We were neutral about the hash. Some of it was good, but there were little pieces of gristle strewn throughout, from the snouts, ears, and other pig scraps donated by butchers or farmers. We often stuffed food we hated into a pocket or handkerchief so that we could later throw it away.
Most SVO food was either donated by Columbus restaurants or charitable groups, or it was obtained through begging at the local market or nearby farms. Many times, one of the orphans would accompany the nun on her begging mission when there wasn’t any school—I suppose to serve as an example of the type of kids at SVO.
I hated it when I was chosen, which happened several times. I suppose I might have had a sort of hangdog, orphan look about me. One of the nuns used to say I looked like the last rose of summer.
At the market, the nun and I would each hold one end of a large basket as we went from stall to stall. I always kept my eyes on the ground because I was so embarrassed. On the farms, I was no help to either the nun or the farmer’s wife, because I was afraid of all the animals, even the chickens. When she sent me to the hen house for a chicken, she’d finally have to come in and get it herself because I would still be standing frozen against the hen house wall.
Other than major holidays, when we got either donated turkey or chicken, our favorite meats were weenies (usually on Sunday) or some reddish meat that was probably horse meat, although we didn’t know it at the time. Bread and gravy was a good meat substitute when supplies were low.
We didn’t often have dessert, but when we did, it was usually Sister Annella’s delicious bread pudding. The ingredients included leftover sweet buns from the nuns’ kitchen, oatmeal, stale bread, milk, and raisins.
When I was small, I couldn’t understand how other girls could enjoy food that I hated, and I would watch with wonder as they chewed gross food with a pleased expression. I eventually came to the conclusion that the way those girls set their faces must make horrible food taste good. I began to imitate their expressions when I had to eat something I disliked. It must have worked, because today I'll eat just about anything.
Sometimes a girl was lucky enough to find chewed gum on the playground. The girl finding it would chew on it for awhile and then share it with her friends, who’d take turns chewing on it.
It may be surprising, but on the whole we were pretty healthy. Medical needs other than serious injury or the need for hospitalization were handled by a nun who served as a nurse in the little girls dormitory. She’d give us cod liver oil during the winter, and when she thought we needed it, Epsom salts and castor oil for our bowels. She’d get very angry and give you a pounding across your back if you threw up after drinking those concoctions. She was convinced you’d done it on purpose, and didn’t relish cleaning up after us.
One of the nurse-nun’s medications was a solution with apple seeds floating in it, but I’ve long since forgotten the purpose. She made a cough medicine that included goose grease, and she or the dormitory nun would make up mustard plasters and put them on our chests when we were congested. The remedy for a sore throat was to wrap one of our dirty stockings around our necks. For skin rashes, the nurse-nun would have you soak your arms or legs in hot water in which she had dissolved tablets with skull and crossbones pictured on them. Then you were sent to Sister Annella for a cup of sassafras tea. Sister Annella’s recipe for an upset stomach was a tablespoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of sugar stirred into a third of a glass of water. Just before you drank it, she’d put maybe a fourth of a teaspoon of soda bicarbonate into it and tell you to drink it while it was fizzing.
Once each spring, we all had to drink an awful-tasting glass of sulfur and molasses in water to clean out our systems. Whenever there was a cootie (lice) infestation, which was often, we’d all have to get in line to have turpentine or coal oil combed through our hair with a fine-tooth comb.
Playing the Orphan Game
Keeping up With the Joneses
(orphanage style)
Denise
remembers all the names
of mommy’s many lovers,
and when her listeners’ interest wanes,
invents a dozen others.
Though some might think calamity,
much different thoughts are Lance’s,
who inherited insanity
from all the family’s branches.
Jose,
who starved six months at least
and is a bit misshapen,
enjoys the thought of food
he’s missed
and basks in adulation.
Alas,
for those without conceit
of family trees all tainted.
How can a little girl compete
who merely isn’t wanted?
We weren’t above using our “orphaness” to our advantage when it suited our purposes. Each year, St. Vincent’s had a moneymaking event called the Annual Orphans Picnic, though it was more like a church festival than a picnic. There were games of chance with spinning wheels and other paraphernalia, bingo games, food stands, raffles, and sale items, and dinners to be bought and served in the children’s dining room.
The Orphans Picnic was mainly for the public, but we were also allowed to attend. We each were given a dime to spend. This made us feel pretty rich, but we also knew how to acquire more money from the kind-hearted Columbus citizens. For instance, we’d “accidentally” step on a visitor’s shoes and, with teary eyes and feigned terror, beg forgiveness. It was usually good for a dime or even a quarter.
Sometimes we’d invest our dime on a pack of chewing gum and then offer to sell a stick to a visitor. Usually, the visitor would give us a nickel, dime, or quarter and tell us to keep the gum too. We would then sell the stick of gum to someone else. Later, we’d compare notes and loot, bragging about who had done the best job on the visitors.
