St. Raphael’s: a Catholic School for the Agnostic

I will now shift you to a place that I can hardly remember but am trying to string back together, piece by piece. Something about St. Raphael’s School makes me not want to forget it.

Here, I quickly learned to critique the world around me. I could proudly say I had never attended a day of church in my life to my fellow Catholic school classmates. I got a note sent home for walking the steps two at a time, instead of one, and I tried to bargain with God daily. 

I only attended Pre-K and Kindergarten, but it feels as though I am continuously uncovering memories that have long been buried. My mind tends to come back to the stairs, the ones I was rumored to have traversed quite dangerously. In the morning, after we said our collective prayer in the gymnasium, our teachers would lead the class up these steps to the classroom. When it was time for lunchtime and recess, they would lead the class back down to the gymnasium, and back up again when it was over. Like our shepherds, they guided our long treks through liminal space from destination to destination.

One day, while walking up these stairs, I discovered that if I hunched my shoulders and sucked in a certain way, my uniform T-shirt would hang loose and hide the protrusion of my baby-fat stomach. Something about it felt unfair, that the other girls never seemed to have as much “baby fat” as I did. Why were we equal size baby, but not equal size fat?

Then, other times, my mind would wander, and I would reflect on my newfound knowledge of numbers and letters. On these stairs, I remember assigning genders and colors to the numbers from one to ten. Two is green, a boy. Four is pink, maybe red, and a girl.

I remember how one of my classmates, D.B., used to announce the latest news on his fluctuating romances when we traversed these stairs. He changed girlfriends so rapidly, I could never keep up. First it was someone else, then it was me, then it was someone else again. It would have been heartbreaking, were I to have actually had any emotional stake in this game.

As for what these stairs look like, I tend to recall the image in a more metaphorical sense than a visual one. Zig-zagging, architecturally unsound staircases of some extra-dimensional, surrealist hellscape. Everything is superimposed by a faint but giant cross.

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When we were momentarily released from our after-school program prison to play outside, I would occasionally spend time with my two older friends. I forget their names. They could have been third- or sixth-graders. All I remember is that they were taller and in some grade higher than me, which obviously made them cool and wise. 

One day, we somehow got to the topic of what our favorite fingers were. Mine was, I proudly proclaimed, my middle finger, because it was the longest and the best of the five. I stuck it out to show it to them. They laughed. Then they’d ask me the same question several more times after that, laughing even more. I was blissfully unaware of the source of their amusement, but the attention made me feel special nonetheless.

The courtyard was a rough terrain of dark, depressing asphalt, livened only by the few trees that populated its edges. Desperate for entertainment, these trees were our safe haven, where imagination was allowed to flourish. Here existed our habitat where we were air-bending fairies. Here I contemplated the consequences if I ate a leaf picked from a tree. Here was the perfect setting for me to reenact the scenes of Bridge to Terabithia. It was a movie that both enchanted and haunted me. As I look back on it now, I realize it helped develop my respect for sad endings.

The courtyard was a place of freedom. If I could escape St. Raphael when the sun was still out, that meant the ice vendor would still be there, ready to serve her magic treats to us eager children.

But, most days, I bided my time in the gymnasium, waiting for my mom to bail me out.

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The gymnasium was my prison after school, as it was for the rest of those with parents who worked longer hours or who didn’t have the luxury of having a stay-at-home parent. Much of my childhood was riddled with this awful imprisonment, these interminable waiting hours.

My friend A. would brag that her mom came to pick her up earlier because her mom loved her more. Better yet, A. also used to have a bad habit of scratching me and leaving marks. When I complained to my mom, her advice was to simply scratch her back, so that’s exactly what I did. My vengeance was executed wordlessly but effectively, perhaps more viciously than intended. It made A. cry. Of course, I was the one who got in trouble, even after reasoning that it was my mom’s advice. She denied all liability.

A. used to have a huge crush on my brother, who’s a year younger than me. She called him her husband. They had many marital concerns (one being that my brother never really had a say in the marriage), but I consider none to be greater than her infamous “My husband peed on me” scene, of which the gymnasium was the setting. She announced it with a deadpan, serious tone, the calmest I think anyone could react when their husband has just peed on them.

My brother also had another girlfriend (that player!) whose name was J. She wasn’t really his girlfriend, they were just really close friends, but my mom used to call her that. I liked J. We were friends. I occasionally talked with her during after-school prison. Perhaps she felt like the sister that I pretended to have.

I was also given the chance to pretend that I owned a Bratz doll when we were given toys to play with after school. At home, my parents ensured that I strictly owned a Barbie collection, so in a sense after-school prison actually granted me a certain liberty.

Eventually, I grew familiar with the after-school scene, with the people who I knew I liked and the dolls I knew I liked to play with. What arrived to interrupt my sense of familiarity was the influx of new inmates, the nearby public school children who we regarded as feral and strange. After a while, though, I realized that they were neither feral nor strange; I simply did not know them. As more and more of them joined us, I felt that my tiny grasp, the very little control I had over the situation, was slipping away.

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I don’t think I’ll ever understand why my parents sent me to Catholic school when they never took me to church. Maybe it was a social experiment. From early on, they instilled a sense of wariness for authority in me. They raised a two-step-walking skeptic. Perhaps I retain nothing from Catholic school because I was already so biased. Maybe the moment that I lost faith was when my father showed me and my brother 2001: A Space Odyssey. We were both terrified and fascinated.

Perhaps how we felt about A Space Odyssey’s “black stick” is the same way most people feel about God. Awe, and fear. Except, instead of our colloquialized “black stick,” adults call it a “monolith.” How boring. 

