My Dad Got Me to a Nunnery Read online

  were kind to me. Besides, Jeff had no father, though he lived on his grandpa’s austere yet

  utopian ranch with a steadfastly super dog who always managed to aid him in escaping his

  little crises.

  As with us guys at St. Louis Home, the nuns at L’Hospice Marcotte provided my

  sisters and their comrades in chains with television entertainment, too, from time to time. Their deleterious favorite that might compare to ours was the movies that elevated the sweet,

  dimpled Shirley Temple to heroic proportion. No matter how the girls at that orphanage

  loathed viewing this program nearly every weekend, they were obligated to watch it and enjoy

  it. What the sister of the black and tan habit wanted, the sister got.

  Were there good, upright, honorable nuns? Yes, of course, there were. Nuns like

  Soeur Thèrese and Soeur St. Croix at St. Louis were sincere, respectable, caring and

  compassionate. They didn’t beat us up. These were the venerable nuns who found candies

  and doughnuts to give to the poor among us when other nuns permitted the more fortunate

  children of wealth to enjoy their abundance of un deserving rewards. The better nuns

  respected and paid attention to us.. Yes, there was Sister Pauline who played games with us,

  laughed, and taught us how to be creative. Although the nuns at St. Louis paid no attention to

  our birthdays, there were nuns at the Marcotte Home who gave candies and ice creams to the

  birthday girls. Unfortunately, my sisters were too poor to be showered with birthday goodies;

  they depended on becoming friends with those more fortunate, that they,

  too, might receive a morsel of their friends’ birthday cake. The Marcotte Home nuns did

  permit the girls to enjoy popular recordings of the fifties when they were old enough to baby

  sit the younger girls at the orphanage. Good deeds by good nuns were an imbalance against

  the misconduct of the few but powerful bad ones.

  Our convents could not be real homes. Children in real homes, we figured, had fun

  things to do. They could go out and play at will. They could go to parties. They could choose

  activities to occupy themselves. I did, after all, watch the kids in the public school across the street from us while Peter and I sat swinging facing the streets of West Scarborough, Maine.

  The sin of envy was proudly mine: I wanted to be there, with those Protestants. They made

  much more noise than we did, and I liked that. I thought that other normal kids like them

  might even have parents who would read to them, who would take them to places. They

  might even have a nickel or two from time to time to buy a toy or candy. They might not be

  afraid of a powerful authority, ready to cast her might, putting them in harm’s way. Of

  course, such kids might have been in abusive family relationships no better than what the nuns

  dealt in. That was one scenario I never thought about as a kid; nothing could be worse than

  our lot at St. Louis. I just felt alone, wistful for a return to Lewiston to be with the rest of my

  family. Seven years was an intolerably long time.

  Surely some simple ways to manage events that hurt us could have been avoided. The

  sadistic beatings were chief among these, of course. The insensitivity to psychological

  wounding could have been averted. For example, the very cause for which our lady clerics’

  order accepted them was charity; these were, after all, the Sisters of Charity. Yet, the charity

  was limited to their role in admitting the abandoned to their care. Once there, the charitable

  features of their work were as gray as their namesake. For example, birthday recognitions for

  some to the exclusion of others were uncharitable. Selling candy bars to those with money as

  others watched them enjoy their bonbons was spiteful. Call me a Marxist. The candy bars

  could, for example have been broken into pieces for all to consume, or other candies should

  have been appropriated through, a levy of a cent or two more per bar so that all the children

  could benefit. These are samples of small steps that would have potentially made our wretched childhood memories a bit less pathetic. Despite these deplorable failures, our

  experiences at the orphanages left each of us with our dignity intact.

  Six years after exiting St. Louis Home, when I was a senior in high school, Bobby and

  I decided to re-visit what remained at St. Louis Home. Irrational in our thinking, perhaps, we

  were almost wistfully longing to return to the torment of Genghis Khan. We noticed that the

  girls, too, were recruited for a stay at St. Louis Home. Some shock to Bobby and me! They

  occupied the space that we once used for the youngest of us all. There was but one veteran

  nun still on staff. That was Soeur St. Patrique. She graciously gave a bit of her time to

  welcome us visitors back and to ask what had happened in the six and seven years since we

  each had left. After enough small talk, she reminded me of the most lasting impression I had

  made on her. She said, “You were the boy who couldn’t find Philadelphia on the map.”

  Though I was a post-adolescent guest with nothing to risk, I remained too unsettled to

  brazenly mouthe something back. In retrospect, I would say now that it was this cosseted

  hermit who was hardly a woman of the world. Could she locate Philadelphia from atop the

  Liberty Bell? I devilishly doubt it. At least Soeur St. Patrique left me with the correct lasting

  impression of the grey nuns—no mercy, no affection, nothing good to say about her

  upbringing of poor castaways as a reflection of her having done God’s work. She was among

  nuns who could not accept their overt imperfections.

