My Dad Got Me to a Nunnery Read online

  proud gift to the Blessed Mother. Joseph, a carpenter who was Jesus’s stepfather was

  always pictured in earth tone colors and always standing up. Most statues show him holding

  baby Jesus and sometimes a long-stem white lily.

  Growing up devoutly Catholic left me in awe of what the holiest of the holy looked like. Were the paintings and statues of them historically correct? Of course, the

  representations we have of these celestial spirits who once traveled our planet are merely the

  impressions handed down, I reasoned, from artists. I grew up thinking of angels as blue-eyed

  and blonde Caucasian females usually cherubs dressed in white, excelling in playing the harp

  as they rest on cumulous clouds. The only exception would be the Archangel Gabriel whose

  preferred instrument was the precursor of the modern trumpet.

  I speculated, too, that she flew in to rest atop the manger in

  Bethlehem to announce the coming of Baby Jesus. St. Joseph

  and Jesus himself might have the likeness of being of Middle

  Eastern origin. Everyone else, it seemed, was Caucasian of European descent. No Africans.

  No Asians. Is it possible?

  For all their shortcomings, our Lewiston apartments were our safe havens. We

  tolerated the uncertainties associated with our frequent moves from one dumpy flat to the

  next. Lionel, the gregarious and more sophisticated one in our neighborhood, never invited

  any of his friends to our apartments. Quite simply, he was too embarrassed to showcase the

  dearth of our possessions. Besides, Lionel maintained well into late adulthood that, on

  reflection, these sordid excuses for apartments at that time were, on balance, a good fit, given

  our caste. Mary Ann, a budding non-conformist teenager, associated with people who

  seemed oddly different from us: Lewiston’s Romanies, called Gypsies in the argot of our day.

  She was attracted to their style of dress as well as the plethora of jewelry they donned. She

  also visited with Hindu and African-American neighbors. Racist that he was, Dad instructed her to stay away from “them.” Our preeminent friends were not from our home base in

  Lewiston but from our respective boarding institutions.

  None of us had longed to become middle class. Who knew what defined a middle

  class? Although we had uncles and aunts who enjoyed limited lower middle class lifestyles,

  we did not know of the comforts of the affluent firsthand. We knew a good deal about each

  other, our collective resourcefulness in making our lives joyful for those few holidays,

  vacations away from the orphanages, and Christmases that our father permitted—that we

  could live together as a family once in a while. Harmony was our family’s clarion call. We

  recall no scuffles among us, no hostilities, not even conflict with other kids in our scruffy

  white ghetto. If there were potential quarrels, like other kids making fun of us because of our

  old tattered clothes, we’d tell those fuckers that we have a big brother who could beat the shit

  out of them. That was usually enough to keep any threats of insurrection at bay. Our

  apartments, however close to designation as unfit for habitation, were a secure shelter—a

  home. While the orphanage and convent at St. Louis Home in Scarborough and at the

  Marcotte Home in Lewiston were clean, provided children with balanced nutrition, and

  offered each their own bed, their monikers were misnomers; neither institution was a home.

  Boulé,thebully

  For many people, there often is one uniquely impressionable adult figure outside their

  family that they can unmistakably assail in abundant detail from their childhood. We

  children of St. Louis Home summon up a merged clone of Cinderella’s malevolent stepmother

  and daughters. Who could this scourge of the blessed Soeur Marguerite D’Youville, founder

  of the Grey Nuns be? Soeur Marguerite could never have sanctioned this beast as a woman

  of God for membership in the order of Les Soeurs de la Charités. Nor would Soeur

  Marguerite have tolerated a surrogate parent governing like Attila the Hun, singularly

  prosecuting her subjects, needing none of her Catholic empire’s barbarian backups. Who was

  this living machine? This piranha among the gold fish. Who wins this hideous brooch of

  shame? Enter Soeur Boulé, the Terminator, hands-down. No, make that hands upside our

  heads and hands swiftly springing across our faces. We all called her Sister Bully, or so that’s

  how we pronounced it. I doubt that neither she nor we knew the connotation for the word,

  bully, . It was just as well, as long as she answered to that call. In retrospect, the name fits as

  well as only Charles Dickens might have selected it, were this his tale.

