My Dad Got Me to a Nunnery Read online

  indulgence. It was Dad’s treat. It was his day for White Owl Cigars. It was his evening to

  waste himself on cheap beer or wine and, once drunk, to weep about his pitiful lot. We

  accorded him no sympathy. We just let him sink in his brew. Inebriation was his opportunity

  to force lust and violence on Mom—or that’s what we now believe occurred.

  Yet, for all Dad’s penury and so much of his selfishness that we flaunted about him, he

  often did scrape up sufficient means to spring twenty cents for Saturday’s movie fare for each

  of us seven. After the movies, hamburgers and Nehi root beer or orange sodee awaited us at

  home. Lionel was almost never among our fold. Add to Dad’s seeming generosity five cents for one packet of Necco multi-flavored wafers that seven of us would take to the show. We

  called them shows, not movies, a throwback to days earlier than ours when movies were called

  picture shows. Our absolute favorite theatre was the Strand on Main Street in Lewiston.

  That’s where we could count on a monster feature—the volley of Frankenstein, Godzilla,

  Dracula, the Blob, and werewolf shows. Nearby was the Empire Theatre that seemed to run

  mostly romance movies—we would have none of that. There was also the Ritz on Maple

  Street that was the Strand’s competition for our business. Ditto for the Priscilla theatre, a

  short walk over the bridge to Auburn. At two feature monster shows, two or three cartoons,

  trailers, and dull newsreels, it was a supremely good buy.

  Lewiston’s Former Ritz Theatre Lewiston’s Former Empire Theatre

  We sometimes remained in the theatre to see at least one of the features a second time; the

  theatre management never objected. We also arrived at the theatre a bit early so that we could

  discover more in the way of refreshments than the Necco wafers afforded us. We pranced

  among the rows of seats looking for lost candies and uncrushed popcorn on the sticky floor.

  There was plenty to go around, and it was an added sumptuous extravagance to our family’s

  only pleasure. Indeed, we had defined wealth. Yes, it was sometimes sweet.

  There may not have been an Easter bunny to grace our home, but we did have a few candies in an Easter basket, gratis brother Lionel’s stealth and uncelebrated generosity. The

  basket consistently consisted of candies such as colored marshmallow eggs, yellow

  marshmallow chicks (peeps), and assorted jellybeans. That was sufficient cause to celebrate

  on returning from the Easter High Mass celebration at church.

  Though the average Sunday noon meal at home was as well rounded a meal as we

  would ever get, there were actually three other occasions when good food befell us: Easter,

  Thanksgiving, and Christmas. The local Elks or Salvation Army could be depended upon

  without Dad’s asking. The food basket from these charities consisted of the requisite turkey

  (ham for the Easter dinner), many vegetables, stuffing, potatoes, bread, celery sticks with

  cream cheese, pie, nuts, and real milk, plus a box of chocolates. One year, however, there was

  no Thanksgiving delivery. Nothing. Zip. We were despondently discouraged. Later in the

  day, by an event that only a nun would describe as a miracle, a charity showed up with a

  sumptuously filled food basket. Thanksgiving had been saved.

  The paucity of resources notwithstanding, there was for us the Yuletide season of

  seeming wealth. Our apartments always sported a real Christmas tree every year, no matter

  what. No family member seems to know where or how we acquired the tree. There were, of

  course, no gifts of any consequence under the tree. It was not the gifts we sought; it was the

  tempo of the time. One gift, such as an alarm clock, would be Dad’s sole gift for all of us to

  share. Fair enough. We valued that overture. Sometimes our spinster Aunt Cécile, a

  secretary at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., would mail our family a box of gifts so that

  each of us could count on one personal gift each Christmas. We cherished our tree—a real fir—that was thoroughly if not gaudily decorated,

  replete with lights and balls of many colors and sizes. That’s what consumed our pleasure. No

  need to worry about matching sets of anything, since anything was fair game for the tree. Best

  of all were the bubbling lights and the generous distribution of aluminum tin foiled icicles

  throughout the tree. I cannot recall how we were able to afford the icicles every year at a

  nickel a box, but I suppose Dad found the money for it somewhere. He was also able to bring

  home all the finger foods left from his shoe factory co-workers’ Christmas party each year.

  Given how frigid our apartment was, we avoided sneezing on our tree in order to manufacture

  icicles. Yuk—I know.

  The year of Mom’s death made for a cheerless Christmas indeed. Not only was Mom

  no longer with us, but also Dad served as the Yuletide Scrooge, the Grinch. As a major

  snowstorm struck Lewiston a few days before Christmas, sisters Flora, Florence and Connie

  sought a way to get home from the Marcotte Home orphanage for the holidays. No

  transportation was available. Desperate to be with all of us, they decided to walk in the hoary

  tempest the distance of two or three miles to our Maple Street apartment, carting along a few

  bagged necessities. And what a surprise it was for Dad to witness their eventual arrival—

  frozen to be sure, but their spirits warmed at the certainty that they had made it safely home

  for Christmas to be with family. Not so fast. Dad did not approve of their coming home, and

  he clearly did not feel that he needed the whole family at home this year. He was quick to

  command them to leave, to return to the Marcotte Home. Not even Cruella could ever have

  exercised so great a vindictiveness upon her children and to have been immune to the gross distress his children long endured from that rejection.

