Nunzilla Was My Mother

and

My Stepmother Was a Witch

.

Terry Gelormino Silver

Although based on a true story, some names herein have been changed to protect confidentiality.  Any similarity between the names and characters in this book and any real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

© 2009 by Terry Gelormino Silver

Dedicated to my two beloved children

who if life were fair would have outlived me:

Maria Christina Bruington

Edward Michael Silver

And dedicated to

my dear and beautiful granddaughter

who has eased some of the heartache:

Christine Lynn Cline

DEFIANCE

Although I’m wearing sorrow’s ring,

must share his bed, his dark abode,

I will not be submissive wife

or bear his seed –

Aborting all that seek

maternal nourishment.

No guard or lock

or jealous, watchful eyes

will keep me from my love

(for even sorrow sleeps).

One moment’s negligence

and I’ll escape

to be with joy!

CONTENTS

Preface

PART ONE – St. Ann’s Infant Asylum

PART TWO – St. Vincent’s Orphanage

Sisters of St. Francis

Religious Fears and Shenanigans

Other Fears and Horrors

Bums of St. Vincent’s

Orphanage Pets

About Sex

Work Assignments

Boys vs. Girls

Depression Cuisine

Playing the Orphan Game

Playground Entertainment

Visits to the Mental Hospital

Nunzilla’s Fangs

What’s in a Name?

My Hero – My Father

Happy Days at St. Vincent’s

Getting Ready to Transfer

PART THREE – The OS&SO Home

The Home Hospital

Cottage 15

Culture Shock

Comparisons

Teenage Crushes

World War II

The Witch

Cottage 15 Rebellion

The Wicked Witch is Dead

A Year of Turmoil

Emotional Breakdown

To Hell With it All

Postscript

About the Author

Preface

Nuns, whom I collectively call Nunzilla, served as my mother since they raised me from the age of four to fifteen.  My son said I should write about them because they've haunted me most of my life.  My husband said I needed to be locked in a room with them and given a whip so I could beat the hell out of them.

I admit there were times in the past when beating up nuns would have given me a great deal of satisfaction.  I used to fantasize telling them off and physically assaulting them.  If I caught a glimpse of a nun, even from a distance, I would tense up and cross the street.  I was fearful lest my eyes unintentionally acknowledged her presence.

I hated all memories of St. Vincent’s. It was only one of three children’s homes where I had been raised, but it was the one that affected me the most.  And yet my feelings about SVO were sometimes contradictory.

During my hate periods, when I was feeling particularly angry, my anger would seem like a force or energy I could send outward as a powerful weapon against the nuns.

After reading about telekinesis and teleportation, I’d lie in bed and fantasize that I could send out my spirit to haunt SVO and terrify the nuns, based solely on the strength of my feelings.  I fantasized about floating over the high brick walls and around the orphanage grounds before diving down through the winding depths of the underground tunnel that some nuns called the catacombs.  I would shriek, howl, and moan, rattling and stirring up the large rats that always nestled along the overhead water pipes.

I imagined soaring up to the shuttered belfries and awakening the hordes of bats from their upside-down reveries, sending them zooming and zigzagging down toward the awestruck nuns and toward the screaming but delighted orphanage children.  In my mind I saw the playground surveillance nun staring up in terrified wonder, crossing herself repeatedly while praying for divine protection.  I never heard any reports of this happening, so I guess my attempts at teleportation were unsuccessful.

However, to my great confusion, there were times when I thought fondly of the old SVO days—of my childhood home.

When I was about thirty years old, my husband and I visited my sister in Columbus, Ohio, and my husband suggested we take a look at the orphanage that I had talked about so often.  When I saw the place, I broke down in tears.  St. Vincent’s Orphanage didn’t exist anymore.  I was completely shattered by its disappearance.  In its place was St. Vincent’s Children’s Center (SVCC) for kids in need of psychological help, or who had gotten in trouble with the law.  There were no brick walls, four- and five-story buildings, no shuttered windows or belfries, no girls shouting or chanting as they played hopscotch, double-dutch, or any of the other games we used to play.  Where was the place of my memories?  Where was my home?

While I was trying to comprehend all the changes that had taken place, my husband confided to one of the lay people that I had been a child in the old orphanage.  She thought it was wonderful that a former resident had come back for a visit, and she rushed to inform several nuns, who came out of their offices to see who I was.  Soon there were six or seven nuns gathered in a semicircle in front of me.

I panicked.  Being in the company of so many nuns was too much.  I broke down and cried.  It was difficult getting into a fighting mode after sobbing like a baby.  Embarrassed by my weakness, I dabbed at my eyes and blathered on about how beautiful everything looked and how wonderful it was to be back, instead of taking advantage of my dreamed-of opportunity to tell the nuns off.

As soon as I started weeping, surrounded by the nuns, my Jewish husband disappeared.  All that Catholicism and emotion were more than he could handle.

As my husband and I drove away from SVCC, I thought of how my orphanage life had started...

PART ONE

St. Ann’s Infant Asylum

Columbus, Ohio

When my four siblings and I left Bellaire, Ohio in 1929, I remember it was raining.  For some perverse reason, I’ve subsequently considered rain connected with any new venture as being lucky, despite the fact that I was leaving my family home forever and my life was changing so completely.

I was four years old.  For awhile I thought we were merely on a fun trip, but before long I began to have an ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach.  As the miles rolled by, the rhythmic droning and turning of the wheels added to my feeling of anxiety.  My mother was not with us.  My father said she was in the hospital and would soon be well again.

I think of St. Vincent’s Orphanage (SVO) as my childhood home because I’d lived there the longest, but St. Ann’s Infant Asylum, which was across the street from SVO, was actually the first orphanage I entered.

St. Ann’s was for infants and preschoolers.  I was accompanied to St. Ann’s by my three-year old sister Anna, and two infant brothers—Roberto, who was one and a half, and Virgilio, who was only three months.  Our oldest brother, Francesco, who was six years old, went directly to St. Vincent’s Orphanage because he was of school age.

I remember my fear when we finally stopped and got out in front of the large building that was St. Ann’s.  The steps leading up to the front door seemed enormous.  I became more frightened when a black-robed nun came to the door and spoke to us.  Looking back on that event and learning later in life that my siblings and I only spoke Italian (a language I no longer remember), my fright is understandable.  Left by our father with beings we’d never seen before (the nuns), speaking words we didn’t understand, could only have been emotionally traumatic.

We cried when our father left us at St. Ann’s, but he comforted us by saying he would return.  My sister and I thought he meant that same day.  We waited near the front door for him to come back.  We screamed and cried when a nun forced us to go upstairs to bed.  Later that night, the two of us climbed out of our cribs and onto the windowsill, keeping our streaming eyes on the dark street as we watched and waited for our father to return.

Instead of calling me Concetta, my birth name, the nuns called me Terfina, and they called my sister Carmela instead of Anna.  Not knowing English, we didn’t know the nuns had renamed us.  The words “Carmela” and “Terfina” were merely words in a language we didn’t understand.   I imagine the nuns were aggravated when we didn’t respond to our new names.  Nuns sometimes were short on patience.

By the time we learned to speak English, Anna and I thought that Carmela and Terfina had always been our names.  We didn’t learn otherwise until many years later.  Our brothers kept their true names, but they were Americanized to Frank, Robert, and Virgil.

I have scattered memories of my life at St. Ann’s–the rows of cribs where we slept, with a nun going from bed to bed to sprinkle holy water on each child, and the playroom, which had a continuous bench built around the four walls that was also used for storing toys.  We would sit on the bench as we waited for our baths or to get our hair combed.

As four-year-olds often do, I had fanciful thoughts about the world around us and what the nuns were trying to teach.  I thought that God was a giant frog who lived up in the sky, because I knew it was rainy and wet up there.  When the nuns said God was always watching us and knew whether we were good or bad, I pictured him looking down at us with great big froggy eyes.  When it was thundering, I thought the frog god was mad at us and was jumping and leaping all over the sky—knocking things around to scare us into being good again

Although God represented something frightening to me, Jesus did not, because pictures on the walls and in books depicted him as such a gentle human being.  Once, when a couple of little boys and I decided to play crucifixion, I played the part of the long-haired Jesus because we thought he was a girl.  We were very serious about the whole thing, and I willingly submitted to their interpretation of the crucifixion and let them press me up against the playroom wall with my arms extended.  They began pounding away at my hands and banging on my head with their little wooden hammers.  It must not have hurt, because I don’t remember crying.  In fact, I was rather pleased that I was chosen to play Jesus and thought the game was a lot of fun.  The three of us were surprised when the playroom nun saw what we were doing, became angry, and put a stop to it.

I remember having an aversion to Hershey kisses and refusing to eat them because I thought they were cut-off nipples.  I also remember a little boy and I playing a game of “you show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”  It didn’t bother me at all that he had something I didn’t, because I naturally assumed that one day I would grow one too.  My theory, after noticing that boys and men were generally bigger and stronger than girls and women, was that you took turns being all of them.  First you were a little girl, then you got bigger and stronger and became a boy; then you grew a little more and became a woman, before finally becoming a man.

Occasionally, older siblings of St. Ann’s children were brought over from St. Vincent’s for a visit.  I was extremely proud of my big brother Frank, and I repeated everything he told me to anyone who would listen.  When he told me our last name was Cocoa, I believed him, because he was called Frank Cocoa by other St. Vincent’s kids.

I didn’t realize that Cocoa was a name of derision until I got to SVO, and neither did Frank at the time.  Years later, he told me that when he first went to St. Vincent’s and couldn’t speak English, the kids asked him what his name was.  Frank said he thought they asked him what he wanted, so he answered “Cocoa.”   It’s also possible that the boys of St. Vincent’s merely doubled the last syllable of his name, Francesco.

When I was almost six, the nuns informed me that I would be going to St. Vincent’s.  I was both afraid and excited by the prospect of the transfer.  I’d soon be going to school and living with my big brother.

PART  TWO

St. Vincent’s Orphanage

Columbus, Ohio

When I first went to St. Vincent’s, what impressed me most were the high brick walls.  I would stare up at them and wonder at their height, awed that they were taller than my father.  I also was amazed to see so many big girls, especially the oldest ones, seventh and eighth graders, in an orphanage.  I thought they were grown women.

Although I was afraid of the big girls and often turned away when they tried to talk to me, I definitely  admired them as I watched them walk up the stairs to the older girls dormitory.  Sometimes they’d stop on the landing and talk together, looking down on us little girls with amusement because of the way we were staring at them.  They looked so strong and brave in their torn work dresses, their thumbs hooked into their belts, their elbows out, and their legs spread wide.  They seemed afraid of nothing, and often when no one was looking, I would try to imitate their swagger and confident air.

Since the boys and girls were kept separate, I seldom saw my brother Frank.  Boys and girls were also kept separate in the dining room.  Things in general were quite serious at SVO.  We marched two-by-two in complete silence through the halls and corridors to church, school, and the dining room.  We were not allowed to talk during meals.  And it seemed we were constantly praying or going to church.

Simple things, like relaxing on the playground, learning rope jumping and double dutch, ball bouncing, and playing games like jacks, marbles, dodgeball, Red Rover, snake, war, cowboys, Mother May I, statues, and other games, were the high point of our days.  We made intricate patterns with strings wrapped around our fingers, made yo-yos out of flat buckeyes, or made rings and other jewelry with tiny beads and wires.

Many times I just liked to be by myself.  I enjoyed watching ants run in and out of their homes or spiders spinning their webs.  Sometimes I would catch a bug and throw it on the web for the spider to eat.  I would entertain myself by letting flies gather on the open sores of my legs or arms.  I was completely captivated by the way the flies stuck their tongues into my sores.  I didn’t realize that what I was doing could be disgusting to other people.

I thought flowers and trees had thoughts and feelings like people, and a large buckeye tree at the edge of the girls playground was one of my favorites.  I would lean against it when I felt lonely or when I had been punished, certain that it liked me and was sorry I was crying.

It seemed to me that dolls came to life when their owners weren’t around.  I would constantly check the small doll on my bed to see if it had changed position, and the fact that she was sometimes facing another way convinced me that she had moved on her own.  It never occurred to me that another person might have moved her.

Any possibility for magic was eagerly pursued, because through magic I hoped to be united with my father again.  I would search for hours for special stones.  I was sure they were magical if they sparkled.  I left little notes in cupped flowers for the fairies who might help me get home again.  We all thought that catching falling leaves before they hit the ground was lucky.  If you caught the right one, your wish would be granted.

When it became clear that catching falling leaves, finding magic stones, and leaving messages for the fairies wasn’t going to work, I thought prayer would be the answer.  It was a common belief among the girls that if you prayed one thousand Hail Marys on special religious days, like the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, your prayers would be answered.  St. Theresa would let you know by the smell of roses in the air that your wishes would be granted.  I tried it several times before accomplishing the thousand prayers, marking them off on a piece of paper as I prayed, finishing the last prayer late at night in my bed.  As usual, I prayed to be transported out of St. Vincent’s and taken back home again.  I was positive I smelled roses.

Eventually several weeks passed, and nothing had changed.  I was still at St. Vincent’s.  I didn’t know what to think.  I was completely devastated.  The next time I went to confession, I told the priest that I didn’t believe in God anymore.

Instead of questioning why I had made such a statement, he said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”  He gave me some “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys” to pray as a penance and told me to stop being so foolish.

Not being sure what kind of people nuns were, given that we never saw them eat, wash, go to the bathroom, or do anything that other people did, I once tried to peek under their habits when I was lying on the playroom floor to take a nap.  The nun caught me and slapped me for my curiosity.  I wondered what the nuns must have been like when they were nun kids.

Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity

The Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity at SVO were not your sweet movie or television types.  They held not only religion, but life itself in serious regard.  The major emphasis of the nuns having direct contact with the children seemed to be on the penance part of their calling rather than Christian charity—some more so than others.

The nuns’ main focus seemed to be on the afterlife and preparing for it.  Any hardships, suffering, humiliation, human loss, or pain of any kind were to be accepted with gratitude and borne with serenity, as they believed that suffering in this life would help us atone for our sins and lessen the period spent in purgatory in the next.

Sweet or not, the Sisters of St. Francis, who operated St. Ann’s as well as SVO, had the greatest influence on my life—although I’m still not sure they’d like to take credit for it.

Many of the nuns at SVO were from Germany, and they frequently conversed in German so that we wouldn’t know what they were talking about.  Still, we were able to pick up an occasional word or two when the words sounded close to English or were used so often in a certain context.  The non-German nuns would whisper with their faces close together when they didn’t want us to see or read their lips.  The stiff edges of their linen headgear blocked their faces beneath their black veils.  We figured they were telling secrets or reporting on our misbehavior.  We doubted they told jokes, as we seldom saw anyone smile besides the laboring nuns and an occasional teacher.

A few of the nuns used verbal abuse and sarcasm as a weapon against children who displeased them.  Most of the others, particularly those who had direct supervision over children, believed strongly in physical punishment.  They also believed in strict adherence to the most minute detail of religious practice, and they demanded unquestioning compliance when it came to their views of how our daily lives should be conducted, whether in church, school, the dormitory, the dining room, or the playground.  They were quick to punish the smallest deviation.

Some of these minute deviations occurred in church.  Praying with fingers curled down on clasped hands rather than pointing upward was strictly forbidden, as was slumping instead of kneeling upright as you said your prayers.  After the service, such deviations could earn you a slap across the face or a crack with a heavy leather strap, plus continuous practice of the correct position until the fearsome nun was satisfied.

Silence was the golden rule at SVO, and breaking that rule during meals or while marching in line could result in your getting only bread and water at your next meal.  Sometimes they’d punish an infraction on our part by making us stand in front of our plates for five or ten minutes before being allowed to sit and eat—cutting down our total mealtime considerably.  You learned to eat quickly at SVO to prevent the bigger kids from grabbing your food.

In the dining room, dropping a piece of silverware or making a spot on the tablecloth could get you sent to the "pigs' table."  When you were a dining room worker, breaking a glass or a plate was so serious that you were sent to the Mother Superior.  The Mother Superior would look at you sadly, sigh heavily, open her desk drawer regretfully, and then take out her strap and lay into you—for your own good, of course.

Some of us thought we could avoid a whipping by the Mother Superior if we gained her sympathy.  We’d lightly cut a finger or hand with a jagged piece of glass or china.  Squeezing hard until the blood spilled over our fingers, we’d try to look pathetic when we went to her office.  It often worked.

Each nun had her own unique style of rendering physical punishment.  There was one who laid you over a chair and then made the sign of the cross over your behind before whipping you with her strap.  Some swung wildly and let the strap or stick hit you wherever it landed.  One nun asked you to “hold up your snoot” so she could hit you in the face.  Another would take off her wooden sandal and use her weight to hold you down as she beat you.

Occasionally, a nun lacking a strap or stick would get carried away and use whatever was at hand.  One lost her temper and threw her keys at a girl, hitting her in the collarbone and breaking the skin.  One nun was known to hit kids hands with her crucifix.

I once stuck my tongue out at a nun when her back was turned. She had been haranguing us, yelling at us, and being especially sarcastic.  Unfortunately, the nun turned around and caught me.  She gasped in shock and acted as though I had sinned against God himself.  I worried that maybe I had, because the nuns had taught us that God spoke through them.  It frightened me, knowing I had been blasphemous and was in danger of hellfire.  I ran up the back stairs to the fifth floor landing outside the attic, got down on my knees, and prayed, “Dear God, if you will forgive me for the terrible sin I committed, I will become a nun.”

That was the only time I contemplated such a life, but when God didn’t show up in a cloud of smoke, I promptly forgot my promise.

The teaching nuns had their rulers for problem students and the gum-on-the-nose punishment for those who dared to chew gum in class.  One nun would grab you by the hair and bang your head against the blackboard in an effort to force the knowledge into your head.  Once, a boy who had been sassing the teacher had to get down on his knees and lick the wooden floor with his tongue, thereby cleansing the part of him that had sinned.

In another class, an older boy got angry with a nun who had been berating him, and threw his schoolbook at her.  As punishment for such a serious sin, the resident priest gave him a whipping in the middle of the children’s dining room as he lay over a chair.  Although we thought the boy’s sin was horrible, we also thought he was very brave for not crying at all.

Some nuns needed no weapons at all, and would whack you across the back with their massive and muscular arms.  You’d usually lose your balance and fall against the wall or onto the floor.

According to some nuns, you were never supposed to defend yourself against accusations of wrongdoing, even if you were completely innocent.  They didn’t apologize if later information proved your innocence.  They theorized that you had undoubtedly gotten away with something in the past, so even if you were innocent of the current misdeed, the punishment would still be apropos.  There was no way we could win.  The nuns felt they were doing us a favor by letting us suffer in this life so we wouldn’t have to in the next.  One nun insisted that you thank her after you were punished.

Although most nuns had no hesitation regarding physical punishments, one of the nuns on playground surveillance duty apparently hated doing the whipping herself.  She would keep track of all our misdeeds and report them to the dormitory nun at the end of the day.  After we had washed up and gotten ready for bed, the children she had reported were called by name to line up for a couple of lashes with a strap before they went crying to their beds.  Sometimes when a misdeed could not be attributed to a particular person, everyone had to line up for a couple of strokes.

We didn’t have contact with all the nuns at SVO.  Some resided in the SVO convent and taught at one of the Columbus parochial schools, while others merely did administrative work.  It seemed that most of the nuns in day-to-day contact with the orphanage kids did not like children at all, but were placed in care of them in the belief that God would help them gain the necessary skills and correct attitudes.  Unfortunately for the children under their care, these nuns never acquired the necessary gifts from God, and their anger and frustration merely deepened and grew over the course of the months and years.

When the nuns who did not like children tried to relate to them, they frequently lacked the necessary sensitivity concerning what would be appropriate.  One time, the nun in the big girls dormitory thought it would be a very funny April Fool’s joke to put candy bars under each girl’s pillow.  The joke fell flat because nobody laughed.  What looked like real candy bars were only blocks of wood covered with real candy wrappers.  We didn’t get candy often enough, particularly candy bars, to appreciate the joke.

One nun thought it was humorous or efficient to call you by your laundry number rather than your name.  Perhaps she was just showing off her excellent memory, but either way, we didn’t like it, because we knew that people in prisons were also given numbers for identification.  Another nun liked to call children by the nicknames given to them by other children, even if those names were derogatory.  I don’t know if this was meant to be humorous or merely portrayed a lack of sensitivity in someone whose talents could have been better used in other work.

Many nuns were convinced that if your eyes shifted around, or if you couldn’t look them in the eyes, you were a liar.  Even though looking into a nun’s angry face was scary, we learned how to stare them straight in the eyes even if we were lying.  Successfully staring a nun down was something to brag about on the playground.

The nuns who taught church history and religious studies could get quite angry if they considered your questions out of line.  When I was in one of the lower grades, the teacher was telling us how God had sent his son Jesus to earth for the express purpose of dying for our sins, and that the Jews killed Jesus.  She told us the Jews asked that the blood of Jesus be on them and on their children, and said they carried the mark of Cain.   Thinking this over, and remembering that one of our jump rope chants included a rhyme about a “dirty Jew,” I felt that this was a bit unfair, so I asked her, “Why should we hate the Jews? Jesus wanted to die for our sins.  He couldn’t have done it if nobody killed him.”

Wow, did that make the nun angry.  She belittled my intelligence and motives, suggesting that I thought I knew more than the mother church.  She warned me that I should guard my mind against the devil’s promptings. That lesson taught me to keep my mouth shut and my thoughts to myself, even though I often wondered how Mary had lucked into being born without sin, whereas I was born with original sin and was always in danger of being thrown into hell.  Why couldn’t I have been so lucky?

The laboring nuns were the kindest to the children, and they were the only ones who actually seemed to enjoy having them around.  These nuns did all the heavy work for the convent.  They worked in the laundry, the children’s kitchen, the garden, and the potato cellar.  Unfortunately, we weren’t in contact with these good-natured nuns as much as we were with the strict and humorless ones who weren’t too fond of the orphans placed in their care.

