My Dad Got Me to a Nunnery
Page 7
St.Croixhad full custody of what were dubbed the “little boys”— the aged 5-7 group. As noted in a previous chapter, we had our own section of the St. Louis Home complex: a
diminutive zone downstairs for play, a petite atrium upstairs, a small dining room, and a two
small dormitories on the third and fourth floors . One large sappy family ! SoeurSt.Croixhad
full custody of what were dubbed the “little boys”— the aged 5-7 group. As noted in a
previous chapter, we had our own section of the St. Louis Home complex: a diminutive zone
downstairs for play, a petite atrium upstairs, a small dining room, and two small dormitories on
the third and fourth floors. One large sappy family!
As a younger kid in the care of Soeur St. Croix, I was assigned sleeping quarters
located on the fourth floor. My bed was situated parallel to and against the wall. As a kid of
age six or so, I sported a nasty tendency to pick my nose, and instead of the repulsive act of
feasting over these green gems, I would then fuse scores of samples of my daily discoveries on
that sky blue glossy wall. That wall must have seemed an especially inviting gallery for my
newfound surreal artistry. Day after day, week after week, more of the same beaded phlegm
was diffused and bonded across the wall like pushpins across a general’s war map. I would
become nervous as these dried elements accumulated and aged on this wall, sans Soeur St.
Croix’s detection. While this sweet nun may have been one dumbell and one dum-dum short
of a dimwit, could she still be oblivious to a kid’s gruesomely foul display of body fluid and
not calling him on it? Lucky for me, the pig menaced on. An occasion presented itself to me
to sneak a peak at this very wall two years after I left Soeur St. Croix’s care and transferred to
the older kids’ dorm—and this is no canard—those seasoned bougers remained there for some
four to six years very much undisturbed. Only Soeur St. Croix would have looked the other way, day after day, if only because it must have grossed her out or
because she was otherwise challenged. Despite her mislaid talents, there must be a place in
heaven that she is now occupying as I reflect upon her childcare skills.
Soeur St. Croix was the caregiver for some twenty or so five to six-year-olds. She
kept us clean, well fed, and taught us about prayer. Indeed, her focus tended toward
obedience and love of God. Obedience was, of course, our nature as subserviant
simpletons in early childhood. Nothing too remarkable. We learned a little bit about
personal hygiene, prayer, and attendance at chapel. Not much else since she was assuredly
untaught—no English and her French must have been what she grew up with on the streets
of Québec, though that is only a conjecture—not an value judgment. She did have a
charming hobby—crafting red roses with silk. She would add green paper to wires for the
rose stems and – voilà, a bouquet to fit properly into the white ceramic statue’s rear slit built
into the Blessed Virgin Mary’s lower back. It has long been fashionable for Franco
Catholics women to goose the blessed lady with artificial flowers up St. Mary’s keister.
Tawdry, but popular.
Soeur Therèse, our kindergarten teacher, was probably of the kindest of them all.
She had a singular focus: the magic of play school. She was a kind, impressionable
lady who seemed to remember her system of rewards. With her, there was no castigation,
no retribution, no colleagues among the Sisters of Charity. For example, after naptime at
our old inkwell desks affixed to the grey wooden floor, we would be rewarded with a
cream-filled chocolate—the little kind that comes in Whitman boxes. Everyone in kindergarten really found naptime to be irresistable. When she walked around depositing
the delectable chocolate morsel on the right front corner of my desk, still feigning sleep, I
would tilt my head slightly as she passed by with the goods. When she was well enough
behind me on her rounds, I would very, very slowly work my hand toward that most
inviting brown lump, just nicking a tiny piece at a time with my fingerrnails as I transported t
the morsels toward my lips. I suspect I must have gobbled up at least half the reward before
she would clap her hands for us all to wake up to the surprise she left us. For all the days
that she us, I was never caught; may the Lord forgive me if I breached her trust. But could
she have ever known? Naagh!
Sister Therèsedid teach me an odd lesson about God. One day as I was alone one
of the swings facing the main street, she drew nearby with no apparent mission, except to
presently rest on the swing next to mine. I looked at her a bit, then I observed her left hand,
noticing something peculiar. She was wearing what appeared to me to be a gold wedding b
band. A good student of the Catholic faith from the start, I knew that nuns were unwed.
Feeling pretty overconfident about my knowledge, I posed the trick question to her: “
Are you married?” She replied in the affirmative. Wow! In a tone of reserved sincerity, she r
retorted, “Didn’t you know that?” “Gosh,”I must have re joined with, “I have not seen you w
with your husband. Where is he?” She continued confidently, “I am married to one man. A
all of the sisters here are.” That made no sense to me. “And we don’t ever see Him, but we a
are married to Him. And we love Him.” She skirted around the true identity of this
polygamous spouse, and in my sweet ignorance, never did unravel this mystery. But Soeur Therèsewas still cool by my psyche. She had me happily hoodwinked. When/if I go to the
great beyond, I surely hope Sister Théresewill be the one to welcome me.
