My Dad Got Me to a Nunnery
Page 12
prescribed silence, running when we should be walking—that sort of thing. She worked at St.
Louis Home for almost as long as I was captive there. Madameostensibly did Soeur Boulé
proud.
When one thinks of the beatified Mother Theresa of the 1990’s, one readily visualizes
her tending to the sick in third world countries. When I think of the beat-me-up Soeur Boulé
of the 1950’s, I readily recall Brother Bobby’s coping with rheumatic fever, begun while
under the “care” of Soeur Boulé. When this ailment caused him such discomfort that he could
not function with the rest of us, he was relegated to the eighty-bed dormitory on the convent’s
second floor to rest. No visits by any nun or any of his friends. No medical care, no visiting
doctor or nurse, no clinical diagnosing. He just needed to rest calmly. Bobby did that, day
after day, week after week. In fact, he had often been forgotten there—no lunch, no dinner.
Just resting in bed--starving. Holy Sacrébleu! Unable to walk on being bedridden for weeks, he crawled his way to the toilet some twenty-five yards away. After three months, the
sister made her first intelligent medical decision: send him to a hospital. A few days later, he
recovered.
A funny thing happened upon Bobby’s return from the hospital. A friend he had met
at the hospital instructed Bobby to deliver a pint of ice cream to me once he returned to St.
Louis Home. Savoring the moment and valuing the fraternal love behind this rare gift, I
decided to keep this entire pint of ice cream very much to myself because it was personally
delivered to me by my ailing brother. In wanting to extend the life of this precious gift, I
placed it in my hinged seat locker in the downstairs play ward. Little did I know that after a
few days, I would no longer have the ice cream as originally presented to me, save for its
aged, curdled stench from having been left in that locker for a day or two. Yikes! I’m sure I
let it aged to the point of full putrefaction before Soeur Boulé ever found out!
I unhappily presented an occasion to Sister Boulé where she might demonstrate her
valiant efforts to care for the sick; that would be me. There we all were-- getting dressed for
a benediction service. From several feet away, a boy hurled a heavy bicycle padlock toward
Brother Bobby, presumably expecting that he would catch it. I happened to be sitting adjacent
to where my brother was standing. To my bewilderment, the padlock fleetingly landed on my
left eyebrow, causing a two-inch long cut that was one-half inch deep. With blood dripping as
might appear in a “B” horror movie, I proceeded to meet with Soeur Boulé for her home-spun
treatment. Out came the bottle of yellow sweltering iodine, which she generously poured into
my stingingly deep wound. With a St. Louis Home-fashioned bandana placed on that, I was released, freed to hang out while everyone else attended holy benediction. Lawsuit,
anyone?Soeur Boulé thought religion, or her interpretation of the Good Book, guided
everything she did. If she didn’t know the reason behind a concept, like why we lived in a
convent when other kids lived at home, she would utter a response to the effect that “C’est un
de les mystères du bon Dieu.” [That’s one of God’s mysteries.”]. She knew how to fake Latin
in unconvincing religious contexts. This would be appropriate, I supposed, given her vocation.
We surely did not mind that she consistently used Latin phrases as figurative religious
allusions as in “Deo gratias” [“Thanks be to God”] for “Recess now begins.” or waking us up
each morning with “In the Name…,” the sign-of-the-cross commencement of one of our
many prayers each day. But on Tuesday evenings, with Milton Berle, America’s
premier live television comedian at the time, we were instead forced to watch the
inspirational orations for scholars of the cloth from the once famous Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
on a competing channel. Now, that indulgence was selfishly unnerving to foist upon us know
nothing pre-adolescents.
Most of us who “did time” in a convent setting would describe compassion as a term
absent from the Grey Nuns’ handbook—and surely not in Soeur Boulé’s lexicon—this “Sister
of Charity.” Perhaps the contemporary styles of pedagogy and child care of the fifties may
have dictated the canon that boys were “tough,” hardly needing compassion—and certainly
not from one Soeur Boulé. Yet, I vividly recall an especially unique encounter with her,
when I was eleven years old, counting down one year left to go at St. Louis Home as
uncommonly judicious. For all I could describe about this commandant, this seeming monster, unfit to wear the holy garb, and more unfit to nurture the innocence of growing
children, there was this one exception. The seeming catharsis of Soeur Boulé’s
uncharacteristic humanity presented itself to me on a sunny Monday noon, September 22,
1958 just after lunch.
She called me into the sewing room where I was afraid of what was to come—some
nebulous infraction no doubt I must surely have committed. On this occasion, she spoke to
me only in English. “How was your mother when you saw her last month?” I responded that I
knew she was ill but had looked pretty good to me. Upon being gently grilled about my
mother’s condition, I did explain my curiosity about how Danny Gamache’s father asked me
on a visit home that summer a month earlier if the little peck on Mom’s cheek was all I
wanted to do before he and his wife were about to return me to the convent. As closely as I
can recall, I innocently did kiss Mom good-bye as I gingerly proceeded with my brother
Bobby toward the Gamaches’ station-wagon bound for Scarborough, Maine. I became
fiercely suspicious during Soeur Boulé’s protracted prefatory minutes of gentle interrogation.