As it turns out, most of the so-called orphans at St. Vincent’s had at least one living parent.  In some families, the single parent was too impoverished to take care of the children (these were the depression years when many people couldn’t find work).  Some of the children had a parent with a mental or physical illness, or one who had been imprisoned.

The kindest, most motherly nun was Sister Annella, who was in charge of the children’s kitchen.  She had a rolling gait like a cowboy—I think she had grown up in the West.  Sister Annella would occasionally give you a hug, or a sweet bun or cookie left over from the nuns’ dining room, especially if she caught you crying in the basement hall after a punishment.  She would give a deep sigh and shake her head after you had confided the details.  Somehow you just knew that her sigh and head shaking didn’t mean she was exasperated with you, but was on your side.

Sister Flavian, the laundry nun whom I never had the pleasure of working with, is fondly remembered by former SVO residents, who said she used to make their ironing labors more pleasant by telling them stories as they worked.

In my early years at SVO, there was a very small, old nun in the little girls dormitory whom all the children loved.  Her name was Sister Desideria, but we called her Sister Daisy among ourselves.  She was very gentle and loving, and would never wake you by poking you with the long stick used to open the top dormitory windows, or by spraying you with cold water from a toothbrush like another nun did.  She would merely ring the bell softly and say, “Good morning, children.  Wake up!  Wake up!”  Sister Daisy often put a licorice button on our pillows at night before we went to sleep and gave us a little pat on the shoulder or cheek as she whispered, “Good night.”

We had nicknames for a few of the other nuns as well, calling a very tall nun “AIU Building” after the tallest building in Columbus, and titling another “Pinchpenny” because she would pinch your legs if she felt that your bloomers were rolled up or your cotton stockings were rolled down under your dress.  Other nuns were just given common nicknames, although we wouldn’t have dared to call Sister Elizabeth, Lizzie, or Sister Magdalene, Maggie, except to each other.

Religious Fears and Shenanigans

Overwhelmed with worries about whether I was good enough to stay out of the clutches of the devil and off the path to hell, I often wished I had been a heathen.  They certainly never had to worry about such things.  The Catechism teacher said heathens never had the opportunity to learn about Jesus, so they would not be sent to hell.

It didn’t seem fair.  Sometimes I even thought that I would rather have been born a tree.  A tree could just live and be beautiful and didn’t have to worry about a thing, since it didn’t have a soul.  Although the teacher said animals didn’t have a soul either, I had no desire to be one, because the nun told us the devil often takes on an animal’s form.  I worried that if I’d been born a dog or cat, with my luck the devil would’ve caught up with me.

The nuns would tell us stories about how various groups persecuted the Christians and killed them for their faith.  This gave me nightmares about soldiers breaking into the orphanage and asking me if I believed in God.  I couldn’t decide how I would answer.  Saying yes would mean torture and death, but saying no would condemn me to hell.

Back then, thinking about going to confession was like a heavy weight you carried around all week—less from the anticipation of confessing to the priest, but more from the fear you might die before you had a chance to confess.  The nun always emphasized how important it was to confess all our sins, especially the mortal sins.  Dying with a mortal sin on your soul would send you straight to hell.

In preparation for confession, we were told to lay our heads on our desks, close our eyes, and think very carefully about all our sins before we left for church.

I knew that purgatory rather than hell would be my destination if I died with venial sins on my soul, but I never wanted to take any chances.  I feared that God might have a difference of opinion as to what was a mortal or venial sin.  As such, I always padded and exaggerated my sins when I went to confession, to be sure all possible sins were covered.  It didn’t occur to me that technically I was adding to my sin load by lying in confession.  If the priest was surprised at the number and quality of my sins, he didn’t say anything about it.

Perhaps I was too scrupulous in examining my conscience, which one of the nuns claimed was one of Martin Luther’s failings.  But with the nuns' scrupulous detection and punishment of our smallest misdeeds or deviations, it was hard to determine exactly the right amount of scruples one should possess.

After confession, we sometimes kidded around that we felt light as a feather, because the weight of all our sins had been lifted away.  We were pure once again, we rejoiced.  But all kidding aside, we did feel lighter.

I wonder what God thought about one particular confession, given during one of the annual retreats, when we couldn’t talk or whisper for three days, and spent all our time praying and reading holy books.  During one memorable retreat, a fierce-looking bearded missionary priest was invited to enhance the gravity of the retreat by giving the sermon at mass and by listening to the children’s confessions.  The stern-looking priest scared me so much that I forgot the words to the prayer that begins, “Oh my God, I’m heartily sorry,” and just made whispering sounds without any words—pretending I was praying.  Then I peed on the confessional floor.

I had overly religious periods when I went around praying “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” during play time or while I was working, times when I was constantly examining my conscience or just worrying about my many sins.  I would make up little tortures to atone for them in imitation of saints whose stories had inspired me.

Sometimes I’d put little stones in my shoes, prick myself with a pin, or hold my arms straight up above me for as long as I could stand it before I went to sleep at night.  The idea was to mortify the flesh, which was a constant theme in our religious instruction.  I tried my best, hoping that all the mortifications I performed would balance the heavenly scales in my favor when God was weighing all my sins.  Other girls, as well as I, were frequently haunted by dreams of hell and the devil, waking up everyone with hysterical screams until the whole dormitory was in an uproar.  If the nun who came out of her cell to see what the commotion was about didn’t immediately turn on the light, she would set off further pandemonium because she was completely garbed in black.

I wasn’t exactly sure of heavenly protocol or how much power each saint had, so to keep on the good side of the whole bunch, I tried to pray to each one whose name I could remember before I went to sleep.  I didn’t know what the repercussions would be if I forgot one saint and he or she got jealous.  I had a difficult time getting to sleep because I always seemed to think of another saint as I was drifting off.

To top everything off, I began to worry that perhaps I was becoming too saintly.  We had been told stories of saints who had been visited by devils coming to tempt them, or by angels.  I worried that I might get such visits.  Whether devil or angel, the idea terrified me, and I often prayed to them, “Please don’t come to see me.”

Perhaps the nuns didn’t realize how literal-minded children can be when they told us harrowing stories of saints and their excessive self-mortifications and held them up as ideals for us to imitate.  The  nuns often seemed to expect us to live the same constrained and ascetic life of the nunnery.

There are always children who can be told the goriest tales without blinking an eye, or who can shrug off stories about hell, damnation, and saintly suffering as merely another type of fairy tale—not to be taken seriously.  I was one of those literal-minded kids who thought saintliness and martyrdom were proper goals for children, and, if we did not achieve these goals, should be prepared to take the consequences after our deaths.  I tried very hard to live up to the ideals set before me, and I worried constantly when I failed in my efforts.  I felt overwhelmed by the weight of my sins.

That said, I must have had some sort of internal safety valve, which succeeded in keeping me in balance.  Often, perhaps as a defense against religious frenzy or because the zealotry was imposed on me rather than being a personal choice, I would go into a heathen mode.  Becoming absolutely bored stiff with all the praying and kneeling, I would stare at the linoleum pattern on the floor of the chapel instead of keeping my eyes on the priest during mass.  If I kept focusing and unfocusing my eyes, eventually I would get a cool 3-D effect.

At times I would try to catch the priest’s eyes, certain that he was really my father.  I thought he was under some sort of spell and didn’t remember he had kids.  I was positive that if he and I could look each other straight in the eyes, he would snap out of it, but he never did.  The priest did actually resemble my father.  He was approximately the same height, had the same coloring, and similar black curly hair.

When the priest tried to sing, I forgot all about the possibility that he was my father and giggled along with the other girls as his lousy voice rang out through the church—especially on Holy Saturday when he had to sing three Alleluias in succession in full voice.  If you can imagine a hound dog baying at the moon in extreme agony, you‘ll have a close approximation of how he sounded.  Sister Rosita, the choir nun, would bang hard on the organ to give the priest the correct notes.  Her attempts to get him back on key and into some semblance of a melody were a complete failure.

The resident priest was Father Hettinger, but other priests also came to celebrate the mass at times.  There was Father Mason, a great favorite of the boys because he played football with them; Father Colton, a favorite of boys and girls; and a Jesuit or other missionary priest during the annual retreat.  The Bishop came on very special occasions like Confirmation Day, Easter, Christmas, the occasional Jubilee celebration for an old nun or priest, and funeral masses.

We had several funerals for nuns while I was at SVO.  The dead nun would lie in a casket in the main library at least a day or two before the funeral mass.  Though we did feel sad as we filed around the casket to view the body, as soon as the nun who had brought us for the viewing wasn’t looking, we’d poke at the corpse to see how a dead person felt.

The funeral masses were always very sad, solemn affairs.  When  we sang the Dies Irae in the girls choir, I imagined all the dead joining us, moaning and weeping right along.  It was one of my favorite funeral songs.

Sometimes we’d be so emotionally drained after all the praying and solemnity of a funeral service, or after intensive religious periods like the annual retreat, that we’d enter the church with joy when we saw that Father Colton was going to celebrate the mass.

Father Colton’s masses only took half as long as other priests' because he said the mass lickety split.  We would almost choke trying to hold in our laughter as he yelled out his prayers, which you could barely understand because he swallowed them up almost as fast as he shouted them out.  He shoved the communion wafer at you almost faster than you could open your mouth, and I was sure that one day he would end up hitting one of us in the face.

It was especially difficult to control yourself if you were sitting at the end of the pew when Father Colton stopped to recite the Stations of the Cross.  When he stopped at your pew, his bellowing voice thundered down all around you, and you had to concentrate on the sorrow of the crucifixion to remain in control.

One of the more sacrilegious things we did in church included occasionally reading what were called “Big Little Books,” which were books about Tarzan or other cartoon characters that someone got from a relative on visitors day.  We’d hide the book inside our prayer missals so the nuns who sat behind us wouldn’t know we weren’t following along with the service.

Neither did the nuns know that we had developed our own finger alphabet, so that you could converse with the girl next to you in church or in other places where we were expected to be silent.  Another way we fooled the nuns and amused ourselves was by substituting similar-sounding smart-alecky English words for Latin during church services.  For example, instead of the litany response “terragamus audi nos,” we’d chant “Terry’s got a snotty nose.”

A favorite summer diversion was to clasp your hands together as though in prayer, until a fly landed exactly between your upright thumbs.  Then you could grab him quickly and gently by his legs and watch him flutter his wings trying to escape.

Sometimes, when all else failed and the church service seemed endless and unbearable, a little playacting would be in order.  I’d jump out of the pew and run out of the church with my hand over my nose and mouth, pretending I had a nosebleed or was about to throw up.  Since I had frequent nosebleeds outside of church services, it was easy to get away with it if I didn’t do it too often.  I couldn’t brag about my achievements to my friends, because they might have tried it too.  This would have ended my escape ploy by bringing the whole farce to the nuns’ attention.

One of my more memorable playacting episodes in church started out sincerely enough, but then I got carried away.  That day, my place in the pew was just in front of the Virgin Mary, and I began admiring her beauty and meditating on her life and her role as the mother of Jesus.

Then I guess the devil got into me.  I stepped outside myself and thought how holy and religious I must look, gazing at Mary.  I wondered if the girls around me had noticed, and if they were as impressed with me as I was—especially with the light streaming down on me from the stained glass window up above.  To ensure their admiration, I decided to enhance the drama a bit more.

I had seen nuns facing the altar with rapt expressions on their faces and their arms outspread, praying with an expression that suggested they were seeing a vision.  I wanted to do the same thing, but didn’t think anyone would go for the outspread arms.  Besides, I didn’t want my little drama brought to an unbelieving nun’s attention and have to face her subsequent wrath.  I very much doubted I could convince her of my great sanctity; so instead, I made myself cry while staring with rapture at Mary.

It was enough to convince the girls around me that I was having a profound religious experience.  They were so moved by the scene that they began to cry in sympathy, although they didn’t have a clue as to what was really going on.  I don’t know which pleased me more—looking so holy to the other girls, or knowing I had the power to affect others’ emotions.

The nuns did their best to make us holy.  It seemed we spent half the day praying.  In addition to the daily mass and afternoon benediction services, we said morning and evening prayers by our beds, prayers before and after meals and classes, and twice a day prayers at Angelus when the bells would ring.  Sometimes there were impromptu prayers as the need arose.  We’d be asked to get on our knees and pray for the Pope, pray that God would hold off on rain that might interfere with some scheduled event, pray that the orphanage boys would win a baseball or football game, and we prayed that Franklin D. Roosevelt be elected.  The powers that be were always hearing from St. Vincent’s Orphanage.

Other Fears and Horrors

Religious fears or the fear of inciting a nun’s anger weren’t our only concerns.  Younger girls were often bullied by older girls, though you could cultivate favor with them by doing odd jobs for them or giving them some of your food or treats which relatives had brought on visiting day.  If a girl got the funnies from a relative on Sunday, she became an immediate pet of the big girls, who would defend her against all the other children.

Things could get very rough among the girls, but it was even worse on the boys side, according to my brother Frank.  He once told me about a bloody fight that took place in the boys basement.  This happened while I was still at St. Ann’s.

Frank said that one of the boys said something to anger another boy, who got him down on the concrete and pounded him unmercifully while he bled.  Frank didn’t remember all the details because he was only about seven at the time.  The boy who was beaten died of his injuries a month or so later, and none of the other boys who had witnessed the fight dared to snitch on the kid who did the beating.  Apparently, the nuns never found out the true story regarding the incident, because nothing was done to the boy who had fatally injured the other one.

On both the girls and boys sides, snitching on another child would earn you the enmity of all.  The benefits of enduring a general punishment inflicted on everyone rather than snitching was one of the earliest things you learned at the orphanage.

The girls liked a good fight as much as the boys did, and arguments on the girls side quickly escalated to hair pulling and fist fights.  When that happened, the girls would cry, “Fight!  Fight!” and a crowd of them  would circle the fighters and watch with keen interest.  A couple of my friends and I used to practice boxing with a bag of laundry so we’d be able to take on any challengers.

Practice boxing was more an act of bravado on my part.  I did a lot of bluffing, going around saying, “I’m not afraid of anybody.”  But of course, I actually was.  Some of the girls were tough and mean.  In addition to bluffing, I tried using humor to ease tense moments, or I simply avoided them by spending my playtime hours reading alone.

Mr. Berry took care of the furnace and did general handyman tasks for the nuns.  He would glare and scowl at us if we so much as started toward him, and we couldn’t imagine what terrible things he would do if he should catch us.  Apparently he was friendly with the boys, who were not afraid of him.  Perhaps he was being careful by scaring the girls into keeping their distance; otherwise the nuns might have misinterpreted his friendliness.

When my sister Carmela came from St. Ann’s, she was terrified of old people.  On visitors day, when some old person walked hesitantly onto the orphanage grounds to where the children were playing, Carmela would hide in back of me, screaming hysterically.  As young as I was, I could see the old people were embarrassed that the sight of them had such a terrible effect on a small child.

Some things scared all or most of the girls.  Most of us had no experience with animals, and stories the nuns had told us about the devil often taking the form of animals were very convincing.  If a dog wandered into the orphanage, the playground erupted into complete chaos.

The dog would get more and more excited, barking and leaping, as the screaming, crying girls ran around wildly, looking for a place of safety.  Girls would shinny up the swing poles where the dog couldn’t reach them, or climb to the top of the sliding board.  Some girls would stand on the top of benches placed against the brick walls, while others would climb down into what we called the aerioles, cowering there until the dog finally wandered off.  The aerioles were deep trenches, excavated along the outside of the main building to allow light and air into the underground basement windows.

We thought the glowing eyes of the dog in twilight were proof the devil had overtaken him.

Bats were both scary and a lot of fun.  There was a multitude of them living in the belfries of St. Vincent’s, and they would swarm down among the children on summer evenings.  We’d scream and try to protect our heads with our hands as we ran frantically around the playground trying to avoid the zigzagging bats as they swooped down toward us.

When the bats flew into the dormitory windows at night, they were a welcome intrusion, giving us additional play time.  We ran around throwing pillows at them or chasing them with brooms, without fear of punishment from the dormitory nun.

Although movies portray bats as horrible, evil creatures, I don’t recall that we viewed them as possible receptacles of the devil—or rats for that matter, although we were still frightened of them.

However, we believed the boys would do almost anything, especially if it was disgusting.  Some boys would put locusts (often known as cicadas) into their mouths, trying to make us gag; they’d also wipe their noses on their sleeves, or pretend to fling their snot on the ground.  At least one boy I knew really did fling his snot, grossing us girls out.  The boys also did mean, hateful things like grabbing a girl’s doll and pulling off its head as they were passing through the girls side on their way to the dining room.  Then they’d laugh as the doll’s owner cried.

Rats were a great problem in the old buildings built in the 1800s.  You’d hear them scurrying around the overhead pipes of the underground tunnels, and they would get into Sister Christa’s root cellar or the pantries of the children’s or nuns’ kitchens.

At night you sometimes heard scampering feet running up and down the stairs outside the dormitory, and you’d pull your feet and hands back under the covers.  It was a constant battle to eliminate them with traps and rat pellets.  Sometimes we’d see a great big gray or black one lying dead at the bottom of the aeriole.  We heard that the boys liked to chase and kill rats for sport, but since we were segregated from them, I never saw them do it.

It was scary getting up at night to go to the bathroom because of our fear of rats, ghosts, or the devil.

The Bums of SVO

Double Take

The orphanage dispenses charity,

and the beggars sit like crows

in the basement hall

off the corridor where the orphans

have to pass.

The orphans close their eyes

and run

past the mutual hungers

and reflected shadows –

from the future spun

through old crystal eyeballs.

The orphans close their eyes

and run!

But the beggars tremble too

and, looking back,

close their eyes.

The girls side of St. Vincent’s had the “bums” because it was on the side with the main building and the children’s kitchen.  The men we called bums were actually poor, hungry men out of work in the midst of the depression, but we didn’t know that then.  We were terrified of their gaunt, empty-eyed expressions and raggedy clothes, and tried to keep out of their way

The men would come to St. Vincent’s to beg for a meal, which would be provided by Sister Annella from the children’s kitchen.  They’d line the benches outside the boiler room, in the pathway through which we had to pass to get from the dining room to the playground.  We’d close our eyes and run by them or cling fearfully to the opposite wall as we passed.  It must have been demoralizing for them to see the horror and fear they incited in us.

Orphanage Pets

Mother Cat

There’s only a hole

where Mother Cat

used to wait for me

outside the refectory.

Now I only stub my toe

or kick at the weeds

when I am through

with all my responsibilities.

I sort of had a pet cat at the orphanage.  I never knew if the cat had just wandered onto the grounds, or if it was brought into the orphanage to help with the rat population.  The cat, which I called Mother Cat, just seemed to appear one day with her one kitten.

The kitten was cute, but it seemed a little stupid.  I was impressed that Mother Cat was so patient with her child.  Even when the kitten was too old to nurse, Mother Cat would put up with the kitten trying to nurse anyways, at least until the nursing seemed to hurt her—then she’d just move away.  One day the kitten was gone and Mother Cat seemed lost.  I felt sorry for her.

One day, when I was working in the children’s kitchen, I heard Mother Cat screeching out in the hallway.  I looked out where some girls were trying to walk the cat like a wheelbarrow by holding up its back legs.  I yelled at the girls and chased them away, rescuing the poor Mother Cat.  She and I became family from then on.

Mother Cat was smart.  She learned to play hide and seek without me even having to teach it to her.  One day I was looking for her and finally saw her under a counter.  When I spied her, I suddenly turned and hid behind a door.  She then came looking for me.  To my surprise, when she saw where I was, she took off running and hid under the counter again.  Back and forth.  Back and forth.  Soon she learned to vary her hiding places as I changed around to different locations.  She really was a fun cat.  Sometimes when I was working in a different part of the orphanage, she would be waiting at the bottom of the stairs, where she knew I’d be coming after my work was finished.

The only thing I didn’t like was when she decided to bring me mice that she had caught.  Once she brought me a mouse that was still alive but whom she had crippled.  It was squeaking pitifully as the cat tossed it between her paws and into the air.  I couldn’t stand the poor mouse’s suffering, so I chased the cat away while I set about killing the mouse.  I cried and covered my eyes as I hit the little mouse with a broom.  Mother Cat just looked at me as though she couldn’t understand such behavior.

One day, Mother Cat disappeared just like her kitten had.  I really missed that cat and never found out what had happened to her.  Sometimes I would hang from the top of a swing pole to look over the wall or peer out an attic window to see if Mother Cat was out on the street.  I was sure she was crying for me.  She was the only animal I ever loved.

Many kids had pets, more or less, if you count locusts, grasshoppers, spiders, and caterpillars.  We played with them and kept them in little containers, so it’s almost the same thing.  We would tie a thin string around the fat body of a locust and laugh as it tried to fly away, looking like a tiny airplane; or we would tickle its stomach so that it would sing for us.  We would hold grasshoppers tightly between our fingers and command them to spit tobacco juice, and sure enough they’d spit out some kind of brown stuff into our hands.

We found spiders very amusing, especially in the way they would come running when we threw a bug into their webs.  Then we would watch the bug—sometimes an ant or small worm and occasionally a fly—struggle to get free of the sticky web.  We’d pull off the fly’s wings and throw it in the web for the spider’s dinner.

Caterpillars were fun because they tickled, and some of them were pretty.  We’d sit and watch them crawl up our arms or legs, giggling as they came near the opening of our sleeve or headed up under our dresses.

About Sex

At the orphanage, we were never to show any part of our bodies except for our arms, hands, and head; we even changed our clothes under our blankets.  This led us to think that the human body was dirty, disgusting, and altogether sinful, something best not thought about.  I would have been as horrified to see another girl’s body as she would have been to see mine.

I vaguely remembered learning at St. Ann’s that boys were physically different from girls, but I don’t remember giving it any thought.  Boys lived on their own side of the orphanage.  Except for seeing them across the dining room or church, they were not part of our world.

