My Dad Got Me to a Nunnery

by B. A. Berube

  one instance, a resident bully at the home threatened him. True to form, Jon took him on until

  the nun in charge—Soeur Boulé—ended the altercation, at least temporarily. She commanded

  that he wear boxing gloves with that bully and duke it out, as it were, to the finish. After a

  nasty, violent encounter, Jon emerged the victor.

  Jon was no sycophant. When the nuns crossed the line with him, he responded in

  kind. In one fit of anger, Jon pulled the black hood tightly pinned about the nun’s wimple—

  exposing her shaved scalp. After a time, the nuns learned that they could not win with

  challenges of the scale this insurgent posed. He was eventually expelled from the institution

  for his wayward ways, for this little dachshund dared dethrone the doberman. Intrepid,

  indeed! Would that we could have been expelled! The rest of us did not have Jon’s courage,

  his convictions.

  Of course, many of the children at St. Louis Home and at the Marcotte Home never

  had a home to go to. These orphanages were all they knew in their youth or early childhood.

  These were the bonafide orphans mixed in with the other poor folk and disenfranchised,

  besides a few “middle class” residents who went home nearly every weekend and summers. Who might have loved them? Clearly, no one at St. Louis. Ditto for the Marcotte Home.

  The kids amongst us likely had no one they could call family. Yet, they, too, had to have been

  lonely for anyone from somewhere who might love them.

  Where there was a nun, there was the ubiquitous French language. Nuns spoke French

  to each other. They used a good deal of English with the kids at both institutions. Unlike

  practices at St. Louis, schooling at the Marcotte Home included academic French of the drill

  and kill sort. The only French enthusiast to come of that practice was Flora—and that was

  grounded in her strategic plan to acquire enough French to become a covert agent determined

  to acquire personalized orphanage intelligence. For Florence, the struggle with academic

  French was a futile effort she surrendered long ago.

  The pattern of English language usage at St. Louis Home was inconsistent with

  practices in place in other school settings supported by the Roman Catholic Diocese. While

  we heard lots of French spoken among these French-dominant nuns, holy hermits elsewhere in

  Maine were behaving differently. For example, In Maine’s St. John Valley, which borders the

  heavily French-speaking residents of New Brunswick, French usage was severely restricted

  for use in both parochial and public schools, though this practice was inconsistent with state

  statute. School board policies stringently forbade the use of French in general conversation,

  and they subjected children to corporal punishment when caught using their maternal

  language on school grounds. The same policy prevailed among Maine’s Indian reservation

  schools where Passamaquoddy was the heritage language and where Catholic nuns comprised

  most of the staff and administration. The Catholic Church’s policies of native language suppression in schools throughout the Northeast continued through the late 1960’s.

  As with their fiefdom of controlling orphanages and many other parochial schools in

  Maine, the Catholic Church’s long enjoyed a universally powerful presence on Maine’s Indian

  reservations. The early missionaries, not only created thousands of Catholic Indians, they also

  determined what Christian names Indians should have. For example, genealogical studies of

  the origin of Passamaquoddy names like Sockabasin and Socktomah honor St. Sebastian and

  St. Thomas respectively. Their influence in schools, too, was significant. Teaching posts and

  school principalships for the reservation schools, until the 1ate 1990’s were almost always

  filled by nuns. Minimal competition and minimal school board clearance were needed. In

  effect, a certified nun who applied for the position would likely be hired for it.

  Long after I left St. Louis Home, I thought about the bilingualism I had acquired

  while I was there. I did not like it. Being bilingual did not help me mingle—at least not with

  the nuns. It seemed that English was the more desirable language of choice, if one had to

  consider language use in the context of the purveyor calling the shots. The nuns spoke

  English to us under selective circumstances. When speaking to us, the nuns’ use of French

  was the language of chastisement, of scolding, of insult, of humiliation. They never told me

  to “get out;” They often told me, “Va t’en.” I knew of the severity of linguistic authority.

  English, on the other hand, was the mainstream medium of ordinary communication in neutral contexts as well as in positive contexts. English was the language of rewards; French was not.

  A Typical Daily Schedule at St. Louis Home

  Times are approximate here, though they were not at that time. 5:30 a.m.

  Soeur Boulé awakens me to serve Mass every day on rotating schedule with other altar servers. Everyone wakes up to attend Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday masses in the chapel next door. (Everyone else sleeps for another half hour for the other days; they wake up to Soeur Boulé’s “In the Name...” (opening prayer).

  6:00 a.m. Masses commence as noted above.

  7:00 a.m. Grace and breakfast, except on non-Mass days when we ate a bit later

  7:30 a.m.

  Prayers; later breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays; I collect 25 cents from Father Jalbert every other week for serving Mass. On Mondays, Father Jalbert comes to our downstairs ward to bless us and to preach.

  8:00 a.m. Prayer, then off to school upstairs (Other nuns take over for teaching—no Soeur Boulé)

  8: 30 a.m. School, except on Saturdays and Sunday. On Saturday, I perform my chores (called offices in French), which was to wash the main floor of the lavatory and its nine toilets. Others are at play downstairs or outdoors after Soeur Boulé declares, “Deo gratias,” Latin for “The Lord be with you.” Every other week, one day in this time slot is reserved for going to Confession upstairs with Father Jalbert.

