The fear of insanity was one of the heaviest burdens I carried around as a child, certain that when I reached twenty-nine (the age of my mother when she had her mental breakdown), it would happen to me and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.
Although taking children to mental hospitals might be beneficial for the patients, I doubt that most children younger than their teens can handle the fears generated by looking at and listening to deranged people—at least without prior and complete preparation.
Nunzilla’s Fangs
The Anointed
Kindness
may be the cause
of unimagined sin;
and so, they religiously
abstain.
But on a hill of broken spirits
they stand
and make their presence known
to God.
There were a couple of nuns who made it known, without saying it in so many words, that SVO kids did not deserve their charity. It was easy for us to believe it when you heard them mention, ever so delicately, that many nuns came from extremely fine or even wealthy backgrounds, and had made tremendous sacrifices “to come here and take care of you.” It seemed like a greater burden than any nun should have to bear. Some nuns expressed their opinion of our low status with sarcasm and a lift of an eyebrow when dealing with us.
Regardless of whether their superiority was expressed by direct words or gestures, or veiled behind apparently innocent phrases, children got the message loud and clear. Perhaps some of the nuns who were prejudiced were truly unaware of it; others were merely insensitive. One of the saintliest nuns referred to one of my brothers as “Bongo” and probably meant it affectionately. I myself was called “chocolate drop” and “brownie” by a couple of nuns because I was a dark-skinned Italian.
Perhaps the playground surveillance nuns meditated on spiritual matters and didn’t really listen to our rope-jumping and ball-bouncing chants, a couple of which referred to Jews and black people in a derogatory way. In any case, we were never reprimanded for it. Perhaps the nuns were merely as dense as I was. I often joined in the chants even though I too was a victim of verbal abuse. I didn’t see anything wrong with the chants, because there weren’t any Jewish or black children present, so it wasn’t anything personal.
One of my few memories of contacts with blacks, or Negroes as we said back then, was the one time when a little black girl, only three or four years old, wandered onto the orphanage grounds. We treated her like we would a new doll, swinging her around and trying to feel her hair. The playground nun finally saw us with the child and took her to the office so her parents could be contacted.
The only other times we saw blacks were the rare occasions when we were taken for a walk in nearby Franklin Park. The SVO kids and black kids would usually exchange insults. We called them graham crackers and they called us soda crackers. Sometimes, after seeing us with a nun, kids would call us cat-lickers because we were obviously Catholic, and we would call them pot-lickers for being Protestant.
A couple of the nuns had an extreme and obvious dislike for my siblings and me. The fact that we were particularly singled out for criticism and ridicule was confirmed at a reunion of former SVO residents many years later. When I identified myself to a woman I hadn’t seen for over fifty years, she asked me, “Why did the nuns dislike your family so much?”
I wouldn’t say this was true of all or most of the nuns, but the nuns who did have an aversion to our family didn’t try to hide it. We did not misbehave more than other children—in fact, we behaved better than many of them. My siblings and I were more completely a product of their religious training and influence, because we had come from St. Ann’s Infant Asylum, which was run by the same order. Many of the other children had come to SVO as older children and resided there only a few years. By the time I left SVO, I had been with the Sisters of St. Francis approximately twelve years.
Not understanding the reason for the nuns’ antipathy toward us, I tended to blame my brother Frank, perhaps unfairly. He seemed to be a constant target of the other boys and the nuns, and I felt the ridicule and antagonism directed toward him was in turn directed to the rest of his family.
In any event, derogatory names and references bothered me more when they came from the nuns rather than from the kids, who usually acted from anger or plain childish roughhousing. Among ourselves, we even had name-calling contests, where the point was to be as colorful as possible in order to win.
It’s not that I expected the nuns to love us. After all, we realized we were not among family. I just would have liked for them to treat us fairly.
The fact that I was considered extremely ugly was made very clear to me when I was about twelve years old. The nun in the big girls dormitory put her hand under my chin and said sweetly, “Why did God make you so ugly, child?”
Although I hadn’t thought of myself as beautiful, I hadn’t thought of myself as so emphatically ugly either. Although I was taken aback by the nun’s question, I answered as the perfectly trained robot I had become. “I guess it was God’s will, Sister.” This earned me a pat on the head and a compliment for accepting my terrible affliction. This was the same nun who thought it was a terrific April Fool’s joke to put a wooden candy bar under our pillows.
Some months later, another nun (I believe it was Sister Paul) decided I was beautiful. It must have been after she had substituted for the nun who was regularly in charge of the dishwashing and clean-up group. After the work was finished, she led a group of us in song, and I remember feeling uncomfortable with the way she stared at me while we were singing.
Sister Paul confided her thoughts about me to Sister Annella, which some of the other girls overheard. Sister Annella, one of the kindest nuns, told me what Sister Paul said and then looked me over, adding, “It’s strange, but I never thought so.” I’m positive that Sister Annella wasn’t trying to hurt me. It was just that she shared the same ideas about beauty as most of the nuns and children.