As young girls, we wore little aprons in the bathtub for our weekly baths.  I don’t know if this practice was to keep us from peeking at ourselves or to keep the older girls who washed us from seeing our private parts.  My only worry was that I might annoy the bigger girl who had to wash me, and her main concern seemed to be getting the job over and done with as quickly as possible.

I don’t remember ever thinking about such things as bodies and people’s private parts back then.  No girl would have even considered exposing herself to another girl there, and any curiosity we might have had was mitigated by the fact that we never saw ourselves reflected in a full-length mirror.  All dormitory and lavatory mirrors were placed high on the wall so that you couldn’t view more than your head.  You were scolded if you took too long combing your hair because the nun said staring in the mirror would lead to the sin of vanity.

It wasn’t until I was in the first or second grade that I had the time, opportunity, and curiosity to find out what was under my clothes that was so taboo.  I had gotten permission from the surveillance nun to go to the basement lavatory.   After I made sure that no one else was in the lavatory, I checked to see if anyone was looking down through the window.  There was no one.  I hurriedly removed my clothing, climbed up on the sink, and took a good look at myself.  It was difficult seeing my rear end, but I saw enough to satisfy.  Later, I wondered if I had committed a sin.

All our clothing was meant to ensure our modesty.  We wore large, baggy cotton bloomers under our heavy petticoats and long dresses.  The bloomers came in handy when we wanted to hide something from the nuns, particularly apples, which we regularly knocked down from a nearby tree.

In the winter we wore long underwear.  No matter what kind of underwear we had on, we weren’t supposed to roll up the legs.  The nun we called Old Pinchpenny used to feel under our dresses to see if our underwear legs were down where they were supposed to be.  If not, she’d give our thighs a sharp pinch.

Since bathing and changing clothing were weekly rather than daily affairs, we must have been pretty smelly, but we didn’t notice it.  We were all in the same boat and were used to each other’s smell.  Occasional washing at the dormitory sink was enough to make us feel clean.

Most of the girls dresses, underwear, and petticoats were made by the nuns.  Other clothing and shoes were donated by local parishes on “Bundle Day,” when they would collect hand-me-down goods for the orphans of St. Vincent’s.

After the donated clothes were collected, they were scattered all over the floor of an upstairs lavatory and fumigated.  Some of the stuff looked pretty old—like from another century.  When we saw shoes we liked, we’d tell the nun that they fit; otherwise we might end up with a pair that looked like granny shoes or were too big.  I once got a pair of tennis shoes that were so large that I looked like a jackrabbit wearing them.

The children who came to the orphanage at an older age than I may have had some idea of how babies were conceived and born.  If they did, they didn't talk about it.  I wasn’t curious, because I thought I already knew.

Catholicism has many stories about God working miracles, and the nuns talked so often about them that we figured they still occurred frequently.  We were sometimes told that a couple had prayed for a baby and that God had granted their wish.  I figured I’d been born because of my parents’ prayers and, when the time was right, I’d pray for a baby too.

Many of the girls must have had the same belief.  We’d tell each other where we had appeared when our parents’ prayers were answered—in a cupboard, on the stove, in the garden, on top of a bookcase, etc.

One day in the classroom, a teacher asked each boy and girl, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  To please the nun and, because we didn’t know too much about careers, one by one all the kids answered “priest,” “nun,” or “teacher,” with an occasional "fireman" or "cook" thrown in.

The nun congratulated the students for their fine choices.  Then she got to me, and I said, “I want to get married.”  The nun seemed to be at a loss as to how she should respond, but all the kids burst into laughter.  If the other kids knew that married people did anything besides kissing and hugging, they hadn’t told me.  I was deeply embarrassed, yet without knowing why I should be.  I quickly recovered and added, “So I can have lots of children who will be priests and nuns.”  I got a warm smile and praise for my choice, but more importantly, the class stopped laughing.

Once a girl working in the dining room left a piece of chewing gum and a note by a boy’s plate which said, “I like you.”  The dining room nun found the note and read it out to the whole room, making it sound silly and a little indecent.  Everyone except the girl who wrote the note laughed at the story.

When I was going on fourteen, menstruation came like a catastrophe into my young life.  I got scared when I found blood in my underwear and didn’t know what it meant.  Was I dying?  Why couldn’t I have a noble death, like dying for my faith at the hands of soldiers, instead of dying in such an embarrassing way?  Was I being punished for the time I took off my clothes and looked at my body in the lavatory mirror?  I begged God to forgive me, and figured that he had when everything was back to normal in a couple of days.

Before I had my second period, the nuns told me I was going to a Columbus home over the Christmas holidays to take care of an eight-year-old boy who would be home from military school during that time.  His mother had outside employment and needed someone to stay in the house with the boy.  The woman had an older brother living with her, but he wasn’t home during the day either.

At that home, I had my second period.  Not knowing what to do, I found some old rags and pinned them around me, rinsed my bloomers, and hung them to dry behind some clothes in one of the closets.  They weren’t quite dry when I put them back on, so I wore them damp.

I didn’t mention anything to the mother, although she was very nice, because I thought I was the only person in the world that this was happening to.  I had no idea that menstruation was a normal female occurrence.  The woman must not have noticed anything, because she didn’t ask me any questions.

As before, my period passed, and I put the whole ugly business out of my mind, enjoying the rest of my stay eating good food and playing in the snow with the young boy.  I particularly enjoyed the attention of the woman’s older brother, who was perhaps in his forties.  I hadn’t been around men or boys since my father, and I had never had a crush on any of the St. Vincent’s boys.  The only male I had ever fantasized about was Nelson Eddy, the movie star.

I basked in the brother’s attention and smiles and began to have an enormous crush on him.  I even wrote, “I love you” on a piece of paper and slipped it into the crack of a basement post.  If the woman or her brother found the note or were aware of my crush in any way, they ignored it.  I returned to St. Vincent’s singing the praises of the brother and barely mentioning the woman or her son.  Needless to say, I wasn’t permitted to go on such jobs again.

The third time I got my period, I realized that this had to be something serious, even if I wasn’t dying.  I decided to tell the dormitory nun, but wasn’t sure how to go about it.  After walking around the dormitory several times, trying to figure out how I was going to word the report of my affliction, I remembered a story we’d been told about the Virgin Mary going to the temple for purification.  I decided that had to be it and whispered to the nun, “Sister, I think I have the purification.”

“Nonsense,” she said, taking me into her little sewing room.  After questioning me further, she shoved a leaflet into my hands with the title, “Elsie’s Twelfth Birthday,” and told me to read it.  I wasn’t too sure what the leaflet was about, since she grabbed it back before I had read the whole thing, but at least it confirmed that I wouldn’t die.  What I concluded was that as you got older, you needed a more thorough cleansing, and what I was experiencing was a stronger, more powerful kind of urination.

The nun gave me a package of cloths and instructions about hiding my supply.  She told me not to talk with any of the other girls about it.  That was fine by me.  Since the whole business seemed kind of shameful, I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it.

Around the same time as the purification incident, my brother Frank caught up with me in the children’s kitchen.  He was very serious and not his usual self, which was being a jokester and giving me brotherly jabs about being ugly, or other things like that.

“Terfina,” he said very seriously, “You’re growing up, and since I’m the oldest in the family, I have to tell you how babies are born.”

He then went into a lengthy explanation about parameciums and amoebas and how they divided.  He asked me if I understood, and I said I did.  I thanked him, and wondered why he had acted so confidential.  I didn’t see what the big deal was.

Work Assignments

A nun yelled at me when I threw a snowball at another girl, insisting that “Ladies don’t do that.”  I responded, “I don’t want to be a lady.  They don’t have any fun.”

It seemed to me that only boys had fun.  Girls were expected to work like dogs and grow up to be quiet, prim, and boring.  Every time I looked out the window to the boys side, they were having fun playing ball, climbing trees, or running around in the big field called The Orchard, while the girls had to work, work, work.  A lady's life seemed to consist of only sweeping, scrubbing, waxing, climbing, brushing, scouring, dusting, polishing, sewing, darning, peeling, and stirring—any and everything but having fun.  I wanted nothing to do with it.

Although I thought the boys didn’t work at all, they must have had some chores, since we didn’t do any cleaning on their side.  Recently, I learned the boys were assigned to do heavy lifting in the laundry room, and to help Sister Christa in the root cellar and her garden.  Their lives couldn’t have been all fun and games, particularly when you consider what my brother told me about the boy being killed in a beating.

Another former resident of SVO told me a story about a boy who had to sleep in the attic because he was a bedwetter.  They also had at least one ogre of a nun who was particularly abusive.  After I’d left SVO, I heard she got into trouble with the law for severely bruising a couple of boys with a horsewhip.  The boys ran away, and when they were caught, showed their bruises to the authorities.  That nun was declared mentally deranged and was removed from her position.

The choice assignment was working in the children’s kitchen under Sister Annella, who was well liked by all the children.  My youngest brother said she would slip him a cookie at times when he was passing by.  He also said she kissed him once and left him completely flustered.  He couldn’t remember being kissed before.

In addition to spending time with the pleasant and loving Sister Annella, the children’s kitchen assignment meant extra food from scraping pots, leftovers from the workmen’s plates, and best of all, a share of the leftovers that came from the nuns’ kitchen.  The workmen and nuns did not eat the same food as we did.

Kitchen work included helping Sister Annella peel and cut an enormous quantity of potatoes and vegetables, stirring the huge pots on the stove, and washing a large assortment of pots and pans.  We also helped to make the coffee for the children’s meals (SVO was given used coffee grounds by a restaurant across the street).  Although we never had milk at our meals, some was used in cooking.

If you worked in the children’s kitchen, you got to see the donated food when it came in.  Some of it was a little spoiled, but Sister Annella did the best she could to make  it edible.  You’d also get to see the incoming meats, and could thrill the other girls with reports of the weird things you saw—things like pigs’ ears, noses, tails, feet, and brains, etc.  I think a lot of the weird meat went into the hash, which wasn’t too bad except for the little pieces of gristle.

Personally, my second favorite assignment was cleaning the church.  I usually had the place to myself, and I enjoyed the warm, serene atmosphere.  As I cleaned and dusted, I relished the sleek feel of the polished wood of the pews and the stair railings leading up to the choir loft.  There was a special feeling about the church, like nothing bad could happen to anyone there, especially with the statues of Mary and Joseph looking down with friendly eyes.

Cleaning the church was only one part of the Halls assignments.  We cleaned all halls and corridors, steps, front offices, and the main library.  When I worked Halls duty, I could snoop into the front office files for information about our family.  From the library, I could sneak out books in my bloomers that were far more interesting than the books available to us.

Boys vs. Girls

We didn’t know too much about the daily happenings on the boys side, but we did know they had a lot of advantages over us.

SVO had an indoor swimming pool in the basement of the auditorium that only the boys could use.  We were envious watching them through the basement windows of the auditorium.  Girls wearing swimming suits would have been too shocking to the nuns, who thought girls’ bodies should be covered from their necks to the middle of their calves.  Even ankle sox, which visiting girls wore, were considered indecent, because they showed too much leg.

Only the boys could learn to play an instrument and be in the SVO Band, which was conducted by a volunteer from Columbus.  Only the boys could go to camp in the summer.  Maybe there were no girls camps in those days.

The boys had a large, hilly, grass-covered field to play in called the Orchard, while the girls play area was only a quarter as big and was mostly paved.  It was a treat when the girls would be allowed to go on the boys side to play in the Orchard on a nice summer day.  We’d sing a song about how we wanted to go to the Orchard before we died.

Depression Cuisine

Day Dreams

Rich people

have candy every day

and sit in the park.

And they never

have to eat pig snout hash

unless they really want to.

We were always hungry and looking for food or something to chew on.  If you got your hands on anything edible, you quickly wolfed it down so that big girls couldn’t take it from you.

We crammed almost anything that could be chewed into our mouths—tree droppings (little hard balls which we called monkey nuts, or flat wafers with a feathery edge and a flat, nutty center), orange peels, peach pits, watermelon and apple seeds, sour grass, and a weed with a peppery taste.  The sewing room nun gave the peppery weed to her canary, which made him sing his little heart out.

Occasionally, we’d chew on coarse brown paper as a substitute for chewing gum, and it would temporarily satisfy our hunger.

After school we’d get a snack.  Some days it would be a slice of bread with oleo on it; other days it might be a turnip or a piece of fruit, depending on what was currently in stock or had been donated.  If the bread was slightly moldy or the fruit was going bad, we’d just scrape or break off the bad part and eat the rest.  My brother Robert ate a bad piece of watermelon when he was a boy and won’t touch it today.

Although I’m ashamed to admit it, sometimes my greed for something to eat would be so overwhelming that I would snatch my little sister’s snack and eat it.  Little sisters commonly suffered at the hands of their older siblings, but sometimes the little sisters won by whining and crying loud enough for everyone to hear.

My sister quickly learned to run and hide when she got her afternoon snack until it was all finished.  In later years, I tried to make up for my meanness to her.

My brother Frank had to be at least as hungry as I was, and maybe more so, but I guess he was more noble.  He would often sacrifice his afternoon snack to the girl he had a crush on.  Frank would sneak through the alley between the brick wall and auditorium building and give me his snack to take to his beloved.  I doubt that I could have matched his generosity.

If someone was eating anything, kids would gather round and yell, “taste, taste,” “seconds, seconds,” or “last bite, last bite,” and whoever said it first would either get a lick, be the second to eat on the item, or get the very last bite.  Sometimes the cry was “core, core” if the person was eating an apple, or “seed, seed,” if it was a peach or piece of watermelon.  We’d open a peach pit with a brick, and we'd eat everything but the stem of an apple.

The girls who worked in the children’s kitchen fought over the leavings from the nun’s kitchen and the workmen’s table.  If they didn’t eat it themselves, they could use it for bargaining power on the playground.  Anything edible was acceptable to the playground bullies, who would then leave you alone and protect you against other bullies.

Whenever we got candy, on holidays or special Saint’s Day, we’d try to make it last as long as possible.  It was always frustrating to have a girl smirking at you while she licked and mouthed a piece of candy days after your own candy was long gone.  Eventually, you learned to control yourself and make a piece of candy last several days by licking it for a few minutes and then wrapping it up again.  That way you could join in tantalizing and frustrating the girls who had not learned self control.

As hungry as we always were, there were some things that everyone hated, like brains (soft, gray, squishy-looking stuff), liver (tough and stringy), sweetbread (smelly and mushy), headcheese or souse (glassy and gruesome), and what I now think was pickled herring, which was donated to the orphanage.  The pickled herring I had as an adult wasn’t as rubbery and was definitely pickled.  We all thought the donated herring was raw; it made many kids gag.  When the dining room nun later found pieces of herring under the tables, in the halls, and in the trash, she said we were wasteful and ungrateful.  She also said we didn’t appreciate the kind people who donated the fish, and that if we were home, we’d probably be eating out of garbage cans.

We were neutral about the hash.  Some of it was good, but there were little pieces of gristle strewn throughout, from the snouts, ears, and other pig scraps donated by butchers or farmers.  We often stuffed food we hated into a pocket or handkerchief so that we could later throw it away.

Most SVO food was either donated by Columbus restaurants or charitable groups, or it was obtained through begging at the local market or nearby farms.  Many times, one of the orphans would accompany the nun on her begging mission when there wasn’t any school—I suppose to serve as an example of the type of kids at SVO.

I hated it when I was chosen, which happened several times.  I suppose I might have had a sort of hangdog, orphan look about me.  One of the nuns used to say I looked like the last rose of summer.

At the market, the nun and I would each hold one end of a large basket as we went from stall to stall.  I always kept my eyes on the ground because I was so embarrassed.  On the farms, I was no help to either the nun or the farmer’s wife, because I was afraid of all the animals, even the chickens.  When she sent me to the hen house for a chicken, she’d finally have to come in and get it herself because I would still be standing frozen against the hen house wall.

Other than major holidays, when we got either donated turkey or chicken, our favorite meats were weenies (usually on Sunday) or some reddish meat that was probably horse meat, although we didn’t know it at the time.  Bread and gravy was a good meat substitute when supplies were low.

We didn’t often have dessert, but when we did, it was usually Sister Annella’s delicious bread pudding.  The ingredients included leftover sweet buns from the nuns’ kitchen, oatmeal, stale bread, milk, and raisins.

When I was small, I couldn’t understand how other girls could enjoy food that I hated, and I would watch with wonder as they chewed gross food with a pleased expression.  I eventually came to the conclusion that the way those girls set their faces must make horrible food taste good.  I began to imitate their expressions when I had to eat something I disliked.  It must have worked, because today I'll eat just about anything.

Sometimes a girl was lucky enough to find chewed gum on the playground.  The girl finding it would chew on it for awhile and then share it with her friends, who’d take turns chewing on it.

It may be surprising, but on the whole we were pretty healthy.  Medical needs other than serious injury or the need for hospitalization were handled by a nun who served as a nurse in the little girls dormitory.  She’d give us cod liver oil during the winter, and when she thought we needed it, Epsom salts and castor oil for our bowels.  She’d get very angry and give you a pounding across your back if you threw up after drinking those concoctions.  She was convinced you’d done it on purpose, and didn’t relish cleaning up after us.

One of the nurse-nun’s medications was a solution with apple seeds floating in it, but I’ve long since forgotten the purpose.  She made a cough medicine that included goose grease, and she or the dormitory nun would make up mustard plasters and put them on our chests when we were congested.   The remedy for a sore throat was to wrap one of our dirty stockings around our necks.  For skin rashes, the nurse-nun would have you soak your arms or legs in hot water in which she had dissolved tablets with skull and crossbones pictured on them.  Then you were sent to Sister Annella for a cup of sassafras tea.  Sister Annella’s recipe for an upset stomach was a tablespoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of sugar stirred into a third of a glass of water.  Just before you drank it, she’d put maybe a fourth of a teaspoon of soda bicarbonate into it and tell you to drink it while it was fizzing.

Once each spring, we all had to drink an awful-tasting glass of sulfur and molasses in water to clean out our systems.  Whenever there was a cootie (lice) infestation, which was often, we’d all have to get in line to have turpentine or coal oil combed through our hair with a fine-tooth comb.

Playing the Orphan Game

Keeping up With the Joneses

(orphanage style)

Denise

remembers all the names

of mommy’s many lovers,

and when her listeners’ interest wanes,

invents a dozen others.

Though some might think calamity,

much different thoughts are Lance’s,

who inherited insanity

from all the family’s branches.

Jose,

who starved six months at least

and is a bit misshapen,

enjoys the thought of food

he’s missed

and basks in adulation.

Alas,

for those without conceit

of family trees all tainted.

How can a little girl compete

who merely isn’t wanted?

We weren’t above using our “orphaness” to our advantage when it suited our purposes.  Each year, St. Vincent’s had a moneymaking event called the Annual Orphans Picnic, though it was more like a church festival than a picnic.  There were games of chance with spinning wheels and other paraphernalia, bingo games, food stands, raffles, and sale items, and dinners to be bought and served in the children’s dining room.

The Orphans Picnic was mainly for the public, but we were also allowed to attend.  We each were given a dime to spend.  This made us feel pretty rich, but we also knew how to acquire more money from the kind-hearted Columbus citizens.  For instance, we’d “accidentally” step on a visitor’s shoes and, with teary eyes and feigned terror, beg forgiveness.  It was usually good for a dime or even a quarter.

Sometimes we’d invest our dime on a pack of chewing gum and then offer to sell a stick to a visitor.  Usually, the visitor would give us a nickel, dime, or quarter and tell us to keep the gum too.  We would then sell the stick of gum to someone else.  Later, we’d compare notes and loot, bragging about who had done the best job on the visitors.

I don’t know if the boys played the orphan game as much as the girls did.  At times we’d have a royal wallow about the tragedy of being an orphan by holding crying contests on the playground during the summer, or in the playroom in the winter.  We’d compete to see who could cry the fastest and hardest, and we’d usually start off with a song:

I am a little orphan,

my mother, she is dead.

My father is a poor man

and can’t buy no bread.

I peek through the window

to hear the angels sing.

Oh God bless my mother

for she is far away –

far, far away.

(author unknown)

After awhile we’d forget it was just a game and continue crying.  It made us feel closer to each other.

Since we couldn’t brag about family wealth and possessions, we’d try to outdo each other about how poor and hungry our families had been, how crazy a particular relative was, or the terrors we had lived through.  One girl would claim to have gone hungry for a week; someone else would say she’d gone without food for a month and had nothing but newspaper for clothes.  Girls would claim to have lived through fires, witnessed murders, been captured by witches, or lived through other terrible events.  I think we knew we were all making up stories or exaggerating real events, but it was great entertainment when we were bored.

A fight wasn’t the only thing that would bring the girls running.  Word of an epileptic fit by one of the girls would pass through the playground like wildfire.  We would circle the person having the fit and watch intently as she went through her seizures and was tended by the playground nun.  When the girl on the ground came to again and started crying from embarrassment, the crowd would feel awkward and move away.

Playground Entertainment

Bravery contests were popular on the girls playground.  This included fistfight challenges and competing for the greatest number of concrete steps you could jump backward over.

Another bravery test was jumping aerioles.  You’d take a running start from the playground and leap over the aeriole to a narrow window ledge of the main building, grabbing quickly for the mesh screen.  The aerioles, or trenches, were maybe four or five feet deep and three feet from the building to the outer edge of the aeriole.  The scariest part was leaping from the window ledge back to the playground because you couldn’t get a running start.  If we had fallen, we’d have been seriously hurt.

When I was old enough to wash windows, I liked to make the nun in charge nervous by standing on my toes on the outside window ledge and acting like I might fall at any moment.  I once achieved supreme peer admiration when I climbed out a fourth floor window to an outside ledge and into another window.  It really wasn’t as dangerous as they thought, since the two windows were near each other at the corner of the building, and I could hold on to the frame of one window while I grabbed for the frame of the other one.  Still, the stunt had the appearance of being dangerous, so I got a lot of credit and prestige for bravery.

