The Chapel

I wasn’t very happy when my mom decided to enroll me to St. Paul’s, mostly because I was so comfortable with my previous school, which for God’s sake I couldn’t remember its name. But I knew I was extremely happy there, at the old school. The only image I could recall from that place was of me escaping my mandatory nap time to sneak into Mother Superior’s office and watched her work. I thought I would be kicked out but she gave me a smile instead. Probably that was all I remembered about my old school. I was too young to have any strong emotional attachment to that place, or at least not as strong as when I was at St. Paul’s.

    St. Paul’s was a castle, literally. The first thing I noticed was the big bell tower rising up, reaching to the sky and every time those bells rang I felt as if there was an invisible force that grasped my stomach and squeezed it strongly. It wasn’t exactly the feeling of fear, rather, it was something so peculiar that I longed for it every so often for the bell and played the rhythm in my head trying to synchronize the imagined beats with the actual sound of the bells. I must admit there was a sense of insecurity once I first visited the campus though. The school was simply too big for a kindergarten! Later I learned that St. Paul’s was a major seminary for South Vietnam and it also housed St. Joseph’s Academy, once an infamous institute for theological studies. My mom walked me to the classroom and I immediately made friends with other kids without any difficulty. Some of them were busy crying at a corner of the classroom and I wasn’t sure why they were crying. I knew if I were them, I wouldn’t be crying. There were enough toy bricks here to build at least two or three buildings, although I was thinking of constructing a citadel if the girls weren’t coming to us and asking for some bricks to build fences around their market. How wasteful of material! – I thought. I said I wasn’t particularly happy when my mom enrolled me to St. Paul’s not because I didn’t have a good time there. In fact, it was one of the best moments in my life. I didn’t like it because until today the image of my mom leaving me behind in the classroom was still vibrant in my head. I was eager to make friends and finish my architectural project to show my mom to learn that she had left. I was frightened. I jumped like a fox out of the classroom but my teacher had been much faster than me. She was strong and determined to hold me back. She must have done that all day and suddenly I realized why those kids at that corner were crying. The very thought that my mom had left me made it so difficult to think about anything else. I started crying, too.

    Life at St. Paul’s wasn’t so bad afterward. The food was really good compared to what my cousins were having at their schools; and I must say my teachers really loved us.  Gradually I forgave my mom for leaving me without notice at my first day of class, but I felt the love that my teachers had for us was pretty much the same and we were living in heaven. Of course besides building citadels and cities I had other passions and St. Paul’s afforded me an opportunity to do that. The building that we had classes was right opposite what my friends and I called the Castle. It was even gigantic enough to attract appraisals from adults and foreign visitors. To us, it was a target of exploration. Our headmaster was a senior nun and she was very strict in a sense. She kept telling us that whoever violated “the laws” would be punished by sending us to the chapel. Back then we had a very vague idea of what a chapel was, but we were sure it wasn’t a place we could survive for long. Hence, when my headmaster told us that we had to respect our food by completely cleaning our plates and that she would know because she had “eyes” on that corner on the wall, we believed her religiously. I always managed to finish last at lunch and the belief that the headmaster’s eyes were watching me all the times scared the heck out of me. I tried to sit next to Le, the fattest kid in class and also loved eating so much that his parents forbade him to have candies. I tried to sneak him pieces of meat or chicken whenever my teachers didn’t pay attention, but despite my effort, I always ended up the last kid to finish his lunch.

    Time passed by quickly and soon it was my last year at St. Paul’s. I managed to stay out of trouble, especially the Chapel. The only time I heard somebody was summoned to the headmaster’s office and punished in the Chapel was once this kid stole an eraser from his classmate. Stealing was a horrible act anyone could think of, especially such a valuable thing as strawberry-shaped eraser! At the end of that school year my friends and I decided to have a trip to the Chapel, an extremely dangerous and stupid thing we could think of at that time. Of course it must be as secretive as possible and nobody outside our circle should know, well, except my girlfriend. She thought it was a stupid idea and resisted coming along although she agreed to be that person who would notice the authority in case my friends and I wouldn’t come back the next day. As planned, the last day of class we had a big celebration for the whole school and we would sneak out of the party to get closer to the prohibited zone. We became smaller and smaller as we were getting closer to the Castle. There were three main heavy bronze gates separated us from the main garden inside the Castle, (I knew this because my mom and I were invited to a gala held at the garden one time). It was something beyond my imagination with all kinds of beautiful and exotic flowers displayed in that garden. The trees there must be a hundred year old!

    We approached the foot of Castle and took the stairs to go up to the church. Although all the bronze gates were closed, we could still use the stairs to enter the church from the side and sneak into the garden. But it wasn’t our plan. We wanted to discover this Chapel everyone was talking about. Take a look at it and get the hell out in one piece – that was our plan. My friends and I entered the great hall. It was cold and much bigger than we thought. It wasn’t exaggerating to say great hall was probably bigger than my entire house. We walked quickly and tried not to leave any sound behind us and finally we got inside the church. It was a dark and cold room lighted by hundreds of candles located on the walls. The room must be as big as three football fields and could seat hundreds of people at once. The lack of light made it harder to locate our exact position and we wouldn’t know if we reached the Chapel or not (none of us had been there before.) As we walked slowly along the cold wall we encountered various statues of saints and a “box” that someone seemed to be sleeping inside. It was so strange to sleep in a box, especially inside the church! Headmaster must be aware of this but I was surprised that she allowed him (this old man) to take a nap here. It must be uncomfortable for him anyway. Curious, we leaned forward to look at him closely and realized he wasn’t breathing at all. Suddenly a breeze of cold wind entered through the open door, carrying the smell of candles and almost blew off all the lights in the room. For a moment we knew exactly where we were – it must be the Chapel! Worse, we now knew what happened inside the Chapel! Without saying a word, we flew out of the Chapel as fast as we could, rushed down to the stairs and didn’t look back. It felt like there was something chasing after us but we were too scared to look back. The four of us made it back to the party but we were too shocked to say anything. My girlfriend looked at us and she was terrified, but at least she knew we would tell her everything, every single detail, when we got our breaths back.