Most adults were amused and bewildered by my precocious ways at only four years old, but by September 1st, 1981, my mother had enough of my constant questions and demands for explanations and decided it was high time I went to kindergarten so she could have a break. Trouble was, most schools required that children be five years old by September 1st to begin kindergarten. But one local Catholic school had a cut-off date of December 1st.

Seeing as how my birthday wasn’t until December 16th, you’d think that would have posed a problem. But my mother was a resourceful woman, and she simply got hold of my birth certificate and erased that 6 in 16 right off the page, making my birthday effectively December 1st. That’s probably the first thing I really remember learning: forgery.

And that’s how I came to be enrolled at St. Francis de Sales Catholic elementary school under the tutelage of Mrs. Parker and Sister Conrad.

Sister Conrad was about a hundred years old and as mad at the world as a blind man at a wet t-shirt contest. Her favorite pastimes were whapping kids with a ruler and praying loudly for our everlasting souls whenever we dared behave like children. I was terrified of her and avoided her as much as possible, which I’m sure she appreciated. Nevertheless, as fate would have it, Sister Conrad and I were to be together engraved in the annals of time and St. Francis de Sales, because she believed in torment and I believed in personal assault.

My parents and I played a game every school-day morning; as soon as I was out of the car, I’d race my father’s black Cadillac down the street. I’d run with all my might alongside the chain link fence that separated my school from the street while my father drove as slowly as he could so I could beat him to my classroom door. I didn’t know that at the time of course. I pumped my little legs like all the demons in Hell were chasing me, and all I knew was that I was the swiftest girl in the world; I could outrun the fastest slug and my daddy’s black Cadillac. And when I arrived at my classroom door, once again the champion, I’d be out of breath and full of confidence because if I could outrun a car, I could do anything.

This particular morning, however, Sister Conrad was standing at the classroom door when I got there. She fetched me by the ear and dragged me into the room scolding me, for there was no running allowed in school! Trecherous! Horrible,! Disobedient girl! There is nothing worse to an old Irish Catholic nun than disobedience, and breaking school rules was just about the most brazen thing one could imagine.

Only, there is one thing the Irish Catholic nuns at St. Francis de Sales hated worse than disobedience, and that was left-handedness. Being left-handed was a mark of Satan; we weren’t supposed to use our left hands for anything at all if we could help it. I wasn’t left-handed, thank the Lord, but the smallest boy in my class, Clippy, was, and boy did he ever catch Hell for it.

Every time Sister Conrad saw Clippy writing with his left hand, she’d sneak up on him and smack his hand with a ruler. Humiliated, Clippy would switch the pencil to his right hand, head ducked low, and try pitifully to write. After a little while, though, he’d always switch back to his dominant hand. Learning to write was hard enough when we were five; I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for Clippy to have to learn to write with his off hand.

The same day as my unfortunate morning run-in with Sister Conrad, I forgot my lunch at home. Kindergarteners did not go to the cafeteria, and if we forgot our lunch, we were shit outta luck. Luckily for me, my best friend Jaimie offered to save the day and share her peanut butter sandwich with me. We sat next to each other, happy as clams, munching on our sandwich halves.

Clippy appeared from the classroom with a mischievous grin on his face. “Hey Amber,”he said, “you wanna see what I can do?”

The answer to that question is always yes. “Sure,” I said, mouth full of peanut butter.

Clippy pulled from his brown lunch sac a plastic sandwich baggy, to which he had tied a GI Joe figurine. Eyes wide as saucers, he threw the sandwich bag into the air and we watched in rapt joy as the sandwich bag magically ballooned into a parachute, gently floating the GI Joe to the ground.

It was probably the coolest thing I had seen in all my five years of life on Earth, and Clippy was absolutely beaming he was so proud. I was about to clap when Sister Conrad snatched Clippy by the ear. “Clippy, what do you think you’re doing? Is that garbage you just threw on the ground?”

“No ma’am!” Clippy pleaded. “It’s not, it’s—“

“I know perfectly well what it is, boy! Should we add lying to your list of offense for the day? Shall we?” And she swatted him with her ruler, accusing him of littering.

“Now you pick that up and throw it in the trash where it belongs,” she said, eyes hard as stones. “And don’t ever let me catch you littering again.”

“But Sister Conrad—”

She swatted him again for interrupting her and for general insolence. Defeated and on the verge of tears, Clippy picked up his GI Joe figurine and makeshift parachute and deposited them into the trash.

“And what is going on over here?”she asked, turning to Jaimie and me. “Are you eating Jaimie’s food?” she asked me, incredulous.

I knew better than to argue or explain; I’d seen Clippy get hit enough to know how useless it was. I merely nodded. “Yes.”

“Horrible little girl!” she cried. “Get out of here! Give Jaimie back her sandwich! Go out to the playground; I can’t even look at you! Stealing other people’s food; I won’t have it!”

I handed Jaime back her sandwich; I couldn’t look her in the eye. I had only taken three bites of sandwich, and I was so hungry. I turned and walked off toward the playground, my mind filled with thoughts of Clippy and his poor toy in the garbage, and my ears filled with my stomach’s loud rumblings.

I hated Sister Conrad. I hated her, and wished she would die. As I walked out to the playground, I found myself praying with all my heart for the good Lord to snatch Sister Conrad from the surly bonds of earth and whisk her off to Heaven where she could sit at the LEFT hand of God the Father Almighty (just because that would have burned her up real good) and to keep her far away from Clippy and his wickedness and glorious friends who share their peanut butter sandwiches.

But apparently it wasn’t enough for Sister Conrad to embarrass me and send me off to the playground half starving; I was no more than twenty paces away when I heard her behind me, following me, yelling at me in her horrible, raspy, old hag voice.

“Back in my day we’d have gotten a good spanking for stealing other people’s food! Thou shalt not steal, the Bible says! And don’t think I didn’t seeing you encouraging that horrible Clippy to litter our beautiful school! I just don’t know what is wrong with children today. Nothing a good paddling wouldn’t cure, I tell you what, you spoiled brat!”

And at that, I’d had it. I’d had enough of Sister Conrad. I’d had enough of her ear-pulling, hand-swatting, garbage-spewing, torturous, hateful ways. I was so angry, so humiliated, so hungry that I did what any hot-blooded little five-year-old child would do.

I turned around and punched the living daylights out of her. I got her right in her gut with all the strength my tiny little body could muster.

And a week later, Sister Conrad up and died of a heart attack.

We learned of her untimely demise at chapel, and when my classmates heard the news, several of them turned to me and made choking sounds, or drew their index fingers across their throats in a slicing motion. My altercation with the old woman had made me infamous; my story was known far and wide. Even the fourth graders had heard of my rebellion. “You killed Sister Conrad!” a boy whispered to me.

The idea that I killed Sister Conrad left me in a tizzy. Could I really have killed her? Was it possible? For days on end, kids came up to me on the playground and called me the witch-killer, the nun-slayer. I could get no relief. I was marked.

My mother noticed something strange about my manner and after a few days she asked me about it. When I could hide my question no longer I blurted out, “Mom, did I kill Sister Conrad because I punched her in the stomach?”

My mother drew me to her chest, stroking my hair, shaking her head. “No, baby,”she assured me, her voice soothing. “Sister Conrad was an old woman, and it was just her time to go. Now, you shouldn’t have punched her. That was a very bad thing to do. But you had nothing to do with her dying.”

I pulled away and looked up at my mother. “I didn’t?” She shook her head. Crestfallen, I turned away. “Darn.”