I don’t know if the boys played the orphan game as much as the girls did. At times we’d have a royal wallow about the tragedy of being an orphan by holding crying contests on the playground during the summer, or in the playroom in the winter. We’d compete to see who could cry the fastest and hardest, and we’d usually start off with a song:
I am a little orphan,
my mother, she is dead.
My father is a poor man
and can’t buy no bread.
I peek through the window
to hear the angels sing.
Oh God bless my mother
for she is far away –
far, far away.
(author unknown)
After awhile we’d forget it was just a game and continue crying. It made us feel closer to each other.
Since we couldn’t brag about family wealth and possessions, we’d try to outdo each other about how poor and hungry our families had been, how crazy a particular relative was, or the terrors we had lived through. One girl would claim to have gone hungry for a week; someone else would say she’d gone without food for a month and had nothing but newspaper for clothes. Girls would claim to have lived through fires, witnessed murders, been captured by witches, or lived through other terrible events. I think we knew we were all making up stories or exaggerating real events, but it was great entertainment when we were bored.
A fight wasn’t the only thing that would bring the girls running. Word of an epileptic fit by one of the girls would pass through the playground like wildfire. We would circle the person having the fit and watch intently as she went through her seizures and was tended by the playground nun. When the girl on the ground came to again and started crying from embarrassment, the crowd would feel awkward and move away.
Playground Entertainment
Bravery contests were popular on the girls playground. This included fistfight challenges and competing for the greatest number of concrete steps you could jump backward over.
Another bravery test was jumping aerioles. You’d take a running start from the playground and leap over the aeriole to a narrow window ledge of the main building, grabbi
ng quickly for the mesh screen. The aerioles, or trenches, were maybe four or five feet deep and three feet from the building to the outer edge of the aeriole. The scariest part was leaping from the window ledge back to the playground because you couldn’t get a running start. If we had fallen, we’d have been seriously hurt.
When I was old enough to wash windows, I liked to make the nun in charge nervous by standing on my toes on the outside window ledge and acting like I might fall at any moment. I once achieved supreme peer admiration when I climbed out a fourth floor window to an outside ledge and into another window. It really wasn’t as dangerous as they thought, since the two windows were near each other at the corner of the building, and I could hold on to the frame of one window while I grabbed for the frame of the other one. Still, the stunt had the appearance of being dangerous, so I got a lot of credit and prestige for bravery.
During the first couple of years that I was at St. Vincent’s, one of the girls’ favorite games was war. To play war, two lines of girls would face each other and sing a challenge to the other side in turn:
Are you ready for a fight?
e-i-over.
Are you ready for a fight?
For we’re the American army.
The other side would respond:
Yes we’re ready for a fight.
e-i-over.
Yes we’re ready for a fight.
For we’re the German army.
After the singing challenge, war was declared and both sides would start hitting each other. The little girls would act as spies, sitting innocently near the other side’s lines and pretending to be playing in the dirt. They’d listen to the other side’s battle plans, then report back to their own generals.
The wars got so vicious that the mother superior was brought into the situation, and she told us with stern forcefulness that there would be no more wars. We were all disappointed to lose one of our most exciting games.
I was just one of the little girls at the time of the wars and didn’t get into any of the fighting, but I enjoyed the importance of being one of the spies, and it was very exciting to see the big girls give each other a beating.
We also went in for gentler activities and contests on summer evenings, such as putting on little skits, telling stories, and taking turns singing. Because of the diverse backgrounds of the girls, many of whom came to SVO at an older age than my siblings and I, our store of songs was varied and steadily increasing. Songs were also handed down from previous SVO residents, so we had a pretty large repertoire of old songs.
Most of the songs we favored were lengthy and sad ballads about death, lost love, prison, and betrayal; also cowboy and hillbilly songs. We particularly liked one song that the nuns didn’t. We would sing it with great fervor while looking toward the brick walls:
I wish I had wings like an angel,
over these prison walls I would fly.
I would fly to the arms of my darling,
and there I’d be willing to die.
(author unknown)
Another fun thing to do was trying to find out what a nun’s real name had been before she entered the convent, since at that time they didn’t keep their birth names after taking their vows. We’d get some distance away from a nun and yell out her previous name, turning our faces away from her so she wouldn’t know who was yelling it. When the wind was blowing and the nun’s veil lifted up, we’d try to get close enough to see if she had any hair or was completely bald.
Visiting day was on Sundays, and even if we didn’t have a relative coming to see us and bringing us goodies, we’d occasionally get a handout by hanging around the fringes of family groups and looking pathetic.
Brothers and sisters could visit each other on Visitors Day. For us, it was about the only time we could get together as a family.
There was an unwritten rule that you always protected your little sister, and if anyone else touched her without permission, you had to fight them, even if the whole thing was your sister’s fault. Good friends would give each other permission to hit a little sister who became a nuisance without the incident leading to a fight. My sister Carmela wasn’t happy that I gave my friend Mary Zita permission to hit her, but in my eyes it was only fair, since Mary Zita had given me permission to hit her little sister also.
