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The Dead Hand…and Lyndon Baines
Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson. The thirty-seventh
president of the United States was the topic of my first high school
research paper. It was my freshman year at Georgetown Visitation
Preparatory Academy a really old school that housed even older nuns. Being
the child of an atheist and a Jew, I found the school to be rather exotic. What
was underneath those bulky habits? Did the nuns have hair? What did their
rooms look like? Curiosity aside, I also found the school to be spooky. Its
main building, the Founder’s Building, was a giant, grey, gothic monolith
that loomed over an entire city block. At the top of the building sat two
angry, triangular windows which squinted at me every day causing foreboding
violin music to play incessantly in my mind.
Luck would have it that I had all of my classes
in this miserable building, which housed mold along with countless gruesome
crucifixes and marble statues. My favorite statue was of Mother Cabrini,
the founder of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. It stood in its own alcove
on the second floor between my French and History classes. While its
cherubic face, covered head and flowing robes may have resembled all the
other school statues, Mother Cabrini stood out. Unlike the others, Mother’s
right hand had delicately spaced apart fingers that thrust upward towards
the heavens. This dramatic and holy gesture provided students the perfect
opportunity to insert a cigarette between Mother’s index and middle fingers
every single period much to Sister Merideth’s consternation whose job was
to doggedly remove all seven to ten cigarettes a day. Although Sister
Merideth passionately proclaimed herself protectorate of the statue, she
still managed to become distracted by a passing greeting or a student’s
compliment on her shoes which resulted in yet another clove, menthol or
Marlboro Red to be delivered into the hand of Mother Cabrini. No one ever
considered what Sister Merideth did with all of those cigarettes until that
is she died of lung cancer the end of my freshman year. The nuns had lost
one of their own. So they dealt with it by having every student walk by
Sister Merideth’s casket and cross themselves. When it came to be my turn,
I noted that the building’s one moment of light heartedness had quickly
turned back to death and dreariness. I also noted that Sister Merideth
looked way better dead than she ever did alive. As I leaned in for a closer
look, I wondered, “Is that….purple eye shadow?”
I was forced into attending this dreary catholic
academy by my parents. I had gone to public school for junior high but got
easily distracted. Actually, I was lazy, really lazy. When I wasn’t
watching endless amounts of television, I was chatting incessantly on the
phone with my equally, if not more, lazy friends. During class, I’d etch
Bob Marley lyrics onto the cover of my notebook. Alarmed by the “excuse me
while I light my spliff” quote on my notebook and disgusted by my C’s and
D’s, my parents decided I needed the strict, academic, all-girls structure
of a college preparatory catholic academy with green and yellow polyester
uniforms to boot. I have two theories of how I actually got in to this competitive school. Either
my parents paid off the school, or Principle Sister Mary Birch decided that
she needed to fill the school’s Jew quota. “We have one Jewish student on
our campus” she proudly stated during my interview.
“Ms. Zuckerman!” Sister Irma shouted. She always
knew when I wasn’t paying attention. “You will write your research paper on
Lyndon Baines Johnson.” Sister Irma was my History teacher. She knew every
historical fact imaginable and got sweaty when talking about horrors of
World War II. I had a difficult time looking at Sister Irma’s face. Instead,
I was drawn to her left hand. Sister Irma’s left hand was “dead.” It was
completely black and its loose flesh jiggled like Jello. Often during
lectures I would become hypnotized by Sister Irma’s hand as it swung back and
forth like a pendulum. “Ms. Zuckerman! What is your research topic on?” I
wasn’t paying attention. “Uh…” I replied. That damn hand! It constantly
made me loose my focus. “Focus Ms. Zuckerman!” Sister Irma shouted. “Lyndon
Baines Johnson!!” She said. That time I wrote it down.
Sister Irma had spent the better part of the
semester teaching us how to write a research paper. She took us to the
library and taught us how to find books on our topics. She taught us how to
identify primary and secondary sources. She taught us how to incorporate
quotes as well as create an MLA style bibliography. At least that’s what I
imagined Sister Irma taught us. The fact was I never paid attention. Instead,
I’d look at her dead hand and think of the dead, grey day outside. I’d then
think about the hot chocolate I’d buy at Sugar’s after school. As Sister
Irma’s hand jiggled while she passed out papers, I’d even think about how
my mother was always on a diet, gaining and losing the same five pounds. While
Sister Irma would point to a map of Poland as she excitedly described the
horrors of the Blitzkrieg I’d think about the month before when Sister Irma
accidentally rested her dead hand on a burning hot radiator until a student
finally shouted, “sister, sister your hand is burning!”
