New bed assignments were issued, and I was placed in dorm two with Patsy and Clare in the first three beds. After moving our things, the three of us walked over to the convent to meet with Mother Bernard regarding the start of the new school year.
“As you know, this is the first time we are sending girls from the industrial school to Scoil Mhuire. I’ve decided it would be in your best interest to spend as much time as possible with your classmates. Therefore, you will be taking your meals with the boarders and permitted to study in their parlor at the end of the school day. However, you are expected to complete your daily chores each morning before attending class.”
Excited by this news, we all thanked her.
“Julia has a uniform for each of you,” she continued, “and you’ll be responsible for keeping it cleaned and pressed.”
Then she dismissed us and I left her office feeling like I’d won the grand prize.
As we walked back to the industrial school, I thought about my good fortune and knew it would be in my best interest to write to Hannah as she’d asked me to in her last letter.
We went straight to the laundry, where Julia handed each of us a small stack of clothing.
“Yer number is inside the collar,” said Julia. “Ya can wash and press em in the evenings, after the girls in the laundry are done workin.”
I went back to the dorm and laid out my new clothing on the bed. I held the navy pinafore up against my chest, and the hem fell just below my knees. Then I ran my hand over the crisp, long-sleeved, white blouses that featured a rather large scalloped collar. My favorite thing was the thin, light-blue tie that completed the outfit. I folded each piece carefully and put it in the box under my bed. Then I sat down and wrote to Hannah.
August 28, 1949
Dear Auntie Hannah,
Today I received my Secondary School uniform. The jumper is blue, worn over a white blouse with a light-blue neck tie. It is very smart looking, yet fashionable, and I think you would like it.
We start classes tomorrow and I will write to you again soon and let you know all about it. I had a lovely visit to Galway over the summer and met your sister Margaret, her husband, and Connor. They were all very nice, especially Connor. He was quite friendly and encouraged me to consider traveling to America one day.
Did you travel for holiday this summer? I was hoping you’d return to Galway, I had such a wonderful time with you last summer.
I will write again soon.
Godspeed,
Peg
I barely slept that night, thinking about what would happen the next day. I worried about fitting in with the other girls and keeping up with my studies. When morning arrived, Clare, Patsy, and I dressed in our new uniforms and lined up to go to mass. As we walked down the stairs, some of the other girls began to taunt us.
“Look at em in their fancy uniforms!”
“They’re Sister Bernard’s pets, ya know!”
“Wouldn’t ya love ta beat the uniform off em?”
“They may look like boarders, but they’re still one of us!”
I hadn’t been prepared for the bitter remarks, but I should’ve known better.
When we arrived at the chapel, Mother Bernard directed the three of us to take seats with the boarders in the pews behind the nuns.
During mass, I turned and looked back at the house children, and some of them stared scornfully at me. One of them was Mary, and I felt as if her eyes pierced me like daggers.
When mass ended, we went to the refectory and sat with the boarders at their table. I quickly chose a chair facing away from the house children. I didn’t want to look their way, but most of all, I didn’t want to see Mary.
My eyes followed the tray Sister Simone carried and set down on our table. It was laden with freshly baked buns. After we said grace, I took one of the soft, warm buns and savored every bite. She returned with a bowl of boiled eggs and a platter of tomatoes and sausages. I ate heartily, but it was difficult to ignore the presence of the house children behind me eating lumpy, gray porridge.
I was grateful the boarders were friendly during the meal, and glad that nothing was said about us being house children. After breakfast, they returned to their rooms, and we went to do our jobs. On my way to the nuns’ day room, I stopped in the kitchen to say hello to Sister Rita.
“Well, look at yerself!” she exclaimed.
“I’m goin ta Secondary School,” I said, feeling very proud.
“So I hear. May God bless ya, Peg! Ya look lovely in yer uniform.”
“Thank ya, Sister Rita. I’m goin ta stop in and see Erin now.”