  Soeur Boulé was an amateurish and probably illiterate nun, diminutive and squat. She

  wore the requisite rimless spectacles to suit the role of her calling that surely someone other

  than her Lord would ever have issued. She habituated us to the value of silence and

  obedience. She taught us karma, though she surely did not know what that meant. For

  example, she terrified we little ones into believing that dragonflies sew the mouths of those who chatter too much. What an impact that had on me! As dragonflies approach my mug to

  this day, I yet wonder. But only for a couple of seconds.

  The French /English nun, an immigrant of Québec, was overseer of us 70-80

  “big boys,” to distinguish us from the other 20-30 “little boys” who shared the building with

  us but were kept in a wing separate from us. Whenever school was not in session, Soeur

  Boulé was in charge—the head honcho. Although she had a partner sister who supported her

  as the head’s fulcrum, it was she, who governed like Saddam Hussein. No one else could

  really complement this martinet. Soeur Boulé ruled. Period. She personified the convent’s

  Machiavellian operation.

  I think I must have had the most frequent direct contact with Soeur Boulé over any of

  the other boys serving a multi-year sentence with me at St. Louis Home and School for Boys.

  I was, after all, her private servant—along with my brother Francis (Bobby), whom the nuns

  called Bertrand, pronounced the French way. Toady service to her extended from post

  breakfast to bedtime. Duties, dubbed offices by the bully, were many. Daily toilet-cleaning

  was a most important office.

  After breakfast each day on alternating weeks, Bobby and I shared the chores for

  cleaning the nine seatless toilet stalls. We were also responsible for one other stand-alone

  toilet equipped with a black toilet seat in a six-by-six windowless room with a six-inch steel

  door. Nothing else was placed in that dungeon-like cell. It was a distinctly scary but clean

  space. That chamber was used, less as a private lavatory than as Soeur Boulé’s locale of

  choice for incarcerating misbehaved kids through solitary captivity. When one of the nine toilets adjacent to our play ward was plugged up, I carried out

  the task of fixing it up, whatever they might require. One culprit causing this ongoing

  problem was newspaper. Yes, newspaper for maintaining rectal hygiene. We cut up a

  boxload of 3” X 5”squares of newspapers for use as toilet tissue. Scratch that. No, it was not

  tissue,it was paper all right. Two squares to a customer. Soeur Boulé distributed this to those

  indicating they needed to perform Number Two on the seatless bowl. This limit was raised to

  three squares wh
en real toilet paper was later introduced to the convent. To fail to mend

  plugged toilets was to disobey, inviting punitive consequences. I hark back to managing one

  quick fixer-upper where one lone chunk of feces with the silhouette of a Butterfinger bar

  floated about clear water; the excrement simply would not go down. Lazy way out: pick it up

  and place it in an adjacent functioning toilet. Bravo. I foiled Soeur Boulé!

  One office was mine alone. It was always a Friday night routine that Soeur Boulé gave

  to me as my exclusive domain. When that duty was to be undertaken, everyone else went to

  bed in the upstairs dorm, escorted by Soeur Boulé. Alas, I was left alone. I had my scrub

  brush and rag needed to sluice the three flights of corrugated rubber coverings that covered

  each step. After this two-hour chore ended, I was to sit on one of my newly sanitized steps and

  wait for Soeur Boulé’s return and inspection of my work. Usually, she was satisfied. I knew

  that because those were the occasions when I was rewarded with two, count them—two—

  Oreo cookies and a glass of milk. If there was one spot missed anywhere, I re-did it and

  proceeded to bed without the cookies. All the same, I remember those cookies, and I had

  them often. NO ONE ever got Oreo cookies. It was to be my secret for all my years with Soeur Boulé. One must understand that the Franco-American work ethic was a well

  entrenched phenomenon. Acts of labor could even be profitable at a place like St. Louis!

