Mother Superior Corleone Orders Wise Guys to ‘Whack’ Me

      I walked out of detention to face the cold, wet, dark and dreary evening.

      My walk home was only two miles. Normally, I walked this distance everyday without effort. However, this day would prove to be different. I walked out into the schoolyard and I felt out of sorts from the inquisition. The few remaining kids were picked up immediately and carted away. I was left alone. I started to walk from the playground towards the front of the school to get to the main street of which I usually walked to and from school.

      All of a sudden, I heard an older kid scream out, “Let’s get him!”

      I turned to the scream, and to my horror, I saw five kids come running towards me. They appeared to be the size and physical maturity of eighth graders. To me they were like adults. They ran towards me, and I sensed that their intentions were bad. I started to run. My short little legs and big butt could not carry me away fast enough. They reach me within seconds and I was slammed to the ground. I landed straight on my ass, a sharp flame of agony shot up my tailbone up the length of my spine. Perhaps this is the incident that broke my lowest lumbar vertebrae, a problem that would plague me later in life.

      Once they got me to the ground, four of them arranged themselves on my limbs. Each kid was sitting on an arm or a leg. The fifth kid sat just below my hips. He beat the crap out of me.

      The other kids took this opportunity to throw in some of their own punches as well. The kids on my legs took the opportunity to punch my legs into jelly and the kids sitting on my arms did this to my arms and shoulders and head.

      I tried to fend off the strikes to my face by turning my face this way and that, so the kid sitting on my waist contented himself to concentrated most of his strikes to my midsection. I do not know how long or how many times he hit me.

      He pounded over - and - over – and – over into my guts. After the initial pain, everything went into a welcomed blur and I don’t remember feeling any more pain until later, just fear and humiliation.

I don’t know when it was that I passed out, but I woke up on the playground, bruised, wet, cold and alone. This incident would haunt me for years. After seeing the Godfather and the memories of this inquisition, the beating would haunt me in a new and novel way.

      I have often visualized The Mother Superior was wearing her usual attire except that it was pinstriped and she is smoking a cigar in a private smoked filled-room talking to five wise guy kids dressed up like old mafia goons.

      I can hear the theme song to the Godfather playing in the background.

      In my mind’s eye Mother Superior was putting a contract on me because I dared to speak up and argue with her, as the haunting melody of an Italian mandolin playing in the background. In a raspy voice I hear her saying to the goons, “Vinny has sided against the family and so he needs to be punished.” “If you do this thing for me, I will remember and repay all of you for your kindness.” They leave the smoke-filled room of the church to hunt me down.

      From the playground, I limped and crawled home. I don’t recall how long it took me to get home because to this day I don’t remember much of the trek. It was all a painful blur.

      I finally got to the house, and I lacked the strength to open the door. I was leaning against the door and I knocked. My grandmother opened the door and I collapsed on to the floor holding my guts and crying until I passed out. I woke up in the hospital in horrific pain and unable to move my legs. Evidently, the beating was so bad that I had to spend a week in the hospital. For some reason the beating made me unable to move my legs and I remember one of the doctors had tried to help me to move them. We failed and my failure to move them seemed to cause the Doctor much concern, which of course caused me concern.

      To this day, I don’t know why I couldn’t move my legs but I think besides the beating, I had an intestinal virus and the beating exacerbated the condition. I do remember that while I was in the hospital I seemed to be getting too many shots for my liking. I started to feel like a pincushion. At one point during my stay, a nurse had come in to give me another injection. I was not going to take it any more. She stood over me with the giant gleaming needle. There seemed to be an evil looking viscous fluid running slowing down the sides of the needle.

      She smiled with yellow crooked teeth, I thought of her as demon I saw in a painting of Dante’s’ inferno that had come to torment me.

      She said with disingenuous sweetness, “Turn over, its time for your shot.”

      I cried out, “No!”

      She tried to turn me over by I was in a bed that had sides to it and I held on to the bars tightly to keep her from turning me over. She grew steadily impatient. She called another nurse to come and help her to turn me over. I was screaming and fighting the entire time. In the end, it took four nurses and one doctor to turn me over to plunge the syringe into my butt, which hurt like hell. This ordeal left the nurses and doctor breathing hard, sweaty and pissed-off, which gave me a large measure of satisfaction.

Then memory fades….