School

When I was seven years old my mother decided that I should learn something about my native tongue. I spoke it, but with a certain stiffness for I thought in English. So mother arranged for me to go every morning to the convent of Jesus Maria in Itzimma. I was delighted, because many of my cousins were at school there, and, up till then, I had felt cut off from what seemed a very desirable and exciting world.

The convent was about a mile and a half from home so mother decided I should walk there (I was very fat at this time, a cross I was to bear till I grew up -- and mother felt that exercise was one way to fine me down!) rather than join the happy, chattering group in the school tram-car. This decision filled me with shame and sorrow and I felt my mother did not appreciate the agony I endured every day as mules and tram raced past me, and jeering voices reminded me I would be late.

I would arrive at school -- hot, dusty and acutely conscious of my awkward plumpness -- just as a burst of sound from the study hall warned me that prayers had begun. I had to kneel in the outer hall with the late-comers and delinquents, until prayers were over and we could give our excuses to Madre Gertrudia. Dozens of pairs of eyes were fixed on us as we crept to our places for the early morning writing "drill" -- a form of torture invented especially for my discomfiture.

The school was a pleasant, sprawling villa, set in an orange orchard. The huge, tiled dining room, which also served for assemblies and public functions, formed one side of a cheerful inner patio, surrounded on three sides by a colonnade. Under these arches the girls sat for the art and sewing lessons which took up most of the afternoons.

The morning lessons consisted of grammar, literature, history of Yucatan and Mexico, geography, arithmetic and a fascinating subject called "lecciones de cosas" -- which taught us about the agricultural products of Mexico. The higher classes studied English and, I believe, mathematics, though of this I am not sure, as my experience was entirely in the lower ones, where I occupied a cosy seat at the bottom! Much of the learning was done by rote, a method now frowned on but quite clever and wellread women emerged from the school, so there must have been some merit to the system. Sewing was taught magnificently; but as the classes were in the afternoon I missed the chance to profit by them, something I have always regretted.

The school was quite strict. As I remember it, the nuns came down quickly and firmly on all transgressions. There was no conversation in class nor in the corridors when we moved from one class to another. There were desks only in the study hall. In class we sat on little cane-seated chairs which we carried from class to class. This gave us a great deal of mobility, and we could seek out cool spots either indoors or outdoors in which to hold the class.

On a few occasions mother would let me spend the whole day at school and this gave me great joy -- for I then felt I belonged to this world of girls. The midday meal was an exciting change from my own excellent lunch at home. At the school it never varied (but now that I have seen the addiction of teenagers to hamburgers I realize that most young people prefer the familiar in food). The convent lunch consisted of white rice and small individual omelettes -- followed by well-cooked minute steaks and topped off with fresh fruit. There were no vegetables. After lunch the girls broke up into groups, each of which was shepherded by a nun, and went out of doors for exercise. My age group spent the recreation hour playing a complicated ballgame at which I was an utter failure, in spite of the hours I spent practicing at home. The older girls walked sedately under the orange trees -- for games such as tennis and croquet were almost unknown in Merida.

Recreation over we resumed our lessons but the hot afternoons were devoted to those studies which required little mental alertness. The embroidery and other needlework done by the girls was beautiful and equal to professional work I have seen.

On ordinary days I left school at 11:15. Miss would come for me and would wait in one of the parlours wilst one of the lay sisters would retrieve me from the arithmetic class. It was a great relief to get this call, for I was incredibly stupid at arithmetic. I would run to pick up my books in the study-hall and then Miss and I would dash down the garden path and on to the street to catch the little tram. It was always a wild scramble and we would sink down on to the seat feeling exhausted.

In spite of much pleading my mother would not let me wear the school uniform, and it made me feel ashamed of myself to appear daily in my utilitarian smock frock when the others looked so grownup and dainty in white embroidered cotton with many frills. It did not help to know that the long light sleeves of the dresses were hot and the high collar prickly.

The nuns, with few exceptions, were Spanish -- therefore old-fashioned. A premium was placed on good manners and decorum and the girls, especially the boarders, were so sheltered from worldly contamination as to make their outlook on life unrealistic. Standards of convent propriety could not be maintained even in the most pious homes. I remember the shock some of us "day" girls received when we heard that the boarders wore chemises for bathing! Questioning of authority was unheard of, and religious exercises were of a simple, pious nature.

Madre Borja, the mother superior, was an amazing woman. Small, plain, pale, she yet managed to fill us with awe. She was a great lady and her speech and bearing bore witness to her aristocratic background. The provincialism of her charges must have been a great trial to her, though neither her manner nor her facial expression ever betrayed her feelings. Though never cold nor uninterested, she kept her distance. In Mexico, by the Laws of Reform, religious were forbidden to wear their habit, so our nuns adopted an austere version of lay dress -- a long black serge skirt, black blouse, and capelet. They always wore mantillas of black net edged with lace. Convent rules and Holy Poverty notwithstanding, they all wore this headgear with a Spanish woman's inborn grace, one might almost say coquetry. Madre Aurea, flashing-eyed and black haired and Madre Gertrudis with her rosy cheeks, unruly curls and merry smile have left particularly charming memories.