  A decision to admit girls at the orphanage must have been pursued as a result of

  economic hard times at the convent. By God’s grace, their scheme didn’t work. St. Louis

  Home was forced to close its doors in 1972, nine years after St Joseph’s orphanage at the Marcotte Home closed. In 1976, “The Bible Speaks” purchased the Scarborough property and

  started another sort of church school. This organization, a Bible-believing fundamentalist

  sect, used the facility to support all denominations and even housed pre-teens in what once

  was our dormitory. The project failed. According to Rodney Laughlin of the Scarborough

  Historical Society, “The Bible Speaks,” was forced to sell the property in 1987 to settle a

  lawsuit initiated by one of its members. A commercial enterprise, dubbed the Dunstan

  Village Association of West Scarborough purchased it for one million dollars. The facility is

  still there as a kind of strip mall, called the Village Square at Dunstan. Reflecting on the Bible

  Speaks’ experience that conjured our space into something scandalously un-Catholic must

  have been haunting our former caregivers in their resting vaults. Was this business evolution

  what Bishop Walsh, St. Louis Home’s founder, would have permitted in the name of the all

  powerful Catholic Church? Who knows? One can only marvel about the source from which

  the Church’s hex had come.

  Meanwhile, L’Hospice Marcotte, a.k.a., the Marcotte Home was renamed “La

  Maison Marcotte.” It now serves as a respectably nurturing nursing home. Its newly

  renovated facility is part of the St. Mary’s Hospital complex in Lewiston, operated by the

  Sisters of Charity and the Catholic Diocese of Portland, Maine. Venues like the Marcotte

  Home and St. Louis Home were defined by agony with hardly any redeeming qualit
ies. By

  some coarse accident of a non-Catholic faith came forth a new tenant at the former St. Louis

  Home:, “The Bible Speaks.” Something, someone must have had to say about moving into

  our convent. Change inescapably had come.

  insouciance

  As the eighteenth century poet T.S. Eliot opined, “The end is where we start at.” That

  would be , Friday, June 10, 1960 for me. It was my twelfth birthday and my independence

  day! Baltimore, no more! Baltimore catechism, that is. No more religious instruction. But

  Mass and prayer and confession? Yes. After seven years at St. Louis Home, how could I

  walk away from it? Fusing my independence and my church made me feel stronger than the

  merger of both—Daimler Chrysler and Ford. It was as strong for me as the crushing of the

  Bell Telephone monopoly in 1984 Yes, I had been a most impressionable convent kid,

  unable to walk away from my Christian faith. My adherence to Catholic dogma and its built

  in terror remained steadfast. I would continue to practice my commitment to Jesus Christ

  undisturbed for a very long time. I wouldn’t rule out becoming a martyr if I had do.

  Becoming sainted was a fair fantasy. The possibilities for my future seemed infinite.

  An albatross awaited me. When in 1958 my mom departed from our lives, and I was an

  eleven-year old resident at St. Louis Home, our family had moved to a neighborhood more

  pleasing than all the previous ones. We ascended to a fine lower class neighborhood,

  anchoring ourselves at rat-free 64 Maple Street in Lewiston, Maine. Yes! No rats any more!

  Yet, some things didn’t change as I would re-enter the family vista one year later at age 12.

  The woe that was St. Louis Home would become no more than a remembrance, though a

  profound one. It was a memory I would block out as often as I might. Recovery would come

  slowly. The apartment at Maple St. featured our old but still functioning Roper gas stove from

  our previous dwelling. Ditto for the same kitchen table, the same large crucifix, and the same

  little brown AM radio. When I first showed up at the apartment later that year, behold, our

  family had a refrigerator—nay, a Frigidaire! No more trekking off to the neighbors to

  “borrow” ice cubes for our popular lemonade stands. We also had a living room set (albeit

  laden with bedbugs) and yes, finally, our very own black and white malfunctioning TV that

  took ten minutes to warm up. For sure, there was no more Bishop Sheen to have to watch.

  Hello Red Skelton, The Real McCoys, Gunsmoke,DennistheMenace,and The Twilight Zone.

  I marveled at the awesome possibilities that would come of being able to choose among three

  television networks. Add to that the fun in maneuvering “rabbit ears” as antennae to acquire

  some sort of reception. There were no nuns around with lots of kids with which to share the

  TV. We could turn our TV on and off at will. No permission. No time limits. No one cared.

  Dad was away at work all week. Lionel had his own work and social life. Mary Ann was

  waitressing and chasing guys. We were three at home: brothers Bobby, Junior, and me.

  Though the relief at having left St. Louis Home was a mammoth elation, I wasn’t

  fully prepared for the mystery that might come of my newfound independence. Nevertheless,

  the concept of a real world outside of St. Louis Home became an peculiar part of my psyche.

  The only life I knew was what the nuns designed for me. Our family was broken up when I

  was five because, save for Lionel, the rest of us were placed in a convent, an orphanage, or in

  an institution for the blind. What would life on the outside truly be like? As happens to

  prisoners leaving jail after many years, my newfound freedom would also require time to. adjust.

  First, I learned how to steal to survive on the streets of Lewiston. I had not yet

  discovered anything about community; even if I did, I would surely know nothing about it.

