by B. A. Berube
their services. Imagine an unpaid school faculty of four unsalaried teachers serving 115 boys.
That was selfless dedication by any measure. The number of faculty would remain static for
the next thirty years. In all, there were sixteen unsalaried nuns and two paid employees.
A newspaper report revealed that St. Louis Home engaged a paid nurse’s position. A
nurse? What nurse? While the nurse’s position must have been reported to the press as such,
none of us residents of the orphanage could recall having seen a staff nurse, though Mother
Superior Luc did have this self-anointed role, replete with syringe supply that she carried in
her white porcelain cooking pan that doubled as, I guess, a first aid kit. That nurse, perchance,
must have been a specialist whose duties were limited to serving the nuns.
There were limited lay services at St. Louis Home. Prominent at the home was a local
handyman, Mr. Raymond, who must have worked at the school partly because he was a
devout Catholic and partly because his son was the school’s lone lucky commuter who had a real house to return to each evening. Tending to us was also an elder lady, a widow, who
came to fill in for SoeurBoulé, the head martinet when she went to lunch. We plainly called
her Madame; she was our supervisor for about an hour every day. No transient volunteers
were welcome to work at St. Louis. If they did, imagine what we might have revealed to
them; imagine what they might have witnessed or exposed for the outside world to know! Ah,
if only there had been a SixtyMinutesinvestigative team in our time!
The one facility we knew too well was our dorm, two wards, a dining area, classrooms,
and the outdoor play area, plus the chapel in the nuns’ building and, oh, yes, a lavatory of
nine-seatless-toilets. That was our space, which we hoped would burn down while we were
frolicking in the woods. Failing that, the orphanage might go out of business. Nay, not during
our penal tenure. A year before my release from the convent, twenty acres were added to the
property, including the construction of a 20’ x 40’ outdoor swimming pool. That was a
welcome addition to our otherwise unexciting summer days at St. Louis. But a satisfying
touch—really.
The ground floor was where we spent most of our days, playing, praying, and listening
to constant group and individual reprimands. No one from the outside was allowed to visit us
in this space. This terrazzo-covered floor was enveloped by green glossy lead painted walls
throughout. Affixed to the walls were our lockers that doubled as hinged-lid seats for
assemblies where we sat attentively to our daily lectures on righteousness. In my mind, those
lockers were not constructed with safety in mind—certainly not from my direct experience.
As one’s little fingers were left in harm’s way, one’s neighbor sharing the lid for about four lockers, would carelessly (intentionally?) drop the lid, risking grave injury. I played
hide-and-seek in my locker once—lots of room to assume a fetal position down there.
Someone came by, sat atop my locker row, preventing me from being able to lift the long lid.
I attempted to cry out as suffocation became imminent. I miraculously regained oxygen as the
fellow atop the locker gingerly left, and I was able to regain my breath. A close call, indeed!
But so, what? Who would care?
We tended to our hygienic needs en masse in that airy basement. In one part of that
space were the showers and three-by-eight foot sinks. In addition, there was a very long red
built-in tub, probably twenty feet in length. Its sole use was for foot washing. On certain of
those hot and humid summer evenings, the forty or so among us removed our three-day old
clammy and stinky socks fixed to our mucky oozing toes, put them on a pile to be laundered
and proceeded toward this community tub with our trousers rolled up to our knees. Upon
sitting collectively along the edges of this tub, we could all watch as the stench of our toes
gradually transformed to a large puddle of dark, warm, and thin sludge. No soap needed; just
soak there and, voilà, the phalanges were almost decontaminated. Well, maybe they did not
really become clean, but we felt a sort of relief at ridding ourselves of the gumminess—at
least until the next day, when our one-dollar donated sneakers would once again pick up more
muck where we left off the evening before.
Located on the floor above us was a space that, except for the dining hall, we had
little access to. One was a sewing room where rarely was anyone sewing anything. It was
the place where the nuns sought to impress the visitors. It was the locale where some of us would go to receive a personal scolding from the tyrant in charge. The most impressive
space was the second floor ward. Had there been basketball hoops, one might brand it a
gymnasium, as an extended hall with attractive hardwood flooring. This well lit mini
ballroom was the only area I ever noticed that sported live, well-maintained plants. Other than
for an occasional statue and crucifix, that room was virtually bare—just a place for show, for
public events—however rare they were. It served as the overly festooned Yuletide hall and
the crowded annual bazaar fête. It was the solemn space to hear Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s
Tuesday sermon on black-and-white television. A hall joining that ward was the infirmary
where one rarely went. There were beds there, but never anyone in them. When sick, we
went up one flight to the regular dorm. Early to bed. Early to rise. Sick no more.
