My Dad Got Me to a Nunnery Page 8
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,
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