The Mighty Queens of Freeville

When I last saw him, Peanut Jesus was lying swaddled in a teeny tiny piece of paper towel, resting sweetly in his cardboard manger. I turned my back for a minute in order to stop a covey of boys from putting together a tabletop football game pitting the Wise Men against Joseph and Mary.

I admit that what happened next is something I probably should have anticipated. In my five years of teaching Sunday school to eight-and nine-year-olds at our church in Washington, I had already faced an ark full of preadolescent shenanigans, many having to do with our craft projects and the holy family. I trained myself in the art of the "teachable moment," even at one point uttering the phrase "Yes, Steuart, that's right. The Virgin Mary does have nipples. Class? Why does the Virgin Mary have nipples? Anyone? Because she was a woman. And she was a mom too. Does anyone know whose mom she was? No?"

After my little Aristotelian monologue, delivered to the mostly smirking and freshly scrubbed faces of my prosperous little charges, I pretty much wanted to run screaming into the street, hail a cab, and go to the nearest bar, until I realized that it was ten-fifteen on a Sunday morning, and if I was lucky enough to find anything open, it would most likely be crowded with Sunday school rejects such as myself--and the last thing I wanted at such a moment was to be in proximity to people who shared my predicament and had been driven to drink by a room full of second graders.

My class of around fifteen kids, which convened after the 9 a.m. service, trooped over to the education building while their parents cruised out to have coffee or a quick brunch at a café. Our weekly ninety-minute sessions were a blur of snacks, stories, simple prayers, and crafts. I liked sending the kids home with something we had made together and got pretty good at thinking up new ways to illustrate the Bible stories we were reading in class. Old Testament- wise, my class and I could knock out individual milk-carton chariots driven by clothespin Philistines in about half an hour. Our Popsicle stick Ark of the Covenant took two sessions, but only because the glue needed to dry.

My crafty crowning glory, however, was the cereal box crèche.

This elaborate homemade nativity scene featured a stable made of a cut-up cereal box populated with cotton ball sheep, cardboard camels, and the holy family, which we made from toilet paper rolls. The star of the cereal box crèche was Baby Jesus--a peanut still in its shell, swaddled in a tiny piece of paper towel and laid in a cardboard manger.

My class of kids happily participated in the manufacturing of our crèches, cutting, gluing, and excitedly talking about Christmas. We assembled our individual Nativity scenes and reviewed the miraculous story of the birth of Baby Jesus. Then they drifted into their favorite classroom activity, which was to goof around.

While my back was turned, I heard the familiar crack of a peanut shell. The faintest whiff of peanut essence escaped into the atmosphere, like a tiny puff of organic life being released into the stale air of our basement classroom. By the time I turned around, Peanut Jesus' manger was empty. I knelt down, face-to-face with Wyatt West. He was wearing his usual Sunday school outfit--a tiny pair of chinos and a Brooks Brothers navy blue blazer over a light blue oxford shirt. He had a little clip-on necktie. Like many of the boys in my class, Wyatt always looked to me like a miniature congressman on a constituent visit. He was holding two empty peanut shell halves, looked blankly at me and said, "Wha?.?.?.??" A small fleck of peanut skin dangled at the corner of his mouth.

"Did you just eat Peanut Jesus?" I asked him.

"That was Jesus?" he said. "I thought that was Joseph."

I decided to ignore the implication that it was somehow all right to eat Peanut Joseph and cut right to the chase.

"No. Joseph is the dad. Class? Who is Joseph?"

I picked up Joseph. His body was made from a toilet paper roll, which we had glued fabric onto and accented with pieces of yarn. Joseph's eyes were pinto beans and his mouth a piece of macaroni. We used little cardboard flaps to make his flipperlike hands and feet.

"This, my friends, is Joseph," I said. I held Joseph aloft. He looked exactly like a toilet roll in drag. RuPaul, by way of Charmin.