My Dad Got Me to a Nunnery Read online

  From the outset, I wasn’t sure what name I would choose for my Confirmation.

  To move me along in making an informed decision, Soeur St. Patrique noted that St. Daniel

  would be most fitting for Confirmation, since the bishop administering this sacrament to me

  was none other than Bishop Daniel J. Feeney. As a bit of a toady, I thought that using the

  name of the administrator of this sacrament was a brilliant maneuver—a way of gaining

  perhaps a few indulgences for the afterlife. Sure, I now know that in selecting Daniel, I was

  polishing Eden’s ultimate Catholic apple: our bishop. Yet, it was Soeur St. Patrique who had

  influenced (i.e., frightened), me toward choosing this name—this Irish bishop. So, off I went

  wearing an ankle-long red gown with a white ribbon around my left biceps with the rest of us

  eleven year olds to St. Peter’s Church in Biddeford to have Bishop Daniel J. Feeney confirm

  me as a Catholic for once and for all. We must have all looked cute—all the St. Louis Home

  kids in a section of their own in this cathedral. A lovely ceremony to be sure. Snacks

  afterwards, too.

  Soeur St. Patrique carried on with the same traditions of classroom management that

  Soeur Baillergeon had habitually demonstrated, especially her exploitation of the weapon of

  the rubber strip of flooring. We knew just where she stood on aggressively matching

  discipline to learning. She chartered this unnavigated territory long before modern

  educators were educated about “assertive discipline.” This nun sported a decent right hand curve and raised the practice of tough discipline to an art form with a dexterity that I think we

  subtly admired—including me. On her desk She donned an inventive flying vessel-. Okay; it

  was just a hard rubber soap dish, solely for use in vaulting toward anyone not paying attention

  to classroom drills. That wounding weapon rarely missed its target: notably anywhere along

  the head’s anatomy.

  Soeur St. Patrique’s crass skill in scolding inexorably extended to humiliation. One

  example stands out when I was the target. Arithmetic was a constant challenge for me from

  the start. As we were preparing for the annual visitation of Mother Superior Luc to our sixth

  grade class, we were to be prepared for any combination of numbers used in multiplication.

  To err before Mother Superior might reasonably cause an adverse reflection on Soeur St.

  Patrique’s teaching skills. So, practicing our arithmetic skills, we did, indeed! As we were

  practicing the multiplication tables of five times any number from one to twelve, I was called

  upon to answer, “What is five times five,?” Shy as I sometimes was, and clearly on Planet

  Pluto during instruction, I answered, “five, Soeur.” “Five?” she queried in disbelief that there

  was someone so stupid in her midst soon to face our cloister’s Grand Pooh Bah , Mother

  Superior. “Vien icitte [come here],” she commanded, as she repeated the multiplication

  question, but with an illustration on the chalkboard that read: 5+5+5+5+5. In front of my

  classmates in a hauntingly quiet room, I vividly recall counting those five suckers, concluding

  that the answer must be “5.” Along came the knuckles of try at the question, “What is 5

  times 5,” to which I then surmised was “10.” One more swipe struck; the tears came. I cried

  out how sorry I was. I was subsequently pulled by the ear back to my seat. Some smartypants

  kid did get it right. As for Mother Superior, absent a show of her strong right hand with an inflammatory epithet about my intelligence as well as one more my shortcomings in

  mathematics, she thought I was cute.

  On the roll call for these seven nuns, only one nun, in my recollection, could earn

  the distinction of being impressionable nun number one: the misanthropic drill sergeant for St.

  Louis Boot Camp, Soeur Boulé. That’s the nun who behaved like a rabid fox decimating

  someone else’s litter of cuddly golden retriever puppies. That was a nun whose legacy for me

  is that she earned a full chapter unto herself in my book. Ooh! There’s much to be said.

  Hang on! She earned her own chapter as the reader will soon discover.

