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.