“Oh Peg, Erin is gone,” said Sister Rita. “She got her situation a few days ago. She’s workin fer Dr. Dylan’s family over in Mount Pleasant.”
“That’s grand!” I said. “She’ll be able ta walk ta town and see her mam.”
It would have been nice to be able to say goodbye to Erin, but that’s not the way it worked in the industrial school. When it was your time to leave, you were lucky to know about it a few days before, but sometimes you had no notice, and there was rarely anytime for goodbyes.
I could see some of the rooftops in Mount Pleasant from the window in the nuns’ day room on the second floor of the convent. I thought about Erin as I quickly dusted and polished the ornate wooden boxes on the mahogany sideboard. She’d been a good friend and I hoped to see her again.
At 8:50 I met Patsy and Clare in the convent foyer, where the boarders had also assembled. Mother Bernard spoke to us briefly about her expectations, and then we left the convent through the front door. We walked down Society Street, passing the dirt lane that the house children used to walk to Primary School. Scoil Mhuire was an elegant building situated just beyond the courthouse. I recognized some of the local girls as we entered the school.
In our classroom, the single pupil desks were lined six rows across and five deep. Patsy sat down in the first seat of the first row, and I took the seat behind her.
Our first class was French, taught by Sister Beatrice, a youthful and energetic nun who spoke with an unusual accent. I thought she was exotic-looking, with her beautiful dark skin and tufts of wiry, black hair sticking out from under her veil. She told us that she was from Corsica, a French-speaking island in the Mediterranean Sea.
She distributed French text books and a red, hard-covered notebook to be used in all our classes. When the lesson was over, she gave us a reading assignment to be completed before we returned the following day. Our next class was Domestic Science, cooking and sewing, taught by Sister Carmel. The morning session ended with Physical Science, taught by Sister Agnes. I’d known her as the cruel nun who pulled towels off of the older girls in the washroom. Sister Agnes was known as the worst nun in Saint Thomas’ Convent. She was thin and scrawny with dry, scaly skin, and she never smiled at anyone.
At noon we were dismissed for our midday meal, and I managed to get the same seat I had in the morning. Our meal was a thick, tasty lamb stew with peas and potatoes—it reminded me of Norah’s cooking. I tried to pace myself and not eat too fast.
“Yer welcome ta study with us in our parlor after class,” said Aileen, one of the boarders.
“Thank you. That’d be grand,” said Clare, without any hesitation.
“I’d love ta,” said Patsy.
I just smiled and kept eating.
As we made our way back to the school, I whispered to Patsy, “We’d better check with Sister Constance about joining the boarders in their parlor.”
“Why? Mother Bernard said we could. I’m goin!” said Patsy. “What else are we goin ta do? I’m not goin inta the yard dressed like this!”
Our afternoon lessons were literature and history, both taught by Sister Theresa. Strands of bright red hair escaped from under her veil and appeared to mar her pure white skin. She also required we read on our own time, and that worried me, as there was no quiet place in the industrial school. So I decided that I had no choice but to join the boarders with
Clare and Patsy at the end of the school day.
Their parlor was spacious, clean, and well-furnished. The walls were salmon-colored and a mint green sofa sat between two large windows flanked by heavy, cream-colored drapes. Shelves crowded with books filled one wall, and framed religious paintings hung on the other walls. I sat down at one of the two oval wooden tables in the center of the room.
“Do ya mind if I use yer washroom?” I asked Aileen.
“Sure, it’s in the rear of our dormitory,” she said, pointing toward a door.
I didn’t have to pee—I was just curious. I walked slowly through their dorm with a dozen beds, each covered with a bright white spread and separated by a small wooden chest. I eyed the personal photos and knick-knacks on display. Their washroom had four sinks, each with its own mirror, and four toilet stalls. I picked up a roll of paper in the toilet stall and thought about taking it—I hated the newspaper squares we used.
