Émilie Dionne

The nuns of Maryville were all French Canadian.  Being from Montréal, French was their first and preferred language, but they all could speak English as well.  They never taught us French, I don’t think they thought we were good enough to deserve being taught.  I never asked to learn it because, well, the vast majority of interactions with the nuns were unpleasant to say the least, and I did not want to have to beg them for something they dangled above us.  When speaking with each other, the nuns always spoke French.  My name being French in origin, Geneviève, I always new when they were talking about me (some of the girls’ names did not translate so literally).  I did pick up on some of the words and phrases simply because they were said so often.  I still remember when Sister Madelyn was frustrated she would always say Mon Dieu! (My God!).

A very small number of nuns were kind and displayed a soft heart.  Most were mean and vindictive and many displayed no emotion what so ever.  I have always been struck by an individual choosing a life dedicated to charity and love, when their own hearts were so devoid of those exact feelings. My hall room nun, Sister Madelyn was one that showed no emotion, I always felt she just didn’t like us, a curiously poor way to begin every day. 

As if hall room was not enough, Sister Madelyn had a way of showing up in far too many other episodes of my life at Maryville. One summer day, I was walking into the cafeteria for either lunch or dinner, I don’t remember which, and Sister Madelyn was standing there as if she were a greeter at Wal-Mart. Normally I would say nothing to her unless I was spoken to first, but as I approached her I saw she was crying.  I had never seen her cry before, this was very strange; I don’t remember seeing her laugh before either, most of the time I felt she showed us a total indifference and an unchanging cold demeanor.  Exactly why I engaged her I do not know, but maybe it was because it was so frankly shocking to see her cry...  I stopped and said “why are you crying”?  She said “Émilie Dionne has died” I just looked at her for a minute, thinking who is Émilie Dionne?  “Is she a relative of yours” I inquired, trying to make sense out of this encounter. “No!” she snapped “she is one of the Dionne quintuplets”…I had no idea who the Dionne family was (they were a French Canadian family that had quintuplets naturally in the 30’s and became something of a phenomenon for that fact). I also had no idea what a quintuplet was, so essentially, I understood none of the words that came out of her mouth at that moment. I looked at her for a second and just walked into the cafeteria and started to eat, never knowing why Sister Madelyn was crying. Had I known who she was talking about, I would have been struck by the irony of the situation; that she felt so emotionally struck by the death of a 20 year old Canadian girl, whom she had never met, while she was so thoroughly cold, uncaring, and removed from the hundreds of children, orphans, right before her, who were all facing crises of their own.       

Jimmy Dorsey

There were many do’s and don’ts at Maryville.  We were not allowed to read comic books; we had to eat every bit of the food they served, even though much of it was uneatable (the putrid and at times rancid food had such an effect on me that to this day I cannot eat bread pudding or Spanish rice). We could not say shut up to anybody, so we learned to say “up shut the other way” with as much vehemence and ire as one would use to say Shut …Up (or anything else).  Parents could come and visit every other Sunday but if they came out on the wrong Sunday, we were not allowed to see them. .  We could go home every other month for a week end except in the summer. During June, July, and August, we were not allowed to go home as it was thought that polio was contracted during the summer months, and that our isolation might spare us from that illness. In addition to a large and formidable list of other restrictions and rules, it was known that we were not allowed to order anything and get it delivered to Maryville, and while I may have abided by most rules, this was one I decided to break.

One day, during one of my visits home, I went to a candy store and bought a Nestle crunch bar.  Upon opening the wrapper the wrapper contained an offer.  It said, with two Nestle Crunch wrappers and 15 cents I could get a Jimmy Dorsey record.  I had no idea who Jimmy Dorsey was, but I assumed he had something to do with music because why else would he make a record?  It did not matter that I had no idea who this person was; I was thrilled with the idea of getting a record (or just anything) that I could call mine.  I would get 15 cents from somewhere, buy another candy bar and send it in and wait for my record.