During the first couple of years that I was at St. Vincent’s, one of the girls’ favorite games was war.  To play war, two lines of girls would face each other and sing a challenge to the other side in turn:

Are you ready for a fight?

e-i-over.

Are you ready for a fight?

For we’re the American army.

The other side would respond:

Yes we’re ready for a fight.

e-i-over.

Yes we’re ready for a fight.

For we’re the German army.

After the singing challenge, war was declared and both sides would start hitting each other.  The little girls would act as spies, sitting innocently near the other side’s lines and pretending to be playing in the dirt.  They’d listen to the other side’s battle plans, then report back to their own generals.

The wars got so vicious that the mother superior was brought into the situation, and she told us with stern forcefulness that there would be no more wars.  We were all disappointed to lose one of our most exciting games.

I was just one of the little girls at the time of the wars and didn’t get into any of the fighting, but I enjoyed the importance of being one of the spies, and it was very exciting to see the big girls give each other a beating.

We also went in for gentler activities and contests on summer evenings, such as putting on little skits, telling stories, and taking turns singing.  Because of the diverse backgrounds of the girls, many of whom came to SVO at an older age than my siblings and I, our store of songs was varied and steadily increasing.  Songs were also handed down from previous SVO residents, so we had a pretty large repertoire of old songs.

Most of the songs we favored were lengthy and sad ballads about death, lost love, prison, and betrayal; also cowboy and hillbilly songs.  We particularly liked one song that the nuns didn’t.  We would sing it with great fervor while looking toward the brick walls:

I wish I had wings like an angel,

over these prison walls I would fly.

I would fly to the arms of my darling,

and there I’d be willing to die.

(author unknown)

Another fun thing to do was trying to find out what a nun’s real name had been before she entered the convent, since at that time they didn’t keep their birth names after taking their vows.  We’d get some distance away from a nun and yell out her previous name, turning our faces away from her so she wouldn’t know who was yelling it.  When the wind was blowing and the nun’s veil lifted up, we’d try to get close enough to see if she had any hair or was completely bald.

Visiting day was on Sundays, and even if we didn’t have a relative coming to see us and bringing us goodies, we’d occasionally get a handout by hanging around the fringes of family groups and looking pathetic.

Brothers and sisters could visit each other on Visitors Day.  For us, it was about the only time we could get together as a family.

There was an unwritten rule that you always protected your little sister, and if anyone else touched her without permission, you had to fight them, even if the whole thing was your sister’s fault.  Good friends would give each other permission to hit a little sister who became a nuisance without the incident leading to a fight.  My sister Carmela wasn’t happy that I gave my friend Mary Zita permission to hit her, but in my eyes it was only fair, since Mary Zita had given me permission to hit her little sister also.

I tried to do my duty in protecting Carmela, and I challenged other girls when they picked on her.  But when Carmela was continually getting me involved in fights with older and stronger girls, self-preservation made me question her before I issued a challenge on her behalf.  She had been bringing me little presents and telling me she’d found the various items.  What she didn’t tell me, however, was that she was finding these little goodies in other girls’ lockers and got caught.

Although I tended to bully my sister and liked to upset her by saying that she wasn’t really my sister—that daddy had found her in the street and brought her home—there were times we had fun together or cried together, not really knowing why we were crying.

I think I was jealous of Carmela, who was more coordinated and athletic than I was, and more outgoing, which is probably why she had more friends.  It bothered me when she wanted to be with her friends instead of me, which could be one of the reasons I picked on her—other than the fact that I could be downright mean at times.

Carmela did a wonderful impression of Popeye (or maybe Jiggs from the cartoon Maggie and Jiggs), squinching up her face and closing one eye, that would have me howling with laughter.  We both would get the giggles when we would put one eye against the other’s eye and flutter our lashes against each other.

Carmela and I liked to sing songs together.  I’d sing the melody and she’d harmonize the alto part until I’d drive her crazy.  This usually happened when I kept asking for constant repeats of “Little Gray Home in the West,” which I thought we did particularly well.

One time we were horsing around together on the bench that circled a large buckeye tree.  We took turns lying with our eyes closed and our heads on each other’s laps so we could count each other’s teeth and pretend to be examining each other’s tonsils.  While I was being examined with my eyes closed and my mouth open, she saw a fly headed for my open mouth and did not warn me.  I almost swallowed the darn thing, and while I sputtered in anger and disgust, she laughed so hard that she fell off the bench.  In later years, it was one of our favorite stories.

Visits to the Mental Hospital

There was a man named Martin DeChant who used to come to the orphanage and pass out candy, and occasionally, balloons.  The nun on playground surveillance would look unhappy as he took us on his lap or kissed us—something we weren’t used to and didn’t like.  Almost every time he’d come, he would have us pose for a photograph.  We never saw the photographs, but it did make us feel important.

Many years later, Mr. DeChant was written up in the Reader’s Digest as a “My Most Unforgettable Character.”  I should have made a copy when I saw the article, but I didn’t.  I can’t locate it now, although I’ve checked with my local library and with Reader’s Digest.

The person who wrote the article mentioned that Mr. DeChant was an albino and made him out to be very saintly.  All I know for sure is that he used to take children with a mentally ill parent to the Columbus State Hospital for visits now and then.

As one of the children taken on these visits, I remember being frightened to death of my mother and the other inmates of the hospital.  Many of the inmates were disheveled, haggard-looking creatures with wild hair and staring eyes, who would glower at us, mutter obscenities, or shout unintelligibly as we walked by.  One time several women got into an argument as to which child each of them wanted.  Carmela and I rushed past them while clinging tightly to each other’s hands.

The whole atmosphere of the mental hospital was menacing and oppressive, with the large, gloomy-looking buildings and barred windows with fierce faces peering out of them.  The fact that the wards had to be unlocked to let us in and locked again behind us did not fill us with a sense of security.  It filled us with panic, and made us think that something terrible might happen and the doors would not be unlocked fast enough to save us.

Since we were trained to be sheep—to never speak up or question any decision made by an adult—it never occurred to us to say we didn’t want to go to the mental hospital whenever a nun or Mr. DeChant decided to take us for a visit.  We did, however, enjoy the candy Mr. DeChant provided on these trips.

One time a nun took a group of us to the hospital for a visit, and something funny happened.   At least we thought it was funny, but the nun seemed embarrassed by the whole incident.

All the children went separate ways with an employee or nurse to the various wards, according to where their particular relative resided.  That time, the nun decided to stay with my siblings and me as we visited our mother at the end of a long ward.  My mother jabbered away in Italian, which we didn’t understand, so we just looked at each other in confusion and studied her, wondering how long we had to stay.  The nun just sat there observing us.

While we were sitting there, some patients at the other end of the ward were rocking and whispering behind the screens meant to give privacy to both the patient and the visitors.  Finally we heard a loud scream—one of the women had tried to push one of the others out of her rocking chair.

The two women began fighting and cursing.  The nun with us blushed, obviously embarrassed by the language they were using.  We pretended we weren’t listening and that nothing unusual was going on.  Just when the violence seemed to be getting out of hand and seemed like it could become a danger to us, the screaming stopped. The woman who had been trying to push the other out of the chair looked out between the screens.  Seeing the red-faced nun, she yelled cheerfully, “Ah, there’s one of the good Sisters, God bless ‘em.  You know, I was raised by the Sisters, and that’s why I turned out so well.”

The fear of insanity was one of the heaviest burdens I carried around as a child, certain that when I reached twenty-nine (the age of my mother when she had her mental breakdown), it would happen to me and there was nothing I could do to prevent it.

Although taking children to mental hospitals might be beneficial for the patients, I doubt that most children younger than their teens can handle the fears generated by looking at and listening to deranged people—at least without prior and complete preparation.

Nunzilla’s Fangs

The Anointed

Kindness

may be the cause

of unimagined sin;

and so, they religiously

abstain.

But on a hill of broken spirits

they stand

and make their presence known

to God.

There were a couple of nuns who made it known, without saying it in so many words, that SVO kids did not deserve their charity.  It was easy for us to believe it when you heard them mention, ever so delicately, that many nuns came from extremely fine or even wealthy backgrounds, and had made tremendous sacrifices “to come here and take care of you.”  It seemed like a greater burden than any nun should have to bear.  Some nuns expressed their opinion of our low status with sarcasm and a lift of an eyebrow when dealing with us.

Regardless of whether their superiority was expressed by direct words or gestures, or veiled behind apparently innocent phrases, children got the message loud and clear.  Perhaps some of the nuns who were prejudiced were truly unaware of it; others were merely insensitive.  One of the saintliest nuns referred to one of my brothers as “Bongo” and probably meant it affectionately.  I myself was called “chocolate drop” and “brownie” by a couple of nuns because I was a dark-skinned Italian.

Perhaps the playground surveillance nuns meditated on spiritual matters and didn’t really listen to our rope-jumping and ball-bouncing chants, a couple of which referred to Jews and black people in a derogatory way.  In any case, we were never reprimanded for it.  Perhaps the nuns were merely as dense as I was.  I often joined in the chants even though I too was a victim of verbal abuse.  I didn’t see anything wrong with the chants, because there weren’t any Jewish or black children present, so it wasn’t anything personal.

One of my few memories of contacts with blacks, or Negroes as we said back then, was the one time when a little black girl, only three or four years old, wandered onto the orphanage grounds.  We treated her like we would a new doll, swinging her around and trying to feel her hair.  The playground nun finally saw us with the child and took her to the office so her parents could be contacted.

The only other times we saw blacks were the rare occasions when we were taken for a walk in nearby Franklin Park.  The SVO kids and black kids would usually exchange insults.  We called them graham crackers and they called us soda crackers.  Sometimes, after seeing us with a nun, kids would call us cat-lickers because we were obviously Catholic, and we would call them pot-lickers for being Protestant.

A couple of the nuns had an extreme and obvious dislike for my siblings and me.  The fact that we were particularly singled out for criticism and ridicule was confirmed at a reunion of former SVO residents many years later.  When I identified myself to a woman I hadn’t seen for over fifty years, she asked me, “Why did the nuns dislike your family so much?”

I wouldn’t say this was true of all or most of the nuns, but the nuns who did have an aversion to our family didn’t try to hide it.  We did not misbehave more than other children—in fact, we behaved better than many of them.  My siblings and I were more completely a product of their religious training and influence, because we had come from St. Ann’s Infant Asylum, which was run by the same order.  Many of the other children had come to SVO as older children and resided there only a few years.  By the time I left SVO, I had been with the Sisters of St. Francis approximately twelve years.

Not understanding the reason for the nuns’ antipathy toward us, I tended to blame my brother Frank, perhaps unfairly.  He seemed to be a constant target of the other boys and the nuns, and I felt the ridicule and antagonism directed toward him was in turn directed to the rest of his family.

In any event, derogatory names and references bothered me more when they came from the nuns rather than from the kids, who usually acted from anger or plain childish roughhousing.  Among ourselves, we even had name-calling contests, where the point was to be as colorful as possible in order to win.

It’s not that I expected the nuns to love us.  After all, we realized we were not among family.  I just would have liked for them to treat us fairly.

The fact that I was considered extremely ugly was made very clear to me when I was about twelve years old.  The nun in the big girls dormitory put her hand under my chin and said sweetly, “Why did God make you so ugly, child?”

Although I hadn’t thought of myself as beautiful, I hadn’t thought of myself as so emphatically ugly either.  Although I was taken aback by the nun’s question, I answered as the perfectly trained robot I had become.  “I guess it was God’s will, Sister.”   This earned me a pat on the head and a compliment for accepting my terrible affliction.  This was the same nun who thought it was a terrific April Fool’s joke to put a wooden candy bar under our pillows.

Some months later, another nun (I believe it was Sister Paul) decided I was beautiful.  It must have been after she had substituted for the nun who was regularly in charge of the dishwashing and clean-up group.  After the work was finished, she led a group of us in song, and I remember feeling uncomfortable with the way she stared at me while we were singing.

Sister Paul confided her thoughts about me to Sister Annella, which some of the other girls overheard.  Sister Annella, one of the kindest nuns, told me what Sister Paul said and then looked me over, adding, “It’s strange, but I never thought so.”  I’m positive that Sister Annella wasn’t trying to hurt me.  It was just that she shared the same ideas about beauty as most of the nuns and children.

I began to think that Sister Paul had been making a joke at my expense.  The girls, who had overheard Sister Paul talking with Sister Annella, ran after me singing “Beautiful Terfina” to the tune of Beautiful Ohio in a taunting way, as though I had initiated the incident myself.

The nun who seemed to have the strongest dislike for our family was the dining room nun, who seemed to get a great deal of satisfaction when she could place all my siblings and me at the pigs' table.  She seemed to keep her eyes on us, waiting for infractions as simple as dropping a utensil on the floor or making a water spot on the tablecloth.  I was always embarrassed and ashamed when we ate there together, and it upset me when my brother Frank laughed and acted like the whole thing was hilarious.

One day, the dining room nun gave a very definitive exhibition of the way she felt about our family.

Somehow, one of the girls had found out that my father had sent money to St. Vincent’s for school supplies.  It was only $125, but it was a lot of money in the mid-1930s and a lot of money for my father, who was in the Dayton, Ohio Veterans’ Hospital.  By the time the information had passed from one child to another, the reported amount had blossomed to $1,000.

It was only through other children that we even heard about my father’s gift, not from the nuns, and we were uncertain of the true amount.  However, this was the first time that we could feel special and proud of our family.

The dining room nun finally had enough of all the rumors and congratulations that we were receiving and called everyone to attention.  “There are rumors going around,” she said icily, “that Mr. Gelormino sent $1,000 to St. Vincent’s for school supplies.  It was not $1,000; it was not $500; it was a mere $125.  That wouldn’t take care of even one of his five children for a week, and he has never sent anything else for their care.  So let’s not have any more talk about all the money that Mr. Gelormino sent.”

She had the children laughing as she talked, stretching out her words—particularly the name Gelormino—and pausing occasionally for maximum effect, until finally I felt like crawling out of there and hiding.  After my father’s death, I found quite a few cancelled checks made out to St. Vincent’s Orphanage among my father’s possessions.  Either the dining room nun hadn’t checked her facts, or she just didn’t care.

For quite a few years, my worst affliction and cause of deep shame and embarrassment was the fact that I was a bed-wetter (which I now understand is fairly common in orphanages and homes where children feel insecure).  I thought about “the problem” constantly during the day and before going to sleep at night.  Unfortunately, all my praying did not help.

Another girl and I, and occasionally a few others, constantly endured whippings, ice cold baths, and being forced to sleep in the bathtub or on the lavatory’s cold tile floor, even in winter.  That girl and I, who were the main transgressors, were eventually given a cot to share rather than sleeping on the cold floor.  The dormitory nun became concerned about my constant coughing and was afraid I was getting consumption (tuberculosis), the same illness my father supposedly suffered from.

The dormitory nun finally thought of a punishment that she was sure would break us of our stubborn clinging to such a disgusting habit.  She forced us to wear our wet sheets on our heads in the middle of the playground with a sign hanging around our necks that said, “I am a pig.”

I eventually outgrew the problem, and I assume that my partner in crime did, as well.  Since she left St. Vincent’s before I did, I don’t know how long her problem lasted.  I think of her often and wonder how our punishments affected her, and how she is doing today.

For some unknown reason, the Halls nun took a dislike to me before I had even been assigned to her work unit.  Once, as I passed her, she said to me out of the blue, “Just wait until you work for me.”

I didn’t know what she meant, but I recognized the threat.  Since I’d had no prior contact with her, her opinion of me must have come from another nun.  I wasn’t sure what she’d found out about me, although I knew there were lots of things wrong with me.

One thing that bothered a few nuns was that I read too much and would get so removed from my surroundings that I wouldn’t hear a nun’s commands or the signaling of her bell.  One nun claimed I was drunk on reading, because when I became engrossed in my book, I wouldn’t hear her speaking, even if she was standing right in front of me yelling.  When her shout wouldn’t bring me back to St. Vincent’s, an angry slap in the face would usually do the job.  Once in awhile, I stumbled over things in my path or fell down stairs because of trying to read as I walked.  Sometimes the places and lives I was reading about became so real to me that I didn’t notice obstacles in front of my eyes.  At those times, St. Vincent’s Orphanage did not exist.  When I mentioned to one nun that people in books were so much nicer than those in real life, she was very offended.

Whatever the reason for the Halls nun’s dislike of me, she finally got me in her work unit and drove me relentlessly in my cleaning efforts, which never met her high standards.

One day when I was on my period, I was assigned to scrub down and wax the six flights of back stairs on my hands and knees.  The Halls nun kept yelling and threatening me because she claimed I wasn’t working fast enough or doing the job right.  Also, she suspected I was trying to avoid work by telling her I didn’t feel well, and asking with tears in my eyes if I could be excused to go to the bathroom.  This further enraged her, and she berated me for my worthlessness and drove me still harder.

She suddenly stopped in mid-sentence.  She became aware of the blood running down both my legs, which had stained my work clothes as well as the stairs I was working on.  In a very quiet voice, completely unlike the way she had been previously speaking, she gave me permission to quit for the day.  After that, she became nicer, as though she had become aware of me as a human being rather than some kind of detested symbol.

What’s in a Name?

Incognito

On summer days

I like to climb

to the top of the swings

and watch the world.

People passing the wall

don’t know who I am –

so they smile.

Sometimes

the tree reaches over

and touches my cheek.

As a child, I used to shinny up the swing poles so that I could look over the brick wall and watch the people walking by.  We called the other side of the wall “The World,” as though it were another country or planet.  Sometimes people passing by would look up and smile when they saw me suspended there.

It made me feel good when they smiled, but I thought they’d stop smiling if they knew who I really was... if they knew I was Terfina, the one with the terrible, horrible, shameful bed-wetting problem; the one with the ridiculous, ugly, and weird name.

Terfina!  How I hated that name.  It represented everything that was wrong with me—all that I hated about myself, all the stupid and embarrassing things I’d ever done.  To me, it seemed more like a label than a name—more like the sign I’d had to wear around my neck one day on the playground “I am a pig.”

I cringed every month when the resident priest came to the classroom to read report cards.  During all my years at SVO, he couldn’t seem to remember how to pronounce Terfina Gelormino.  The other kids would crack up as the priest stammered and stumbled over every syllable – Tur, Tir, Turf, fy, fee finna, Gur, Gal, Galum, Jelor, myna, minno, meeno.

I particularly hated my name when the nuns would team it with the last name I hated even more–Terfina Cocoa, knowing full well that Cocoa was not my real name.  Regarding my first name, they (like I) may not have known it was not my real name, since I had arrived with it from St. Ann’s.

When I was in my early teens, we were taken to visit our father at the Dayton, Ohio Veterans Hospital after he had sent money for the trip.  At that time, he asked me, “Where did you get that f---ing name Terfina?  Your name is Concetta.”

I didn’t think Concetta was much of an improvement in an orphanage full of cute American names like Patsy, Mary, Peggy, Annie, Sally, etc., and I don’t remember telling anyone my real name.

After that I just thought the nuns made up the name Terfina as an indictment of the lowly person I was.  In later years, Italian people I questioned about the name had never heard of it, and I have never seen it listed in a book of names.  I never questioned the nuns as to why they had changed my sister’s and my name but not our brothers, either then or years later, mainly because I wanted to keep as far away from nuns as possible.

Another name I was given was my confirmation name.  The nun told us to choose a saint’s name, and I chose the name Peter.  She looked at me like I was completely stupid, since Peter is a man’s name.  I hadn’t seen anything wrong with choosing Peter, because a few of the nuns had men’s names, like Sister Paul.

“You can’t take a man’s name,” she said. “Take the name Agnes.”

Well, Agnes wasn’t a name I particularly liked, and I didn’t think Terfina Agnes Gelormino sounded very good together, but when she told me the story about St. Agnes, I thought it would be okay.

According to the nun’s story, St. Agnes was captured by soldiers, who ripped her clothes off.  She was exceptionally modest and prayed to God to cover her nakedness.  Her prayers were answered, and she immediately sprouted long hair that completely covered her body.

Then one day, I finally got a name I liked.  A friend’s brother came to visit her at SVO, and after she introduced us, he called me Terry instead of Terfina.  I was ecstatic, because there was a heroine in a Zane Grey book who had the name Terry, and she seemed like such a confident and likeable person.  I immediately asked other girls to call me Terry.  Many of them also liked the name and changed over right away, although the nuns kept calling me Terfina.

When I was at SVO, my brother Frank was the biggest horror in my life, far worse than being saddled with the name Terfina, and far worse than being considered ugly or any of the other problems that had weighed me down.

Before my sister and younger brothers came to SVO from St. Ann’s, my Sunday visit was only with Frank.  It usually ended disastrously and with great embarrassment.  Frank was two years older, and he liked to roughhouse with me as though I were a boy.

One time he talked me into playing football and graciously said I could carry the ball.  Imagine my surprise when I was tackled and thrown to the ground.  Soon the two of us were rolling around on the floor in front of all the visitors.  The nun was horrified and sent the two of us out of the visitors room in disgrace.

After our sister and younger brothers joined us at St. Vincent’s, our Sunday afternoon visits usually ended up with Frank and me competing as to who was right on any subject—in effect, who was the head of the family.

I firmly disputed Frank’s leadership, because he was constantly antagonizing adults and children and making a fool of himself.  Whether right or wrong, I felt Frank’s actions brought ridicule and hurt to the rest of the family, not to mention the stigma that came along with the terrible nicknames with which he was dubbed.

At SVO, if the oldest sibling had a nickname, whether given in ridicule or admiration, the younger brothers and sisters would often inherit the same name with the adjective “little” in front of it.  Frank was the first to be called Cocoa and the rest of us received the same name.  Someone gave Frank an even worse name when he was caught playing around with horse dung, and I cringed every time I heard it, expecting to inherit that one also.   Thankfully, I didn’t.