I began to think that Sister Paul had been making a joke at my expense. The girls, who had overheard Sister Paul talking with Sister Annella, ran after me singing “Beautiful Terfina” to the tune of Beautiful Ohio in a taunting way, as though I had initiated the incident myself.
The nun who seemed to have the strongest dislike for our family was the dining room nun, who seemed to get a great deal of satisfaction when she could place all my siblings and me at the pigs' table. She seemed to keep her eyes on us, waiting for infractions as simple as dropping a utensil on the floor or making a water spot on the tablecloth. I was always embarrassed and ashamed when we ate there together, and it upset me when my brother Frank laughed and acted like the whole thing was hilarious.
One day, the dining room nun gave a very definitive exhibition of the way she felt about our family.
Somehow, one of the girls had found out that my father had sent money to St. Vincent’s for school supplies. It was only $125, but it was a lot of money in the mid-1930s and a lot of money for my father, who was in the Dayton, Ohio Veterans’ Hospital. By the time the information had passed from one child to another, the reported amount had blossomed to $1,000.
It was only through other children that we even heard about my father’s gift, not from the nuns, and we were uncertain of the true amount. However, this was the first time that we could feel special and proud of our family.
The dining room nun finally had enough of all the rumors and congratulations that we were receiving and called everyone to attention. “There are rumors going around,” she said icily, “that Mr. Gelormino sent $1,000 to St. Vincent’s for school supplies. It was not $1,000; it was not $500; it was a mere $125. That wouldn’t take care of even one of his five children for a week, and he has never sent anything else for their care. So let’s not have any more talk about all the money that Mr. Gelormino sent.”
She had the children laughing as she talked, stretching out her words—particularly the name Gelormino—and pausin
g occasionally for maximum effect, until finally I felt like crawling out of there and hiding. After my father’s death, I found quite a few cancelled checks made out to St. Vincent’s Orphanage among my father’s possessions. Either the dining room nun hadn’t checked her facts, or she just didn’t care.
For quite a few years, my worst affliction and cause of deep shame and embarrassment was the fact that I was a bed-wetter (which I now understand is fairly common in orphanages and homes where children feel insecure). I thought about “the problem” constantly during the day and before going to sleep at night. Unfortunately, all my praying did not help.
Another girl and I, and occasionally a few others, constantly endured whippings, ice cold baths, and being forced to sleep in the bathtub or on the lavatory’s cold tile floor, even in winter. That girl and I, who were the main transgressors, were eventually given a cot to share rather than sleeping on the cold floor. The dormitory nun became concerned about my constant coughing and was afraid I was getting consumption (tuberculosis), the same illness my father supposedly suffered from.
The dormitory nun finally thought of a punishment that she was sure would break us of our stubborn clinging to such a disgusting habit. She forced us to wear our wet sheets on our heads in the middle of the playground with a sign hanging around our necks that said, “I am a pig.”
I eventually outgrew the problem, and I assume that my partner in crime did, as well. Since she left St. Vincent’s before I did, I don’t know how long her problem lasted. I think of her often and wonder how our punishments affected her, and how she is doing today.
For some unknown reason, the Halls nun took a dislike to me before I had even been assigned to her work unit. Once, as I passed her, she said to me out of the blue, “Just wait until you work for me.”
I didn’t know what she meant, but I recognized the threat. Since I’d had no prior contact with her, her opinion of me must have come from another nun. I wasn’t sure what she’d found out about me, although I knew there were lots of things wrong with me.
One thing that bothered a few nuns was that I read too much and would get so removed from my surroundings that I wouldn’t hear a nun’s commands or the signaling of her bell. One nun claimed I was drunk on reading, because when I became engrossed in my book, I wouldn’t hear her speaking, even if she was standing right in front of me yelling. When her shout wouldn’t bring me back to St. Vincent’s, an angry slap in the face would usually do the job. Once in awhile, I stumbled over things in my path or fell down stairs because of trying to read as I walked. Sometimes the places and lives I was reading about became so real to me that I didn’t notice obstacles in front of my eyes. At those times, St. Vincent’s Orphanage did not exist. When I mentioned to one nun that people in books were so much nicer than those in real life, she was very offended.
Whatever the reason for the Halls nun’s dislike of me, she finally got me in her work unit and drove me relentlessly in my cleaning efforts, which never met her high standards.
One day when I was on my period, I was assigned to scrub down and wax the six flights of back stairs on my hands and knees. The Halls nun kept yelling and threatening me because she claimed I wasn’t working fast enough or doing the job right. Also, she suspected I was trying to avoid work by telling her I didn’t feel well, and asking with tears in my eyes if I could be excused to go to the bathroom. This further enraged her, and she berated me for my worthlessness and drove me still harder.
She suddenly stopped in mid-sentence. She became aware of the blood running down both my legs, which had stained my work clothes as well as the stairs I was working on. In a very quiet voice, completely unlike the way she had been previously speaking, she gave me permission to quit for the day. After that, she became nicer, as though she had become aware of me as a human being rather than some kind of detested symbol.
What’s in a Name?
Incognito
On summer days
I like to climb
to the top of the swings
and watch the world.
People passing the wall
don’t know who I am –
so they smile.
