The Nun on the Bus

When the noon bell rang in the hill-top convent school of Nuestra Madre de la Merced in Quito, Ecuador, we would board the pale-yellow school bus that took us home for lunch. Two hours later, the bus would pick us up for our afternoon classes. And it was during that after-lunch trip that the drama of the motorcycles would unfold.

As the bus made its rounds on the cobbled streets, the boys from the Jesuit school in their uniforms and the ones from the American school in their leather jackets would come roaring up on their Vespas, Harleys, and Moto Guzzis and escort us through the town. On cloudy days there were fewer of them, and during the rainy season only the most ardent pursuers showed up. But on sunny afternoons they came out by the dozen, hooting, whistling and waving as they rode.

As the first motorcycle appeared over the horizon, the older girls would start to whisper and nudge each other, and with each addition to the procession they giggled and rolled their eyes and squirmed in their seats, trying to get a better look at the bikers. I was twelve at the time, and convinced that my classmates--who, due to the difference in school systems between Spain and Ecuador, were two or three years older that I--were insane. While the gawky Rodrigos, Pacos and Ricardos accelerating towards us sent the other girls into raptures, I watched Sister Imelda.

She was a young nun, newly professed, which is why she had been given the hopeless job of maintaining order and decency on the bus. She had a pretty face beneath her wimple, with ruddy skin, shapely eyebrows, and flashing green eyes. In her floor-length habit of white wool with wide sleeves and black veil she looked, except for the mannish lace-up shoes that were part of the outfit, almost elegant.

She sat near the front of the bus. As soon as a motorcycle was heard in the distance, she would straighten up in her seat, tug at her veil, and stare fixedly ahead, resolved not to let the bus chasers get to her. But soon there would be two motorcycles, and then three, and her face would redden and her knuckles whiten as she gripped the seat in front of her. When she couldn't stand it anymore, she would whirl around on her seat and yell "silencio!" at the giggling girls. But they couldn't hear her because of the motorcycles thundering behind us.

She would sit back down, adjust her veil, and clench her jaw. I could see her struggling to control herself, but as the whistling and hooting and roaring reached a certain pitch, she would leap up and fly to the back of the bus, her face purple with rage and flames shooting out of her eyes as she shook her fist at the bikers, shouting "imbéciles! malcriados! facinerosos!" This never failed to send the girls into fits of suppressed laughter and embolden the boys, some of whom leaned over to slap the bus as they sped by.

Poor Sister Imelda! I felt the indignity of her situation. She could either rail at the boys and be laughed at, or ignore them and appear to approve of their behavior.  As it was, the only thing that dissuaded our escorts, besides the rain, was the end of the route. As soon as the school's great iron gates came into view the riders would peel off one by one, like fighter pilots abandoning formation, and head to their own schools.

I wondered what Sister Imelda made of her trial. Perhaps she saw it as punishment for her sins. Perhaps she offered it up to relieve the sufferings of the souls in Purgatory (don't ask how that was supposed to work). I imagined that every day at dawn, as she headed to the chapel for prayers, she begged Our Lady of Mercy for rain.

Where is she now, my nun on the bus? Nuns last a long time, and she may still be living in the sisters' quarters on the third floor of the school. I wonder if, when she hears the bus depart on its rounds, she's glad that she's no longer young. As for those long-ago boys, her tormentors, do they now, driving their cars through the winding streets of Quito, remember the days when the girls they pursued were held captive in a yellow bus and guarded by a green-eyed dragon?