Sor Flora Teaches Me a Lesson or Two
The nuns quickly determine I’m not good for much else, so they have me teach English in one of the concrete classrooms that opens onto a central courtyard. I exist in only two places: the classroom and the wood-plank house that I rent from the nuns. The walk between these two worlds, in either drenching rain or stifling humidity, is a sticky purgatory. In the little house, I lie on my cot under the mosquito net and let sweat soak my sheet. At school, I fudge my way through the day; I have no idea how to teach. I’m 21, a liberal arts grad, and sure the Peace Corps has never seen a less qualified volunteer.
I’m assigned to a rural site – by no means a town – in the green and impoverished center of the Dominican Republic. The school is run by a Spanish order of sisters and staffed by four thin-lipped Spanish nuns and one native, Sor Flora, who’s as wide and dark as her Spanish sisters are narrow and pale. They all live in the large convent adjacent to the school. The Spanish sisters file into the classrooms each morning to teach, but Sor Flora is the administrator, the heavy, and everyone steps to the side as she rushes by on school or community business, tidy in her khaki habit and flat black shoes, her short veil swelling behind her like a sail.
I sometimes see Sor Flora standing in the yard of a house that looks just like mine, chastising whole families: mothers’ and fathers’ heads lowered while the children stand quietly beside them. One day I see her sweep a crying student into her arms, like mercy itself. Whenever she fills the doorway of my classroom, I don’t know if it’s to offer an encouraging smile or scald me with a scowl. Sometimes she stops by my house with a sack of mangoes, other times to pan my housekeeping. When I find out that admission to the school is limited to families able to purchase the blue and khaki uniform from Sor Flora, and that the kids who don’t attend school work their scrawny family farms or care for younger siblings, I’m naïve enough to question this practice. I learn to never question Sor Flora. I think I understand some things, but I don’t.
The lay teachers keep their distance from Sor Flora, even Ramon, the oldest, a real grownup. Ramon’s considered handsome, but I have my eye on dark and quiet José, who lines up students to kick the soccer ball across the courtyard or run laps around the school. Dora’s my favorite teacher. She laughs at my American accent and gives me impromptu merengue lessons between classes. Her spot-on lisping impressions of the Spanish sisters make me laugh until I cry. She won’t poke fun at Sor Flora, though. My imagination has been trained by a larger world, so I never really understand that the school, the convent, and the families splayed along this one dirt road are Dora’s end game.
The nuns sometimes send a student with an invitation for afternoon tea. The Spanish sisters ask me impolite questions politely while Sor Flora squints at me from the head of the table. I do my best to give them answers they might like. I know I’m a disappointment to them, and not just because I’m a terrible teacher and I smoke Nacional brand cigarettes behind my house after school. They don’t like the laughter I share with Dora, and they definitely don’t like the way I look at José. The invitations come less often, and when they discover that José has been visiting me in my little house – a breach of multiple taboos – the invites stop altogether. Sor Flora’s visits end abruptly; I feel invisible whenever she passes by.
Still, when I get careless about boiling my drinking water and lie weak and panting on the concrete floor of my little house, unable to make it to the outhouse, the nuns send the medic: Sor Flora. She kneels on the floor beside me, cradles my head in her hands and whispers that she has a cure and might give it to me. I must first agree to leave José to the local girls. I’m stunned but I agree. She hands over an aluminum pouch full of Gatorade. It helps.
Linda Sanchez is a writer, teacher, alchemist, and entrepreneur. Her short stories, personal essays and flash fiction have appeared in The First Line, Blink-Ink, and other literary journals. Linda lives north of Boston with her husband and two beloved dogs, most often in a state of bliss.