I tried to do my duty in protecting Carmela, and I challenged other girls when they picked on her. But when Carmela was continually getting me involved in fights with older and stronger girls, self-preservation made me question her before I issued a challenge on her behalf. She had been bringing me little presents and telling me she’d found the various items. What she didn’t tell me, however, was that she was finding these little goodies in other girls’ lockers and got caught.
Although I tended to bully my sister and liked to upset her by saying that she wasn’t really my sister—that daddy had found her in the street and brought her home—there were times we had fun together or cried together, not really knowing why we were crying.
I think I was jealous of Carmela, who was more coordinated and athletic than I was, and more outgoing, which is probably why she had more friends. It bothered me when she wanted to be with her friends instead of me, which could be one of the reasons I picked on her—other than the fact that I could be downright mean at times.
Carmela did a wonderful impression of Popeye (or maybe Jiggs from the cartoon Maggie and Jiggs), squinching up her face and closing one eye, that would have me howling with laughter. We both would get the giggles when we would put one eye against the other’s eye and flutter our lashes against each other.
Carmela and I liked to sing songs together. I’d sing the melody and she’d harmonize the alto part until I’d drive her crazy. This usually happened when I kept asking for constant repeats of “Little Gray Home in the West,” which I thought we did particularly well.
One time we were horsing around together on the bench that circled a large buckeye tree. We took turns lying with our eyes closed and our heads on each other’s laps so we could count each other’s teeth and pretend to be examining each other’s tonsils. While I was being examined with my eyes closed and my mouth open, she saw a fly headed for my open mouth and did not warn me. I almost swallowed the darn thing, and while I sputtered in anger and disgust, she laughed so hard that she fell off the bench. In later years, it was one of our favorite stories.
Visits to the Mental Hospital
There was a man named Martin DeChant who used to come to the orphanage and pass out candy, and occasionally, balloons. The nun on playground surveillance would look unhappy as he took us on his lap or kissed us—something we weren’t used to and didn’t like. Almost every time he’d come, he would have us pose for a photograph. We never saw the photographs, but it did make us feel important.
Many years later, Mr. DeChant was written up in the Reader’s Digest as a “My Most Unforgettable Character.” I should have made a copy when I saw the article, but I didn’t. I can’t locate it now, although I’ve checked with my local library and with Reader’s Digest.
The person who wrote the article mentioned that Mr. DeChant was an albino and made him out to be very saintly. All I know for sure is that he used to take children with a mentally ill parent to the Columbus State Hospital for visits now and then.
As one of the children taken on these visits, I remember being frightened to death of my mother and the other inmates of the hospital. Many of the inmates were disheveled, haggard-looking creatures with wild hair and staring eyes, who would glower at us, mutter obscenities, or shout unintelligibly as we walked by. One time several women got into an argument as to which child each of them wanted. Carmela and I rushed past them while clinging tightly to each other’s hands.
The whole atmosphere of the mental hospital was menacing and oppressive, with the large, gloomy-looking buildings and barred windows with fierce faces peering out of them. The fact that the wards had to be unlocked to let us in and locked again behind us did not fill us with a s
ense of security. It filled us with panic, and made us think that something terrible might happen and the doors would not be unlocked fast enough to save us.
Since we were trained to be sheep—to never speak up or question any decision made by an adult—it never occurred to us to say we didn’t want to go to the mental hospital whenever a nun or Mr. DeChant decided to take us for a visit. We did, however, enjoy the candy Mr. DeChant provided on these trips.
One time a nun took a group of us to the hospital for a visit, and something funny happened. At least we thought it was funny, but the nun seemed embarrassed by the whole incident.
All the children went separate ways with an employee or nurse to the various wards, according to where their particular relative resided. That time, the nun decided to stay with my siblings and me as we visited our mother at the end of a long ward. My mother jabbered away in Italian, which we didn’t understand, so we just looked at each other in confusion and studied her, wondering how long we had to stay. The nun just sat there observing us.
While we were sitting there, some patients at the other end of the ward were rocking and whispering behind the screens meant to give privacy to both the patient and the visitors. Finally we heard a loud scream—one of the women had tried to push one of the others out of her rocking chair.
The two women began fighting and cursing. The nun with us blushed, obviously embarrassed by the language they were using. We pretended we weren’t listening and that nothing unusual was going on. Just when the violence seemed to be getting out of hand and seemed like it could become a danger to us, the screaming stopped. The woman who had been trying to push the other out of the chair looked out between the screens. Seeing the red-faced nun, she yelled cheerfully, “Ah, there’s one of the good Sisters, God bless ‘em. You know, I was raised by the Sisters, and that’s why I turned out so well.”
Nunzilla Was My Mother and My Stepmother Was a Witch Page 5