We studied all afternoon and then ate supper before parting with the boarders. Then we had to endure the discomfort of kneeling through the rosary with the others casting dirty looks toward us, but over time, we learned to ignore them.
Our real challenge arrived in December when the boarders went home for holiday. Patsy, Clare, and I had to fall back into life as house children. Not only did we lose our privileges, but we had to eat porridge and rabbit stew off tin plates, and by this time, I’d come to despise it. Life as a house child now seemed intolerable, and I felt like we didn’t belong.
On the Saturday after Christmas, I felt sick as Patsy and I walked together in line to Saint Michael’s for confession. The pain in my stomach was so bad, I could barely walk.
“Come on Peg, it’s freezin,” said Patsy, “Can’t ya walk any faster?”
“I’ve got this stabbin pain in my stomach!”
“Ya better tell Katie or Sister Constance.”
“Maybe it’s the onset of the monthlies. Ya know—the bleedin that’s supposed ta come.”
“Maybe it’s the food,” said Patsy. “We’re not used ta it anymore.”
The pain continued all weekend, but there was no sign of blood. Monday morning, when we returned to our classes, I could barely walk. It was during our Domestic Science lesson that I doubled over and crashed to the floor.
I woke up in a bed covered with crisp white sheets, looking up at a featureless ceiling. I wondered where I was—it surely wasn’t the dorms. I couldn’t sit up, so I turned my head to the side and saw nuns wearing white habits running around the large, open room. I was too weak to get their attention and fell back into another deep sleep.
I woke up a second time as a nun in white gently shook my arm.
“I’ve got to take your temp,” she said.
When she removed the glass stick from my mouth I asked her where I was.
“You’re in Galway Hospital. You had an emergency appendectomy yesterday.”
For three days I lay in the bed dozing in and out of sleep, and the nuns gently washed me and fed me each day. On the fourth day I woke up to see Norah and a doctor standing at my bedside.
“She needs to rest and stay off her feet for about two weeks,” said the doctor, and then he was gone.
Norah and one of the nuns dressed me in my school uniform and helped me into a chair with wheels. The nun pushed me to an exit door where a man helped me into the back seat of a black car, and Norah sat beside him in the front giving directions to her house.
The man and Norah took me inside, where Delia was sitting at the kitchen table with Ryan and Rachel. The three of them watched as I was escorted into the back room and put into bed. Ryan and Rachel came to the bedroom door after the man left, but Norah wouldn’t allow them into the room. I slept until the evening, when she brought me a bowl of chicken soup. She sat at the edge of the bed and watched me eat. I told her I was unsure of how many days of school I’d missed and was concerned about falling behind in my studies.
“Don’t ya worry yerself about that, Peg,” she said as she took the empty bowl. “Ya need ta rest.”
Over the next few days, Norah brought me my meals in bed and gave me tablets for pain every few hours. The tablets made me feel groggy and I slept the time away. In the evenings after supper she allowed the children in to visit me, but wouldn’t let them sit on my bed. On the fifth day she helped me get up, and led me to Dan’s chair beside the fire.
“I don’t want ya bendin down now and pickin up Rachel, ya’ll tear open the incision site,” said Norah.
Ryan and Rachel had both grown since the summer and seemed very well-behaved as they cautiously approached me. They sat on the floor beside my chair and I read to them. Shortly after Norah put a kettle on the burner, someone started banging on the front door. She opened it to find a boy who worked at the shoppe down the street.
“Phone call fer Mrs. Hanley,” he said. “The party says tis urgent.”
Norah looked worried as she threw on her coat and told me to mind the children, but not to get up. A few minutes after she left the kettle began to whistle. Slowly, I took the painful steps across the floor, turned off the burner, and returned to the chair.
When Norah returned, she looked very upset, so I didn’t ask her any questions about the phone call. She silently started to prepare supper and I fell asleep in the chair. I was roused from my sleep when I overheard Norah telling Dan about the call.