In retrospect, I can now be more sympathetic to Frank, who must have had a hard time of it too.  He was the first of our family to enter St. Vincent’s and was all by himself.  He probably seemed like an alien as far as the other boys were concerned.  He had the unusual name of Francesco Gelormino, spoke only in Italian, and had a darker complexion.  Children, like animals, will attack anyone who looks and acts different from the pack.  The nuns should have operated on more than instinct, but they picked on him also.

As a child, I felt that Frank’s clownish behavior and wild antics were what caused the attacks on him and eventually on the rest of his siblings.  Yet, I realize now that his antics might not have been a cause but a reaction to the kids’ and nuns’ constant attacks.  It may have been his way of showing everyone they could not frighten or defeat him, and that he would laugh in the face of their ridicule and hostility.

My Hero – My Father

When I thought of my parents, I mostly thought of my father, because most of my memories were of him.  Thinking of him gave me good feelings, but thinking of my mother only caused fear and anxiety.  I couldn’t remember any time with her before she went into the Columbus State Hospital for the mentally ill.

My father had been quite handsome as a young man, and even the nuns seemed to be aware of it.  Perhaps part of it was that he had a strong resemblance to the resident priest.  I idolized and fantasized about him until he became almost a mythical figure, a giant of a man who would stride onto the orphanage grounds one day like a conquering hero.  In my imagination, my father was over six feet tall and he would come and sit up high on a throne so that he could see everyone and they could see him.

In my fantasies, everyone in the orphanage would have to pass before him and, after questioning us who were his children, he would decide who would get rewards and who would get punished.  My imagined punishments didn’t go beyond whippings with a leather strap, and only varied in the number of lashes each would receive.

The rewards were always candy.  Those who had been the nicest to us would get a large milk can full of candy—maybe two.  The ones who had been a little nice might get one or two sacks of candy, and the ones not too mean might get one or two pieces only.

I held on to this vision of my father for quite a few years, but the rewards eventually changed from candy to money.  My fantasies were destroyed one day when he finally came to SVO for a visit after an absence of several years, during which he had been admitted to the veterans’ hospital.

We had been told that our father would visit on the day of the Orphans Picnic.  My sister and I waited eagerly on the bench circling the large buckeye tree near the girls playground.  When we had last seen him, he had looked like a tall, young, and vigorous man.  This time, we did not even recognize him as he passed in front of us.  “I wonder who that old man came to see,” I said to Carmela.

That old man walking with a cane was my father.  He was only about forty years old at the time, but he looked much older.  He was not as tall as my child’s viewpoint had caused me to believe—probably only about five feet, five inches—and he looked very weak and trembly.

At first I wouldn’t accept that he was my father, and I wondered what the man was up to.  I asked him questions that only my father could have answered, then took out a photograph of him and my mother and asked him if he knew who the people in the photograph were.  The tears running down his cheeks gave me my answer.  I finally had to accept that the strange man standing there really was my father.

I also realized that all my fantasies about him were false; that the people who had been mean to us would go unpunished; and I would never be able to make the grand gesture of rewarding those who had been kind to me.

My father looked hungry, so I shared my hot dog with him.

Happy Days at St. Vincent’s

Life wasn’t always grim at St. Vincent’s.  The fundraising Orphans Picnic was eagerly anticipated all year long and talked about long afterward.  Due to the generosity of local individuals, churches, and civic organizations, the nuns treated us to an annual trip to the zoo, and a picnic to Franklin Park.  During the summer we’d get an ice cream or popsicle treat once in awhile, and I remember we went to the circus a couple of times.  Women from the Big Sisters Organization would come once a month to bring candy and small gifts to those having a birthday that month.

During my last few years at St. Vincent’s, some charitable group arranged for us to see movies in the SVO auditorium a couple of times a month.  We all loved Shirley Temple, Jane Withers, Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland, and Bobby Breen, and we learned the songs from all their movies.  We particularly liked the Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy movies; at least the girls did.  I would try to dream about Nelson Eddy by thinking about him before I went to sleep.

The nuns liked the movies as much as we did, but they would lower their heads and avert their eyes when something too worldly came on the screen—such as a man taking off his shirt or the characters becoming too romantic.  The nuns sat behind us, and we’d turn around once in awhile to see if any of them were peeking.

Holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter, as well as special religious days like the one in honor of St. Vincent, the patron saint of the orphanage, completely transformed the SVO atmosphere.

The church would be decorated with beautiful cloths and flowers, and the priest would wear much grander vestments.  The music of the Latin masses by Bach and other famous composers would be joyous, transporting everyone with their power and thundering magnificence.

The mass would end with the victorious ringing of the church bells as one of the stronger nuns pulled on the ropes dangling from the church tower down through the vestibule ceiling.  We would all feel giddy with happiness, and even the grouchiest nuns would be smiling and have a pleasant word for everyone that day.

Of course, since we children thought of our stomachs first and foremost, a lot of our happiness had to do with anticipation of the food the nuns served on special days, including the candy treats we would receive.

At Christmas time, there were decorated Christmas trees in both the library and auditorium, and we had a visit from Santa Claus, who gave each child a gift.  Although most of us didn’t know it, the Bishop himself played Santa Claus, hamming it up by ringing his bells and shouting, “Ho, ho, ho,” as we sang Christmas carols for him.

In the big girls dormitory, we had our own tradition of hanging our stockings on our locker doors for friends to drop something in.  Usually we’d wrap up small things like a couple of bobby pins, a stick of chewing gum, a piece of candy, a sharpened pencil, etc.

The stockings of the most popular girls would be fat on Christmas morning; the girls with empty stockings would be devastated.  One Christmas, word passed around about a girl weeping in her bed because she didn’t get a single thing.  Although we all could be selfish at times, on this occasion we weren’t.  One by one, girls took stuff out of their stockings and dropped it into hers.  Then we coaxed her to take another look.

The Bishop also came to St. Vincent’s on Easter.  The girls would be allowed to go to the boys side and watch as he threw dyed, hard-boiled eggs to the boys, who jumped and leaped in front of him trying to catch as many as possible.  Some would just splatter on the ground.  Then the Bishop would hand out Easter candy to everyone.

The nuns, like us, seemed to have great enthusiasm for theatrics of any kind.  They would cast us in plays and operettas and make all the costumes for us.  Some of the shows were for internal enjoyment only, but others were performed for the public, and for these the nuns would charge an admission fee.  It was always an honor to be selected for a part.

I was lucky enough to be picked a few times myself, and my roles included being a slave girl, a witch, a witch doctor, and once a head of lettuce in an operetta about McGregor’s Garden (from The Tale of Peter Rabbit).  Though I wanted to be the heroine each time, I always enjoyed the roles I played, and I put everything I had into them.  I usually got compliments on my acting from the nuns, who said I became a different person on stage.  In truth, I was very confident when I played someone else.

We were permitted to use some of the costumes from our plays for the Halloween Parade, which was held in the auditorium each October, or we could make our own costumes out of crepe paper.

Some of the teaching nuns were creative in their methods, and they made learning fun.  There was one who used blackboard football games to track our learning, granting us points as we advanced across the field.  You could use the points like money at her year-end store to purchase small items like combs, pencils, holy cards, and candy.

Another nun would line up two racing teams, then ask a question.  Whoever got to the blackboard first with the correct answer would earn a point for their team.  The rest of the class enjoyed the opportunity to laugh and be rowdy as they cheered on the team of their choice.

The English teacher insisted that we should learn and use a new vocabulary word every day.  Using three- or four-syllable words on the playground seemed strange at first, but after awhile we got used to the sound of the words, and they became part of our personal vocabulary.

I remember telling a friend one day as we were going up and down on the teeter-totter, “A very ignominious thing occurred today, and I feel so despondent.”  It became a game to see how many of the new words we could combine in one sentence.

There was also a poetry club headed by the English teacher, who had us memorize poems and recite them onstage.  The nun taught us to use very exaggerated gestures while reciting—gestures probably more appropriate to the 1800s—but I completely enjoyed the overacting, dramatic cadences, and overblown phrases nonetheless.

From the moment I first learned about poetry, I began to write my own.  These were usually quite saccharine and melodramatic.  I began to carry a notebook around with me during my free time, and wrote down my thoughts, at least when I didn’t have my nose buried in a book.  Sister Annella told me she thought I would be a writer some day.  She was the only one I remember who encouraged me to think I might become more than someone else's servant one day.

In addition to the holidays and other special events that brightened up St. Vincent’s life, books were my refuge and escape.  Strangely, I never realized how unhappy I was until I transferred to the Xenia home.

When I was young, the Pollyanna books were of enormous help.  I don’t know if children today read the Pollyanna books—perhaps they find them too corny—but Pollyanna helped me through much of my childhood.

I used Pollyanna’s method of looking for something to be happy about, no matter what terrible things had happened.  Though it sometimes took a lot of imagination and effort, I usually found something to make me feel better.

After a very difficult day, I would lie in bed and review all that had happened, trying to remember something that I could consider pleasant.  It didn’t have to be anything major to lift my spirits.  Even insignificant things did the trick, like finding a perfect stone for playing hopscotch, receiving an unexpected smile from a nun, avoiding an anticipated fight, or having something I liked at mealtime—or at least nothing I detested.

There were a few times when I couldn’t think of anything to feel good about, and would just listen to the wind blowing through the dormitory shutters or look out at the moon and stars until I felt better.

As I got older, the discovery that I could make others laugh—that I had a talent for deflecting others’ hostility away from me and smoothing out tense situations with humor—increased my happiness immensely.  I became skilled in imitations, comical gestures, and jokes.  Now and then I could even get one of the grouchier nuns to unbend a little as I went into one of my comedy routines.

Eventually, I began to lose interest in the books available to me. When I was on the Halls work unit, I would raid the library near the front offices, leaf through the books until I found one or two interesting ones, then hide my choices in my bloomers.  I would read the books on the sly, and then return them without anyone being the wiser.

I remember crying bitterly over The Hunchback of Notre Dame, identifying with the poor misshapen creature, as well as with a character in a book about a mountebank.  In the latter book, the main character had been kidnapped as a child by a group of mountebanks who purposely disfigured the boy so they could exhibit him in their carnival.  They cut a smile into the boy’s face so that even when his heart was breaking, his sorrow was hidden behind a terrible smile.

I remember how my heart broke for that poor man, and how I cried for a very long time.

Getting Ready to Transfer

Although the children at St. Vincent’s were only supposed to stay until they completed the eighth grade, my brother Frank stayed two years beyond that, and I stayed one.  The nuns hadn’t known what to do with us, since my father insisted that his children not be separated.  My sister Carmela was finishing the eighth grade, and our two younger brothers were probably in the fourth and sixth.

In the interim, the nuns arranged for Frank to start high school at a local parish school, and for me to spend my final year at SVO in the children’s kitchen with Sister Annella, who sang cowboy songs for me while we peeled potatoes or washed pots.

If there were no relatives to take in the eighth grade graduates, the nuns usually tried to place them with a family in Columbus or another local community.  These families would feed and clothe the teenagers in exchange for their labor as servants or workmen until they were adults.  It was up to the families as to whether the teenagers would go on to high school or not.  Some eighth graders did not get that opportunity.

Our father had wanted to transfer all of us from St. Vincent's to the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Orphans Home (OS&SO) when we were quite young.  I found this out by snooping into the orphanage files while on Halls duty, when I was supposed to be cleaning the front offices and library.  The nuns apparently didn’t dream that any of us would dare look into the files; they certainly weren’t kept locked.

To prevent being caught, another girl helped me by sweeping around the corner from the front vestibule, where she could see down the long corridor in plenty of time to give me a signal.  It she saw a nun coming, she’d tap the floor with her broom, and I would have enough time to close the files and get back to work.

In the Gelormino file, I also found a translated letter from my grandfather in Italy, telling my father not to send us there, as he  would be unable to take care of us.  Another letter was from my father, asking the court to allow his children to be transferred to the OS&SO home in Xenia, Ohio, as we had appeared to be very unhappy when he had visited us.  The court responded with a letter insisting that we were completely happy where we were, and should remain with the nuns at St. Vincent’s.

If anyone ever checked with us to see if we were happy, we weren’t aware of it.  Occasionally a visitor would come to the orphanage playground, accompanied by a nun, and talk with any children who happened to be nearby.  The visitor usually asked  general questions about school, what game we had been playing, or about a toy we happened to have in our hands.  At the end he might casually ask us whether we were happy at St. Vincent’s.  Since the nun would be close by, the answer would never be anything but yes.

A few months prior to the discussions about what to do with the three oldest in our family, including the negative aspect about the Xenia home put forth by the nuns, it had been arranged for the five of us to visit our father at the Dayton Veterans’ Hospital.  The trip may have been arranged by the American Legion, since they had begun taking an interest in SVO children whose fathers were veterans.

My siblings and I were shocked at our father’s frail appearance at only forty three years of age.  He sat hunched over in his wheelchair, obviously in great pain and very distressed that we did not come to him with instant affection.  Instead, we stood in a semicircle in front of him and stared.  He whispered brokenly, “They don’t know me; my own children don’t know me.”

Even though I felt awkward doing it, I felt such pity for him that I went over and placed my arm around his shoulder, trying to pretend we weren’t such strangers.  We couldn’t stay long, because he was in great pain, and the hospital staff said we had to leave.  We all bid our father a sad goodbye and kissed him on the cheek, because we felt it was something he wanted and expected.

I’m sure my siblings and I had this last visit in mind when we informed the nuns that we’d abide by our father’s wishes and agree to transfer to the Xenia home, even though the nuns emphasized that we could refuse to be transferred.

The nuns warned us that we must remain true to Catholicism even though the Protestants would make every effort to tempt us away from our faith.  At that time it was considered a sin to associate with Protestants, so we, as well as the nuns, were fearful about falling under their influence.  We also hated the idea of going to yet another institution, complaining to each other, “First St. Ann’s, then St. Vincent’s, then the Ohio Soldiers and Sailors Orphans Home, then the Old Folks Home.”

The sewing room nun made Carmela and me new heavy rayon dresses, which were over-decorated with a generous supply of bows around the puffed sleeves and gathered necks.  We thought the dresses were beautiful, since they were the best and newest we’d ever had.  The dormitory nuns rummaged through the donated clothes to gather the rest of our going-away clothes.

Frank got an outdated suit and a tall hat.  Carmela and I got a couple of additional dresses, and underwear completely unlike the ones we had always worn—panties instead of bloomers, silky-feeling slips instead of cotton petticoats, and brassieres (a garment we had never seen before).

Even though I was well developed by this time, and my sister just slightly less, the nuns had never provided us with bras or even mentioned that they existed.  We giggled over the bras, and turned them around in our hands.  It was fairly obvious what we were supposed to do with them.

The nuns just guessed at the size of bra we should have and had made no attempt at measurement.  Carmela’s bra fit better than mine, which was at least a size too small.  I barely managed to get the uncomfortable thing fastened.

Frank, Carmela, and I said goodbye to our younger brothers and also the other children.  We continued to moan and groan about the transfer to another orphanage, insisting that we had agreed to it only for our father’s sake.   A couple of nuns were in the car with us as we drove away from St. Vincent’s, and I think it was more for their sake than ours that we complained so much.

My thoughts centered on the OS&SO Home as I tried to imagine a world without nuns.  I wondered how soon the Protestants would begin attempting to pull us away from our faith.  It was very worrisome.  The nuns kept their thoughts to themselves and hardly said a word throughout the trip.

PART THREE

Ohio Soldiers & Sailors Orphans Home

Xenia, Ohio

The OS&SO Home was like a small city of orphans, spread out over several hundred acres.  It was built after the American Civil War for children of veterans who needed a home.  It was funded and staffed by the State of Ohio and continuously supported by various veterans organizations and a strong and enthusiastic association made up of former pupils.  The modern trend of foster homes instead of orphanages finally closed it down in 1995-96, when the land was bought up by a religious organization (to the disappointment of many ex-pupils, including me).

My first impression of the Home was of its beauty, greenery, and wide open spaces.  I was thrilled to see there were no walls.  We drove in over a bridge adorned on each side by an old cannon, up through a tree-lined street, and past a large grass-covered parade ground that led to the Administration Building.  We walked across the parking lot and entered the building with the two nuns in front, and Frank, Carmela, and me tagging behind.

Our procession was observed by some of the OS&SO children, who stopped what they had been doing and stared at us with great interest.  While it was unusual for them to see nuns walking around on their campus, I don’t doubt that we looked strange to them as well, with our subdued and serious demeanor and the odd cut and style of our clothes.

It was late April, 1940, and the girls of that period wore saddle shoes and bobby socks.  Their dresses came to the knee or slightly above, and the older girls wore lipstick.  Many of the girls styled their hair into curls or pulled it up into puffs.  I later found out the Home had its own beauty salon for girls interested in a cosmetology career.

It was quite obvious that the boys, who wore tee shirts and slacks, were amused by Frank’s high-crowned hat and drab suit.  The girls’ eyes flitted over Carmela’s and my short, straight hair, homemade dresses with their profusion of bows, long cotton stockings, and sensible shoes.  Until I saw the smirks and looks passing between them, I didn’t realize how odd we looked.

The Administration, or main building, was flanked on both sides by a row of white children’s cottages, with a covered walkway or veranda running down the full length of the cottage rows as protection against the weather.  One side of cottages was for the boys and the other side was for girls.  There were two separate cottages for the black children, who seem to have mostly positive memories of the OS&SO, since many of them return to it for Home reunions.

The Home Superintendent greeted us by name.  “Welcome to your new home, Frank, Terfina, and Carmela.”  My sister immediately corrected him, saying, “My real name is Anne, and I don’t want to be called Carmela anymore.”  I chimed in that I preferred being called Terry.  He gave us both a smile and called us by our chosen names.

He then invited the nuns into his office, and told us we could wait in the lobby.

A social worker came over to where we were sitting and began to tell us a little about the OS&SO.  She told us that all new children had to stay in the Home’s hospital for two weeks before going to their assigned cottages.  We were to get complete physical examinations to ensure that we were in good health and had no sicknesses that could infect the rest of the student population.

After two weeks in the hospital, we would be given placement tests and assigned to appropriate classes for the two remaining months of the school year.   A housemother would take us to the Home commissary to be outfitted with whatever was lacking in our wardrobes.

The social worker told us what to expect in the children’s cottages, where most of the children lived.  Each cottage had a mix of children from the first grade up to juniors in high school—about fifteen to twenty kids in each cottage.  There were Peter Pan cottages for preschoolers, and two senior cottages:  Hayes Hall for the girls, and Roosevelt Hall for the boys.

We were told about the Home’s hospital, which had a resident doctor, patient wards, and a full-time nursing staff; and about the Home farm which had cows, pigs, and chickens, and even had its own complete dairy, including a bottling machine.  We learned about the facilities for vocational training, and the academic program for grade school and high school students.  She told us about the Home chapel; the armory, which was used for the boys Junior ROTC training; the indoor and outdoor swimming pools; the baseball and football fields; the student orchestra and band shell; the auditorium for plays and movies; and the dining hall, which was shared by all children except for those in Peter Pan or senior cottages.

The Home also had its own power plant, which furnished heat and electricity to all the buildings, including the homes for the faculty and staff.

After the nuns had finished their meeting with the superintendent, they told us goodbye and admonished us to stay true to our faith.  They told us that a bus would take all the Catholic children to mass at St. Brigid’s church in downtown Xenia every Sunday.  We were then taken by the social worker to the Home hospital.

The Home Hospital

Newkies, or new kids, were kept separate from other patients in the hospital wards.  My sister Anne and I shared one room, and Frank had a room to himself across the hall.

We settled in, hung up our clothes, and decided which bed each of us wanted.  Then we peeked down the hall toward the girls ward, and then the other way to the boys ward.  Seeing no one, we sat down and looked at our copy of the Home Review, whispering about the articles that reported on the various activities at the OS&SO.

We felt a little unsettled.  Just that morning, we had been at St. Vincent’s, surrounded by nuns, and now we were at a new place that hadn’t a single nun—just ordinary men and women in charge of our lives.  It seemed we were in a different country and would have to learn new ways.

I had been surprised when the social worker who had brought us to the hospital hadn’t gotten angry or scolded me after I declared in a flippant tone, to prove I wasn’t going to be seduced by Protestants, “If I don’t like it here, I’m not going to stay.”  She just laughed.

In a short while, a nurse brought each of us a supper tray, which we eagerly took from her hands.  We were pleasantly surprised with the quality and quantity of food.  Except for the ice-cold milk instead of coffee, and the ice cream for dessert, it was much like an SVO holiday meal, with chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, peas, carrot sticks, and rolls.  Even more surprising, delicious meals were standard throughout our hospital stay and also in the children’s dining hall.  The food was so much better than what we had at St. Vincent’s, which did not have access to state funds or have its own farm and dairy.  I felt I was in orphan heaven.

On that first day, we ate every last bite of our supper and waited for the nurse to come back for our trays.  Maybe this won’t be such a bad place after all, I thought.  I’ll just have to be careful around the Protestants.  When the nurse came in to get the tray, she told us where the bathroom was and told us to take a good shower because we were scheduled for a physical examination in the morning.

Anne took her shower first, and when she returned, I went to take mine.  There was a full-length mirror in the shower room, and after I took off my clothes, I stared at myself in horror.  I hadn’t seen my naked body since I was about six years old and climbed on the SVO sink to have a look.  I was shocked at what I saw.  Although I had been vaguely aware that my body had changed since I was a small child, vaguely knowing was not the same as actually seeing—full length from head to toe and from every angle.

I don’t know what I expected, but it was certainly not what I saw.  I guess I expected to see a larger version of a small girl’s body—which, if I’d thought about it, wouldn’t have made sense, since I was aware that I had developed breasts.  In fact I had walked hunched-over at St. Vincent’s because I had been aware of my development and tried to hide it.

