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.