St. Peter Claver

Every town with black Catholics has a St. Peter Claver’s. My first was nursery school. Miss Maturin made us fold our towels in a regulation square and nap on army cots. No mother questioned; no child sassed. In blue pleated skirts, pants, and white shirts, we stood in line to use the open toilets and conserved light by walking in darkness. Unsmiling, mostly light-skinned, we were the children of the middle class, preparing to take our parents’ places in a world that would demand we fold our hands and wait. They said it was good for us, the bowl of soup, its pasty whiteness; I learned to swallow and distrust my senses. On holy cards St. Peter’s face is olive-toned, his hair near kinky; I thought he was one of us who pass between the rich and poor, the light and dark. Now I read he was “a Spanish Jesuit priest who labored for the salvation of the African Negroes and the abolition of the slave trade.” I was tricked again, robbed of my patron, and left with a debt to another white man.