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[152] [ Seven ] Native Ground, Again I spent the summer after I graduated from Springfield reading, thinking, and chewing over what I might do next. My father must have wondered about the ten job offers that were supposed to be waiting for me after four years of effort. Instead, I was beholden to the federal government with no prospects on the horizon. After a six-month grace period, I would have to begin paying back student loans. One afternoon in mid-August, Father Andrade appeared at our doorstep in his familiar summer straw hat ready to spend a couple of hours with my mother and titia. I happened to be home. I had no car, no money, and nowhere to go. When he learned that I had graduated and didn’t have a job, he told me there was a fourth-grade opening at the school of Espirito Santo parish, where he was a curate. In the Azores, islanders prayed to Espirito Santo, the Holy Spirit, to ward off volcanic eruptions. The church, filled with old and new immigrants, had a reputation as one of the most Portagee in Fall River. The church and the school were in the Flint’s far East End, pinched between the Quequechan River and triple-deckers shaded by John Flint’s mills on narrow, winding Alden Street. The school made use of a dirt, city-owned playground that backed up to the turgid millstream and was named for Espirito Santo’s first pastor. Father Travassos Park seemed like a bad consolation prize for a local religious pioneer. “Park” dignified the scant strip of dirt that bore his name. The Flint Portuguese had grown accustomed to accepting what they could get. “Joe, the school needs a teacher urgently,” Father Andrade informed me. “Classes are going to start in a little more than two weeks.” He told me that the young Portuguese man who taught fourth grade had just been appointed to fill a vacancy in the public school system. This promotion meant better pay and benefits. I didn’t respond enthusiastically to the notion of teaching in the fourth grade and of doing so in a school that had been considered too Portagee Native Ground, Again [153] for us Conforti kids to attend. “Joe, call the principal. Don’t waste any time,” Father Andrade prodded me. “I’ll put in a word for you.” Under his barrage, weighed down in debt, and with no job offers or money, I called the principal instead of running away with the circus. Espirito Santo was staffed by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, the FMM, as they referred to themselves. They were primarily a foreign missionary order. Their training prepared them to accept an assignment in places like the Philippines or India on a moment’s notice. The mother superior in Fall River had spent time in New Guinea and China where the Japanese imprisoned her in the late 1930s. In other words, the FMM were among the Catholic Church’s most demanding orders. But St. Francis’s accepting and charitable spirit, I would come to realize, leavened the FMM’s obedience to Catholic dogma. In addition to their predominately foreign labors, the order did some work in the United States. Espirito Santo was considered a missionary field because of the poor immigrants who had formed the church and continued to augment the parish. A card-carrying religious skeptic, I walked the plank to Espirito Santo filled with anxiety and with images of Sacred Heart’s Millie ricocheting in my head. Fate or God had smiled down on me and executed Millie’s revenge—or at least I fleetingly thought so. I introduced myself to Sister Mary Josetta, the name the principal took when, after completing a novitiate and then temporary vows, she received a ring and became a permanent bride of Christ. She was neither Millie nor a poor desiccated nun who had poured out her life in service to the Church. I liked her immediately. She was young, smart, and personable. She also had a high-wattage smile. Never could I have imagined what lurked around the corner. In two years “former” Sister Josetta and I would be planning our marriage! “I’ll need a transcript from you,” she said. “I understand you majored in history.” “Yes,” I replied, “and I minored in English.” “Did you student teach?” she asked. “No, I was in secondary education and took some education courses,” I explained, “but I became a liberal...

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