We should colloquialize God.

We should think of God the way we do a childhood memory. The way each person has their own version, but they retain complete faith. We hold onto what once was, despite knowing the details are faded — because it is ours, and ours alone.

Maybe that means thinking of God the way my parents do. They don’t necessarily agree with organized religion, but they also look back to their Catholic days and are, for a moment, overwhelmed with a deep sense of nostalgia. It is this that compels them to momentarily regret not providing the same for their children. For providing what they say is a necessary framework of tradition and culture.

Religion set aside, they believe that the Bible is a literary hallmark, a great feat in storytelling. I’ve never read it, but I have watched the Spy Kids movies 1, 2, and 3 religiously. And I mean over and over again. My eyes were absolutely glued to the TV screen. That’s what I’d consider a great feat in storytelling. 

I also remember watching Spider-Man cartoons from the 90s and thinking that they always looked so fuzzy because they were old. Well, turns out I needed glasses. I first got them in Pre-K, and I was appalled by this ocular dysfunction of mine.

In the classroom, our teacher Mrs. R used to scold the boys for playing with fake finger guns. I couldn’t quite decide if this was right or not, and this was one of my earliest internal moral debates. It was 2007, 9/11 was still a sore subject, and she said something about violence and guns and God. I agreed, to a certain extent, because I couldn't see the point of their game and to be quite frank, I found it slightly annoying. But at the same time, I thought it was an absolutely ridiculous rule. Something about censorship and oppression and freedom is what I think my five-year-old mind was trying to get at. I didn’t think that God would find it sinful to just pretend.

My first act of political controversy also took place in the classroom. That was when Mrs. R was talking about the president during class and I loudly proclaimed, “George Bush is evil!” only to be told that I had to “respect our president” by sole fact of his being president. I didn’t understand why I was being reprimanded. I was entitled to my own opinions, after all, and didn’t everyone know he was evil? 

And because I think I’m always right, I get absolutely frustrated when people don’t understand me. I don’t think my kindergarten teacher Mrs. L ever understood me. I remember her appearance as characterized by wire-frame glasses and a head of broccoli for hair, and I remember that her words were often meaningless to me.

In the classroom, this boy named I. kissed my leg much to my surprise and disgust. I lamented to Mrs. L, who simply waved off my distress by saying, “Aw, that means he likes you!” Forget consent, she thought it was adorable. When I. used to follow me around pestering me, Mrs. L told me, “Malena, boys like to bother the girls they like.” I don’t think I ever succeeded in getting Mrs. L to recognize a single struggle of mine.

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The gymnasium, during the school day, was an altogether different place. It was a multipurpose room that served as a cafeteria and an auditorium. That’s why we traveled down the stairs to the gymnasium for lunchtime. 

Here, I remember briefly reflecting on why Mrs. L had decided to use the phrase “wake up and smell the coffee” to me. She proceeded to explain the meaning of the phrase, I just don’t recall in what context it came up. My memory tends to conflate this phrase with “stop and smell the roses,” and to be honest I’m not exactly sure which one was actually said. Perhaps it was both. Though I also vividly remember the giant “Got Milk” poster on one wall, which I tended to contemplate as if it were some kind of art piece, most of my memories here contain lunch boxes full of Lunchables, foot-kicking games beneath the table, and Fruit Roll-Up eating contests.

I graduated from kindergarten in this gymnasium. At this time, I was already aware of my parents’ plans to move to New Jersey. It was both frustrating and frightening to think that I would have to remove my entire being from my current world and reimplant myself in another, to begin again as a “Jersey girl” with a weird accent and none of the New York sensibility I had grown to love. 

When I expressed my woes to Mrs. L, she said to me in this very gymnasium: 

“Well, Malena, at least you’ll have air conditioning.”

I had never heard something so useless, so oblivious to my imminent doom. I didn’t see how that was supposed to make me feel better at all. Sure, it was June and the gymnasium got very hot, but that was only a temporary discomfort in the face of a permanent transition.

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St. Raphael school does not exist anymore, and sometimes it feels as if it never existed. I can no longer go back and revisit the source of these half-baked memories. I can only trust in my mind to faithfully recollect them. If I were to revisit these stairs, would they invoke the same sense of thoughtfulness and hint of rebellion in me? Would the courtyard make me long for lost friendships and innocence? Would the gymnasium be its own prison once again? Or would I simply walk through those halls and feel nothing but a resounding emptiness, that this place invokes absolutely nothing within me and my memories remain just as unsatisfactory? 

There is no way of knowing any of this now, and I guess no point in wondering to begin with. Upon a quick Google search, I was reminded of this, the futility of it all. Though I could hardly find any pictures of the old place, I luckily managed to discover this astounding headline: “St. Raphael’s Priest Allegedly Punched By Man Urinating in Church Parking Lot.” 

I have once again been forcefully made to move on from St. Raphael, and I believe there’s some trace of that little girl within me who feels frustrated about that. But I guess it is exactly how Mrs. L put it:

“Well, Malena, at least you’ll have air conditioning.”

Perhaps that was the beauty of her advice: no matter how useless or nonsensical it was, there was always some element of faith, of hope. Perhaps that’s what religion is. Perhaps that’s how I feel about God. Or perhaps that’s how I feel about St. Raphael.

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Author Bio: Malena Colón is a senior concentrating in literary arts. She also writes for Post- Magazine and is on the illustrating team here at Sole. From writing to drawing, she loves to be creative, but enjoys her time most when she can just laze around with her cat.