Maybe my mother and Mother Frances just wanted to scare me. If so, they were succeeding. Every time the classroom door opened, I started shaking. By 2:00 I began to believe that I might be getting a reprieve, but then I thought about how horrible it would be to spend the weekend wondering whether I would get paddled on Monday. Better to get it over with, I thought. At 2:30 Mother Frances stepped through the classroom door. There was no doubt that she was on a mission: in her right hand she held the brown paddle that we hadn’t seen for such a long time. She said, “Excuse me Mother Veronica, I need a few minutes. Brenda , I want you up here right now.” My knees felt like jelly, and there were tears in my eyes before I reached the front of the room.
Catholic School in New England18