Not liking what I saw, I bathed and dressed as quickly as possible, avoiding the mirror, and went back to our room to comb my hair.  Whether Anne had the same reaction as I did, I don’t know, because neither of us talked about it then or later.  Perhaps I thought I was the only one dumb enough to be surprised at how my body had changed.  Anne and I didn’t have too much to say to each other for the rest of the evening, and we were glad to turn in.  It had been a long day.

The next morning we were already washed and dressed before the nurse came in to tell us we’d have breakfast after our physical exams, which would be in half an hour.  We waited quietly until she returned. When she came back, she directed us to a curtained-off area in the examination room and left.  We waited for further instructions.

“Alright girls, come out one at a time in your birthday suits,” said a man’s voice.  Having never heard that expression before, Anne and I looked around the area for anything that could possibly be considered a birthday suit.  When the doctor’s impatient voice called again and we still hadn’t found anything to wear, his meaning dawned on us both at the same time.  We stared at each other in shock.  Neither of us had been naked in front of each other; and to be naked in front of anyone else, particularly a man, was frightening.

I fearfully parted the curtains for my first complete physical examination and the first display of my body to someone other than the nursing or dormitory nun who had placed a mustard plaster on my undeveloped chest.  Now here I was, completely naked and alone in the same room with the doctor.  Since the nurse had not come into the examination room with us, she and the doctor talked through an intercom.

Oh God, I thought, please protect us against the Protestants.  I prayed for God’s help and asked St. Agnes, my patron saint, to intercede with God to rescue me—to work a miracle so that long, thick hair would sprout all over my body to protect my modesty.  But nothing happened.

Neither Anne nor I talked about our examinations afterwards.  I know I was too ashamed and confused to discuss what we had just experienced.  Our brother Frank never mentioned his examination to us either.

Anne must have been particularly distressed because she buried her nose in a prayer book for a while after that.  Frank and I were insensitive, calling her Holy Anne, thinking she was trying to show us up with her piety.

We spent the rest of our time at the hospital listening to the radio, looking out the window, reading, and playing cards furnished by the nurse.  We wondered what would be in store for us when we finally joined the other children in the cottages.  Frank went to a boys cottage.  Anne and I were assigned to Cottage Fifteen.

Cottage Fifteen

My first impression of Cottage Fifteen was favorable.  I liked the fact that the cottage was the size of a regular two-story home rather than the high, multistory buildings of SVO.  Also, the girls, who ranged from first graders to high school juniors, seemed friendly.  One girl, Iris Jean, won my heart completely by saying, “I’ve been dying to meet you.  I just love your name ‘Terfina.’  It sounds like the name of a heroine in a book.”

Iris pronounced Terfina in a completely different way than the nuns had, but just the fact that she thought the name was beautiful made it okay.  Naturally, we became friends, although I immediately informed her, the other girls, and the housemother that I preferred to be called Terry.

Miss Redway, the housemother, asked my sister and me to come into her private sitting room for a get-acquainted chat before we were released to join the other girls.

She seemed favorably impressed with the fact that we had been raised by nuns and felt we would be a good influence on the other girls, some of whom she said were real trouble makers and needed to be closely watched.  She recommended that we stay away from these girls as much as possible, since they might try to influence us in a bad way.  She also said we should keep our eyes and ears open and suggested we keep her informed of any mischief.

Miss Redway explained the rules of the cottage, and the eating arrangements in the dining hall where brothers and sisters could sit together and chat.  She gave us general information about the OS&SO, such as there being a whistle that blew to let us know when it was time to rise and go to sleep, meal times, and when it was time to leave the cottages for classes during the school year.

Then Miss Redway took out a paddle and extended the flat side toward Anne and me in turn, asking us to place our right hand on the paddle while she solemnly intoned, “I hope I never have to use this on you!”  Then she welcomed us to Cottage Fifteen, and we were dismissed.

Anne and I gave each other a puzzled look after that strange little ceremony, but we knew Miss Redway was fooling herself if she thought we would be her allies against the other girls.  We knew what happened to snitches from our SVO days, and we had no plans to avoid the other girls.  We wanted to have friends, not enemies, among the girls.

One morning during that first week, Miss Redway asked one of the twins in our cottage (first graders) to inform Anne and me that she wanted to see us in her sitting room immediately.  After we entered the room, she closed the door behind her and said, “I have some bad news for you; your father has died.”  Anne and I began crying, but the housemother would have none of it.  “Oh stop your crying,” she said.  “You didn’t even know him.”  Then we were dismissed.

Although we may not have known our father, he had been a part of our lives.  We always knew that somewhere out there in the world, there was someone who really loved and cared about us, and we had clung to that knowledge desperately throughout the SVO years.  I felt as though the edges of the universe had given way, and that nothing was holding me down anymore to keep me from floating off into emptiness.

No matter what Miss Redway thought, I missed my father deeply.  As unrealistic as it was, deep down I had always felt that if things became really desperate or I was in danger, he would find a way to rescue me.  Now I couldn’t count on anyone.  That night and for many nights afterward, I tried to cry as quietly as possible so that no one would hear me crying foolishly for a man I hadn’t known.

Although Anne and I were sisters, we’d never really developed normal sisterly bonds or been each other’s confidant as sisters often are.  This was probably due to the fact that we’d been mostly kept with our own age group at St. Vincent’s, except on the playground.  Anne and I had never opened up about our feelings and inner thoughts to each other, except to express anger.  It didn’t occur to us that we could comfort each other.  We faced our sorrow alone.

There wasn’t much opportunity or encouragement for intimacy at St. Vincent’s, even between brothers and sisters.  The only children who seemed to be close to their siblings were the ones who’d entered SVO at an older age.  They’d lived at home long enough to have learned how to give and receive affection, something my siblings and I lacked.  We knew we were related to each other, but that was about it.

One of the first things I noticed in our cottage was the way sisters and best friends usually kissed each other before going to bed.  I’d never seen a display of affection at SVO, and my siblings and I had never been affectionate with each other.  Probably the only person any of us had kissed was our father, whom we seldom saw.

One evening, after watching the other girls kissing and hugging goodnight, I had a sudden longing to show affection toward my sister—to show her I cared for her.  I got out of bed, reached over to her, and kissed her on the cheek.  She leaped out of bed like she’d been shot, and hit me in the mouth.  “You dirty thing,” she screamed, “don’t you ever do that again.”

A few nights later, she jumped out of bed and hit me again.  She said she’d found a big toenail in her bed, and accused me of putting it there.  She figured anyone doing such a nasty thing as kissing her was probably capable of anything.

The Cottage Fifteen girls appeared brazen to Anne and me, but they were mostly good-natured and kind.  When they saw what they considered strange behavior on our part, and how ignorant we were about many things, they couldn’t resist teasing us.

Lacking our inhibitions about undressing in front of each other, even the older girls thought nothing of walking around the dormitory and locker room without clothes.  We attributed it to their being Protestants, and it was exactly the kind of thing the nuns had warned us about.

Anne and I would pull two locker doors together and try to undress in private, and would wrap up in towels to go to the shower.  After watching us cringing and hiding for a couple of days, it became a game for the others to fling open the locker doors or grab away our towels.

The girls were curious about everything we’d brought with us from St. Vincent’s, including bundles of cloths stored in our locker.

“What are those for?” one of the girls asked me.

I felt it was obvious, and I refused to answer such a smart-aleck question.  When the girl persisted in questioning me, I realized her puzzlement was genuine, so I whispered, “Sanitary napkins,” and blushed.  I was surprised she didn’t know.

“We use these,” she offered helpfully, reaching for a box of Kotex.  “You won’t need those cloths anymore.”

One evening when we were all sitting around in the small room adjacent to the locker room, one of the juniors asked me, “Are you a virgin?”

“No, of course not,” I answered, puzzled by her question.  After the laughter stopped, she asked, “Do you know what a virgin is?”

“Of course,” I said.  “A virgin is Mary, the mother of Jesus, and I’m not the Virgin Mary.”  The room exploded into laughter again, and then they began trying to outdo one another in shocking Anne and me with the basic facts of life.  We were completely innocent back then, although we were already fourteen and fifteen years old.  The information almost made me sick that night, as I lay in bed thinking about it.  I ached in sorrow for my dead father, and was at the same time repelled by the thought of what he and my mother had done to give birth to me.  I wanted to throw up.

Culture Shock

After moving to the OS&SO, I experienced so many changes in such a short time span that everything seemed to be spinning out of control.  I felt like Alice in Wonderland, having wandered into a strange land where everything was reversed, upside down, and turned around.

I was ignorant of many things taken for granted in twentieth century America, including modern feminine practices.  The more spontaneous and democratic way of life at the OS&SO was also completely new.  I was accustomed to the more authoritarian ways of the nuns at SVO; I had known my place there, which was to obey and be quiet unless I was asked to speak.  Many things which were highly valued at St. Vincent’s seemed to have no value here.  It was confusing and unsettling at times.

Because I had tested so well academically, no one realized my complete lack of knowledge in other areas of life, and no one offered any guidance on the basic customs and acceptable behaviors in my new environment.   Since I obviously had no idea of the knowledge I was lacking, I didn’t have the slightest idea of what questions to ask; at least, not until I had already blundered my way through, learning the hard way as I went along.

The extreme modesty I had learned at St. Vincent’s was considered ridiculous and unbelievable at OS&SO.  Sitting passively and waiting for direction made me appear stupid, not wonderfully obedient and submissive, as the nuns had thought.

Regularly using words of three and four syllables each, the initiative of which SVO’s English teacher was so proud, had become second nature, but at the OS&SO it was looked upon as an affectation, and I was teased by my peers.  Still, although I may have known some words they were unfamiliar with, they commonly used words that weren’t part of my vocabulary, such as nonchalant and promenading, as well as military terms and acronyms like reveille, taps, and CQ (call to quarters).

Because the OS&SO was a home for children of veterans, military terms and acronyms were used frequently.   There was mandatory Junior ROTC training for the boys, who were called cadets, and quite a few of the male employees were former members of the military, as well.

My housemother, Miss Redway, not only thought I was stupid, but thought I was barbaric for not shaving my legs and under my arms.  The fact that girls and women were expected to shave was new to me, since no one at St. Vincent’s had said anything about it.  I had certainly never seen anyone doing it.  Miss Redway once called me a whore because she caught me without a bra on.  I had been at Cottage Fifteen for only a few days when it happened.  Miss Redway met me at the bottom of the stairs with a horrified expression on her face.

“Get back upstairs and put on a bra,” she screamed.  “You look like a whore.  Only whores go around with no bra.”

I was shocked at her unexpected anger and ran back upstairs, embarrassed that everyone had again witnessed my stupidity.  I had never been given a bra at St. Vincent’s until the day I was dressing to go to the OS&SO, and it had been issued without any explanation.  I assumed bras were an optional garment to wear, like a hair ribbon, hat, or gloves.

I kept getting into trouble with Miss Redway because I made no move when the whistle blew.  When she yelled at me, I tried to explain to her I hadn’t heard the whistle.

“I’ve never met anyone so dense and stupid,” she’d mutter.  One day when the whistle was blowing, one of the girls asked me,

“Can’t you hear that?”

“You mean the train?” I asked.

“That’s not a train,” she said.  “That’s the whistle.

When I was told we would be signaled with a whistle for our scheduled activities, I assumed they’d use a mouth whistle like the nuns did at SVO.  I never expected the sound of a train whistle coming from a power plant smokestack.

I got into difficulties at school as well.  Since there were a couple of months remaining in the school year, I was permitted to take some vocational courses to sample OS&SO’s offerings.  These were usually offered during the freshman year in addition to academic courses.

I couldn’t seem to keep my mind on what I was doing in cooking class and kept catching my apron on fire as I bent over the stove.  I still enjoyed the class, though I cringed at how often the teacher coughed into the food as she was cooking.

In sewing class, after a couple of lectures about differences between various materials, we were informed that we had progressed beyond making aprons and were ready for something more complicated.  We were issued patterns for a blouse and told to lay the pattern on a piece of material.  Everyone in the class may have progressed beyond the basics, but that didn‘t include me.  Although I had mended seams before on an old-fashioned sewing machine with a treadle at SVO, the nun had directed me every step of the way.  I had never done anything more complicated than a straight seam; I'd never even seen a pattern before.

I kept turning the pattern around and around in my hands as though it were a puzzle whose meaning would become clear after I’d studied it.  Then I sat quietly waiting for further instruction as I had been taught at SVO—that we were never to initiate anything ourselves.

I thought the instructor would take the initiative and show me what to do.  I didn’t know I was expected to go to her if I needed help.

The instructor apparently had never had a student who turned a pattern around and around in her hands, made no effort to start anything, and asked no questions.  She decided I was unteachable.  She asked the Head of the Vocational School to remove me from her class because I would never learn to sew.  Since I didn’t like sewing, I really didn’t care.  I got to spend more time typing, which I liked.

I was a complete failure in gym class.  The first day I reported to the gym, I was told to join a basketball game that had already started.  I told the instructor that I had never seen a basketball game and didn’t know how to play.

The instructor lost patience with me and said, “Just get in there and play, for heaven’s sake.  You can be one of the guards.”

When I entered the gym I had seen the girls running around the floor and throwing the ball into a basket.  It seemed easy enough, but I didn’t know the rules of the game.  In girls basketball, at least in those days, the guards did not cross the centerline, only the forwards did.  Deciding to do my best, I ran across the centerline, grabbed the ball, turned around, and threw it into the other team’s basket, because it was closer to me.

The instructor grabbed her head as if to say, “What a moron!” while the girls on the court and on the benches howled with laughter.  I wasn’t too crazy about gym class after that.

I didn’t fare any better in the hospital, where I was supposed to assist the nurse by taking water or other needed items to the patients, making beds, and making myself useful as required.

When I had to work in the boys ward, it became a game for  them to get me flustered, especially when they saw how shy I was.  One day, one of the boys yelled for water, and when I got close, he grabbed me around the neck and pulled me down to the bed.  Another time when a boy standing by his bed said something fresh to me, I kicked at him to show my disapproval.  He grabbed my foot and held my leg in the air.  Both times the boys were laughing like little kids playing a prank, and I couldn’t help laughing myself, even though I was embarrassed.

Unfortunately, the nurse happened to walk into the ward during both incidents.  Because I had been laughing at the boys’ antics, she was certain that I had been flirting with them.  She gave me a “D” for that class.

I did better in my academic classes.  The English class was so easy for me that my hand was frequently the only one raised when the teacher asked a question.  However, it eventually got embarrassing, as it appeared I was showing off, so I soon stopped raising my hand, and pretended I didn’t know the answer.

Apparently the nuns had taught us more in our eighth grade English class than the OS&SO did in their ninth and tenth grades.

I was outstanding on vocabulary quizzes, thanks to the nun who had insisted that we constantly learn new words and use them every day outside the classroom.

I loved the Dramatics class, where the instructor very obviously loved teaching.  His enthusiasm was contagious, and his criticisms were always thoughtful and discrete, never embarrassing.  Being naturally theatrical, I tried to get in as many plays as possible, but I enjoyed everything about the class and the productions whether or not I had an acting role.

Mathematics was a tough course for me.  Although I had done well in simple mathematics, I was out of my depths in algebra and higher mathematics.  Our teacher was a crusty old retired army sergeant, and I was too frightened of him to ask any questions.

The Current Events class was interesting, and made me feel part of the real world as we discussed events occurring internationally and in the United States. I had never been aware of what was going on outside St. Vincent’s, because we never saw newspapers or listened to the news (though we did get to listen to some of the radio shows on Sunday evenings in the dormitory).

As it turns out, I had lived through the depression without realizing it.  I merely attributed our lack of funds and food to the fact that we were in an orphanage and couldn’t expect much.

Comparisons

Except for my growing dislike of Miss Redway, my life at OS&SO began to smooth out.  Despite my fears prior to arriving on campus and a rather shaky start, by the time the first year was up, I had begun to get the hang of life at the OS&SO, and found it surprisingly enjoyable, even with the normal trials and tribulations of being a teenager.

Although there were still a lot of chores for everyone, the OS&SO just didn’t have the somber atmosphere of SVO.  Life seemed to have opened up for me, and suddenly I was allowed to have hope for the future and enjoyment in the present; better yet, enjoyment without guilt.  I was exhilarated that I didn’t have to march in long processions, two-by-two, in complete silence throughout the day’s activities, or have to eat my meals in silence anymore.

As arranged, I went by bus to St. Brigid’s with other Catholic kids for Sunday mass, but I felt guiltily relieved that I didn’t have to go to daily mass and didn’t have to pray all day long.  Fewer religious obligations seemed to lessen the fear, tension, and pressure I had come to associate with religion.  The boredom I had begun to feel at SVO when reciting repetitive prayers over and over again until they lost their meaning had gotten even stronger.  Sometimes I wondered if God might be bored hearing them.

Despite my shock at the open display of nudity in the cottage when I first arrived, eventually I began to think the Protestants had a healthier attitude toward the body.  That said, I never was able to overcome my own inhibitions about exposing myself.

There were many opportunities for fun and social interaction at OS&SO, including Friday movies, parties, hay rides, pep and bonfire rallies, scouting, sports activities, and dances, including a Military Ball.  You could work as a reporter for the Home newspaper, The Home Review, or participate in various clubs.  There were indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and a Home Camp in Clifton, Ohio, where every student could attend for two weeks each summer.

At the age of sixteen, students were allowed to date.  This might entail making fudge together in the girl’s cottage under the watchful eye of the housemother, holding hands while promenading arm in arm around the campus, walking to school together, or sitting together at the Friday evening movies.  On Saturday, if you got a pass from your housemother, you could go shopping or see a movie in downtown Xenia.

Although someone did once invite me to the Military Ball, I never dated anyone at the Home.  I was awkward around boys.  I often wished I could be outgoing and vivacious like some of the girls, but it wasn’t my nature.  This didn’t spoil the pleasure I felt being in the place where my father had wanted to send me long ago.  It was also great to be in a place where I was merely one of many students, and less an ethnic curiosity.

Another unbelievable pleasure was having money to spend.  The Home distributed allowances to the children each month according to their ages.  The last amount I remember receiving was 50 cents.  This seemed like a fortune compared to the ten cents a year we received for spending at the St. Vincent’s Orphans Picnic.

There was less bullying of younger girls by the older ones like at SVO, at least in our cottage.  My sister made friends with girls from other cottages, but my friends were mainly Iris Jean and Berdene in Cottage Fifteen.

Berdene was a very small, good natured girl who was always ready for mischief and fun.  When she wasn’t into mischief, she was busy making little outfits for her older sister’s little girl.

Iris and I became particularly good friends, even though she was a couple of years younger than me.  How could I not like her after she announced she loved my name?  Besides that, she was an extremely imaginative, pixie-like girl, had a great sense of humor, and seemed very sophisticated to me. We got in all sorts of mischief, appreciated each other’s humor, indulged in outrageous fantasies together, and daydreamed about the future and what our husbands would be like.

Iris Jean definitely piqued my interest when she shared her life story, giving me the impression that she had led a southern belle’s existence before her parents were murdered, and she had to enter the Home.  She showed me a picture of herself with a parasol and one riding a horse; also a picture of her parents, which she kept in her locker like a shrine, with a small bouquet of artificial flowers in front of it.

Perhaps the primary reason for our bonding was the fact that neither of us had our feet firmly planted on the ground.

Once, I almost wrecked my friendship with Iris Jean.  We had gotten into a minor disagreement about something, and when I couldn’t convince her, I struck her with my fist.  That was the common way of settling disagreements at St. Vincent’s.

Iris got teary-eyed and looked stunned, as though no one had ever done that to her before.  I immediately realized by the shocked expression on her face that hitting someone else wasn’t the customary way of settling things at the OS&SO, at least among the girls.  I realized I would have to learn different ways of settling arguments from there on out.

It seemed traitorous to compare SVO with the OS&SO, and so when the obvious differences between the two made me think negative thoughts about SVO, I quickly put them out of my mind.  I thought that being critical of the nuns and SVO somehow threatened my faith, and that scared me.

The superintendent of the Home and many of the employees would emphasize to us “This is your home,” and you felt they meant it.  This was so different from the nuns repeated reminder:  “You are fortunate we took you in,” and the implication that we should be more grateful.

Teenage Crushes

My first romantic dreams involved older men, such as the actor and singer Nelson Eddy, and the man whose nephew I’d taken care of before I came to  the OS&SO.  I continued my obsession with older men by getting a crush on two of my high school English teachers.  I doubt that either was aware of my infatuation.

I suppose if I had been more socially adept, I would have aimed my romantic attentions toward boys my own age, but I had no skill at small talk and no knowledge of how to appeal to teenage boys.  Unless we were in class and the conversation was about academics or school activities, I was completely awkward and mute.

The English teacher I had in the tenth grade, Mr. Pilson, had the unanimous admiration of the girls in his class.  Mr. Pilson had a beautiful build; he was tall and athletic and, according to us, moved like a tiger and had a marvelous deep voice.  The fact that he had a face like a bulldog did not detract from his handsome good looks, as we all agreed.  Somehow, his heavy eyebrows, deep-set eyes, and exuberant self-confidence only enhanced his strong masculinity.

I knew I didn’t have the essential qualities to make such a heroic person notice me, so I made no effort to get his attention.  Instead I worshipped him from afar.  Iris Jean had Mr. Pilson in another class, and her fantasies about our Adonis were grander than my own.  I had confidence that she could capture his attention if she tried, and that if she did, she would give me all the details of their trysts.  But Iris only had teenage boyfriends, so the great romance I had anticipated never took place.

The boys liked Mr. Pilson too.  He was an example of someone whom they would have liked to be, especially once they noticed his effect on the girls.  They particularly respected the way Mr. Pilson started off the school year by declaring he had been a teacher in a boys reform school, knew how to handle trouble makers, and wouldn’t take crap from any of us.  Then, loudly notifying us he would be boss, he became the nicest, most enthusiastic teacher we’d ever had.  Boys who previously thought poetry was sissy stuff recanted after hearing it in Mr. Pilson’s deep, booming voice, and watching him as he paced around the room reciting dramatic verses with great passion and obvious enjoyment.  He could have recited the dictionary and all the girls would have melted at his feet.