Uncommonly attentive to my comments, this rarely non-plused nun struggled to level with
me. She spoke softly, water welling about her eyes—a sight I had never witnessed. She
uttered these words,” Your mother died this morning.” I could not cry. I was afraid to cry in
her presence. After a painfully long silence and a reluctance to respond, I built up a bit of
courage to differ with her, as if that were an option. When she excused me, I returned
downstairs with a stop in the iron-doored dungeon-like single bathroom and let myself go
forwhat might have been a ten-minute cry. After drying my eyes and attempting to regain my composure, I entered the big hall downstairs where everyone was preparing for the daily
rosary ritual—a simple recitation of sixty prayers over and over again that lasted, on average,
about a half-hour. An announcement was made to the seventy or so boys amongst us that this
recitation of the rosary was to be “a special intention” dedicated to my mother who had just
died. I cried with restraint but made this time of prayer my most sincere and penetrating
toward its most venerable cause. I was subsequently taken home to be with my family for the
ensuing week of mourning. Mom was dead at 47.
Like my pre-adolescent and adolescent siblings, coping with Mom’s death at my age
of eleven was a lonely crucible to surmount. There was neither a “center for grieving,” a
“crisis response team,” nor any other vehicle to counsel children who experienced the loss
of a loved one. On return from the virtual comfort
of my family at the funeral, a return to St.
Louis Home was to be business as usual. There was no sympathy expressed by anyone; no
one saw how I might be comforted in the days subsequent to Mom’s death. As I lie in bed, I
appealed to God in a futile effort to revive her. These were my trying days of despondence.
My sole source of relief was my bedtime pillow upon which I would sob for as many days and
weeks as it took. I dared not cry amongst my peers, fearing retaliation from Soeur Boulé,
although she had managed the announcement of Mom’s death sensibly.
Soeur Boulé demonstrated similar aberrant behavior following Bobby’s unattended
long illness with rheumatic fever at St. Louis Home. A few months after our mother died,
Soeur Boulé informed Bobby that he would be going home for good. She wept as she bade
him goodbye, as he was carried, unable to walk, to a waiting vehicle. This was a hauntingly
tender moment—something he never had witnessed from this seeming fiend. She had set the stage with a rare demonstration of compassion for both Bobby and me. Soeur Boulé’
merits my thanks for that tribute to my ailing brother and me.
The expiation of Soeur Boulé’s contraventions against her vows indeed may have
ended with her death. That penitence has left its demoniac impression on lives longer than
hers. She had been a hated lady of the habit to many boys, who became the baby boomers of
the end of the twentieth century. Her hypocrisy in pretending to be carrying out her sacred
mission of unselfish service and her repugnant behavior in the abuse of scores of children
leave me badly scarred but bearing hatred only for her actions. As evoked in the Lord’s
Prayer, one must forgive those who trespass against us. Indeed, I shall always seek for her a
rest in peace with God’s mercy shining upon her.
\
eleven months without Christmas
Ten empty pockets were the birthright of our large family. We inherited a shared
albatross as an accident of birth. Ignorance of prosperity, or even of the middle class, begot us
a welcome soupçon of bliss. Our experience may marginally compare with that of Frank
McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes and ‘Tis. I mention McCourt because his account of
childhood deprivation makes my account closer to, say, that of the common folk . But our
narrative is not about Middle America. Indeed, McCourts’s large family didn’t have much
fun. Ours did. His Dad was a drunk, leaving the family destitute. My Dad was a binge
drinker and placed his needs above ours, but he did leave residue for us. He also let our
cousin Adjutor at age six inhabit our space whenever his drunken father was thrown out of the
flop houses in our city. We did not quite measure down to white trash—though we may
possibly have been close to it. McCourt beat us by at least a jillion.
Given his near blindness, our Dad didn’t much seem to mind our many uninvited
Lilliputian visitors—the portly gray rats and the diminutive iridescent brown cockroaches.
And us—well, we managed poverty as we very much enjoyed each other any time we were
away from the two orphanages. As a family not mindful of our poverty, we owned and
presumably fed a stray dog we called “Rover”. Rest assured, she was a mongrel—not a
purebred, not that we would have known the difference. Of course, no one within miles of
our neighborhood would likely own a purebred dog. When Rover died, we acquired another
mongrel that we named “Lucky.” I have never figured out how Dad could have ever afforded to feed a dog, let alone provide for the ten of us. Lucky had to fend for herself
to survive. Actually, Lucky wasn’t so lucky; she got run over. My sister Florence almost got
run over along with her. No more dogs after that. Home together during the summer was the
zeitgeist that defined our hauntingly rich life as siblings free of rivalry in Lewiston’s Petit
Canada. This marked the greatest affluence we could have ever wanted, sans the wealth.
