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But the blue-eyed baby sister of God had languages too, even though she was Irish, and pretty, and slender as a boy. She answered, in waspy Sardinian. Something about a seedling penis in Sammy’s pants. Well, that broke it. Sam the Man came out of his seat real cool and headed for the open floor at the front of the room. Say that again in English, he said. His hands came up into that relaxed southpaw roll we knew could explode in a flurry of staccato combinations. But Sister Margaret smiled and laid her pointer down. Then she walked across the open space between them, hands at her side, and licked her lips.
“You want some action, fellah?”
Sammy’s face remained obscure in a kind of handsome gloom. She laughed and turned away, then sucker punched from the left and the undefeated warrior of Holy Rosary School started falling. His eyes filled up with shock, and before his butt hit the floor he was hers.
He sat there, pulled his legs up, held them to his body with locked fingers, and stared at her with what looked like pure adoration. To our great surprise, she didn’t order him back to his seat. She just swirled her habit and strode, her slim hips swinging perhaps a little too freely for a nun, back to her desk, and began to instruct us on the major exports of Brazil.
Even after the minute hand on the big round clock at the front of the room stuttered home at three and freed us, he remained seated in the aisle. We tip-toed around him, careful not to acknowledge his ignominious condition, but I noticed, as I passed, that his dangerous body gave off the most peaceful emanations, and I wondered if something had broken inside him.
I was wrong, of course.
A few days later, at recess, Alexander the Giant – a big stupid seventh grader who had never really admitted that Sammy was a better fighter, though Sammy’s quick hands had hammered the arrogance out of him more than once and made it less and less possible for him to indulge his oafish compulsion to beat up on us little guys – began to act up. News of Sammy’s miraculous conversion had brought the habitual sneer to his big slack face. Now he lumbered around for a while, then waded into our box-ball game and cuffed Skinhead so hard the baseball cap flew off his head. Alexander looked around. Sure enough, there was Sammy, standing against the school wall, one foot back against the bricks, smoking
Libros Libertad 