  Whatever the whim of the nun on guard (usually Soeur Boulé or Sister Rita), I could deliver.

  Nevertheless, I was good at what I did, and there were almost always yummy rewards—

  cookies and candies.

  My other duty was more long-term. I was Danny Gamache’s attendant. Danny was

  the red-haired boy, two years my junior with an acute learning disability. His face was laced

  with grape-like tumors that later would spread to his cerebrum. I would guess his IQ to have

  been close to thirty. My assigned tasks were to dress him up, keep him clean, attend to his

  bathroom needs, feed him, and keep him safe. That’s all. I performed this service from ages

  9-12. I was understandably thankful that his parents came to relieve me of these duties on

  weekends, since they would take him to their middle-class home in Lewiston. On Sundays,

  his parents rewarded me with a quarter for my services—money that I pocketed, unbeknowst

  to Soeur Boulé.

  Soeur Boulé monitored our time, our every activity. Private time did not exist for our

  band of poor castaways. Prayer, meals, daily rituals of personal hygiene, and “recreation”

  were activities that Soeur Boulé closely supervised. Her repression extended to lavatory

  privacy, too. She was resolute about measuring our intimate moments of timed solitude in the

  lavatory. Had we spent more than a minute in the stall, she would be prepared to yank us

  away. I thought Soeur Boulé paid too much personal attention to me and to others

  sometimes. Only partly exempt from her ubiquitous scrutiny was our body cleansing. To minimize this practice as the ultimate manifestation of sin, we wore skirts, called piqués,going

  to and away from the shower. Yet, when I showered on Friday evenings as we all did in our

  private stalls, she carried on n with her fearsome omnipresence. All of us could count on a

  shower visit by this voyeur. As I tended to my private hygienic duties in my stall, she would

  poke in from the closed curtain, look me over, and then utter the same command each time,

  before leaving, “Lave-tu ton corps?” [“Are you washing your body?”]. I was too frightened

  to turn around or cover myself. I did not understand the motive for her posing so seemingly

  silly a query each time. Yet, I wondered.

  Soeur Boulé developed her own approach to care for the sick and infirm—one of the

  vows of the order of the Sisters of Charity. Though cold season arrived at St. Louis Home as

  it occurred anywhere else, she found no accommodation for this menace, especially at

  nighttime. Whenever anyone had a bad cough during the night, he could indeed count on

  Soeur Boulé’s fascist fanaticism. After four or five consecutive coughs that could

  understandably disturb sleeping neighbors, some admonition to contain this ticklish throat

  would be warranted. First visitation from the sister: “Arêt de tousser!” [“Stop coughing!”] As

  more involuntary coughing ensued, filtered through a muffled pillow and coverings, she took

  that as the signal for visitation two—an escalation to humiliation and abuse: “Je t’ai dit

  d’arrêter de tousser, mon sans de sens {or sans de seine}.” [Loosely translated: “I told you to

  stop coughing, you senseless fool; {artist without a scene}”], followed by several strikes to the

  head, forcing the bedding and pillow over the victim’s head, then more strikes elsewhere

  across the body. She then delivered her signature ultimatum: “Faites-ça encore, puis tu va avoir la mal affaire à moi.” [Do this again and you’ll get the worst of me.”] As for my own

  seeming inability to properly contain or muffle the unremitting, unrelenting coughs I

  experienced, I knew that the final cure arising out of her final visitation was, no doubt, going

  to do in the afflicted . With her at my bedside armed with a ferocious reprisal, others like me

  were granted more strikes, ear and hair tugged and dragged off half-naked, told to retrieve