“That beast of a nun wants Peg on the first train ta Ballinasloe in the mornin. She’s worried about her headage count and payment.”
“Nothin ya can do, Norah,” said Dan. “She’s in their care, they’re responsible for her.”
In the morning Norah and the children walked me to the train station. I was still very weak and had to hold on to the stroller to keep my balance. We walked slowly in the bitter cold winds. I was eager to return to my lessons, but I would have liked to stay on with the Hanleys a few more days. Norah had cared for me in such a loving way that my feelings toward her had softened. I thought about her kind actions, versus my negative assumptions about her. My thoughts were conflicted and my incision was sore, and I couldn’t help but weep during the train ride back to Ballinasloe.
I foolishly looked around the empty Ballinasloe depot as if someone should be there to meet me. Then I carefully made my way back to the industrial school, taking small steps and resting periodically. I rang the bell at the blue door and waited, thoroughly exhausted and leaning against the building to hold myself up.
It seemed like a long time had passed before the door opened. It was Sister Constance.
“Peg Joyce, you’ve some nerve takin off like that!” she said. “How dare you leave the hospital and take a holiday without permission!”
There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do.
“You’re picking up airs and graces that you’re not entitled to, and I won’t have it,” she said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I t took several weeks for me to catch up on my studies and physically recover from my surgery. During that time, the boarders were especially kind to me. They carried my books, shared their notes from class, and made sure I was comfortable in their parlor while studying.
To my surprise, even Mary inquired about my surgery after the rosary one evening. I still missed her and hoped we could be close again. Mary had been someone I could confide in, and now we rarely spoke to each other. She’d been the closest thing I had to family, and I thought of her as my sister.
After getting back to normal I took time to reflect on how kind and caring Norah had been to me. She nursed me tenderly and I felt like she truly cared. I couldn’t help but feel my growing affection toward Norah and her children. They all treated me so lovingly and I found myself thinking about them more often than ever before. I also wondered if they thought about me. Sometimes I’d imagine sharing holidays with them and visiting Granny out in Moycullen. I desperately wanted to live with them, to share in their joy and sorrow; but most of all, I wanted to feel like I belonged to a famil
y.
In the spring, Sister Carmel gave us civic duty assignments visiting local seniors and sick people on Saturdays after confession. I became fond of one old woman who reminded me of Granny, always giving us tidbits of advice. The visits were welcomed opportunities for us to spend less time in the industrial school, where we felt ostracized by the other girls. Even Sister Constance made sarcastic remarks, referring to us as “the three intelligencia.” After making our rounds, all the girls would meet up in Saint Michael’s Square and sit and chat a bit before returning to the convent. Maura Glynn, a tall, sturdy farm girl, who had a keen interest in boys, often provided us with a good laugh. She’d sit on the bench, flipping her hair back and waving to the young lads that passed, hoping to get noticed.
“I’m dying ta have my first kiss!” Maura told us one afternoon.
Tara O’Brien, a boarder from Taylor’s Hill, said Maura was sure to get in trouble with her obsession about boys.
“It happened ta my sister,” said Tara. “She kissed a boy, and before she knew what was happening, he was having his way with her. Sure enough, she got pregnant.”
“Did he marry her?” asked Patsy.
“Scoundrel denied it was his,” said Tara. “Our parish priest sent my sister away ta have the baby and I haven’t seen her since. That was three years ago!”
The boarders shared many secrets, including their hopes for love and marriage and, for some, a career. Through them, I was exposed to a world I’d only glimpsed during my summer holidays in Galway. Although the boarders were more worldly than myself, I realized we were similar in other ways. We shared many of the same feelings and desires as young girls.
I took comfort in learning I wasn’t the only one dreaming about going to America. We passed many hours sharing our knowledge of the “American Dream.” I felt proud that I could tell them about the first-hand information I had about America from Auntie Hannah and Connor.
The House Children Page 11