A Million Little Pieces Of My Mind

When we started our Senior year in September, we had a brand-new nun, Sister Anthony Marie, as our homeroom teacher. She was also the choir teacher. She was very nice, young and hip, and we took to her. She taught a full load of classes and impacted every student in the school…before the unthinkable happened.

Sister Anthony Marie…left. the. convent.

She left the Sisters of St. Joseph and became a civilian.

That, of course, did not inherently mean that she couldn't continue to teach us.

Yeah, right!

Not only did she not continue to teach us; no one would even tell us what happened. (I found out a few years later.) I guess the idea that one might decide not to be a nun was just too threatening to the others. (Historically, almost every nun who taught us has since left the convent if she didn't die first. We must've been a tough crowd!)

As yearbook photographer, I'd been assigned to take photos of all the classes, including hers. Sister St. Charles, the yearbook teacher, wanted the photos of the classes in the yearbook, but not of Sister Anthony Marie. If I couldn't crop her out of the photo, Sister St. Charles made me cut her out of the photo with scissors, so a faceless, nun-shaped shadow stood where she had been!

As a deeply-closeted gay kid, don't think the message here was too subtle for me to get: If you don't live up to our expectations, you, too, will be erased.

Well…I kept the negatives. And now, 55 years later, I can restore the memory of Sister Anthony Marie, by sharing the photos that were banned and hidden from view, lest anyone ever imagine that one of Jesus' wives could get a divorce.