  their clothes from under the bed and march down to the first floor hall where the invalid was

  to sit still, asaiting several hours until the boys all came down to prepare for breakfast. Yes

  indeed, I sat there, during the hours approaching dawn, remaining motionless on my wooden

  locker bench, fearful that Soeur Boulé may catch me, should I move about the vast empty

  space. When the other kids arrived around 6:00 a.m., I was given my continuing penance: at

  each playtime the next day, I was to curl under this nun’s desk for additional time forlorn,

  confined. Despite Soeur Boulé’s firm instructions and consequences of disobedience, I never

  did learn to contain my nighttime coughs. Others like endured the same. Coughing is what I

  predictably did as commanded by my throat and lungs on attracting a cold and passing it on to

  anyone nearby. And Soeur Boulé’s response was an equally speedy and predicable abuse of

  adult authority.

  There was one practice that I think may have been in part to blame for those

  meddlesome colds. During cold and flu season, Soeur Boulé held up a bottle of strawberry or

  cherry flavored cough medicine each evening. She invited anyone amongst us who thought

  they had a cold to come up for a teaspoonful of this pleasantly flavored syrup. There were

  usually twenty or so unsuspecting takers amongst us. This ruby remedy seemed to us, after all, the elixir of euphoria. One teaspoon shared among twenty guys—ugh! Immediately

  after the swallow, off the unwary twenty went to the upstairs dormitory. The other, more

  discerning boys were permitted an extra hour of time with the black and white television set

  before going to bed. I marched to that capricious lineup every time. Numb! Dumb!

  The penurious state of guys like Bobby and me earned no compassion, much shame,

  and a high profile among the more fortunate to mutely scorn. Soeur Boulé’s mechanism for

  awarding candies was based on nasty chores or on social class—the former was compensated

  for work, the latter was rewarded
as an accident of good fortune. The tuition-paying higher

  caste residents of St. Louis Home received their five-cent candy bars on Sundays, Tuesdays,

  and Thursdays after lunch. I, on the other hand, was a charity case entitled to this treat IF I

  could produce the requisite coins. No free candy for the poor. Coins, however rare, came

  only of washing stairwells and toilets, requisite duties for the indigent among us.

  There was one other way I could make money at St. Louis Home. Parents of the

  convent kids or guardians might give them money, or Father Jalbert, the chaplain might give

  us altar servers a quarter from time to time. Everyone had to turn the money over to Soeur

  Boulé for, ahem, “safekeeping.” As it happened, I did receive twenty-five cents on most

  weekends from the Gamache family; sometimes our chaplain Father Jalbert paid me a quarter,

  too. I planned that modest sum of money for one purpose: candy bars at five cents each.

  There was nothing else one could purchase—candy was the sole sweet inventory that was for

  sale to us. There was an assortment of chocolate bars available to those with the money to

  buy no more than one on any given Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday, following lunch. No money, no candy. Ha! But wait. I had money! Usually a quarter. Sometimes even fifty

  cents. So, I could count on Sundays for a candy bar, which would leave me with twenty cents.

  If I calculated this correctly, I would have funds sufficient to purchase a candy bar four more

  times from that quarter alone. Come Tuesday, one could spot me in the line, ready to

  purchase the sweet bonbon. Soeur Boulé coyly looked in my manila envelope among others

  in her black lockbox, commented on its bareness and brusquely chased me away, insulting my

  integrity for merely suggesting there was money in that little envelope. She would exclaim,

  “T’as pas d’argent, mon sacré fou; va t’en donc!” [“You don’t have any money, you damned

  fool; get out of here!”]. Yet I knew she was supposed to place my money there after I

  surrendered it to her a day or two earlier. This thievery on her part occurred each time my

  quarter was deposited. In sum, this nun violated her vow to uphold the Ten Commandments,

  one of which read, “Thou shalt not steal.”

  To protect me against this thief, I saved a whole dollar I once received in the mail from