Sometimes
the tree reaches over
and touches my cheek.
As a child, I used to shinny up the swing poles so that I could look over the brick wall and watch the people walking by. We called the other side of the wall “The World,” as though it were another country or planet. Sometimes people passing by would look up and smile when they saw me suspended there.
It made me feel good when they smiled, but I thought they’d stop smiling if they knew who I really was... if they knew I was Terfina, the one with the terrible, horrible, shameful bed-wetting problem; the one with the ridiculous, ugly, and weird name.
Terfina! How I hated that name. It represented everything that was wrong with me—all that I hated about myself, all the stupid and embarrassing things I’d ever done. To me, it seemed more like a label than a name—more like the sign I’d had to wear around my neck one day on the playground “I am a pig.”
I cringed every month when the resident priest came to the classroom to read report cards. During all my years at SVO, he couldn’t seem to remember how to pronounce Terfina Gelormino. The other kids would crack up as the priest stammered and stumbled over every syllable – Tur, Tir, Turf, fy, fee finna, Gur, Gal, Galum, Jelor, myna, minno, meeno.
I particularly hated my name when the nuns would team it with the last name I hated even more–Terfina Cocoa, knowing full well that Cocoa was not my real name. Regarding my first name, they (like I) may not have known it was not my real name, since I had arrived with it from St. Ann’s.
When I was in my early teens, we were taken to visit our father at the Dayton, Ohio Veterans Hospital after he had sent money for the trip. At that time, he asked me, “Where did you get that f---ing name Terfina? Your name is Concetta.”
I didn’t think Concetta was much of an improvement in an orphanage full of cute American names like Patsy, Mary, Peggy, Annie, Sally, etc., and I don’t remember telling anyone my real name.
After that I just thought the nuns made up the name Terfina as an indictment of the lowly person I was. In later years, Italian people I questioned about the name had never heard of it, and I have never seen it listed in a book of names. I never questioned the nuns as to why they had changed my sister’s and my name but not our brothers, either then or years later, mainly because I wanted to keep as far away from nuns as possible.
Another name I was given was my confirmation name. The nun told us to choose a saint’s name, and I chose the name Peter. She looked at me like I was completely stupid, since Peter is a man’s name. I hadn’t seen anything wrong with choosing Peter, because a few of the nuns had men’s names, like Sister Paul.
“You can’t take a man’s name,” she said. “Take the name Agnes.”
Well, Agnes wasn’t a name I particularly liked, and I didn’t think Terfina Agnes Gelormino sounded very good together, but when she told me the story about St. Agnes, I thought it would be okay.
According to the nun’s story, St. Agnes was captured by soldiers, who ripped her clothes off. She was exceptionally modest and prayed to God to cover her nakedness. Her prayers were answered, and she immediately sprouted long hair that completely covered her body.
Then one day, I finally got a name I liked. A friend’s brother came to visit her at SVO, and after she introduced us, he called me Terry instead of Terfina. I was ecstatic, because there was a heroine in a Zane Grey book who had the name Terry, and she seemed like such a confident and likeable person. I immediately asked other girls to call me Terry. Many of them also liked the name and changed over right away, although the nuns kept calling me Terfina.
When I was at SVO, my brother Frank was the biggest horror in my life, far worse than being saddled with the name Terfina, and far worse than being considered ugly or any of the other problems that had weighed me down.
Before my sister and younger brothers came to SVO from St. Ann’s, my Sunday visit was only with Frank. It usually ended disastrously and with great embarrassment. Frank was two years older, and he liked to roughhouse with me as though I were a boy.
One time he talked me into playing football and graciously said I could carry the ball. Imagine my surprise when I was tackled and thrown to the ground. Soon the two of us were rolling around on the floor in front of all the visitors. The nun was horrified and sent the two of us out of the visitors room in disgrace.
After our sister and younger brothers joined us at St. Vincent’s, our Sunday afternoon visits usually ended up with Frank and me competing as to who was right on any subject—in effect, who was the head of the family.
I firmly disputed Frank’s leadership, because he was constantly antagonizing adults and children and making a fool of himself. Whether right or wrong, I felt Frank’s actions brought ridicule and hurt to the rest of the family, not to mention the stigma that came along with the terrible nicknames with which he was dubbed.
At SVO, if the oldest sibling had a nickname, whether given in ridicule or admiration, the younger brothers and sisters would often inherit the same name with the adjective “little” in front of it. Frank was the first to be called Cocoa and the rest of us received the same name. Someone gave Frank an even worse name when he was caught playing around with horse dung, and I cringed every time I heard it, expecting to inherit that one also. Thankfully, I didn’t.
In retrospect, I can now be more sympathetic to Frank, who must have had a hard time of it too. He was the first of our family to enter St. Vincent’s and was all by himself. He probably seemed like an alien as far as the other boys were concerned. He had the unusual name of Francesco Gelormino, spoke only in Italian, and had a darker complexion. Children, like animals, will attack anyone who looks and acts different from the pack. The nuns should have operated on more than instinct, but they picked on him also.
Nunzilla Was My Mother and My Stepmother Was a Witch Page 6