JAGGERBUSH’S CONFESSION
I walked into the principal’s office again. Jaggerbush was sitting across from Sister Kelly Pork Belly. Her pop-bottle glasses were foggy because she was already overheated.
Jaggerbush was in fifth grade, one grade behind me, and the nuns at Saint Augie’s were still batting zero against him in the confession game.
“Sit! Your brother was just about to confess his sins.”
I busted out laughing. Her face shriveled up like a Shrinky Dink you left in the oven too long.
“You find this funny? Maybe you can tell me who’s responsible for the pornography in the boys’ lavatory.”
“I don’t know anything about any graffiti,” I said.
“Pornography! Not graffiti. Pay attention!”
She started her breathing exercises. When she lost her temper, it sounded like she was having a baby.
“You know what I’m referring to. The lurid images of that brawny, green woman. Her taut flesh is barely concealed by tattered rags.”
“The Savage She-Hulk?” I said.
Jaggerbush glue-sticked pictures of She-Hulk inside every missile and hymnal in church last month. Nobody complained until now.
“It’s not her fault she’s green,” Jaggerbush said.
“Regardless of her race, scantily clad women with bulging, rippling muscles are simply,” she took some deep breaths, “Inappropriate. This is your final opportunity. Tell me what you know.”
“She’s cousins with the Incredible Hulk,” I said.
“Fine,” she said, “From this day forward, no comic books on school property. Congratulations.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Jaggerbush leaned closer to the fish tank. His beak touched the glass.
“Are you threatening me?”
“Not me. It’s the She-Hulk Fan Club I’d watch out for if I was you.”
“They make Franco’s Italian Army look like sissies,” I said.
“Who’s Italian what?” she said.
“Franco Harris. Running back. Pittsburgh Steelers.”
“The one who committed the Immaculate Conception?” Jaggerbush said.
Sister Kelly sucked wind like she had a case of the croup, “Franco Harris is not God.”
“Tell that to our dad,” Jaggerbush said.
“He meant the Immaculate Reception, Sister.”
“I know what he meant!”
Jaggerbush was the only kid in Pittsburgh who wasn’t a Steelers fan. He wasn’t a Virgin Mother fan either, so got confused when it came to miracles.
He shoved his hands in his Toughskins pockets and faced Sister Kelly.
“I’d leave She-Hulk out of it. Especially with Christmas coming.”
“Or what? Santa Claus will incur the wrath of this imaginary She-Hulk cult?”
“That’s silly,” he said, “They’ll go after Jesus.”
She screeched about blasphemy and devil spawn and roasting in Hell, but she was hard to understand because of her asthma attack. Then she kicked us out of her office and went into labor.
The next day in school everybody had to say an extra prayer to Saint Anthony because the Baby Jesus disappeared from the school Nativity Scene.
Robert Roman grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, where he sold newspapers to cars from a concrete island. He worked as a mail carrier, busboy, bartender, and laborer while earning a degree in English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh. He taught GED preparation at a juvenile detention facility, elementary school in the Baltimore City public schools, and English to high school seniors in Howard County, MD. He studied writing at Johns Hopkins and UCLA. He now lives in L.A., where he writes fiction and America’s favorite hangman puzzles.