Higher Education

second draft of a flash fiction

Hello, Subscribers,

Here is the most recent draft of a flash fiction. The earlier crafts were funny, I think, but I wanted to add more serious elements while retaining some of the humor. Let me know what you think.

Thanks!

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Photo by Sandra Alekseeva on Unsplash

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During my freshman year of college at Gonzaga University, nuns lived in a dorm on campus and they ate their meals with us in the student dining hall. I didn't know what kind of nuns they were. I didn't even know there were different orders of nuns until I got to Gonzaga. I only knew the two ex-nuns on our reservation. Both of them taught grade school. One of them had turned into a gentle hippie and the other had turned into a classroom despot. The hippie was so magical that we brought her broken birds to heal. The despot once cut off a boy's braids with left-handed scissors. So, when it came to nuns, we Indian kids lived in a binary.

I was baptized Catholic by a Jesuit shortly after I was born—he was a holy man who'd survived a bear attack—but I never knew what kind of Catholic that made me. He had two thick scars that ran across his neck and I never went to Mass. I wasn't even one of those American Catholics who only show up on Easter and/or Christmas.

Some Indians think that priests were always cruel to us. But it's mostly city Indians who believe that. On the rez, many Indians are Christian. That isn't a contradiction. In fact, most of the older Catholic Indians speak our tribal language and still practice the old-time Spokane Indian religion, too. You wanna hear something crazy? That bear-slashed Jesuit fluently spoke our language! Hell, I only know how to count to ten and cuss in our tribal tongue.

You wanna know my theology? I believe that every living thing on Earth has a soul. I also believe in the goodness of Jesus but I'm about 82% sure that he was only human—that he was the ultimate social worker. When it comes to Eucharist, the body and blood are just bread and wine to me. But my disbelief doesn't mean that I disrespect Eucharist. I'm in awe of the Catholic belief that the bread and wine transform into the tangible flesh and blood of Jesus, even as I don't believe in that transformation. Their holy is not my holy. Their metaphors are not my metaphors.

So I didn't enroll at Gonzaga because I was baptized by a Jesuit and wanted to be taught by other Jesuits. And I didn't attend Gonzaga because of my love for that hippie ex-nun. No, I came to Gonzaga because they gave this poor-ass rez Indian the most scholarship money. And money is always secular. And my secular self couldn't have gone to college if it wasn't free.

You wanna know the most bizarre and wonderful thing about my college life? I got to eat three meals every damn day. Growing up, it felt like a miracle when there were leftovers in the fridge. Yeah, here's one of the things that people don't think about when they think about poverty: my family ate every last bit of food that we had every time we had it. We wouldn't have been composting if there was such a thing as composting back then. There was nothing left to compost. Our dogs ate the same meals as us because who can afford food that's only meant for dogs? So, trust me, I never took the Gonzaga meal plan for granted. I always said a non-believer's silent prayer as I walked into the dining hall.

One night, I was waiting in line behind two nuns when I saw a huge praying mantis on one of their shoulders. And, no, mantises don't pray for real. Their arms are built that way to make them faster predators. Their arms are spring-loaded weapons. It's kinda like mantises do the opposite of praying. They don't pray; they prey. So maybe that tyrant ex-nun on the rez was a praying mantis in disguise, enit?

This is all to say that I didn't feel blasphemous when I slapped that scary green insect off the Gonzaga nun's shoulder.

Shocked, she turned to see who'd hit her.

"Mantis was on you," I said and pointed at it on the floor.

She reflexively stomped on it and gasped. Unforeseen tears appeared in her eyes. Then she said, "I didn't mean to do that."

"It's okay," I said. "I forgive you."

And I did forgive her for real. I did. I did. I did.