  11:00 a.m. Prayers; clean up before lunch.

  11:30 a.m. Grace and lunch; Soeur Boulé in charge.

  12:15 p.m. Rosary recitation every day except Saturday

  12:30 p.m Play in downstairs ward; Boulé is on break; Madame is in charge. When Soeur Boulé returns, candy is sold on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, except during Lent. No money—no candy. During the summer months, this would be nap time.

  1:30 p.m. School upstairs. On weekends, its “Deo gratias” play time downstairs or outdoors; On Saturdays, we might watch Bimbo, a circus show on TV. Sometimes we ride a carriage pulled by ponies Blaze and Thumb as they circle the play yard. During the summer, this could be swimming pool time. On Sundays, this is parent visitation time for the fortunate.

  3:00 p.m.

  School recess time and snack downstairs play ward or outdoors: molasses on bread, rhubarb sticks with sugar, or an apple were most common. On Fridays, this was benediction time at the chapel next door (a 15 minute service), accompanied by rosary recitation in the chapel (30 minutes).

  3:15 p.m.

  Monday-Thursday: return to classes for another hour. Otherwise, “Deo gratias” in the play ward or outdoors.

  4:00 p.m.

  Fridays—some kids get to go home for the weekend. The rest of us watch them leave as we remain with Soeur Boulé in the downstairs ward or outdoors. All other days—still playtime until supper

  5:00 p.m. Grace and dinner upstairs

  5:45 p.m.

  “Deo gratias” (play time) in the downstairs ward except for those of us a
ssigned to dining room cleanup; Sunday—the politesse (lecture about good behavior) lecture on Sundays from Soeur Boulé and update on kids lying to their parents about mistreatment at St. Louis Home

  6:00 p.m. “Deo gratias” (play time) downstairs or outdoors; Tuesdays—Bishop Sheen on TV; maybe Youth Cavalcade, a state talent show; Sunday TV lineup—Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, Jack Benny, Roy Rogers, and Ed Sullivan. (Two doggy shows, one comedian, one cowboy, and one variety show emcee).

  7:00 p.m.

  Malfeasants for the day are sent to bed early, along with anyone who is snookered into accepting cherry-flavored cough syrup from Soeur Boulé.

  8:00 p.m. Prayer and lights out; Soeur Boulé prays aloud as she walks up and down the bed aisles of the dorm upstairs.

  The nuns’ very identity was ostensibly French, not English. It became, therefore, appropriate

  for me, at least viscerally, to find the anguish of French to be uniquely repugnant. On leaving

  St. Louis Home, I bade good riddance to French—especially to the nuns’ Québec/New

  England variant of French. It would take me two decades later to reconsider French not only

  as an honorable language but the sole language medium I would later use with my children

  and grandchildren.

  We had little to do in the convent at Scarborough. We took in no organized games, no

  parties, except when one happened at Christmas and perhaps once in the spring. Even

  Christmas at the orphanage, though more elaborate than anything we could do at our Lewiston

  home, was not as good as our having Christmas together as a family. We didn’t trek out on

  field trips—not even a nature walk. There was an elongated table-top kind of bowling alley in

  our downstairs “recreation” hall. Not once in all my years there were there ever bowling balls

  and pins. None, ever. It was a piece of useless furniture in the center of our ward.

  Recreation was a thing self-induced when doable. At each orphanage, we did have our

  friendships with each other and our invented amusements. Our habitats brandished a merry

  go-round, swings, a seesaw, and monkey bars that helped in passing what seemed a life

  sentence. As St. Louis sported pigmy ponies Blaze and Thumb and “Lassie” the mangey dog.

  L’Hospice Marcotte showed off “Trigger,” a horse provided to the girls, besides “Sheba,” an

  infectious stray dog that the girls teased mercilessly. When the two

  emaciated ponies were introduced to St. Louis Home, it seemed a good relief to us, but they

  did not consume much of our time following their arrival. As with the nuns’ customary display of public pretense, the animals were there for show—however hideous. Flora’s

  recollection was that the horse at the Marcotte Home did provide for some time out, but much

  of that was dedicated to her obligatory chore of maintaining the nuns’unsullied creatures.

  Time passed as quickly and painstakingly for us at St. Louis Home as it might for a

  toddler ascending Maine’s Mount Katahdin on a tricycle. For my part, I frittered away lots

  of time on the swings, swinging, thinking, swinging, and thinking. The merry-go-round was

  of marginal interest to most of us. Most of “free” time for underprivileged inmates at our

  convent was spent working at cleaning and helping wherever called—the chapel, the dining

  hall, the toilets, the floors, or the best assignment of all—to help the convent’s paid

  handyman. That occurred only when I was physically removed from the nuns’ indefatigable

  scrutiny. I wanted to skip meals so I could hang out with that amiable worker.

  Like Bobby and me, Connie and Flora and Florence were harmoniously secure with

  each other. Connie well remembers repeatedly hugging and kissing her younger twin sisters.