  Except for the Christmas chasm of 1958, the year Mom passed on, our spirits had

  runneth over throughout our household. We found the yuletide cheer everywhere. Yet, the

  big one, the one stop for Christmas entertainment was Lewiston’s Salvation Army hall. The

  auditorium was always beautifully decorated, replete with the Christmas spirit. The seven of

  us showed up—no parents, no big brother, Lionel. The Salvation Army’s focus was on all the

  needy kids: providing them with entertainment, lots of candy, and a gift for everyone there.

  Sometimes we were able to choose among the donated simple gifts, like puzzles, small table

  games, little toys. No questions asked. It was the sole gift any of us ever received for

  Christmas during our childhood years. The red wagon we utilized for hauling our bottles and

  newspapers and even furniture for our moves was, yes —courtesy of the Salvation Army.

  Indeed, the Salvation Army continues to be our family’s preferred charitable organization. If

  only we could have given others gifts.

  The mother of all Roman Catholic Franco-American observances was Nöel/Christmas.

  La joie de vivre peaked with the celebrations of Christmas at St. Louis Home as well as

  L’Hospice Marcotte. Christmas was the year’s only holiday of note. For the Marcotte Home,

  Christmas was an event for the nuns’ pleasure, where the girls’ Christmas cheer was far less

  visible. The nuns partied; the girls did not. Old folks at the adjacent nursing home received

  the candies. Our sisters as well as Bobby and I enjoyed elevated spirits for the co
uple of

  weeks anticipating our homebound Christmases. Unlike the nuns at the Marcotte Home, St.

  Louis Home’s nuns splashed their seemingly munificent and generous Catholic spirit throughout the Yuletide season. Most, but not all, of the revelry and joy was to honor the

  birth of Christ. Yes, there were Christmas parties designed for the underprivileged, the

  destitute, and those under the care of the Sisters of Charity. It was Christmas for us, too. No

  time for melancholy. Not at Christmas. Even the nuns were happy at Christmas—not because

  they smiled or laughed, but because they had a mission that seemed right to those of us at this

  residential center against our will. They had a Christmas plan for us. That plan started in

  early December. Situated in our glossy hardwood floored auditorium at St. Louis Home, the

  nuns placed the life-sized manger of baby Jesus surrounded by a collection of real Maine

  balsam fir trees, smothered with aluminum foiled icicles—loads of them. A silver painted and

  glittered drop cloth covered the top of the manger and draped all the way down a series of

  fake steps suffused with fake snow leading to figurines of Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the

  Three Wise Men plus animals adorning the hay filled crèche. Not to forget the lighted Angel

  Gabriel atop the manger and always a twinkling star nearby. I suppose this white cloth turned

  silver was meant to represent the mountainside where the original manger was believed to

  have been situated. Not quite a credible setting for the Middle Eastern town of Jerusalem, but

  then no one was looking for authenticity.

  With inspiration like this, I always felt compelled to create a crèche (manger) for the

  occasion while at St. Louis Home. A bit more modest, perhaps, it was a diorama of baby

  Jesus in the manger. I used a shoebox and cutouts from Christmas cards to paste together my

  nativity scene. Add a little paper star on top, place a bit of grass about the base and voilà—a

  manger. It was my kiss-ass gift to Soeur Boulé—little good that it ever achieved. The chapel at St. Louis Home, too, displayed a more tasteful crèche with modest

  looking additional crèches set in our classrooms and playroom. The dining room sported a

  cardboard fireplace with more lights and decorations. Ditto for the fake fireplace at the

  Marcotte Home. The nuns overlooked no object in sight that could hold some sort of

  ornamentation. Every light, every window, doorway, walls in the auditorium, dining room,

  and reception area were decorated with aluminum icicles, garlands, colored lights and balls,

  stickers—anything Christmas. These were ornate if not tawdry garish garnishings.

  Christmas busted out here as well as at the Marcotte Home.

  In that auditorium, a well-planned Christmas party would occur later that month.

  There would be music, candies, and gifts. Sometimes, even used gifts were sort of out of

  order for us. Lionel, for example, recalls receiving a high-ticket chemistry set. Bobby and I

  recall carefully unwrapping the better gifts so we could re-gift them to take home to our

  siblings—a tradition that even former First Lady Nancy Reagan embraced to save money, as

  she recycled to friends and dignitaries White House gifts she and the President received.

  Given her wealth, I would term her practice cheaply disingenuous; ours was nobly heartfelt.

  There were games galore at the annual St. Louis Christmas soirée. Strangers we never

  saw would attend; they might smile at us as we played the games and enjoyed a spirit that we

  knew was temporary, yet worth exploiting. No reprimands. No punishments. Even Soeur

  Boulé was irrelevant.

