Sister Dorothy Does a Makeover

Newly arrived in Birmingham, Alabama, I spent my freshman year drowning in a soup of cultural and linguistic confusion. I was the only foreign student in the Catholic high school and, too intimidated to ask for help, I was left to fend for myself. The mass, which in those days was still said in Latin, and algebra class, where you could get along with a minimum of words, were the only activities where I felt secure. Able to speak only a little English, and understanding even less, I lived in a perpetual panic that I would miss a crucial piece of information or disgrace myself in some unimaginable way.

I was especially nervous in Home Ec class, where Sister Dorothy, who suffered no fools, was teaching us to use the sewing machine. Not knowing what the words “spool,” “bobbin,” or “zipper foot” meant, I was making slow progress. When Sister would lean over me to explain for the umpteenth time how to pull the bobbin thread up from the innards of the machine, I would break into a sweat, and all my English would evaporate as if by magic. Any day, I felt sure, Sister Dorothy would tell the principal that I was too mentally challenged to be in that school—or perhaps any school. (It took me a while to realize how incredibly lenient the American system was compared to the schools I had attended in Spain and Ecuador.)

At fourteen, though, language difficulties were the least of my troubles. What most tormented me was that I looked hopelessly different from my fellow students. This was 1958, a time when girls wore wine-dark lipstick, cashmere sweaters over pointy bras, pencil skirts, and little scarves tied around their necks. To me they looked like movie stars. I, on the other hand, showed up on the first day of school in a knee-length dress with a gathered skirt and a hand-embroidered top that, having no darts and no give, crushed my womanly attributes against my rib cage. As if that weren’t bad enough the dress featured a bow tied at the back….

One afternoon at dismissal time I was told to report to Sister Dorothy. I quaked. Had I broken the sewing machine? Had she sat on a pin I had dropped? In the Home Ec room Sister Dorothy, robed in the full Benedictine habit and looking solemn, was waiting for me. “I want you to try these clothes on,” she said, handing me some things. “You can change in my office.”

I was, as usual, disconcerted. Since when did nuns make people try on clothes after school? I had been going to nuns’ schools all my life in a couple of different countries, and not once had I been asked to undress. I figured that this was another American academic quirk, like diagramming sentences. But I went meekly into Sister’s office and changed into a long, straight, wool skirt with a slit in the back, and a green cashmere V-necked sweater with elbow-length sleeves. I returned to the classroom and Sister Dorothy nodded. “They fit you fine,” she said. “You can take them if you want.”

At home, I put on the new outfit and went to show my mother. “Ave María purísima!” she cried, raising her hands to heaven, “what’s happened to you?”

“One of the nuns gave me these things.”

“But you can’t wear these clothes! They make you look twenty-five, at least! They’re inappropriate for a girl your age.”

There it was again, my mother’s idea of what was appropriate for a girl my age: no lipstick, fingernail polish, stockings, high heels, or form-fitting anything. It was my own personal calvary, from which I prayed for deliverance every night. But now Sister Dorothy, of all people, had handed me these weapons against my mother. “You can’t say they’re inappropriate, if a nun gave them to me,” I countered.

“I don’t know,” my mother said, shaking her head. “I guess it would be impolite not to let you wear them.”  She asked me to turn around, looked at me from all angles. And then my wide-hipped mother said, with a sigh, “I never knew you had such slender hips…”

The next day I showed up at school looking, except for the absence of lipstick (that particular battle with my mother would rage for another two years), almost like a regular American teenager.

Sister Dorothy, who wore a medieval habit, lived in a convent, and had taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, nevertheless understood how strong the urge to fit in can be in an adolescent heart. She didn’t give me advice or offer to pray for me, but offered practical, material help instead. If her act of mercy wasn’t as dramatic as clothing the naked, it was equivalent in the difference it made in my life.