  For example, I did not know how to celebrate Halloween, though the nuns once did give us

  Halloween candy and allowed for some bobbing of the apples. Yet, I learned of the amazing

  tradition of trick or treat on the streets. Wow! Did I accumulate wicked quantities of candy

  from tenants in our the big city. Indeed, there was no one, not even in the public school, to

  counsel me about how to manage my new life away from the orphanage. Come to think of it,

  I doubt they knew I came from that reclusive environment. I was ready for prime time

  mischief. More about that later.

  A year before my departure from St. Louis Home, Bobby had left the orphanage due to

  his rheumatic fever left untreated after having been bedridden for three months. Until I would

  come home, Bobby had been placed at the “Opportunity Farm, “a special school and farm for

  adolescent boys. We were about to see a good deal of each other again. No longer did Bobby

  or I return to Lewiston to escape the misery of St. Louis Home. We would be together

  forever.

  Life at our Maple Street apartment would now be the real thing. Sure, I felt prepared

  for the possibilities of nirvana far away from St. Louis Home. Yet, troubling me was that my

  mom had died during my last year at St. Louis, and she was not to be a part of my new life—

  my return to the true homestead served, as one might say, to end the deferral of grieving. I

  was living in the apartment that Mom left, that she may enter the hereafter. My life as her kid, not as a subject of the nuns, commenced a year after hers ended. It was time to move on.

  Unfortunately, my sisters Flora and Florence were still incarcerated at the L’Hospice

  Marcotte girls’ orphanage in Lewiston—a couple of miles from our apartment. They would

  remain there for another four years. That saddened us because twelve year olds at St. Louis

  were released, but at the Marcotte Home, they remained locked up until age sixteen. By any

  measure, that was unfair, though Dad found it fitting to save two bowls of soup he could not

  afford by dumping his two daughters at the Marcotte Home.

  Dad promised Flora and Florence that he would to visit with them at the orphanage,

  though after Flora and Florence waited and waited for his arrival, it became clear that he

  would be a no-show. Soeur St. Louis’s admonition to the girls was swift, “Il ne vient pas ; va

  t’en; rétourne en haut.” (“He’s not coming, get out; go upstairs”). Our sister, Mary

  Ann, whose painful memories of the Marcotte Home were like ours with St. Louis Home,

  would forever stay away from stepping on the Marcotte Home property, even if only to visit

  Flora and Florence. Meanwhile, we three brothers did hike over to the orphanage on those

  days when we thought the nuns would welcome us there to see our sisters. Besides, this was,

  after all, a home for girls, where impressionable boys from the outside may prove devious.

  The nuns warned us upon visiting that we would be limited in what we could witness

  happening at that home during our visit, since the nuns were selective in what we could see or

  do with our sisters. At least the head nun, Soeur Stanislaus was advising our teenage twins to

  avoid boys whenever leaving the Marcotte Home. She pointed to dance halls and movie

  theatres as most risky and sinful. Close call. One of our favorite techniques for assuring we could visit our sisters at L’Hospice

  Marcotte was to stop over immediately following Sunday Mass that we fine Catholics

 
; attended without protest at the Marcotte Home chapel. That gained us a few points with the

  good Sisters of Charity. Smart move. Though the twins were in our shared hometown of

  Lewiston, they may as well have been in Europe, since there were limits to our enjoying their

  company, as we always had done far better as a family at our home.

  Soon after Connie was too old for the orphanage at the Marcotte Home, Dad made

  arrangements for her continued abandonment by placing her in foster care with the

  Boissoneaults, a Franco-American family at Biddeford, Maine. While not a bad environment

  for her, because this was a wonderful family, Connie nonetheless deserved to be with us.

  That left Mary Ann, Lionel, Junior, Bob, and me at home alone.

  Lionel was working at a bowling alley and later at a brickyard—money he would in

  part be forced to give Dad to pay for room and board. He was, after all, over sixteen years

  old. Since Lionel was the elder sibling, he had his own bedroom at the Maple Street

  apartment, just as he did at all the other apartments. The Maple Street apartment had three

  rooms to house six of us. Lionel always knew if any of us poked about in his room when he

  was away. If we did, he would dispatch torment as appropriate. Mary Ann was the most

  vulnerable. Lionel and Mary Ann had a unique relationship at home that could only be

  described as hostile, as would befit a shark and piranha.

  Brother Junior, always the more inventive among us, had left the Perkins Institute for

  the Blind based in Boston. He even sported about the neighborhood in a bicycle from an allowance he earned at Perkins. Bob later owned a couple of wheels, too. With their bikes,

  they shared a newspaper route, though it was short-lived. Mary Ann did pilfer one only to

  have Lionel filch it from her later on. I surely had no bike—ever. I have never learned how

  to ride a bicycle.

  Dad arranged for Mary Ann, well into her later teens, to stay with his sister, our Aunt

  Irene. This middle class aunt lived in a lovely two-story Lewiston home. To Mary Ann, this

  was some rich lady. Aunt Irene was a wonderful aunt by all accounts, though too frail to give

  Mary Ann the care she would need. With Mary Ann’s budding and insatiable appetite for the