Soeur Cantin, who taught a combined first and second grade class of about twenty o
of us, brought us closer to the real world of what St. Louis Home was going to be. She was a
a no-nonsense kind of righteous lady. Lots of drills on spelling, the names of the saints, rote
learning of concepts from American history, science, and the Good Book. She introduced us t
to the intensive memorization of the Baltimore Catechism, the “green book” that over my
years at St. Louis Home was to become nastily routine. That’s the book that opened with
the question, “Who made us?” [“God made us.”] “Why did God make us?” [“God made us
because He is the Supreme Being, infinitely perfect, who made all things and keeps them in
existence.”] “Why did God make us?”] God made us to show forth his goodness and…”
Oops!...seems I forgot the rest to that one. There were another three short questions after
that one, followed by the big one: “Recite the Apostles’ Creed.” [I believe in one God, the
Creator Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth”---and another ten or more elusive
sentences that followed]. Gosh, where is that little green book with the drawings of the
angels? But we were told that without possession of the inspirational book, the Baltimore
Catechism, we would be doomed to the fires of hell. Yikes!!!
SoeurCantinalso introduced us to the simple features of English grammar. Can
you spot the verb in this sentence? “God loves every one of us.” Or the subject here? “The
Catholic like this one: “If you recite ten ‘Hail Mary’s’ three times each day with twenty
more during Mass, four rosaries, plus your grace at each meal for a week, how many prayers would you have recited?” Th
at seems a tough assessment for a little kid who had no
opportunity to offer a differing view..
SoeurCantintook responsibilty for inclusion of students with special needs
many, many years before students with exceptional needs won the rights of full
participation in public education. A little red-haired boy, Danny Gamache, with an IQ
hardly greater than 30, always sat out front with SoeurCantin. She found ways to keep him
engaged as the rest of us went about the business of learning. Sometimes he would
project loud, annoying outbursts, but SoeurCantinwould just keep trucking along.
Anyone else doing that sort of thing was just asking for a rubber shoe sole across the palm
of each hand.
On Fridays , the first and second graders would go across the hall to join her
colleague’s class, SoeurBaillergeon’scombined third and fourth grade class. Here, we
came for some fun sing-a-longs. SoeurCantinwould peek out the door to the hallway
where the overhead light would be unscrewed to accommodate a long extension cord to the
adjacent classroom, since none of the classrooms were equipped with electrical outlets. We
treked over to that classroom where all the boys in the class had to move away from their
bolted-down desks to accommodate us little ones from SoeurCantin’s class as we mounted
on top of their wooden chairs that were screwed on to the floor separate from the desk. It
seemed like fun to me at the time. On a small table in front of SoeurBaillergeon’s class was
a small 78-speed record player. She played fun kiddie songs that we sang along with.
When December arrived, we would sing “Old Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Away in a Manger” and “The First Noel.” I think the convent’s music library consisted solely of the
songs noted above and two secular pieces we screeched: “Oh My Papa” and “A Little
White Duck.” Consider, “Oh, My Papa, To Me He was So Wonderful…”—Hold it right
there. That cheerless song was definitely not for Bobby and me, but we had to sing it. The
better one was about the duck. We must have crooned that silly duck song a million times d
during the year, “There’s a little white duck sitting in the water…a little with duck, doing
what he oughter, a little white duck swimming by the lily pad …” and on and on. Singing,
no matter how seemingly meaningless, was always a great way to finish off an
otherwise dull school week of lectures and drills. Though I can’t be sure, I think we may
even have borrowed St.Thomas Acquinas’s much heralded hymn from our chapel,
TantumErgo VeneremurCernui. That inspiring chant was the singing nuns’ unqualified
darling for Sunday Mass and Benediction.
Soeur Baillergeon, except as host of the Grade 1-4 Friday sing-a-longs, had no
appreciable impact on me. Her 78 rpm record player was the greatest technology we had
going—surpassed only by those infrequent occasions when a 16mm film projector became
available for us to view movie hits like The Robe and, can you believe it, the musical,
Oklahoma! The more common audio-visual stimulus would be a filmstrip projector that
permitted us to see the path of hemoglobin, synchronized by a manual beeping sound. No
overhead projectors, no opaque projectors, and no mimeograph machines, though these had
been invented. We must have missed the chisel and stone era by a year.
Soeur Baillergeon did sport a tool different from Soeur Cantin’s for carrying out punishments for those among us who might speak to our mates in class: the use of a quarter
inch thick rubber, which was a foot-long and one inch wide scrap taken from stairwell
covering. To receive this weapon of discipline was understandably very, very painful.
Virtually no one escaped Soeur Baillergeon’s sadistic acts of discipline in the name of
orderliness. Many tried. No one succeeded. I often witnessed the technique of others who
screamed before the strap struck their wrist. Soeur Baillergeon was not impressed with their
style of foreplay in expressing premature pain, even with real tears. Others thought that by
telling their parents on visiting day of their ordeal with corporal punishment, the abuse would
end. Not so. The parents rendered more punishment to their children for snitching on the
Lord’s purveyors of assertive discipline. When the nuns learned that they had been the
targets of these loose lips, they would retaliate with additional beatings. Lesson learned: it’s
not nice to tattle tale, especially against a nun.
