There were the Sisters who taught grades one through eight: Sisters Aimee, Beatrice, Dorita, Everard, Gratia, Mary Margaret, Mary Therese, Rose Margaret, and Spiritu.
The latter made it quite clear in the first minute of the first day of class that her name was not Spiritoo, or Spiritonto, or Spiritutu, or Sister Spiro Agnew, and any boy who muttered or jotted or scrawled a joke of that sort, and it was always a boy who did so, would regret that impulse for weeks afterward.
And if any boy here did not believe Sister as regards this matter, he need only refer to his older brothers, if any, or the older boys in his neighbourhood, of whom surely one or two remembered Sister Spiritu all too well, boys, all too well.
There were the Sisters who worked the convent: Sister Cook in the golden redolent kitchen, Sister Helen in the boiler room and garage and heating and cooling units, Sister Catherine in the office, Sister Blister the school nurse (real name: Sister Philomena), Sister Francine who ran the room in the convent to which women in the parish quietly came during the week and carried away bags of food and clothing and toys that had hardly been used at all and still mostly retained their sheen.
If you paid close attention on Saturdays you could see a quiet procession of men delivering bags of food, and mothers delivering bags of clothes and toys that had hardly been used, and occasionally a truck would pull up and unload whole gleaming crates of milk and cream. The driver was the dairyman himself, who was an inscrutable man; I asked him once about these deliveries to the convent and he said I do not know what you are talking about, which puzzled me.
There was Sister Eugenie, who dealt with the monsignor and the chancery, apparently as a sort of mediator or interlocutor; and Sister Teresa, who conducted site visits every four months, driving a 1959 Mercury Montclair four-door hardtop painted the colour of sunsets in southern Utah; and once, only once that we ever remember, there was the Mother Superior, who was called Mother by the other sisters, although she must once have been Sister Something, which no one called her anymore; you wondered if she missed being a Sister, and sometimes wore Mother uncomfortably, like a wool mantle on a suddenly warm day.
Not one of them ever