  Oh yes, there was one more resident among us. That was “Lassie,” the namesake of

  that collie who appeared on CBS’s show by the same name every Sunday evening. Our

  Lassie, however, was no collie, and no Hollywood star. She was a stinky mongrel who may

  have had some collie bred into her. This pitiful creature meant nothing to us—not even as a

  distant friend. Ditto for the two Siamese cats. Ditto for the nuns’ gallant efforts in harboring

  them more charitably than they did us.

  I had almost no experience with these seven nuns taken collectively as a group. On

  second thought, there were two occasions when I presented myself in their collective

  company. One was during those 6:00 a.m. weekday masses when I served as altar boy (now

  called altar servers), when they were our only audience in the chapel, except maybe that

  nameless Madame, who served as Soeur Boulé’s surrogate martinet. Having all those nuns in

  the chapel made me plenty nervous—but not as nervous as when everyone at St. Louis was

  LEFT: The C LEFT: Convent and Chapel Section of the Former St. Louis Home; RIGHT: Catholicism Lives!

  attending Mass on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays. All of these nuns and some others

  joined as the chorus belted out the hymns for Sunday’s “high masses.” Tantum Ergo was

  their consistent favorite. They sang it every week. Quite frankly, I thought this hallowed

  melody to have been uniquely captivating.

  The nuns at L’Hospice Marcotte, like those at St. Louis Home were Les Soeurs de

  la Charite. Like ours at St. Louis, they came to Maine from Québec and spoke French as

  their preferred language. Flora, wanting to earn their friendship, not only concentrated on

  perfecting her French as a little girl, she even taught one Soeur Stanislaus basic English.

  Besides, these nuns treated the non-Francos at the convent far worse than they did the

  francophones. As for Florence, the value in acquiring some Québec French was limited to

  enjoying the advantage of being able to eavesdrop as the nuns spoke French to each other.

  From what my sisters have told me, the nuns at their orphanage behaved remarkably

  similar to those at St. Louis Home. They even experienced Mother Superior Luc who was

  transferred there from St. Louis Home. They described her as I would: fearsome but fair. Soeur Luc purchased two ponies for our convent; she purchased two small horses for theirs.

  Soeur Luc was also their resident counselor, though it is doubtful she had any credentials to

  assume that role. She did counsel Flora as she approached her sixteenth birthday with graphic

  details about sex. Florence didn’t acquire that knowledge, depending instead on street-smart

  kids discussing sex as filth via lewd jokes. Talk of menstruation was a taboo. Flora, on the

  other hand, was shocked to learn from the Mother Superior so much about sexual arousal

  The Grey Nuns, a.k.a. LesSoeursdela Charité(The Sisters of Charity)

  of the sexes and the devil’s pleasures that may come of “the act.” How could Soeur Luc

  have known so much about these bawdy affairs, Flora queried.

  Soeur Luc proposed the initiative that Flora and Florence be placed in foster care upon their departure from L’Hospice Marcotte. That turned out to have been an appalling scheme,
r />   as these twins toiled as slaves for an ungrateful and abusive old couple until Flora confronted

  them and would no longer tolerate them. The twins were subsequently placed in a benevolent

  foster home, a good, more archetypal family environment.

  My sisters were grateful for those nuns at L’Hospice Marcotte who were, unlike some

  of their colleagues, pleasant, kind, and protective. They benefited from the graces of Soeur

  Michaud, a teacher, and Soeur Leroux, the assistant principal. Others like Soeur Stanislaus,

  Soeur St. Louis, and Soeur Alène were not quite so virtuous, comparable perhaps to Soeur

  Boulé and Soeur St. Patrique in our midst. Soeur Alène, for example, markedly humiliated

  the pee-pee girls that she assigned to special beds for all to know. These victims included

  Flora until she was eleven years old. Flora mused about those days, “Each time we wet our

  beds, Soeur Alène shoved our noses in the soaked sheets like an abused dog.” The bedwetters

  would subsequently clean up their sodden sheets. This nun enjoyed any scene like this where

  the hurt they inflicted on her victims could be showcased to the other girls. Bad table

  manners caused the girls to eat from the gremelle (communal food waste; muck) bowl atop

  each table. Florence was berated as so many others like her in front of the other girls for

  commiting minor infractions, but she vowed as a child, “I will not let them break me.”