Sister Irma’s hand stamped itself into my brain
staying with me long after History. In French while we conjugated the verb,
faire, I’d think of the Renaissance fair my parents took me to in September
and let me wander off by myself for two hours which I keenly took advantage
of by downing two lagers and watching a joust amongst a crowd of rowdy
Maryland rednecks. At lunch, as I was about to bite into my bologna
sandwich, I thought of Sister’s hand and quickly lost my appetite. During
English as we read the Canterbury Tales and discussed the black
plague, I immediately thought of Sister’s hand which made me think of the
times my brothers and I would manically flip through our dad’s New England Journal of Medicine trying
to top one another in a race to find the most disgusting skin disorder. Before I knew it, the school day
was over and the only knowledge I retained from my classes was Sister’s
dead, black, hand.
“Katy. I got your progress report. You’re getting
straight D’s.” My mom’s voice sounded tight and angry. Whenever she spoke
about my grades, she clenched her teeth. “I don’t get it.” I replied. “I’m
working my ass off.” My mom quickly stepped on the accelerator of our
maroon suburban then slammed on the brakes for a red light. I guess she
wasn’t buying it. “Your father works his ass off. You watch television.” My
mom accelerated again and cut off a guy in a Volvo station wagon. Her voice
was so constricted I thought it might self destruct. “Shit!” she exploded. The
guy in the Volvo was right beside us honking and flipping us off. “Mom,” I
said, “Please don’t.” But it was too late. My mom already had the Polaroid
out and took a picture of Volvo guy in the act. I suppose my mother did
this to embarrass other drivers for giving her the finger or the drop dead
sign. But it happened so often that I was sure my mom cut people off on
purpose just so she could catch them on film in their worst moment. As I
watched the freaked out Volvo guy quickly drive off, I asked my mother,
“Mom why do you have to do that? It’s so embarrassing!” “What’s
embarrassing is your grades,” my mom replied tersely. “Your father works so
hard.” This time her voice finally cracked and she started to cry. Sister
Irma’s black, hand handed her a Kleenex.
That night, before my paper was due, I hated
myself. Why didn’t I pay attention in class? Why couldn’t I be like my
father who works so hard? Why, oh why, do I always let my mind wander? And
then a small, evil voice crept inside my head. “It’s that damn hand. Cut it
off!” I sighed, went to the basement, forced myself to skip over the “H”
volume of my parents old Encyclopedia Britannica and pulled out the “J”
instead. I started writing my paper. “Lyndon Baines Johnson was born on
August 27, 1908, in central Texas…In the 1960 campaign, Johnson, as John F.
Kennedy's running mate, was elected Vice President…On November 22, 1963,
when Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson was sworn in as President.” Three
pages in, I stopped. I noticed a photograph of Johnson holding up his
Beagle named “her” by its ears. “First of all”, I thought, “who would name
their pet ‘her’? How impersonal. Not to mention, I wonder how ‘her’ felt
about being held up by the ears as a media spectacle. How humiliating.” After
going back upstairs, making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and
ruminating over the injustice inflicted upon Her, I caught myself. My mind
was wandering again. And just how did I get upstairs in the kitchen anyway?
I returned to the basement and started writing again. I wrote a paragraph
about how Johnson outraged animal rights activists by holding up his beagle
by the ears. I then stated, “Nevertheless, his action clearly indicated the
nature of his blustery Texan personality.”
A week later, I got my paper back covered in
thick black ink; funny how Sister Irma preferred black ink to red or even
blue. Perhaps she had a desire to match everything to her hand. Sister Irma
pointed out that my paper was riddled with dangling modifiers, run on
sentences and misspellings. My paper lacked an adequate thesis statement,
meaningful analysis and my quotes were insufficient. But as I flipped
through each marked up page, I noticed that one paragraph stood alone,
untouched and un-violated by black ink. It was the paragraph about Johnson
and his Beagle. I realize now that that paragraph was a distinct product of
my wandering mind. And as an adult, I attribute my most original writing to
my haphazard ways of thinking. For that, I am grateful. Not to Sister Irma
but to her dead, black, hand.
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