Our family did not understand or know much about poverty. We lived within the
meager means before us. Money? No, not much of a notion or concept about money at all.
Heck, that’s what must have been the rationale for our delivery to the arms of the Grey Nuns
at St. Louis Home and the Marcotte Home orphanages. We didn’t have any capital, except
whenever we came up with devices to acquire some, and then waste it. Most common was
collecting returnable bottles at three cents each, found along Lewiston’s railroad tracks. It
never occurred to us that we could more easily have shaken down some of the people in the
neighborhood tenements for their discarded empties. Come to think of it, why would these
paupers have bottles if we didn’t have any? On a good summer day, brothers Bobby, Junior,
and I could make as much as fifteen cents, total. That was an impressive booty!
Our sisters did not fancy joining us in collecting bottles strewn about trestles, dumpy
alleyways, and along factory walls. Instead, they did, however, accompany us in gathering
old rags and newspapers. We secured these treasures from tenement dwellers that were
certainly as pitiable as we were; yet, they would provide us with their scraps. We loaded these
items onto our little rusted red wagon and off to the dump (now known as a landfill or a
transfer station). Newspapers and rags weighed in for recycling after, say, four hours of door-to-door soliciting: easily twenty-five cents, total. Sometimes we picked up filthy rags
strewn about the dumpsite and, smartly enough, redeemed them right there. Enterprising
perhaps, but not honorable. Next stop, the corner store for Hostess cupcake rewards for all of
us. Sometimes we would invest part of the proceeds in five-cent Kool-Aid packets, lemon
flavor. Once we sponged ice cubes from a neighbor less poor than us—that would be
someone who owned a real refrigerator, we were set to operate a genuine gourmet lemonade
stand. At five cents per drink, we could rake in fifteen cents after a few hours under the hot
sun. We could surely have advised Charles Dickens on how his character, Oliver Twist,
could effortlessly survive in his parish workhouse.
Bobby and I liked hanging around Brother Junior. We respected his understanding of
money. He showed us the ropes and was usually fair about sharing the takings from our joint
efforts around town. Junior had a homemade shoe shine kit, including brown, black, and
oxblood polish, along with the requisite brushes and rags for shining the shoes. Junior thought
smart. No one in our poor neighborhood could really afford a shoeshine at ten cents a pop. It
was also true that many of the local mill workers would ingest a few beers on any given
Friday or Saturday evening at the local urine-stenched barrooms. That was our opening.
These drunks would have allowed us to polish their fannies if we could. At up to two dollars
earned on a Saturday night, Junior and I or Bobby felt like a corruptive Jack Abramoff
tycoon. The exploitation of our fellow peasants worked only as well as he and I could escape
the bartender’s fury, since children were not permitted to hang about in bars. We just carried
on until we were carried out. Though the group of us may have been unaware of the significance of real money—or
the very absence of it—I think that our Dad longed for a healthier subsistence. When I was
eight or nine years old, I would accompany hi
m on any given Saturday on his obligatory walk
toward the utility companies in downtown Lewiston where he was to pay some of his bills.
Wearing his signature fedora and dressed in a full blue suit, he sought to make good on his
credit standing long before credit itself earned its sometimes-tainted reputation at large. There
was an electric bill to pay as well as one for city gas (The wood stove had outlived its
usefulness for cooking and heating.). There was never a telephone bill to pay; our family
never had a telephone, ever. Dad’s view about meeting his obligation toward his vendors was
that if he paid a buck a month to each of them, except for the rent, then his credit was good.
He plainly could not afford more than that, having earned at most $ 45.00 per week from the
now defunct Holmes & Stickney shoe factory in Portland. I’ve since wondered whatever
happened to that forever-growing “Amount Due” balance in those utility accounts when he
broke up our family some five years later and walked away to live an independent life alone
and no longer poverty-stricken..
Our lingerie may be best described as rags, unadorned and trouble-free. On any
particular day, ours was unmistakably a community wardrobe. What we all wore was dumped
in boxes or in a four-foot cardboard barrel, most of it donated by the local textile factories.
The first one to locate a pair of well-worn underwear was the lucky dude for the day. Ditto
for holey socks, loose or tight fitting pants, and the mother lode of a Maine winter—a real
winter coat. For our sister Flora, the socks doubled as mittens, much to her risk of ridicule at school. As budding adolescents, twinss Florence and Flora donned hand-me-down bras as
did their older sisters Mary Ann and Connie. Connie recalls that her clothes alone were
sufficient to hold off any potential friends. The rest of us made do, enduring the comforts of a
light summer or spring jacket during the frigid days of January, courtesy of the generosity of
local charities. Usually we wore summer garb during the zeroes of winter. After all,
enduring frozen toes and ears was a natural part of street life on any frosty day in Maine.
Didn’t everyone else around us cherish the chill? We thought so.