Nunzilla Was My Mother and My Stepmother Was a Witch

by Terry Gelormino Silver

  I vaguely remembered learning at St. Ann’s that boys were physically different from girls, but I don’t remember giving it any thought. Boys lived on their own side of the orphanage. Except for seeing them across the dining room or church, they were not part of our world.

  As young girls, we wore little aprons in the bathtub for our weekly baths. I don’t know if this practice was to keep us from peeking at ourselves or to keep the older girls who washed us from seeing our private parts. My only worry was that I might annoy the bigger girl who had to wash me, and her main concern seemed to be getting the job over and done with as quickly as possible.

  I don’t remember ever thinking about such things as bodies and people’s private parts back then. No girl would have even considered exposing herself to another girl there, and any curiosity we might have had was mitigated by the fact that we never saw ourselves reflected in a full-length mirror. All dormitory and lavatory mirrors were placed high on the wall so that you couldn’t view more than your head. You were scolded if you took too long combing your hair because the nun said staring in the mirror would lead to the sin of vanity.

  It wasn’t until I was in the first or second grade that I had the time, opportunity, and curiosity to find out what was under my clothes that was so taboo. I had gotten permission from the surveillance nun to go to the basement lavatory. After I made sure that no one else was in the lavatory, I checked to see if anyone was looking down through the window. There was no one. I hurriedly removed my clothing, climbed up on the sink, and took a good look at myself. It was difficult seeing my rear end, but I saw enough to satisfy. Later, I wondered if I had committed a sin.

  All our clothing was meant to ensure our modesty. We wore large, baggy cotton bloomers under our heavy petticoats and long dresses. The bloomers came in handy when we wanted to hide something from the nuns, particularly apples, which we regularly knocked down from a nearby tree.

  In the winter we wore long underwear. No matter what kind of underwear we had on, we weren’t supposed to roll up the legs. The nun we called Old Pinchpenny used to feel under our dresses to see if our underwear legs were down where they were supposed to be. If not, she’d give our thighs a sharp pinch.

  Since bathing and changing clothing were weekly rather than daily affairs, we must have been pretty smelly, but we didn’t notice it. We were all in the same boat and were used to each other’s smell. Occasional washing at the dormitory sink was enough to make us feel clean.

  Most of the girls dresses, underwear, and petticoats were made by the nuns. Other clothing and shoes were donated by local parishes on “Bundle Day,” when they would collect hand-me-down goods for the orphans of St. Vincent’s.

  After the donated clothes were collected, they were scattered all over the floor of an upstairs lavatory and fumigated. Some of the stuff looked pretty old—like from another century. When we saw shoes we liked, we’d tell the nun that they fit; otherwise we might end up with a pair that looked like granny shoes or were too big. I once got a pair of tennis shoes that were so large that I looked like a jackrabbit wearing them.

  The children who came to the orphanage at an older age than I may have had some idea of how babies were conceived and born. If they did, they didn't talk about it. I wasn’t curious, because I thought I already knew.

  Catholicism has many stories about God working miracles, and the nuns talked so often about them that we figured they still occurred frequently. We were sometimes told that a couple had prayed for a baby and that God had granted their wish. I figured I’d been born because of my parents’ prayers and, when the time was right, I’d pray for a baby too.

  Many of the girls must have had the same belief. We’d tell each other where we had appeared when our parents’ prayers were answered—in a cupboard, on the stove, in the garden, on top of a bookcase, etc.

  One day in the classroom, a teacher asked each boy and girl, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” To please the nun and, because we didn’t know too much about careers, one by one all the kids answered “priest,” “nun,” or “teacher,” with an occasional "fireman" or "cook" thrown in.

  The nun congratulated the students for their fine choices. Then she got to me, and I said, “I want to get married.” The nun seemed to be at a loss as to how she should respond, but all the kids burst into laughter. If the other kids knew that married people did anything besides kissing and hugging, they hadn’t told me. I was deeply embarrassed, yet without knowing why I should be. I quickly recovered and added, “So I can have lots of children who will be priests and nuns.” I got a warm smile and praise for my choice, but more importantly, the class stopped laughing.

  Once a girl working in the dining room left a piece of chewing gum and a note by a boy’s plate which said, “I like you.” The dining room nun found the note and read it out to the whole room, making it sound silly and a little indecent. Everyone except the girl who wrote the note laughed at the story.

  When I was going on fourteen, menstruation came like a catastrophe into my young life. I got scared when I found blood in my underwear and didn’t know what it meant. Was I dying? Why couldn’t I have a noble death, like dying for my faith at the hands of soldiers, instead of dying in such an embarrassing way? Was I being punished for the time I took off my clothes and looked at my body in the lavatory mirror? I begged God to forgive me, and figured that he had when everything was back to normal in a couple of days.

  Before I had my second period, the nuns told me I was going to a Columbus home over the Christmas holidays to take care of an eight-year-old boy who would be home from military school during that time. His mother had outside employment and needed someone to stay in the house with the boy. The woman had an older brother living with her, but he wasn’t home during the day either.