Sister Rita was the side kick to another nun, Soeur Boulé, who has earned an entire
chapter to herself later in this volume. She is best remembered as Sister Rita rather than Soeur
Rita because she seemed to be more English than French as suggested by her title, though she
was Québecoiselike the others; it’s just that her English proficiency was strong. Soeur Boulé
gave Sister Rita authority over us only during her absence, as she was a reasonably
responsible guardian for us. While Soeur Boulé had her fully private room situated at the
front of our large dormitory of eighty beds, ten to a row, Sister Rita was assigned to the
private room that caught little attention at the rear of the dormitory.
A nun, more exacting in carrying out the rules of classroom order for grades five and six, was the short-tempered Soeur St. Patrique (French, not Irish for Sister St. Patrick). To be
charitable in retrospect to this sister of charity, she did oversee the older, hence more daring,
among the boys of St. Louis. She also had a demanding non-teaching duty: care of the
Home’s two ponies, “Thumb”, a black colt and “Blaze”, a gold foal. They were purchased
about two years before I was to leave the institution. These ponies were stinky beasts and
probably malnourished. It took a mili-second to notice that Soeur St. Patrique was herself a
bit stinky with that conspicuously horsey stench when we arrived to attend her class for the
day. She did organize rides for us on two-wheel carriages harnessed to the ponies that went
round and round our playground of about a half an acre. Passers-by must have thought we
were most cute and fortunate to have this sort of entertainment. Image to the nuns was
everything.
As Soeur Cantin with help from Soeur St. Croix assumed a special role in preparing
me for my first Holy Communion (Eucharist), it was Soeur St. Patrique who took charge of
preparing me for my sacrement of Confirmation. This was yet another rite of Catholic
passage, one in which your Baptism after birth gave you the choice to become a Roman
Catholic for the rest of your life. However, Baptism was a temporary arrangement.
Confirmation would secure all that permanently. Confirmation was a sacred occasion for
confirming that the Catholic Church did right by you at your Baptism. Now, your
Confirmation would seal the deal: you became officially Catholic by your own choice, rather
than by birth. As a gesture of understanding that one needs choices on matters of spirituality,
we also were given a choice of a saint’s name to go with our baptismal name originally selected us by our parents at birth. As it happens, unlike anyone else in may family
of eight siblings, only brother Bobby and I had saints as our namesakes from birth.
Bobby decided to choose the top saint of the lot, the chief guardian to the gates of Heaven,
and the reputed founder of the Catholic Church and its first pope, the m
an who declared,
“Upon this rock, I will build a church.” Rock translates to pierre in French which translates to
Peter. And so it was, St. Peter for Bobby—his top choice.
My elder brother Lionel’s experience at St. Louis Home bordered on idyllic inspiration
as I recall this portion of his letter to me seventeen years after I left the convent: The teacher asked each boy in the room to pick a saint or patron for Confirmation. I had, earlier in the day, picked St. Michael the Archangel and only awaited my turn in roll call to announce my patron. While waiting, however, I began to wonder whether St. Michael was, in fact, a saint or an angel. After all, he had never had a human body, nor as far as I could recall, ever lived on earth. I admired his daring feat as he led the procession of other fine, upstanding angels in casting out Satan, then known more commonly as Lucifer, out from the place of light and into the pit or void of darkness. That flaming sword! Imagine the scene. All main characters in full drag. All roles played heavily.
There I was in fourth grade trying to figure all this out when suddenly the nun calls out, “And you, Lionel, whom do you choose?” Without a pause—for I had gained a reputation for being quick, foolishly so more often than not, I called out, “Saint Don Bosco.” The inner turmoil was over, argument settled. St. Don Bosco, while not as powerful as St. Michael, was at least a real bonafide saint. The names went on and on, about thirty of us in the class. Before long, I heard a student answer, “St. Michael the Archangel” when asked his patron. The nun went on as usual, no more startled at the choice than any other. I guessed too late that I could have done the same.
St. Don Bosco was the kind of brother or priest who ran a school for boys. He was kind of St. Francis, only a teacher of some sort. The last time I heard about him, I was in fourth grade. You know how accurate the nuns were about saints. I visualized him in fourth grade as I do now, either in fantasy or from some dimly recollected photograph complete with halo: a brown frocked, frocked brother/priest with hand on the head or shoulder for one of the many boys about his person. He and the others were all smiling and standing in a yard—an Italian schoolyard no doubt, talking apparently. He seemed like a decent fellow.
I smile a saintly smile and wonder if my patron has come back to help me out. Maybe I’m Don Bosco reincarnated. Maybe it’s all bullshit. In any case, my patron saint in myth or otherwise, is St. Don Bosco, and I’m doing what he was for work.