Other punishments stressed humiliation—having to sit with the girls if you were a boy or vice versa; being sent to the chalkboard to write continuously, “I am a liar,” or “I am sorry I misbehaved.” When the chalkboard was filled, you erased and started over.
School ended at three o’clock, when the bell rang for freedom. We would all wait for Sister’s “Dismissed!” then grab our schoolbooks and flee. Boss had given me orders: “You don’t have a second to spare!” I would run home, grab an apple and the four nickels that waited on the table, put my tights and ballet shoes in my practice bag, guzzle a glass of milk, and head for the subway. One nickel got me to Columbus Circle at Fifty-ninth Street by three thirty p.m. A second nickel was for the Fifty-ninth Street crosstown bus to Madison Avenue. (I could save that nickel by running across the park, which I often did, leaping to touch the leaves of overhead trees all the way.) My hand would be on the ballet barre by four o’clock, as we began our pliés. There were some twenty girls and two other boys in my class—Eddie Villella, a year or so younger, and Paul, a year older, I think his last name was Mackowitz. Eddie would go on to join the New York City Ballet and thrill audiences for decades. Paul dropped out before we reached our teens. Rumor was, he had a short career as a banker before being arrested for embezzlement.
Class was an hour long. After, I would dawdle and fool around in the locker room, wrestling with Eddie, being a bully, and sometimes peeking in to watch the professional dancers at their evening class. Eventually, I’d eat my apple on the subway and be home by seven p.m. Boss would be in the kitchen cooking. I’d hand her my sweaty dance clothes and head out to join my buddies on the block until she bellowed, “Dinner!” from the window.
None of my pals ever questioned where I went after school. Till one day!
The bell rang, and we waited for Sister Carmelita’s “Dismissed!” Instead, we got a barked order: “Stand up.” We rose. “Face the back of the room.” We turned. “Don’t move.” We froze. Then she softly addressed the backs of our heads. “As punishment for your rowdiness, you will stand in silence until I dismiss you.” Nobody breathed; the ticking of the clock sounded its sledgehammer. Sister