  At that home, I had my second period. Not knowing what to do, I found some old rags and pinned them around me, rinsed my bloomers, and hung them to dry behind some clothes in one of the closets. They weren’t quite dry when I put them back on, so I wore them damp.

  I didn’t mention anything to the mother, although she was very nice, because I thought I was the only person in the world that this was happening to. I had no idea that menstruation was a normal female occurrence. The woman must not have noticed anything, because she didn’t ask me any questions.

  As before, my period passed, and I put the whole ugly business out of my mind, enjoying the rest of my stay eating good food and playing in the snow with the young boy. I particularly enjoyed the attention of the woman’s older brother, who was perhaps in his forties. I hadn’t been around men or boys since my father, and I had never had a crush on any of the St. Vincent’s boys. The only male I had ever fantasized about was Nelson Eddy, the movie star.

  I basked in the brother’s attention and smiles and began to have an enormous crush on him. I even wrote, “I love you” on a piece of paper and slipped it into the crack of a basement post. If the woman or her brother found the note or were aware of my crush in any way, they ignored it. I returned to St. Vincent’s singing the praises of the brother and barely mentioning the woman or her son. Needless to say, I wasn’t permitted to go on such jobs again.

  The third time I got my period, I realized that this had to be something serious, even if I wasn’t dying. I decided to tell the dormitory nun, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. After walking around the dormitory several times, trying to figure out how I was going to word the report of my affliction, I remembered a story we’d been told about the Virgin Mary going to the temple for purification. I decided that had to be it and whispered to the nun, “Sister, I think I have the purification.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, taking me into her little sewing room. After questioning me further, she shoved a leaflet into my hands with the title, “Elsie’s Twelfth Birthday,” and told me to read it. I wasn’t too sure what the leaflet was about, since she grabbed it back before I had read the whole thing, but at least it confirmed that I wouldn’t die.
What I concluded was that as you got older, you needed a more thorough cleansing, and what I was experiencing was a stronger, more powerful kind of urination.

  The nun gave me a package of cloths and instructions about hiding my supply. She told me not to talk with any of the other girls about it. That was fine by me. Since the whole business seemed kind of shameful, I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it.

  Around the same time as the purification incident, my brother Frank caught up with me in the children’s kitchen. He was very serious and not his usual self, which was being a jokester and giving me brotherly jabs about being ugly, or other things like that.

  “Terfina,” he said very seriously, “You’re growing up, and since I’m the oldest in the family, I have to tell you how babies are born.”

  He then went into a lengthy explanation about parameciums and amoebas and how they divided. He asked me if I understood, and I said I did. I thanked him, and wondered why he had acted so confidential. I didn’t see what the big deal was.

  Work Assignments

  A nun yelled at me when I threw a snowball at another girl, insisting that “Ladies don’t do that.” I responded, “I don’t want to be a lady. They don’t have any fun.”

  It seemed to me that only boys had fun. Girls were expected to work like dogs and grow up to be quiet, prim, and boring. Every time I looked out the window to the boys side, they were having fun playing ball, climbing trees, or running around in the big field called The Orchard, while the girls had to work, work, work. A lady's life seemed to consist of only sweeping, scrubbing, waxing, climbing, brushing, scouring, dusting, polishing, sewing, darning, peeling, and stirring—any and everything but having fun. I wanted nothing to do with it.

  Although I thought the boys didn’t work at all, they must have had some chores, since we didn’t do any cleaning on their side. Recently, I learned the boys were assigned to do heavy lifting in the laundry room, and to help Sister Christa in the root cellar and her garden. Their lives couldn’t have been all fun and games, particularly when you consider what my brother told me about the boy being killed in a beating.

  Another former resident of SVO told me a story about a boy who had to sleep in the attic because he was a bedwetter. They also had at least one ogre of a nun who was particularly abusive. After I’d left SVO, I heard she got into trouble with the law for severely bruising a couple of boys with a horsewhip. The boys ran away, and when they were caught, showed their bruises to the authorities. That nun was declared mentally deranged and was removed from her position.

  The choice assignment was working in the children’s kitchen under Sister Annella, who was well liked by all the children. My youngest brother said she would slip him a cookie at times when he was passing by. He also said she kissed him once and left him completely flustered. He couldn’t remember being kissed before.

  In addition to spending time with the pleasant and loving Sister Annella, the children’s kitchen assignment meant extra food from scraping pots, leftovers from the workmen’s plates, and best of all, a share of the leftovers that came from the nuns’ kitchen. The workmen and nuns did not eat the same food as we did.

  Kitchen work included helping Sister Annella peel and cut an enormous quantity of potatoes and vegetables, stirring the huge pots on the stove, and washing a large assortment of pots and pans. We also helped to make the coffee for the children’s meals (SVO was given used coffee grounds by a restaurant across the street). Although we never had milk at our meals, some was used in cooking.

  If you worked in the children’s kitchen, you got to see the donated food when it came in. Some of it was a little spoiled, but Sister Annella did the best she could to make it edible. You’d also get to see the incoming meats, and could thrill the other girls with reports of the weird things you saw—things like pigs’ ears, noses, tails, feet, and brains, etc. I think a lot of the weird meat went into the hash, which wasn’t too bad except for the little pieces of gristle.

