The Art Lesson
Years before I decided to become a nun, I drew a rabbit. At St. Simeon’s Catholic School, mornings filled up with daily Mass, catechism, arithmetic drills. But one day our teacher, Sister Ignatia, changed the routine.
“Who knows what special day is coming?” she asked and looked at me. Before I could answer, someone else said, “Easter.” Then everyone shouted, “Easter! Easter!” We made a lot of noise.
“That’s enough.” Sister Ignatia gestured, finger to her lips. A day earlier, cardboard eggs, chicks, and pure white bunnies had appeared on the bulletin boards. The effect was magical. We longed for spring.
“After lunch, we’ll draw Easter bunnies,” Sister promised. True to her word, after recess, she passed out sheets of oaktag paper. We snatched up pencils and crayons, hardly waiting for directions.
“Watch me.” Sister Ignatia stood at the front of the room. She guided her chalk across the board in confident sweeps.
“Two circles, one on top of each other. Then, two more small circles at the bottom for feet. Ears, two upside-down V’s.” I watched Sister’s slim arm in motion, the black cuff of her sleeve dusted with chalk, her wrist flexing like a falling leaf. When she finished drawing, the rabbit on the blackboard sat up straight, waiting for a face. Then Sister explained
“When you’re done, bring your drawing up to my desk. If you do a good job, we’ll put a bow around your bunny’s neck.”. We set to work, pencils moving across paper. But I had a question.
“Can I draw my bunny sideways like the one up there?” I pointed toward the decorations over the blackboard.
“No,” Sister Ignatia said. “This is the way to do it.” She pointed to the blackboard.
I bit my lip and drew circles and “v’s.” After a few minutes, my impatient, crooked bunny looked nothing like what she’d drawn. This looks wrong, I thought. I erased and began again.
Soon, other children raised their hands and went up to Sister Ignatia’s desk. One by one she accepted their drawings, stapled on pink ribbon bows and taped each drawing to the wall beneath the lip of the chalkboard. A parade of circular bunnies marched across the room.
I took mine up too.
“This one isn’t ready,” Sister said. “Can you try again?”
“Yes.” I wanted to say more, but Sister frowned.
“Go back and do it over. You want a ribbon, don’t you?”
“Yes”
I drew and drew, each bunny more lopsided than the other, none of them worthy of a ribbon. At the end of the day, I packed my schoolbag, crushing down the papers, grinding them to the bottom. I tossed my crayons on top, not bothering to put them in the box as we’d been taught.
That night, Mom cleaned out my school bag.
“What’s this?” she said, holding the ragged sheets of oaktag in both hands. I cried. Then Mom told me to draw some bunnies before bedtime while she did the dishes.
Surrounded by sheets of white typing paper and Number 2 pencils, I drew bunnies, one after the other, large ones so extravagant they reached the edges of the page and small, fluffy ones with powder puff tails and ears bumpy as cauliflowers, ears waving like flags in a storm. Mom took my drawings and pasted them to the wall with adhesive tape from the medicine closet. All the bunnies in the world looked back at us.
“Good job,” Mom said. I like them all.” But the next day back in school, I didn’t get my drawing on the wall.
I took my vows and for many years taught school. One night I awakened with tears on my face. I’d been chasing rabbits, wild brown things. They twisted underneath bushes, raced over logs. I followed them into the woods, a crayon in my hand like a wand. By that time, I’d begun to ask myself if the convent was the best way to live my life. I’d learned how to do things the accepted way. I’d learned the rules. But what if the rules didn’t fit the situation? What if I didn’t need a pink ribbon anymore?