  Indeed, there really were few options for doing time as young neglected children. Though we

  rarely taunted each other as siblings, Bobby and I exchanged mockeries toward Flora and

  Florence and Connie as we prepared to leave our beloved homestead for our respective

  orphanages, uttering: “…too bad you have to go back today, huh?” That line alone forced

  each of us many a short though often restrained snivel. Sadism, I suppose.

  At St. Louis Home, no one read stories to us. We had no toys, no crafts, very few

  books, and certainly no corruptive comic books. There were no outside volunteers to visit

  with us, to break the monotony. There was only one diversion that usually failed to capture our attention: a tall claw-footed mahogany Victrola radio. The nuns set that radio to noxious

  organ music on those rare occasions when it was turned on. Might those nauseating melodies

  have been intended as wholesome music to stimulate our conduct most kind and most gentle?

  Though some of us kids enjoyed store-bought toys or games to fill the hours, the rest

  of us sought out self-made outlets for coping with our world-weariness and ennui. Enter the

  diversion of marbles and baseball cards. Even the poorest among us could earn or steal

  marbles and baseball cards. The value of those Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Ted Williams

  cards was, to me, limited to the freshness of the slab of bubble gum in each package. I’m sure

  I tossed lots of those baseball cards out. In retrospect, my lacking a modest prescience as a

  child revealed me to be downright dense. As a result, marbles were the gold standard for most

  of us at St. Louis. Only we knew of their value; the nuns had no clue. Of course, few of us

  could purchase marbles at our hometown five and dime department store, but others among us

  did. Those few bourgeois—not us-- who owned marbles became the friends of many. They

  would become my partners, too, that I may win marbles and sometimes baseball cards. Since

  no one could have real money as legal tender, and no one would find capital worth anything,

  since there was nowhere to go with that funny money, however genuine. Favors came of

  bartering and of paying off debts though cards and marbles. In little time, these objects

  became the equalizer, the easiest way to share fortunes—especially with marbles. Marbles

  were our most cherished indulgence. There were ordinary marbles of varying colors. There

  were the plain translucent “clearsies,” the coveted “cat’s eyes” of varying colors, and the

  mother lode of them all, the cat’s eye marble the size of an hors d’oeuvre meatball. We earned marbles by playing undemanding games. One such game involved players standing

  atop a circle, carved in the dirt with a twig. The challenger placed one less valuable marble in

  the center of that circle for openers. The objective was to drop his marble at neck level, foot

  outside the circle, so that the marble in the circle would be “kicked out.” First one to succeed

  takes all. Another game involved rolling a marble up a cardboard-made ramp into an elevated

  shoebox that was set several feet away from the players. The players continued until the first

  one to land a marble that stayed in the box won all the marbles played.

  When I was in my fourth year at St. Louis, a medium-sized television (black and

  white, of course) became available to us for about an hour each evening and for perhaps an

  hour on Saturday mornings and afternoons and a little more on Saturday and Sunday nights.

  That helped assuage the languor, even if the nuns decided what entertainment we could enjoy.

  We were, of course, forbidden to touch either the radio or television dials.

  The tube served as a partial curative to the monotony of life at St. Louis. Popular

  televisio
n shows were the Saturday morning slapstick programs we longed for each week.

  Among these: “The Three Stooges,” “Laurel and Hardy,” (better known to us— though now

  politically incorrect— as “Fat and Skinny”), and “Abbott and Costello.” “The Three

  Rascals,” popular at that time, about three boys always menacing about their neighborhood

  and creating chaos was off limits to us. Remember, ours was a clean-cut, straightforward

  Catholic school, after all, where infectious influences were stringently kept at bay. Besides

  these morning shows, we took in just one Saturday television show immediately after lunch:

  “Bimbo the Elephant,” a series about a boy and his loyalty toward a wayward elephant. This program, which was the favorite among the nuns, afforded us young lads the sole effect of

  fidgeting until it was over. In sum, this elephant kid’s lackluster story was consistently mind

  numbing, deadly, and uninspiring.

  There were evening television shows during the week that those of us who escaped

  castigation for the day could take pleasure in, as our fallen buddies marched morosely up to

  bed shortly after supper. Among our screen delights was “Jack Benny” for the Sunday night

  laughs. Benny was the first one I ever saw on television who provided a role to an African

  American, even if it was that of servant—an honorable effort, though an now a justifiable

  indictment of our times. Like the nuns, we enjoyed the variety of entertainment offered on the

  Sunday “The Ed Sullivan Show.” Other favorites included “The Whirleybirds,” a police

  fighting crime adventure conducted aboard a helicopter, “Dragnet,” the original cop drama

  prototype, and “Roy Rogers,” the cowboy who was never defeated in street fight and never

  lost his hat in the melee, nor did he ever receive a scrape or bruise from the volleys of

  unrelenting blows from the bad guys. We were also fond of celebrity dogs such as, “Rin Tin

  Tin,” a cop dog and “Lassie,” champion to its goodie-goodie wimpy character, Jeff. I liked

  the sanguine character of Jeff, since he behaved consistently adroit under conflict, as I would

  have: I’d have called on Lassie every time to save the day, to please the adults in my life who