A few weeks passed, and Sister Madelyn came over to me one day, and she had in her hand my Jimmy Dorsey record.  She said “you know you were not supposed to do this”, I didn’t respond.  An 8 year old is really not prepared to make rational arguments, so I stood there, silently, it was all I could do - she handed the record to me and said with a stern tone of institutional distance and indifference, “don’t do this again.  I put the record in my locker and just smiled. I felt like I had won – it was a wonderful feeling. I couldn’t really explain my excitement over the record, I had no way of playing it, no record player, no turn table, but I didn’t care, my desire wasn’t about playing anything, it was about having something.   It is now 58 years later and I still have my Jimmy Dorsey 45 and I have never really cared about the way it sounds.

Employment

At Maryville all the boys and girls were expected to work a job, separate from going to school and sports.  Some of the jobs were decent others were right out of Oliver Twist.  If you were liked by the nuns you got one of the better jobs, but if you were disliked for one of the seemingly endless myriad of insensible reasons out there, you ended up scrubbing stairs and cleaning toilets. Almost every year, I ended up scrubbing the stains from old worn stairs and floors or cleaning up soiled public restrooms, but once… just once, I got lucky…or so I thought.

I was eight years old and I was assigned to work in the Convent, believe or not that was a great job… for an eight year old in an orphanage. I was thrilled with my new assignment and I also learned that my older sister Kathleen was also assigned to the Convent – It couldn’t be any better.  At every opportunity, I would find my sister and talk to her. Without a mother or father in my life, I always found myself reaching out to my older sisters for warmth and affection, often with shallowly disappointing results.

Shortly into my new assignment, the nun in charge of the Convent came to me and told me I was being re-assigned to another job. I was devastated, with all the turmoil and uncertainty in my life, I cherished being close to one of my sisters and actually being able to talk to someone in my family. I began to sob and asked her why?  With a cold and distant tone that the nuns of Maryville seemed to own, she told me that my sister Kathleen had asked that I be removed from the Convent job, because, as the nun put it,” you bother her too much”.  Bewilderment, fear, sadness and rage poured over me.  I started to scream and I begged the nun that I wouldn’t bother Kathleen any more, and to just please let me stay… but my pleadings were to no avail, I was removed.  I don’t remember what job I was re-assigned to; it just didn’t matter.  I felt abandoned that day my mother left us at Maryville, but my sister Kathleen having me removed for “bothering her” made me realize that I was truly alone. It’s not as if I should have been particularly surprised, at how Kathleen treated me.  This was not the first time she had been selfish, insensitive, and cruel, and it was surely not to be the last.     

Christmas Gifts

Christmas was quickly approaching and I wanted to buy some Christmas gifts for my four sisters.  But what does an 8 year old buy with only 30 cents… not much, even back then.  The other challenge was that the Maryville commissary stocked lots of candy but not much else and that was the only place I could do my shopping.

It was Saturday and I ventured out to the commissary.  I kept asking the nun, who was in charge of the commissary, how much this and that cost.  I ended up buying a spool of thread (I don’t remember the color), some 3 ring note book paper, a small statue of the Mary, the blessed mother and another item I cannot remember.  I paid for my gifts and ventured back to Isabelle hall.  I put the gifts in my locker and went out to play.

When I returned to my hall later that night, I went to my locker to look at my gifts but they were gone. Somebody had stolen them.  I was devastated.  I just didn’t know what to do.  Finally, I decided to go to my hall nun and tell her that one of the girls in my hall had stolen my Christmas gifts.  I wasn’t sure what she could do, and I surely did not hold out hope for her interest or dedication to my wellbeing, but I needed to tell someone, and in our world at Maryville, the nuns were all we had.

A couple of days later, Sister Madelyn, my hall nun called me over as if she wanted to speak with me privately.  She told me she knew who had stolen my gifts and that she had retrieved some of my gifts but the others were gone.  This particular nun had never shown emotion in the past but I’ll always remember what she said to me.  She said “You know why this is particularly cruel... because, you never bother anybody”.  I put the gifts back in my locker but it didn’t feel the same anymore, my Christmas spirit was gone.