The angel on my shoulder

A nun lives in the apartment next door. I see her occasionally, her grey hair poking out of her wimple, her tiny frame dressed in no-nonsense blues and grays. Sometimes, we ride in the elevator together. She asked me once if I speak Spanish — or Portuguese? Italiano, maybe? But it was no to all three, and we stumbled along with my English and her Spanish, sharing an uncomfortable elevator laugh.

The nun hovers around me in spectral form, a moral authority even when she’s not there. I’m careful to keep the volume on my TV turned down, and I never let the door slam when I take out the trash. When I leave the apartment for a night out with friends — any time I’m in a dress that’s too short or a top that’s too low — I pray I won’t run into her. When I get home late that night, I cringe when the hinges on my door squeak.

Once when the Captain came to town, all three of us ended up in the elevator together. She tried her Spanish on him with better results than she’d had on me.

“I wonder what she thinks of me,” I wondered aloud afterward. I’d had three male visitors stop by my apartment since Monday — a friend for coffee, a colleague to pick up radio equipment, and now the Captain to show me a good time — and each time, I’d managed to bump into the nun with my guest in tow. True, the nun and I don’t attend the same church. We don’t share a common language, let alone a common value system. But, still, I worried about her opinion.

This preoccupation with moral authority troubles many of us. Granted, most people have a metaphorical angel on their shoulder — not a diminutive neighbor whose visitors call “hermosa” — but we still regulate our conduct to suit a perceived code of proper behavior. I, for one, am obsessed with appropriateness.

I balk when a man refers to his genitals on the first date, and I’m careful to keep my conversations with partners out of the gutter. I wear sensible outfits to dinner and I save my mini skirts for the club (where all bets are off). But I wonder: Would life be more fun if we didn’t keep ourselves on a short leash? Can our moral authority — imagined or otherwise — ever be satisfied?

Coming home one evening in a tight skirt and knee-high boots, I stepped off the elevator

just as the nun next door was saying goodbye to one of her visitors. The visiting woman, rosary in hand, stepped onto the elevator as I stepped off. I looked down the hall to catch a glimpse of the nun in her doorway. She smiled and waved in my direction. I couldn’t quite make out what she said as she turned to shut her door. And, to tell you the truth, my Spanish really isn’t that good. But as she shut the door, I swear I heard her mumble under her breath.

“Puta,” she said. 

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