  Personally, my second favorite assignment was cleaning the church. I usually had the place to myself, and I enjoyed the warm, serene atmosphere. As I cleaned and dusted, I relished the sleek feel of the polished wood of the pews and the stair railings leading up to the choir loft. There was a special feeling about the church, like nothing bad could happen to anyone there, especially with the statues of Mary and Joseph looking down with friendly eyes.

  Cleaning the church was only one part of the Halls assignments. We cleaned all halls and corridors, steps, front offices, and the main library. When I worked Halls duty, I could snoop into the front office files for information about our family. From the library, I could sneak out books in my bloomers that were far more interesting than the books available to us.

  Boys vs. Girls

  We didn’t know too much about the daily happenings on the boys side, but we did know they had a lot of advantages over us.

  SVO had an indoor swimming pool in the basement of the auditorium that only the boys could use. We were envious watching them through the basement windows of the auditorium. Girls wearing swimming suits would have been too shocking to the nuns, who thought girls’ bodies should be covered from their necks to the middle of their calves. Even ankle sox, which visiting girls wore, were considered indecent, because they showed too much leg.

  Only the boys could learn to play an instrument and be in the SVO Band, which was conducted by a volunteer from Columbus. Only the boys could go to camp in the summer. Maybe there were no girls camps in those days.

  The boys had a large, hilly, grass-covered field to play in called the Orchard, while the girls play area was only a quarter as big and was mostly paved. It was a treat when the girls would be allowed to go on the boys side to play in the Orchard on a nice summer day. We’d sing a song about how we wanted to go to the Orchard before we died.

  Depression Cuisine

  Day Dreams

  Rich people

  have candy every day

  and sit in the park.

  And they never

  have to eat pig snout hash

  unless they really want to.

  We were always hungry and looking for food or something to chew on. If you got your hands on anything edible, you quickly wolfed it down so that big girls couldn’t take it from you.

  We crammed almost anything that could be chewed into our mouths—tree droppings (little hard balls which we called monkey nuts, or flat wafers with a feathery edge and a flat, nutty center), orange peels, peach pits, watermelon and apple seeds, sour grass, and a weed with a peppery taste. The sewing room nun gave the peppery weed to her canary, which made him sing his little heart out.

  Occasionally, we’d chew on coarse brown paper as a substitute for chewing gum, and it would temporarily satisfy our hunger.

  After school we’d get a snack. Some days it would be a slice of bread with oleo on it; other days it might be a turnip or a piece of fruit, depending on what was currently in stock or had been donated. If the bread was slightly moldy or the fruit was going bad, we’d just scrape or break off the bad part and eat the rest. My brother Robert ate a bad piece of watermelon when he was a boy and won’t touch it today.

  Although I’m ashamed to admit it, sometimes my greed for something to eat would be so overwhelming that I would snatch my little sister’s snack and eat it. Little sisters commonly suffered at the hands of their older siblings, but sometimes the little sisters won by whining and crying loud enough for everyone to hear.

  My sister quickly learned to run and hide when she got her afternoon snack until it was all finished. In later years, I tried to make up for my meanness to her.

  My brother Frank had to be at least as hungry as I was, and maybe more so, but I guess he was more noble. He would often sacrifice his afternoon snack to the girl he had a crush on. Frank would sneak through the alley between the brick wall and auditorium building and give me his snack to take to his beloved. I doubt that I could have matched his generosity.

  If someone
was eating anything, kids would gather round and yell, “taste, taste,” “seconds, seconds,” or “last bite, last bite,” and whoever said it first would either get a lick, be the second to eat on the item, or get the very last bite. Sometimes the cry was “core, core” if the person was eating an apple, or “seed, seed,” if it was a peach or piece of watermelon. We’d open a peach pit with a brick, and we'd eat everything but the stem of an apple.

  The girls who worked in the children’s kitchen fought over the leavings from the nun’s kitchen and the workmen’s table. If they didn’t eat it themselves, they could use it for bargaining power on the playground. Anything edible was acceptable to the playground bullies, who would then leave you alone and protect you against other bullies.

  Whenever we got candy, on holidays or special Saint’s Day, we’d try to make it last as long as possible. It was always frustrating to have a girl smirking at you while she licked and mouthed a piece of candy days after your own candy was long gone. Eventually, you learned to control yourself and make a piece of candy last several days by licking it for a few minutes and then wrapping it up again. That way you could join in tantalizing and frustrating the girls who had not learned self control.

  As hungry as we always were, there were some things that everyone hated, like brains (soft, gray, squishy-looking stuff), liver (tough and stringy), sweetbread (smelly and mushy), headcheese or souse (glassy and gruesome), and what I now think was pickled herring, which was donated to the orphanage. The pickled herring I had as an adult wasn’t as rubbery and was definitely pickled. We all thought the donated herring was raw; it made many kids gag. When the dining room nun later found pieces of herring under the tables, in the halls, and in the trash, she said we were wasteful and ungrateful. She also said we didn’t appreciate the kind people who donated the fish, and that if we were home, we’d probably be eating out of garbage cans.