corey Farrenkopf

reading the hobbit with sister theresa

At your Catholic School, they don’t believe in IEPs or learning disabilities. They do believe in extra reading time with the nuns on Saturday. The nuns don’t have degrees in education, or any other certification, but they do have Jesus and full possession of your weekend. They rarely wear their habits, but when they do, you pretend you’re being instructed by a hooded Gandalf, or that other wise wizard in the Hobbit, which your father reads to you before bed.

Your reward at the end of multiple hours of mispronouncing saint names is a bookmark with a golden crucifix tied to the top, the perfect gift for a child who can barely read. They never give a name to why your paragraphs never progress, for why pages turn so slow. Enough prayer and practice and he’ll be reading the Bible like an old apostle. But you don’t want to read the Bible like an old apostle. You just want to read the Hobbit, with your dad, and not stumble over every third word. You want to be able to hum the songs with him, trade off dialogue so the voices match. Smash the dishes, crack the plates, and all that.

“Do you think he can skip next week?” your mother asks when she picks you up, knowing your father has promised to take you to see the Fellowship of the Ring on the condition you finish your remedial work. You aren’t thirteen yet, so this is a big deal.

You clutch the prayer book you’ve been using to sound out the words for Sunday hymns close to your chest, the golden crucifix dangling from eight pages in.

“No, next week we’ll need him here. And the week after that. It won’t last forever, but we can’t ease up now,” the nun will say, patting your shoulder.

Maybe your father will take you to a Sunday showing, you tell yourself as you drift down the front steps to the parking lot, the spire of the church across the street casting a black shadow across the parking lot. But you know that won’t happen. Sundays are for mass, not Mordor. You’ll want to argue this point, but you’re afraid your father might stop reading to you all together, and how are you going to get through the trilogy on your own?

“The book’s always better than the movie,” your father will say. “You’ll understand someday.”

__________

About the author

Corey Farrenkopf lives on Cape Cod with his wife, Gabrielle, and works as a librarian. His short stories have been published in Vastarien, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Southwest Review, Reckoning, Flash Fiction Online, Bourbon Penn, and elsewhere. His debut novel, Living in Cemeteries, will be published by JournalStone in April of 2024. He is the Fiction Editor for The Cape Cod Poetry Review. To learn more, follow him on twitter @CoreyFarrenkopf or on TikTok at @CoreyFarrenkopf or on the web at CoreyFarrenkopf.com.