  Some of us were able to leave the orphanages to attend yet more Christmas jamborees

  hosted by local charities. The AFLCIO’s local unions hosted several parties for poor kids. Charitable groups caroled before the girls at L’Hospice Marcotte. My sisters were mostly

  embarrassed at all the pity inspiring the do-goodism of the visitors. That was not their idea of

  Christmas generosity. At St. Louis Home it was sometimes us who performed through

  singing or demonstrating choreographed movements for those charitable organizations. It

  seemed worth it. For our circus act, we received candies and other sweets. I didn’t notice

  their compassion over our family’s misfortune.

  The foremost Christmas celebration before we could return from St. Louis Home to

  our family in Lewiston, however, was the convent’s Christmas trip to Portland for all of us at

  the orphanage. The nuns (or some other charity) arranged for a bus to take us to Portland’s

  State Theatre, site of the city’s annual Christmas party for needy children. This event

  included a community troupe that featured a comedian and “Spumoni, the Ice Cream Man”

  who extolled good humour. His material was well tailored to kids, a chanteurwho would lead

  us in Christmas carols, and a children’s movie. For Christmas, the production was surely

  made to order for us and no one else. On departing from the movie house, we each received a

  large grab bag of assorted goodies—an apple, a banana, an orange, candy bars, soda, cookies,

  popcorn, and some small toys. It was a day of jubilation, lots of happiness. ( I cannot summon

  up a single rueful Yuletide vibe. No one ever said, “ Va t’en” or “ Sacre-toiton camps.”(“Get

  out” or its stronger variant). No one, but no one has ever replicated the Grey Nuns’ skill and

  sincerity in kindling a Christmas spirit so powerfully jubilant and magical. Said, Anne Frank,

  “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.” On the twelfth month of

  each year, that sentiment proved true to my experience at St. Louis Home... bleak times

  Most of us fossils of institutions such as St. Louis Home (or L’Hospice Marcotte for

  the girls) could invoke a timed exercise of word association at the mere mention of their

  names. To that end, our lexis might present itself in rapid fire such as: obedience, authority,

  intolerance, prayer, rules, French, anguish, punishment, routine, boredom, fear, inflexibility,

  work, negativism, subservience, obsequiousness, silence, sadness, loneliness, and the greatest

  of them all—abandonment. The grey nuns at both nunneries accepted their cloistered

  environment that a convent such as St. Louis or the Marcotte Home afforded them as part of a

  fulfillment of their sacred vows to God. Each having their own chapel on site, little kids to

  oversee, and lots of opportunities for work and prayer must have made the environs an

  absolute experience of their paradise on earth . For us young lads this was an indefinable and

  inexplicable alternative to life they otherwise deserved with presumably loving parents and

  siblings. Such institutions were solely a venue defined by agony with few redeeming features.

  Yes, St. Louis Home and L’Hospice Marcotte were sites forlorn. No nun ever hugged

  us. They expressed no humor and engendered no laughter. There were no counselors—no one

  to hear, to understand our seclusion from a world we knew little about. My childhood friend

  at St. Louis, Peter at age eight, was my outlet, a companion to me, a seven-year old

  confidante—one who seemed to soften the blow of that loneliness. I suspect I did the same

  for him.

  Our orphanages were places where almost no one knew our names. I shuddered at being belittled with the French label of guinille nillou - vieux pépère (ragged hobo of a

 
; grandpa) that the nuns so often called me whenever they didn’t call me by my assigned

  number, and because my gait appeared to be like that of an old codger. At either convent,

  one’s name was rarely uttered; only an assigned number served as an identity. We were

  relentlessly identified by our respective numbers—rarely if ever by our family names. When I

  asked Florence if she could remember her number at L’Hospice Marcotte, she quipped with

  this rejoinder, “They used my number way more than my name; of course, I remember my

  number. It was 72.” A common address shouted out would be, “Va t’en numero soixante

  douze!” (Get out, number 72!”). To complete our assigned extra labor well would earn a girl

  plenary recognition from the nuns at L’Hospice Marcotte, using their surname, rather than

  their inmate number. Our labor was God’s work and His reward. Bizarre but true, at St.

  Louis Home, Bobby had the identical number that was Florence’s at the Marcotte Home: 72;

  Peter was Number 79; Lionel was Number 9. I was Number 20; Mary Ann was Number 5;

  Flora was Number 5; Connie was Number 50. Though I have a lapsed memory of telephone

  numbers over the years, I, as with my siblings, cannot fail to remember my two-digit ID from

  St. Louis.

  Obedience to the rules of authority and subservience to the nuns was the fear factor

  that defined our relationship with their tormenting cabals of the cloth, no matter the venue or

  situation. To have done otherwise, even to question their intent, their rationale, their judgment

  would yield grave consequences. Afflicting the comfortable, especially the least socio

  economically fortunate, was the unsaid practice. Many incidents with Soeur Boulé illustrate that relationship in the preceding chapters of this volume. Peter recalls how he and

  his brothers recall that relationship, though he cannot recall our friendship of a half-century

  ago. Peter’s brother Jon tested these themes often, and he was routinely reminded that the

  devil’s work he was pursuing would cost him dearly. No matter. Jon frequently ran away.

  Not Peter. Not me. Like mine, his was a submissive demeanor.

  Peter’s brother Jon was okay when left to his own devices, when not threatened. In