The other English teacher during my junior year, Mr. Elwin, did not have the raw masculine charisma of his competitor.  If I had to compare them to movie stars, Mr. Pilson would be Clark Gable, while Mr. Elwin would be Leslie Howard, in the movie Gone with the Wind.

Mr. Elwin was attractive in a more gentle, scholarly way and had a slightly receding chin.  His group of admirers was smaller, and I may have been the only one who had a crush on him; at least I’d never heard other girls raving about him like they had Mr. Pilson.  This gave me hope, and I figured I might have a small chance with someone not quite as god-like.

Mr. Elwin loved poetry of the more delicate and gentle type, rather than the boisterous and dramatic kind that appealed to Mr. Pilson.  I loved both types of poetry, but I wanted Mr. Elwin to admire me and think I had a gentle poetic soul.

On a very beautiful and warm spring day, Mr. Elwin decided we should have our class outdoors.  I forget what we were studying at the time, but I well remember the bit of playacting that I planned.  At one point, when the class had stopped for a break, I got up and drifted poetically (I hoped) across the grass to a large boulder where I slipped down gracefully (I hoped) and leaned my head back against it as though I were overcome with the beauty of the world.  I was hoping that Mr. Elwin was watching.

Unfortunately, when I peeked on the ground from under my eyelids, I noticed that the boulder was entirely surrounded by poison ivy, which I was highly allergic to.  Not wanting to ruin my romantic scene and come off looking like a fool, I decided to stay there and ended up with the worst case of ivy poisoning in my life.  Even worse, I had to go to school the next week, including Mr. Elwin’s class, with swollen eyes, huge swollen lips, and a rash on my face and arms.  I looked like a baboon.

World War II

We were all sitting around the radio in Cottage Fifteen when President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan after they had bombed Pearl Harbor.  We had mixed feelings of shock, fear, and excitement at the prospect of living through such a tumultuous period in American history.

The girls were full of patriotic fervor watching the OS&SO cadets parade each Sunday in their Junior ROTC uniforms.  They marched over the parade grounds to the music and drums of the Cadet Marching Band, led by Iris Jean’s handsome brother, who was the drum major.  The girls and Home staff watched from the sidelines, well aware that many of the young, handsome boys would indeed be going off to war.  Many of the girls were misty-eyed as they wondered what the future had in store for their classmates.

Many of the Home boys went into the service, some even before they graduated from high school if they could get the Home superintendent to sign their enlistment papers.  Some of the boys came back on leave to talk to various classes about their experiences.  Several of the boys died in the war.

My brother Frank joined the Coast Guard and said he saw some action; my brother Robert joined the Army near the end of the war and didn’t see any.  I was relieved that nothing happened to either.  I remember how sad I felt when I said goodbye to Frank, my old childhood nemesis.  I was so worried that I might never see him again, and suddenly my childhood anger didn’t seem all that important.

During the war years, one of the grade school classes wrote a letter to Clark Gable and Carole Lombard as a school geography assignment, asking them about their ranch and what they grew on it.  Clark and Carole responded by sending enough oranges to the OS&SO for all the kids to share.  They also arranged for us all to see Gone with the Wind in a downtown Xenia theater.  Iris Jean and I sat together, squirming and oohing over Clark Gable, who became our new fantasy lover.  In my eyes, with Iris’s southern belle background, she could have easily been Scarlett O’Hara.

The stars' acknowledgment made us all feel special and important, and we were very sad when we learned that Carole Lombard had been killed in a plane crash on a trip to sell war bonds.

The excitement of the war temporarily distracted us from our animosity toward Miss Redway, and hers toward us.  Many of the girls, including myself, wrote letters to servicemen—partly out of patriotism and partly in the hope that we could initiate some sort of  long-distance romance.

Once, my brother Frank wrote me a friendly letter with the news that he’d passed my picture around to the guys on his ship.  When he told me how everyone had enjoyed it, I was thrilled and looked forward to receiving letters from his shipmates.  I soon learned that he had showed them the worst picture of me in his possession—one he had taken after I’d gotten finished mopping a floor.  I had messy, uncombed hair, and was wearing a dirty, torn dress.  I realized that war or no war, Frank was still the same and had not lost his unique sense of humor.

The Witch

The main bond between the girls of Cottage Fifteen was our mutual dislike of Miss Redway, our housemother.  She was a small, stiff-backed woman who walked with her head tilted backward as though she were looking down from a great height on something she found unpleasant.  She was quick to anger, and as a matter of routine, would swing her paddle around as she walked up and down the stairs and through the cottage, looking for someone on whom to vent her rage.  She particularly terrorized the younger girls, and angered the older girls with her sarcasm, name calling, and unfounded accusations.  She often referred to us as riff raff and alley rats.

We never knew what might set our housemother off.  Sometimes, when the sound of our laughter from upstairs would annoy her, she’d claim we were having a sex party.  This only encouraged us to make ribald jokes at her expense.  We’d snicker at her pretense of being such a genteel lady after observing her sitting in her rocker with her legs spread wide, or with one leg crossed over the other in such a way that we could see her underwear.

We hated Miss Redway’s phony public persona.  She would smile and call us honey-girl in front of other people, while surreptitiously pinching us hard on the arm or leg, with her hand hidden beneath her other arm or a piece of clothing.

We especially detested the way Miss Redway would maneuver us into a far corner of her sitting room.  After calling one of us into her room for a chat, she would start the conversation calmly and sweetly and tell us in very sugary tones about how we really shouldn’t have done something or other.  She would call us honey or dear while slowly backing us up, one step at a time, into a corner, until she was blocking the only exit out of the room.  Then suddenly, like a snake and without warning, she would strike out and hit us hard in the face.  It was always very nerve-wracking, because although you knew the slap was coming, you could never predict exactly when.

Miss Redway took great pride in her belief that she was a scholar.  She liked to help the younger girls in the cottage with their homework, as it allowed her to demonstrate her skill as an educator.  I wasn’t aware of this practice when the little girls asked me to help them with their homework.  Of course, I was flattered, and immediately agreed to help.

Before we got started, the little girls confided that Miss Redway had been helping them, but had been giving them many incorrect answers, and they were afraid to tell her.  I was in a quandary, wondering if I should or shouldn’t help the little girls.  After a moment's reflection, I decided that Miss Redway would likely be relieved to have this chore taken off her shoulders.  Instead, when the housemother found out, she felt threatened and felt certain I was taking over her prerogatives.  She went into one of her epic rages, shouting, “Did she go to college?  Has she passed the Civil Service examination?  Well, I did.”

Miss Redway’s tirade went on for a full five to ten minutes, which only served to provide us with more material for our jokes.  From that point on, any time one of us tried to make a point about something, the others would shout, “Have you passed the Civil Service examination?  Well, I did!”  Then we’d all crack up.

Miss Redway tried to get even with me for what she thought was my attempt to show her up.  She made continuous attempts to prove to everyone in the cottage how completely stupid and incompetent I was.  When she had an audience, she’d ask me to do something very simple, like counting the laundry, for example, and then say, “Oh never mind.  I know you wouldn’t be able to do that.”  Then she’d smirk and turn to one of the youngest girls, “I’m sure that YOU will be able to do it correctly.”

By this time, Miss Redway was very aware that my sister and I had no intention of avoiding the other girls in the cottage, or acting as her little Catholic goody-two-shoes spies.  She didn’t get a single report from us about the other girls’ activities.  This was probably another reason for her resentment and her vicious attacks on me.  She didn’t seem to blame my sister Anne.  I suppose she thought I was the evil influence who masterminded our lack of cooperation.

If someone left a messy sink with loose hairs all over the surface, forgot to flush the toilet, or did not wrap up and dispose of a used Kotex, she’d immediately scream my name.  She’d accuse me of being a filthy pig, and loudly belittled me so that everyone could hear, whether or not she had evidence I was involved.  She didn’t want to know the truth, so she didn’t ask any questions, and she never, ever apologized if proof of another girl's guilt was presented.  Flustered, she would go into her room and slam the door.

I began to hate Miss Redway with a passion, wishing she were dead, sometimes fantasizing that I had my hands around her throat and was tearing her apart.  I was surprised I could hate so strongly.

Cottage Fifteen Rebellion

The incident that became known as the Cottage Fifteen Rebellion had not been planned.  Everything had started out as simple girlish hijinks—nothing more.  One summer night, not long after CQ and the powerplant had signaled lights out, we were all wide awake and feeling full of devilment.  Although we were not supposed to bring food into the dormitory, one of the girls pulled a box of crackers from under her covers and began eating them.

Hearing the sound of rustling paper, crumbling crackers, and chewing, one of the girls pulled out a flashlight and shone it on the miscreant who, enjoying the spotlight, bowed to one and all and made exaggerated motions of taking each additional cracker out of the box, holding it in the air, and then stuffing it in her mouth.  The rest of us pantomimed our applause and started giggling.

Wanting to get in on the fun, several of us went to our lockers and got flashlights and snacks, and distributed additional snacks to those who didn’t have any.  Then every girl from the youngest to the oldest took turns eating with exaggerated motions while the rest of us simultaneously flashed our lights on the eater.

As the fun continued, we got more and more rowdy and our voices got louder and louder.  Suddenly, Miss Redway burst out of her room and stood outraged in the light outside the bedroom door, where she could be distinctly seen by all.

We were completely silent for a moment as we stared at her; and then, before she had a chance to say anything, we all exploded into laughter.  Our housemother had come out without a robe and was wearing a very thin, flimsy, and transparent nightgown which hid nothing from our curious eyes.

Not realizing why we were laughing so hysterically, Miss Redway warned us that we would not be allowed to go to Friday evening’s movie if we did not stop.  By then we were feeling so slaphappy that our laughter only increased.  We went completely insane with laughter, and no matter what our furious housemother threatened us with—restriction to quarters, reporting us to the Dean of Girls—we couldn’t stop.  The spasms of laughter just got louder and louder as Miss Redway stood there sputtering in her ridiculous nightgown.  Finally, she just gave up, stormed into her room, and slammed the door.

Our collective resentment of our housemother had been so intense and so longstanding that the night’s episode only stimulated our desire to misbehave.  The next day, all of Cottage Fifteen, from the youngest to the oldest, felt a strong sense of camaraderie for having misbehaved spontaneously and in unison.  We felt like the best of friends, linking arms and marching around and around in front of the cottage, shouting and singing.  If our housemother had looked out the window or heard us that day, she never mentioned it.

A few weeks later, Miss Redway went away on vacation and was to be gone at least a week while a substitute took her place.  The substitute didn’t know how much we all hated Miss Redway, so she trusted us more than she should have.

One day, while the substitute was out of the cottage, she left Miss Redway’s private room unlocked.  We saw this as a rare opportunity to check out forbidden territory, and we took advantage of it.  At first we only intended to satisfy our curiosity about Miss Redway’s inner sanctum, but when we saw her collection of wrinkle creams, hair dye, bubble bath beads, and lotions, our inner devils surfaced again.

We all took bubble baths courtesy of our housemother, and dug gobs of wrinkle cream out of her jars, wiping them on tissues and leaving them on her dresser.  We wanted her to know that someone had gotten into the jars, and we hoped she’d be embarrassed that her worries about wrinkles and gray hair were no longer secrets.

And yet, when Miss Redway returned from her vacation, she was unexpectedly calm and never said a single word to us.  The only explanation I can think of is that the substitute replenished Miss Redway’s supplies so she wouldn’t be blamed for leaving her room unlocked.

The next episode occurred between Miss Redway and me.  I was in a room downstairs that included a small bathroom, and was trimming my hair with a large pair of shears.  As I was cutting, I heard Miss Redway shouting and the sound of a paddle hitting someone.  Then I heard my sister Anne crying.  I became angrier and angrier as I listened.  Suddenly, I shouted:  “Leave my sister alone!”

With a roar, Miss Redway came charging into the room swinging her paddle.  As she raised her paddle to hit me, my eyes widened in fear and I raised my hand to protect my face, completely forgetting I had the large shears in my hand.

Miss Redway completely misinterpreted my widened eyes and upraised hand with the shears.

“You're crazy,” she shouted, circling around me with her paddle, but making no effort to hit me with it.  Her frightened eyes emboldened me, so I snarled, “Don’t you dare hit me.”

“I’ll hit you if I want to,” she yelled as she continued circling me—but she never got closer.

It hadn’t occurred to me to hit her, let alone stab her, but when I saw the fear in her eyes, I took the opportunity to look ferocious while I held the shears like a dagger.  I knew then that she would never hit my sister or me again, and I sensed her reign of terror was over.

The other girls who witnessed the episode knew I wasn't going to harm Miss Redway.  If they mentioned anything about it at all, it was only to joke about our housemother circling around, ranting and raving, afraid to come any closer.  Miss Redway, however, strongly believed I had actually planned to use the shears on her, and she reported me to the Dean of Girls.

When the Dean called me to her office and asked to hear my side of the story, I told her I’d had no intention of either striking or stabbing Miss Redway.  I told the Dean that Miss Redway had surprised me while I was cutting my hair, and when she attempted to hit me with the paddle, I had raised my arm to protect my face, completely forgetting I was holding the shears.  The Dean apparently believed me, because she made no mention of a punishment, but she did say, “I know you’ve had a very unhappy childhood, but you should try to forget it and get along with Miss Redway.”

I brooded about the Dean’s last words to me over the next few weeks as I began preparing for my move to Hayes Hall, the cottage for senior girls.  Those words seemed to remove the protective shield covering my subconscious, and I began to critically examine the life I’d had with the nuns.  For the first time, I dared to admit to myself that the nuns had been mean, and that I hated them.  However, this created within me a whirlwind of guilt and doubt regarding my religious beliefs.

In the months before I left, the girls in Cottage Fifteen had grown more and more resentful of Miss Redway’s endless harangues about our being alley rats, and tired of her strong-armed efforts to regain control of the cottage with even tighter restrictions and harsher punishments.

When we complained to each other that we might as well be in Germany or Russia, I suggested that we needed our own Declaration of Independence to present to Miss Redway.  Everyone agreed, and Berdene, who was always game to try anything especially daring, became as excited as I was during the meeting, and she volunteered to help me draft up the required document.

I did most of the writing myself, stating that America was a democracy, but that she, Miss Redway, had been acting like a dictator and running Cottage Fifteen like a concentration camp.  With Berdene’s help, I added various demands, including no more hitting any of us with a paddle, no more accusations without proof, no more calling us names, and so on.

Such brazenness represented a complete 180-degree turn from our previous fear of Miss Redway, and it must have been a complete shock to her when Berdene and I, after asking permission to talk with her, presented our document.  Her response to our demands was surprisingly calm.  She looked at us coldly and said she would read our paper later.

The Wicked Witch is Dead

I didn’t realize what a traumatic year was ahead of me when I moved to Hayes Hall, the cottage for senior girls.  Hayes Hall was unlike the other cottages in appearance and operation.  For one, the architecture was different.  The cottages were plain functional buildings, whereas Hayes Hall resembled a fine southern home.

Hayes was probably very much like a sorority house.  There were separate bedrooms, with two to four girls in a room, rather than the usual open dormitory arrangement.  There were comfortable upholstered chairs, end tables, and mirrors in the living room, plus a piano, making it look more home-like than the sparsely furnished living rooms of the other cottages.

At Hayes Hall, life seemed more leisurely, and we didn’t have to rush and dress for meals in the dining hall.  This was particularly nice at breakfast time, when we could come down to the dining room in our robes or beat-up old clothes as long as we looked presentable and didn’t turn anyone’s stomach.  We took turns cooking and cleaning, although the housemother, Miss Melvin, usually prepared the meat entrees for dinner.  With our more loosely supervised life, we recognized that we would soon be adults.

Miss Melvin was a jolly, warm-hearted woman whom most of the other girl called Mom or Melvie.  As much as I wanted to—and tried several times—I could never call her Mom.  It was always Miss Melvin or Melvie.  I envied the other girls’ easy familiarity with Melvie, especially when one of them put a hand on her shoulder when talking to her or gave her a hug.

Life in general seemed to be going great for me.  I was doing well with my Commercial major in high school, had won a small prize in a poetry contest held by the Home’s chaplain, as well as winning the Prince of Peace Declamation Contest.  I was on the Home Review staff, was selected to be Class Prophet for the senior yearbook, and was a member of the Student Council, the American Legion’s Junior Auxiliary, and the Girls Athletic Association.  Even more gratifying, I no longer had a housemother constantly harassing and belittling me.

It seemed like life couldn’t get better, until one day, one of the senior girls came home to Hayes Hall and told me that Miss Redway had died.  I laughed out loud and said, “Good, it’s about time.”  I naturally assumed it was just a joke, because most of the girls knew how much I had hated her.

But it wasn’t a joke.  Miss Redway had died in her sleep.  It was one thing to wish her dead, to dream about it, picture it, and picture myself causing it, but the reality—that she had actually died very suddenly and without any prior illness—came as a terrible shock.

It was completely unreal to me, and I sat on my bed for a long time trying to come to terms with the reality that Miss Redway was dead.  I tried to ignore the nagging thoughts that pecked at my brain.  Was I somehow responsible for her death?

All introspection fled when I was told that all the former and current girls of Cottage 15 would have to attend her funeral.  None of us wanted to go.  We had hated her in life, and it seemed awfully phony to go to her funeral.  But we had no choice, since we were ordered to go.

Iris Jean, Berdene, and I sat together in the funeral parlor after we had solemnly paid our respects at the casket, noting that Miss Redway looked more relaxed than she ever had in life.  The embalmer had even managed to soften her expression and her lips, which had always been tightly pursed when she was alive.

Although we had been forced to attend, we were all determined to be properly respectful and subdued if nothing else.  After everyone had viewed the body and perhaps said a prayer, the congregation sat down and waited for the eulogy.

The Home’s minister, who hadn’t really known Miss Redway, took his place behind the speaker’s stand and started talking about how we were there to say goodbye to Miss Redway, who had been the housemother of Cottage Fifteen for many years.  Iris Jean, Berdene, and I listened intently as the minister recited facts about Miss Redway’s life.  As he continued talking, we looked at each other in disbelief.  I don’t know if someone from the Home staff had given the minister false information or if he had just assumed what he was saying was true.  He stated that not only had Miss Redway been an excellent housemother, but that she had indeed been a true mother to the many children fortunate enough to have been placed in her care.

As the minister spoke of Miss Redway’s virtues and how she had been loved by those in her care, some of the girls who had clearly hated our housemother as much as we had started to sob.  The false emotion and sentiments on display made the whole scene look like a weird comedy to me.

Iris Jean, Berdene, and I bowed our heads so that no one could read our expressions.  We tried to keep our faces neutral and attentive, but finally, the incongruous scene was too much for us and we began to laugh.  We stuffed our handkerchiefs into our mouths to muffle the sounds and kept our heads low, hoping our shaking shoulders would be interpreted as sobs.

Although the girls near us were aware that we had been laughing, no one else seemed to have noticed, since we weren’t criticized afterwards, and there were no repercussions.

As I lay in bed that night, I brooded over the fact that I had actually laughed at someone’s funeral.  I couldn’t believe that I actually had done it.  It seemed like the worst kind of blasphemy, like some kind of mortal sin.  Deeply ashamed of my actions, I asked God to forgive me, thinking that even Miss Redway deserved better treatment in death, in spite of her many faults.

I couldn’t sleep.  I felt responsible for Miss Redway’s death because of the intensity of my hatred for her and the way that hate had dominated my thoughts for so many nights at Cottage Fifteen.  I had frightened her with my exaggerated performance with the scissors and shocked her with my Declaration of Independence and the way I had brazenly presented it to her.  I condemned myself for joining in the laughter when Miss Redway came out of her room in her flimsy nightgown, and for participating in the raid of her private room.  I felt that we, and especially I, had broken Miss Redway’s spirit, and that might have been what killed her.

It was difficult believing Miss Redway was really gone.  I suppose I thought the two of us would be locked in some kind of hate tug-of-war forever. Now that she wasn’t on the other end of the rope, I felt thrown off balance.

When I finally went to sleep, I dreamed about Miss Redway dressed as a nun.  Then different faces of nuns from my childhood began to merge into her face and then back until I wasn’t sure who I was looking at.  I woke up shaking and drenched in sweat.  The Dean of Girls’ summation, “You had an unhappy childhood,” kept running through my head.

Had I felt free to hate Miss Redway because she wasn’t a representative of God and the Catholic Church, as the nuns had claimed to be?  Both she and they had made every attempt to destroy my self-esteem and confidence.  I thought of the SVO dining room nun who had been so vicious to me and my family and seemed to take pleasure in stripping every shred of pride from me and my siblings.

I thought of all the nuns who had made my childhood so desolate:  the dormitory nun who had asked me why God had made me so ugly, as though such a question couldn’t possibly hurt a young girl; the nun who worked me so hard in the Halls unit until even she was able to recognize her cruelty; the ones who had ridiculed and used their perfected talent for sarcasm against me, although I was only a child; and the ones who had beaten me at the slightest provocation.  I felt my anger rising and the tears spilling on my pillow as I recalled the nun who had forced me to sleep on the lavatory floor so that everyone passing through could see my disgrace.  The humiliation I’d felt as a child forced to stand like a pariah in the middle of the playground overwhelmed me.

The questions swirling through my head left me unsettled and frightened.  I wanted to stop thinking, but couldn’t.  Had I hated Miss Redway so intensely because she reminded me of the nuns I had subconsciously reviled?  Had I been afraid to acknowledge that hate because it would have threatened my faith and belief in God and in the Catholic Church?

I cried through the night as I reviewed my years at St. Vincent’s, when I had excused everything that happened to me as an orphan’s lot, and accepted self-mortification as good for my soul.  I now knew that the nuns should have treated me better, and I had severe doubts about their belief in the need for pain and suffering.  The OS&SO had shown me that life didn’t have to be so stark, that you could be a good person without constant brooding about hell and damnation.