Housed one more up flight up, the brown rubber covered steps were our four
classrooms: one for kindergarten, one for first and second grade, one for third and fourth
grade, and the other for fifth and sixth grade. The classrooms accommodated enough space
for perhaps twenty chairs and desks bolted to the creaky wooden floor. Blackboards covered
literally every wall of each classroom. These blackboards were liberally chalked up with
flawless cursive writing that our teacher nuns would have us copy at our desks. At an average
of eight texts or tests per month filling those boards, we became accustomed to the art of
copying not only magnificently legible work, but we were also taught to replicate penmanship
exemplifying calligraphic value. Technology that would replace this practice would not
come for at least another decade. Visible at the end of that hallway was an emergency exit,
which lead to a rusted, squeaky fire escape bolted to the wooden exterior of the building. We were high up there, to be sure, and this stairwell was some frightening, especially for
those among us who were incurably acrophobic.
One more flight up was the dorm. There were eight parallel rows of ten little white
iron bar beds tidily adorned with tan and red plaid bedspreads. Everything up there was
immaculate and orderly. The only other piece of furniture there was a cushioned rocking
chair to the front of the dorm for use by the attendant nun. Mine was the seventh bed in row
two. My friend Peter’s bed was the seventh bed up row three, directly across from me. Of
course, we were all forbidden to talk to each other as we prepared for bedtime. Once in a
prone position, we surely could not face each other across our rows; all faced in the same
direction. I suppose some among us cheated when the opportunity presented itself. A smaller
dorm, the one used by the you
nger boys, was situated one floor above the dormitory for the
older ones. Sleeping in either dorm during Maine’s searing summer nights were
understandably agonizing. Shut-in spaces like these could easily could warm up to 95 degrees
Fahrenheit, plus humidity for much of the night—with not even a fan to be found.
There were several windows on either side of this third-story dorm. I remember them
well, since I was a non-paying pauper who was usually assigned the task of washing its
windows. I actually didn’t’ mind washing the interiors of those windows. It was the exterior
that was my fearsome challenge. As an acrophobe, I was frightfully unprepared for the
method I would need to follow for cleaning those windows that were located at least forty
feet above the ground. I was to sit on the window sill with my backside on the outside; I
would pull the lower window down to wash it as well as to use it for support. I always thought that maybe the window would let go and I would back-flip to my demise on the
ground. One wonders, weren’t there rules prohibiting a pre-adolescent from engaging in
work this dangerous in scope?
Another section in this St. Louis Home building housed the youngest among us—those
aged five to seven, where I commenced my seven-year habitation at St. Louis Home. Those
little fellas, too, had a very modest downstairs quarter far removed from ours as well as a
second floor public reception area—an open space too small to be considered a hall. On one
of its walls was a statue of the ubiquitous Virgin Mary’s likeness. This was the lady in blue
and white with the artificial roses “growing” from an outlet crafted in her lower back. These
silk roses were painstakingly created by the skilled nun, Soeur St. Croix, who apparently had
plenty of time on her hands and great devotion to the mother of Jesus.
By the time I was about nine years old, the bishop permitted the nuns at St. Louis
Home to construct completion of an elaborate if not kitschy outdoor shrine to the much
revered Lady of Fatima—the Virgin Mary who was alleged to have appeared to three
children in Fatima, Portugal in 1917. As the tale is told, she caused a miracle to happen—
something to do with a spinning sun drying the rain and curing some people of life-threatening
diseases. At Fatima, she advocated the daily recitation of the holy rosary. St. Louis Home’s
shrine to the Lady of Fatima consisted of a large mound of dirt buttressed by a concrete wall
at its rear. Atop this mound of multicolor, multi species annuals and perennials stood the gray
concrete mold of the venerable virgin mother herself looking down upon us sinners. More
flowers surrounded her and a circle of candles in red glass casings adjoined by rosary beads, each the size of a baseball. It was here that, at least during the warm season, we all recited
the rosaries (four “Our Father’s”, fifty “Hail Mary’s,” four “Glory Be’s,” and other
interjections delivered between the decades of “Hail Mary’s.” Yes, the display was garish, to
be sure, but, quite frankly, I found it spiritually moving and inspirational. It was, for me, a
preview of sorts of what the Virgin Mary’s quarters in heaven probably look like.
There is more to the Fatima story. Stories about Fatima abounded at St. Louis Home.
It seems that the virgin mother appeared several times to three children over a few years.
When she re-appeared for the last time to the third child, she delivered a letter that was to find
its way to the pope—in her own handwriting, announcing the date of the global hell, an
apocalypse that some believe was perpetrated by World Wars I and II. That message, once
dubbed “Zero 1960” was believed to have been about a would-be Armageddon. This
mystifying epistle understandably left the pope crying for three days though he promised that
he would eventually reveal that communiqué’s contents. Another
of Our Lady’s messages had something to do with Russia’s returning its people to a practice
of Christianity. Also forecast was the death of a man in white to die as a martyr from a
gunshot wound. Could that man have been the pope? Creepy stuff.
