In my novel REMEDY, I took it upon myself to revisit the many hours of my childhood spent with the pocket New Testament and a bowl of Crayolas in Catechism class. The pedagogy of the day leaned heavily on the mnemonic potential of the image to teach children the scriptures and Catholic dogma; every assignment required an illustration. I got proficient at drawing fish, loaves of bread, halos, wimples, boats, barns and seas so solid you could walk on them. I remember once being asked to find a notional symbol for Jesus’ miracles. This troubled me at first until an illumination flashed and following its wisdom, I drew a giant jar of Miracle Whip. Buster Lunes, a kid who indulged the polysemy of his name whenever he could, snickered: “You busted!” The teacher admonished me for supplying the word when the whole point of the exercise was to find non-verbal representations. But my real error, of course, lay in belittling Jesus’ saving acts by likening them to an ersatz condiment. Illustration for illustration’s sake was leading the flock toward the pastures of apostasy.
For many years, I worked at the Crayolas and mini-Gospel until, around the age of Middle-School, I got a teacher who was a closet Protestant. She – I shall call her Mrs. Luther — explained to us she grew up Lutheran but had converted to Roman Catholicism to marry her husband. “This class is going to be different,” she told us that first day. “You Catholics don’t read the Bible so I am going to teach you what I know best.” Mrs. Luther brought out a stack of Bibles – whether they were King James or Jerusalem I can’t recall — and passed them down the rows. “You can put The New Testament away for now. We’ll come back to it that once we’ve understood its source.” Then we started reading Wild Man Ezekiel’s prophesying and I felt as if I had entered a world as weird and wonderful as Ronald Dahl’s peach but much racier due to all the abomination, fornication, and whoredom going on. Rather than illustrate – too risky for sure! — we were led on a odyssey through the Great Book, with Mrs. Luther at the rudder pointing to the words. The words! It was the best catechism class I had had and would ever have (later, in High School, I was subjected to the “egg exercise” as depicted in Remedy – so things got quite dire, you see). Unfortunately, mid-way through the year, Mrs. Luther disappeared and was replaced by Mrs. O’Leary who wore Birkenstocks and forced us to graduate to Watercolors. The church must have sniffed out Mrs. Luther’s Protestanty plot.
(Above is a page from my friend Ray Watkin’s catechism book from the early sixties in Texas. It’s sad to say but I meet people everyday who can’t tell the difference and would get the whole exercise wrong. Bring back the catechism!)
For reasons I won’t go into here, I’ve enrolled my son in catechism this year. Let me just say that this is not simple for me, yet despite my ambivalence he goes without complaint and is picked up at his school Tuesday afternoon by a nun and led off to the “Aumonerie” for class.
Last week when I went to fetch him, his teacher ran after me and grabbed me by the arm: “Madame!,” she said in a voice that sounded alarmed. “Votre fils est un surdoué!” Now it was my turn to be alarmed. Mentally gifted?
Had his school teacher said the same in regard to mathematics I would have looked proudly at my boy and said,” Son, the Age of Aquarius has just written you out an ample check. Keep mastering those equations and you shall inherit the Moon.” If she had complimented his reading, writing and poetry skills, I would have beamed even more unabashedly and hummed: “Son, the Age might not write you out an ample check for your talents, but focus your mind on the Spirit, your heart on the Arts and you shall inherit the Earth. Keep it clean.”
But I was not ready for this one. “Merci. A mardi prochain, Madame,” I said equally breathless now, wanting more than anything to skip out of there.
“What was it you studied today?” I asked my son, feeling uneasy. I handed him a pain au chocolat.
“Martyrs, mom. We studied the Christian Martyrs. Starting with Saint Paul of Tarsus.” I gasped. “Alors, tu es surdoué en…” I couldn’t get myself to go on.
“Martyrs,” answered my son. He took a greedy bite of the bun. Having expended great mental energy in class, he needed the sustenance.
“Good job,” I congratulated him. And what else could I say? I’m also the Mother of Remedy.