sister marie gleeson drawing blood from the palm of one shy twelve year old just because she could not remember that amatis came after amamus ; sister bernadette mulligan asking how an alkali could be identified and thrashing the girl who said suck it and see ; virginia herself being battered by a sadist named otoole when she accidentally bounced a hockey ball off the greenhouse -no one believed that it had been a miraculous stroke of the stick- and through the stained glass window of the chapel .