My most enduring task for four of my seven years at the home was service as guardian
to Danny, a severely learning disabled boy, two years younger than I. I took full
responsibility for his needs, his sometimes-violent outbursts, his uncontrollable bladder and
sphincter, his illnesses, and his uncontrollable manners. His errors were understandably
many. The inconveniences, hardships, and my often-unachievable responsibilities for his well-being were daunting. I felt often helpless. I was, after all, at the mercy of the nun’s
understanding of my limitations as a pre-adolescent in charge of a child whose needs could
not be satisfied by these nuns, much less a little kid like me. Sometimes Danny lay sick in his
bed in the dormitory, where I was to sit in the nun’s comfortable armchair (a rare privilege!)
and stare into space for hours, solely because Danny could not be left alone. I missed one
very big Christmas party because duty required that I take to the armchair as Danny was best
left hidden from the party’s sponsors, given his many outbursts. When the yuletide soirée
ended and my peers ascended the stairs to the dormitory, the nun in charge reminded all of us
about the sacrifices we must perform in the name of God as she consoled me, “Tu va être
recompenséàla prochainemonde.”[You will be rewarded in the next world.”]
Most honorable, of course, was that Bobby and I serve as an altar boys at Mass. We
never served together for the same Mass. My service as altar boy occurred three times a
week. Bobby served fewer times than that. Dressed in a long white embroidered surplice
that covered a black ankle-length cassock, I felt closer to God both spiritually and physically.
Surely, only the priest was closer than I, since he was always very close to the venerably
mysterious tabernacle at the center of the altar. This was a brass (or was it gold- plated?) two
by-two by two-foot box with a door in the front that held the consecrated Eucharistic hosts
and wine for the Mass, and may also have housed a relic of a saint. No one, but no one other
than a priest could get a peek at the tabernacle’s interior. The door to the tabernacle was
locked at all times other than during the Mass. When I lit the candles in their tall gold-plated
candlesticks atop the altar before each mass, that center box intrigued me, as I eyeballed it as if it were a stash of cash, and then continuing about my routine. A powerful symbol to me, it
was as one might suggest—a Pandora’s box.
There were other tasks, too, that we poor folk did to pay our keep, as it were. There
were covert tasks for the trusted amongst us—like helping to enforce discipline by taking
down the assigned number of the guy who broke a rule, such as speaking during mealtime, for
an ensuing spotlight to the entire group and accompanying disciplinary action by the nun in
charge. Some of us were assigned to spy on our mates during Sunday parent visitations. In
some respects, those moles were as vindictive as the nun for whom they were an agent. Wish
we had had an emissary like Paul Revere who could augur, “the snitches are coming; the
snitches are coming!” Action taken from disappointing sleuth reports was serious as is noted
in a later chapter. Indeed, we children were a rem
arkable resource for the institution’s
staying power, as long as outsiders believed that these nuns were fine purveyors of motherly
care and healthy discipline needed in a community setting such as ours.
Selective utilization of resources outside the walls of St. Louis did occur. Non-profit
organizations and agencies did perform charitable deeds that directly impacted on the
children. Members of fraternal organizations came to see us perform, and rewarded us with
used toys as gifts, generally around the holy holidays. Infrequent events like this would occur
during the year, but the most celebrated of occasions for merriment were Christmas parties
that outside sponsors hosted to glorious excess—by far the most pleasant of times at St. Louis.
The nuns, oddly enough, welcomed the departure from the reformatory tone of the home
during yuletide. The local police department, the fire department, the U.S. Coast Guard, the Boys Club, and even the U.S. Marines graced our community hall with special programs,
candy, games, and movies. The local U.S. Coast Guard chief took one of the kids under his
wing to spend a whole weekend on the ship, usually the same goody-goody kid—not me,
though I did get to go once. The sailors aboard were gracious, happy to have a poor, sad
castaway among them to feed, to joke with, to offer full access to the ship—no rules, no
discipline in this military installation that I could recall! The sole melancholy was in having
to return to St. Louis on Sunday.
As an institution that must have surely been frugally managed, the exploitation of local
resources appeared minimal. Yet, these ecclesiastic wannabes exploited virtually all the
human resources at their immediate disposal. Nuns managed the orphanage without financial
compensation, as they were ostensibly dedicated to the Cloth in particular, and
they exploited their unlimited access to the free labor provided by us captive children. Like
the incarcerated, we were assigned numbers. Mine was Number 20; brother Bob was
Number 74; my friend Peter was Number 80. The Catholic diocese relied upon these nuns
for free services such as child supervision, sewing, cooking, housecleaning, and teaching at St.
Louis Home. For us little ones, we were mostly consigned to a simple sycophancy as a