  Rarely would Florence cry out as others did from the pains of the nuns’ slapping her at her

  elbow’s underarm. Rarely did girls dare escape from the Marcotte Home. Never were they

  successful. Those who did attempt flight, faced unknown retribution conducted secretly.

  Soeur St. Louis broke the news to the girls of our mother’s death. As befits a ten year old receiving such news, Flora screamed at that shocking announcement. Soeur St. Louis warned

  her to shut up. Soeur Michaud, one of her teachers intervened and apologized to Flora,

  saying, “Pleur-toi doucement, Flora” (“Cry slowly, Flora”) as she hugged her. Florence,

  whose grief on losing Mom took longer to heal, returned to the convent after the funeral with

  no acknowledgement from the nuns of this ten-year-old’s loss. She needed a shoulder to cry

  on, a way to cope with Mom’s death. Absent that and inventive as she was, she reflected on a

  pictoral image of the Virgin Mother as that of our Mom. That was Florence’s commemorative altar of resilience.

  our little Canada

  Bobby and my sisters and I enjoyed breaks from our respective orphanages during

  Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter of the fifties and early sixties. Breaks to Lewiston from

  the Marcotte Home were far shorter than were allowed by the authorities at St. Louis. In that

  respect, Bobby and I were indeed fortunate. We also left the orphanage during the summers

  of our first few years at St. Louis Home. We knew that home was in Lewiston with our

  family—not at “the home” in Scarborough with the nuns. Our ramshackle apartments were

  little to boast about, as was our fetid neighborhood, though all the dollars in the U.S. Treasury

  could not exceed the affluence of our spirits.

  Our household was probably like any other around us, considering the bleak environs

  of Petit Canada of Maine’s second largest city, Lewiston. Lewiston was a textile mill town

  where many uneducated Franco-Americans toiled to support their large families. Yet, our

  family did not benefit from the seeming resource that Lewiston’s factories offered. Dad was

  the sole breadwinner for our family of ten. Dad was mostly blind and deaf; so, his

  marketability in this town was minute, though he held a high school diploma and was willing

  to work—and work hard. There were no provisions for his handicaps. Apartments in

  Portland where we were born were costlier than those of Lewiston. Instead, he found a job

  fifty miles to the south at a shoe factory in Portland, Maine’s largest city. We were all born in

  or near Portland, and spent our toddler days there. Dad worked in Portland as we

  lived in Lewiston, where he supported us more cheaply than if we had lived in Portland. Lewiston is a city long dominated by a population that traces its ancestry to Québec

  about the year 1880. That is when poor Québecers immigrated to the United States to seek a

  better life, not unlike those who entered the U.S. by way of Ellis Island in New York.. They

  were a people unflaggingly devoted to their Church, their French heritage, and their strict

  work ethic. They were also devoted to preparing and eating their tourtières [pork pies],

  popular in their larder for any occasion but especially at Christmas réveillons [Christmas eve].

  Our family traces its heritage to Québec from a previous generation. We came to

  Lewiston for a reason very different from that of our ancestors. During our family’s short

  stay in Portland prior to our entry into orphanages, we did not fit well among the

  neighborhood’s lower middle class. As paupers dwelling there, we were like Eliza Doolittle

  and Oliver Twist vacationing in Malibu . Lewiston, on the other hand, was an axis of

  subsistence for the poor and uneducated. It was a natural adjustment for our family to make

  while most of us were toddlers. Here was this little metropolis of textile and shoe factories,

  where work was abundant, albeit for paltry wages. Some aunts and uncles lived in Lewiston

  in modestly comfortable apartments, but we ten rarely had cause to visit them. Perhaps it was

  best that we remained ignorant of the more comfortable life.