Most of the adults at the OS&SO were kinder in dealing with children than the religious nuns had been, and even seemed to like being around them.  The staff didn’t have the belief that you were inherently inferior because you were in an orphanage.

The underlying message at St. Vincent’s, whether intentional or not, was that the orphanage was the nuns’ home and that they had been especially noble and charitable to take in such poor, unfortunate beggar children, children who should be abjectly grateful for every crumb or benefit bestowed on them.

I felt that the nuns’ cruelty and lack of compassion had caused me immeasurable and irreparable damage.

A Year of Turmoil

Exposure

We stand alone –

the tree outside my window

and I inside.

She, stripped of her foliage

and I, bereft of pride.

She stands with quiet dignity

despite the gnarls showing,

and with serenity

awaits the winter’s snowing.

As the weeks passed, it became an effort to do even the simplest things.  I didn’t want to study, and sitting in school for hours became unbearable.  Becoming increasingly more restless and depressed, I felt a great need to get the heaviness out of my head and heart.  I wasn’t able to pray, but I desperately wanted to talk.  But to whom?  And how?

I didn’t know how to unburden myself.   I had never felt close to anyone, including my sister and brothers.  I had never talked with anyone about my feelings, fears, and longings.  I was even afraid that I was going insane, and I haunted the library looking for answers for what was ailing me.

Sometimes I would sit on the steps leading down to Melvie’s room at Hayes Hall and just stare down toward her, hoping she would  somehow be able to feel my loneliness—that she would be able to see through my skin and recognize that I needed someone, perhaps her, to say, “What’s troubling you?  Do you want to talk about it?”

Although I very much wanted to talk, I wasn’t able to initiate a conversation with Melvie and could only sit there staring mutely toward her room.  She had no idea what was going on with me, and I suspected that I made her uncomfortable.  It must have been very unsettling to see me sitting there staring.  She would make a little joke or maybe tell me about a book she had been reading, and I, happy to at least be talking with her, would joke back.

One night, when we were supposed to be in our bedrooms, I was feeling unbearably tense and restless and decided to slip out of the cottage and walk down toward the artificial lake.  Although it was dark, there were enough lights to see the path to the lake.  It felt good to move around instead of tossing and turning in my bed, tormented by my thoughts.

The beauty and peace of the night descended on me as I sat and watched the play of lights on the water and listened to the sounds of the night.  Then I heard the sounds of footsteps and looked up to see Melvie approaching.

“What are you doing out here, Terry?” she asked softly.

“I’m just listening to the frogs,” I said, glad that she had come after me.  Perhaps that had been my subconscious hope—that she would hear me leave and follow me to see what I was up to.  Maybe away from the other girls and hidden in the relative anonymity of the night, I would finally be able to unravel the tight knots within me—maybe Melvie could help me to sort through my thoughts and feelings, and help me find the answers to everything that was troubling me.

“It’s late,” she said gently.  “Let’s go in.”

Melvie never mentioned the incident again, but soon thereafter I received a call from the Home’s psychologist asking me to come in for an appointment.

The psychologist greeted me warmly, pulled out a chair for me, and asked how everything was going.  Without thinking, I answered, “Fine.”  I wondered what he wanted with me.  He asked how I was getting along at Hayes Hall, to which I answered “Fine,” again.  He said he would like to give me a test, and I waited without comment, figuring I had no choice in the matter.

The test took about an hour.  When I was done, he checked it over, looked at me gravely, and then checked it over again.  I felt I had done poorly on the test because of the seriousness of his expression, and I began apologizing for what I was certain was a low score.  “I’m sorry," I said.  “I don’t feel well today.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he replied.  “You’ve gotten an outstanding score; in fact you scored higher on your IQ test than anyone at the Home since I’ve been here.  It’s unbelievable.”  Then he rambled on and on for awhile.

From his words, I gathered that he was surprised I wasn’t a school leader, and even more surprised that someone with my background—a child of a common laboring man and a mentally ill woman—could be so intelligent.  He acted as though I were some kind of anomaly.

The psychologist informed me that it had been brought to his attention that I had been taking some pretty interesting books from the library, many of which were about mental illness and psychiatry.  He talked briefly about the field of psychiatry and asked me if I would like to meet with a psychiatrist.

I was thrilled, because I had been thinking I might want to be a psychiatrist and had started writing my name followed by the word “psychiatrist” in my notebooks.  He said he would make arrangements for me to see a psychiatrist in Cincinnati, and he asked if I would like to work in the doctor’s office at the Home Hospital.  He said Dr. Teffer could use some help in his office, and he understood that I was pretty skilled at typing and shorthand.

I left the psychologist’s office that day walking on air.  He believed in me.  Apparently he thought I possessed the necessary intelligence to actually become a psychiatrist one day.  I felt full of joy and ambition as I saw a wonderful future ahead of me.  My depression lifted.

I could hardly wait to start work in Dr. Teffer’s office, and I was determined to make both him and the psychologist proud.  I would learn everything I could and let my helpfulness show how grateful I was for their confidence in me.

Dr. Teffer was so gracious and pleasant that it was pure joy to work for him.  He appreciated everything I did and gave me endless compliments on the excellence of my typing and general assistance, which made me want to improve myself further.  I took Dr. Teffer’s medical dictionary home to study medical terms so that I wouldn’t  have to stop to ask the meaning or spelling of a word when he gave dictation.  If I hadn’t been so interested in psychiatry, I would have tried to cancel my Cincinnati appointment so that I could remain at work with Dr. Teffer.

I was finally taken to Cincinnati for my meeting with the psychiatrist, a woman.  She surprised me by asking questions about my life at the OS&SO and St. Vincent’s Orphanage instead of discussing the field of psychiatry.

She concluded our meeting, which took perhaps an hour or two, by informing me that I was probably more intelligent than many of the people who had raised me, and that they had sensed it and resented me for it.  She assured me I was not responsible for Miss Redway’s death, even though I had wished her dead.  She further stated that those who had laughed at her funeral were probably more honest than those who had acted sad or cried.

What the psychiatrist said next disturbed me greatly, and I couldn’t understand how she came to her conclusions after just one meeting.  She said I hated my mother and blamed her for having to go to an orphanage, and that I loved my father too much.  I found it hard to accept that I could hate someone who had had a mental breakdown.  It would be like kicking a person when he or she was down.  And it didn’t make sense that I had loved my father too much, as I had seldom even seen him during my childhood.

I was disappointed that there had been no discussion about psychiatry, but decided that the psychiatrist would probably bring it up at our next meeting and further explain what she had meant about  my feelings toward my parents.

Back at Dr. Teffer’s office, I worked with renewed vigor.  I was determined that I would be a success and make him and the psychologist proud of me.  They would know that their confidence in me had not been misplaced.  Moreover, the nuns at St. Vincent’s who had considered me worthless would learn they had been completely wrong.

One morning, when Dr. Teffer was out of town and I was caught up with my work, my curiosity led me to the doctor’s file cabinet where he kept records on all the students.  I looked into the folder with my name on it and was horrified by what I read.

I had been completely naïve.  The psychologist had not sent me to a psychiatrist to learn more about the psychiatric field, but because I had been deemed disturbed and in need of psychiatric help.  I must have been sent to work for Dr. Teffer just so he could keep an eye on me.  My file record included comments about my relations with Miss Redway and stated that I was extremely hostile.  Apparently the Dean of Girls, the psychologist, and Dr. Teffer believed the charges made against me by Miss Redway.

Emotional Breakdown

After reading the file, I felt completely betrayed.  Why hadn’t the psychologist or Dr. Teffer been honest with me?  Did they think I couldn’t handle the truth?  If they had told me of their concerns, I probably would have been more open with the psychiatrist and given her more details about my background than I had provided, and I probably would have gotten more benefit from the consultation.  I had read enough psychiatry books to know what was required in such a session.

The psychiatrist thought my problems were related solely to my relations with Miss Redway, my guilt over her death, and my feelings about my parents, whom I had left when I was four years old.  She seemed to think I’d spent the major portion of my childhood at the OS&SO Home, since we hardly discussed the nuns.

I felt the OS&SO psychologist didn’t have to send me to the Cincinnati psychiatrist to learn what made me tick.  I believe that sympathetic questioning by any discerning and caring adult, whether or not a psychiatrist, would have made the long-buried words gush forth from me like a fountain.

Learning that I had been fooling myself was a mortal blow.  Life was becoming increasingly pointless and empty, with endless days of working and meaningless struggles year after year, with death being the final event no matter what.  I slept poorly and began to have dark circles around my eyes.  I made no effort to make myself attractive.  Everything seemed a complete waste of time.  Life itself seemed like a waste of time.

There was no second appointment with the psychiatrist, and I was left alone to stew over the questions she had stirred up within me.  I began to sneak out of the Home for long walks down a nearby country road, where I could weep in private.

Occasionally a cow would look up at the sound of my deep choking sobs.  If I saw a farmer, I turned my face away so he wouldn’t see the tears streaming down my cheeks.  I felt there was an ocean of sorrow dammed up inside me, and if I were to open my mouth wide enough, it would come roaring out like a flood.

To Hell With it All

How long my anguish and pain persisted, I have no idea, but one day my tears just dried up, and the pain was replaced by determination and conviction that all of them were wrong—the nuns, Miss Redway, the psychologist, Dr. Teffer, the psychiatrist, and everyone else who had insulted me in the past.  Instead of worrying about who I hated and why, I decided I liked my hating self better than the blubbering and self-pitying nonentity that I had become.  Hate would be my strength.  The inner valve that kept me from going into a religious frenzy came through again, keeping me from melting down into a puddle of nothingness.  I was determined to enjoy my life, no matter what.

To this day, I still don't how I qualified for graduation, since I hadn’t paid much attention in class during most of that last year.  As graduation drew closer, my creative energies were re-awakened by the need to write funny prophecies for each member of the senior class.  I even managed to take an interest in getting my hair fixed at the Home's beauty salon so that I wouldn’t look haggard for my graduation picture.  I knew a copy of the senior pictures would remain in the Home’s historical records for future eyes, and I didn’t want to scare anyone.

On the evening of our graduation, when I got on stage and read what I had written about each student, many people seemed surprised that I was so funny and so confident—especially the psychologist and Dr. Teffer.  It gave me great satisfaction showing them they might have underestimated me.

Since I had no relatives to take me in after graduation, the social worker asked me where I planned to live on leaving the Home.  I gave her the name and address of a friend of mine from St. Vincent’s Orphanage who was living with her mother in Columbus.  I don’t recall asking them if I could live with them, but fortunately, they were kind enough to take me in until I could find another place.

On the last day, I put on the new outfit that the Home had provided, packed my suitcase, and lined up with the other girls to wish Melvie thanks and goodbye.  I wanted to kiss and hug her that last day like everyone else, and perhaps call her Mom, but I couldn’t.  I merely shook her hand and said goodbye.  I entered the social worker’s car with $50 in my purse, which every senior was given by the OS&SO, and headed to Columbus with a mixture of hope and fear.  After fifteen years, I was finally leaving all orphanages behind me.

Postscript

Although these orphanage memoirs include some unhappy times and cruel individuals, there were happy times and kind and even saintly individuals as well.  While it’s true that the bitter moments of my childhood filled me with hate for many years, I still think orphanages are a better option for homeless children than foster homes in many cases, at least in the United States.

Orphanages, particularly the non-sectarian type run by a diversified group of adults, can in most cases safeguard against the chance of one or two neurotic or over-zealous adults inflicting their venom or fanatical theories on helpless children.  I’m certain some foster parents are wonderful, kind-hearted people, but in some cases appearances can be deceiving.  How can one know what occurs in a home’s confines?

The stability and continuity of care in orphanages is better than moving a child from one foster home to another, which often seems to be the case.   The camaraderie and friendships that develop between children who are on the same economic level or in similar circumstances create strong bonds that can last a lifetime.

A child in a foster home, on the other hand, might feel that he or she is “different” and perhaps an object of pity.  If most of his or her classmates have more and better clothing, the latest and most popular toys, and can participate in pleasures he or she can never hope to engage in, there will be a tendency for the foster child to feel inferior.  Because foster children live in a home setting, they may expect more from the foster parents than they are able or willing to provide.  Children in orphanages don’t have such expectations of the adults who take care of them.  Being treated fairly is sufficient.

The reason I hated the nuns more than I hated the housemother at the Xenia Home was because the nuns either claimed or implied they were speaking for God and the Catholic Church.  If they said you were ugly, stupid, and worthless, it was essentially the same as implying that God said it.  That’s a terrible weapon to use on a child.  I considered the housemother only a mean, hateful, and neurotic old woman.

Each child raised in an orphanage might have a different story, likely because he or she might have had completely different experiences and interactions with the adults.  Many who came out of St. Vincent’s had horror stories as bad or worse than mine, but others had pleasant memories and spoke well of the nuns.  Many of us with horror stories assume these had likely been the nuns’ pets.

My youngest brother, who went into an orphanage at three months old, is one of the latter.  I believe his need for a mother made him more compliant and therefore more pleasing to the nuns and housemothers.  Some children, of course, were suck-ups, which smoothed their way considerably, or they were appealing to the nuns because of their appearance or national background.

Adults can be immediately attracted to a child or repelled by him or her, just as they can with other adults.  A few people are able to love all children indiscriminately.  I’m not one of them.  I believe that children come into this world with certain qualities—such as having a submissive or aggressive nature, shy or outgoing personalities, stubborn or flexible temperaments, etc.

The picture of myself at four years of age shows me to be determined and stubborn.  I was also highly imaginative, emotional, and intelligent.  I also may have had a chip on my shoulder at a very early age.

After my father informed me my name was Concetta and not Terfina, I thought the nuns had robbed me of my true name strictly to saddle me with a name they could ridicule.  When I found out that I only spoke Italian when I entered St. Ann’s Infant Asylum, I assumed that I hadn’t realized the nuns had changed my name.

But perhaps even at four, and even in spite of the language barrier, I was aware that my name had been changed.  Given my temperament, I’m sure it made me very angry.  This may have started my relationship with nuns on the wrong foot and caused me to think that the all-powerful nuns in their black robes had not only changed my name, but also had caused the breakup of our home.

When I was living in New York City, I requested my birth certificate from Ohio’s Vital Records Office, using the name Concetta, and that is what I received from them.  I didn’t dream there was also a birth certificate on file for a girl named Terfina.

I found this out in my seventies, after sending a request for my  orphanage records from Catholic Charities in Columbus, Ohio.  Among the papers I received, I was stunned to get a birth certificate for a girl named Terfina.  Strangely, it showed my Aunt and Uncle as being my parents.  Apparently, Terfina had been a cousin who died.

The birth certificates of our cousins Terfina and Carmela probably got mixed in with our brothers’ birth certificates after our mother went to the mental hospital and our father stayed at his brother’s house for awhile.  The nuns never noticed that my sister’s and my birth certificates were different than those of our brothers, and it seems my uneducated father did not review the files he turned over to the nuns.

Many children dislike their given names, but few hate their names with such intensity as I did the name Terfina.  Was my name change merely a spark that eventually grew into a wildfire of hate for the nuns?

I want to emphasize that when I speak of cruel and insensitive nuns, I speak only of the few nuns that I dealt with on a daily basis, in one religious order that I am familiar with, in one particular time and place.  I don’t have knowledge of all the nuns who were at St. Vincent’s, or nuns in other orders.

The overall philosophy of a religious order depends on the character and personality of its founder.  If she was an authoritarian, rigid, and ascetic individual, it is likely that women attracted to that order will be of similar mind.  If the founder was a loving, charitable, and kind person, that order will undoubtedly attract others with warmer tendencies.

The order of nuns who ran St. Vincent’s Orphanage and several other religious institutions and schools in Columbus, Ohio, was founded in Holland in 1835 at a time when sterner and harsher handling of children was in general vogue throughout the world.  I would guess that the original philosophy and rules of operation from the orphanage’s early years had been handed down and rigorously administered during my own years at SVO.

As in many institutions, once certain rules, methods, and procedures have been initiated, they more or less become set in stone.  Newer members of such organizations usually follow along with the status quo without question, especially in religious institutions where obedience to one’s superior is mandatory.

The particular group of nuns who established St. Vincent’s Orphanage in 1875 came from Reims, Prussia, in Germany, apparently because they disagreed with the policies of Bismarck (Chancellor of Germany).  The majority of the SVO nuns I remember were also German, and had left Germany with the rise of Hitler.  Many, unfortunately, did exhibit the old stereotypically Germanic traits of harsh, unbending discipline and lock-step precision, which made SVO life a pretty tough environment for children.

Although the physical punishments handed out by SVO nuns were severe and frequent, I’m sure that to other children, as well as to me, their verbal abuse and sarcasm were even harder to forgive, and the effects much longer lasting.

A few of the nuns who had direct supervision over children were seriously disturbed, if not psychotic; however, most were probably well-meaning and thought what they were doing was for the betterment and salvation of our eternal souls.  In their eyes, being whipped with a thick strap or board, or being slammed against a wall or floor, was better than burning in hell for all eternity.

With time and distance, I can now appreciate that the nuns’ prejudices and actions were shaped by their own backgrounds, experiences, limitations, and their understanding of religion and what God wanted of them.  In most cases, they probably did not perceive that they were being cruel or damaging to the children under their control.

I now believe that even the harshest and meanest of nuns was likely a victim of the church’s, or at least her order’s, policy of placing a nun where there was a need, regardless of whether she was suited for the position or not, or had the temperament and training to handle the job.  Back then, it was believed that God would grant the inappropriately placed nun the grace of suddenly acquired skills and talents.

You might as well expect God to make a violin virtuoso out of someone who completely lacks musical appreciation, has a tin ear, and possesses the dexterity of a water buffalo.  How frustrating it must have been for a nun who disliked children—who was easily irritated and repelled by their high spirits and inevitable messes—to be placed in such an untenable position.

If the worst case scenario for the future came to pass and society was flooded with thousands of AIDS orphans, there definitely would not be enough foster homes willing or able to take such children in.  In such an event, orphanages would become necessary again.

Future orphanages should permit children to have frequent contact with the outside world, as they will eventually need to adjust to and become a part of it.  Outside contact would also put a damper on any abusive tendencies on the part of those in charge.  To preclude such abuse, a psychological profile should be performed on each individual assigned or hired to take care of children.  This would help to eliminate the neurotic housemother or neurotic nun types.

If orphanages experience a revival again, halfway houses should be established to take in young adults after they leave the Home.  Children who have been institutionalized for many years often have very little idea of how the outside world functions, especially if they have no relatives to take them in after they leave.

If former prisoners need such houses, children who have been in orphanages most of their lives prior to adulthood need them even more.  Letting children come out of orphanages with little prior knowledge of how society operates is like putting lambs out for slaughter.

In my opinion, orphanages are a better option for homeless children than foster homes; that said, I’m still leery of those run by religious institutions.  It is too easy for a child to assume that God approves of the words and actions of religious leaders, even if the leaders don’t express this to the child.

At eighty-three years of age, I no longer hate the nuns or poor old Miss Redway.  There is so much intentional cruelty in the world, and so many people living in the worst of circumstances, that it puts anything I experienced into proper perspective.

Now that my view has broadened, I no longer hate the so-called ogres and can look back on my orphanage days with affection, particularly those spent at the OS&SO Home.  The popularity of the foster care system was the reason this historic Home had to close.  There were no longer enough children entering the Home to justify the expense of its operation by the State of Ohio.

To my dismay, the OS&SO buildings and grounds were sold to a religious group.  I think many ex-pupils were relieved that the OS&SO hadn’t been turned into an industrial complex, but whether the religious group is any better is open to debate.

To sum up my opinions, non-sectarian orphanages are better than foster homes, but foster homes are better than religious orphanages.  I fear religious zealots who have no tolerance for the imperfections of humanity.  The religious zealotry that inspired many saints, such as Father Damian and Mother Theresa, can also inspire horrible monsters to cause war and suffering, and the  monstrous zealots of all religions in mankind’s history far outnumber the saints.

Religious Robots

Move on

religious robots,

with your offensive smell,

so certain that all others

are doomed to fires of hell.

The essence of your nature

seeps through your piety

when you applaud the ones who hate

diverse humanity.

Relentlessly, you robots

march on like mindless fools,

believing you’re the best because

you follow all the rules.

But God may favor kindness

above religious ways.

Your rants and chants and endless prayers

don’t sanctify your days.

March on,

religious robots!

Keep thinking you are right,

but just ensure your hearts and minds

are sealed up nice and tight.

The House of God

Rejoice ye bells –

He’s in His place.

He’s in His place

and neatly tied.

With reverence,

bow down, bow down.

He must not stray

outside these walls.

Outside these walls

we live our lives.

So lock Him in,

within, within.

In ceremony,

cover up.

Yes, cover up

with hymn and psalm.

Let all you do

have grace, have grace.

Lay flowers down,

but leave no earth.

Yes, leave no earth

which reeks of life.

Your love must leave

no scent, no scent.

No crudity

shall enter in –

shall enter in

to mar this place.

just leave your soul

outside, outside.

About the Author

Terry Gelormino Silver was born in Bellaire, Ohio and received her grade school education at St. Vincent's Orphanage in Columbus, Ohio.  She went on to earn her high school diploma from the Ohio Soldiers & Sailors Orphans Home in Xenia, Ohio.

The author worked for the Air Force Institute of Technology for many years.  Prior to that, however, the author spent nineteen years in New York City, including three years in Greenwich village, where she met her husband; and Brooklyn for sixteen years.  The couple had two children before the author returned to Ohio after she and her husband separated.  Sadly, both her husband and her children have since passed away, but her spirits are lightened by a beautiful granddaughter.

Now retired and living in Decatur, Georgia, Terry enjoys crossword puzzles, writing poetry and short stories, and gambling.  This is her first published book.