  Dad continued for several years to work in Portland at the Holmes and Stickney now

  defunct shoe factory commuting to Lewiston on weekends. With the help of a neighborhood

  co-worker who was his chauffeur for a modest fee, our family was able to anchor itself in

  Lewiston throughout most of our childhood. Portland was, of course, distant from the

  surrogate dwellings that two of us boys had at St. Louis Home in Scarborough and that the four girls experienced at L’Hospice Marcotte in Lewiston. Lionel attended St. Louis Home

  for only one year—a certain perk for being the elder sibling. Brother Walter, Jr., who was

  legally blind, was not particularly welcomed at St. Louis; so, he was placed at the more

  reputable Perkins Institute for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts.

  By the time I was five years old, the year I was dropped off at St. Louis Home, the

  family had settled in a modest—make that Spartan—nay, make that roach and rat-infested

  encampment at Hines Alley in Lewiston. It was at Hines Alley that my twin sisters and I

  better understood that there were several siblings amongst us in our dubious abode. Lionel

  reminds us that the Hines Alley milieu was a good fit for our pitiable lot. The address says a

  good deal about this Petit Canada venue—sleaze and less. It was a small and not very

  presentable as a dwelling befitting our beautiful family. We burned wood for heat, but there

  was very little wood available; so we made do wrapping ourselves in old donated blankets.

  Winters were intolerably cold. The norm was the ongoing presence of rats and roaches.

  This apartment in some respects was the more impressive among many that we lived in

  because it’s the first in memory.

  The other tenement buildings along Hines Alley seemed worse than ours. For

  example, our windows were adorned with tissue-thin plastic curtains that provided some

  illusion of
décor. By contrast, the very, very poor and very, very large family next door, the

  Tanguays used newspapers with which to cover their windows. The yellowed newsprint was

  ample evidence to us that we must have been more fortunate. We were also resourceful

  enough to locate a nickel to buy a packet of Kool-Aid and run a lemonade stand. The Tanguays never did that. We went door to door to solicit, find, or beg for recyclable beer and

  soda bottles at three cents a shot; the Tanguay kids never did that either.

  One Sunday, when brother Bobby and I were being picked up to return to St. Louis

  Home from our Hines Alley home, we shared passenger space in the Gamache station wagon

  with two nuns on furlough from the convent at Scarborough. I vividly recall their reaction to

  the neighborhood, unabashedly insulting us on the occasion of our impecunious housing

  arrangement, and of the filth around us, though we maintained our proper hygiene without

  fail. In rags, yes, but the rags were uncontaminated. After all, Mom did wash our clothes by

  hand on a scrub board. Later the family would acquire a pre-owned washtub wringer. While

  these gossipy nuns solicited our appreciation for the alternative convent they were host to,

  neither Bobby nor I acquiesced. We knew what they could not understand. Our home,

  however its condition, was our natural habitat. Its prominence in our lives as part of our

  family unit elevated us to a level that St. Louis Home could never approach.

  I learned something else about our Hines Alley sojourn forty years after we left that

  space. It was from Raymond Chouinard, who was a teenager at Lewiston High School when

  I was in the early grades at St. Louis Home. When in recent years I mentioned our stay in

  Hines Alley, he illuminated, asking, “Was your dad blind or nearly blind?” Given the

  affirmative to his question, he summoned up his memory of our family and that of the

  Tanguays from his newspaper route of the 1950’s. He knew that my dad was home only on

  weekends. Ray always squirreled away a complimentary weekend Lewiston Daily Journal for

  this poor blind man, whom he knew was surely too poor to buy a newspaper. Indeed, we children saw that he had a weekend newspaper and thought nothing more of it. For him, it