Waiting…

In some…well most aspects, Maryville had more in common with a state prison than a boarding school.  All mail going out or coming in was read and censored before being mailed or received.  Parental visits were only allowed every other Sunday between 12:00 to 4:00 or 1:00 to 4:00… I don’t exactly remember which time slot it was.  If parents came out on a different Sunday from the one which they had been allotted, the children were not allowed to see their parents.  Maryville could get away with this because most of us were wards of the Catholic Church; our parental rights had been surrendered. I remember the Sunday I learned I was no longer under my Mother’s responsibility, but a ward of the Catholic Church...  My Mother was visiting and she was complaining about Maryville and I said to her “why don’t you take us out of here”, and she said “I can’t” and I said “why can’t you … you are my Mother” and she said “I have surrendered my rights to you” and I said “you are no longer my Mother, why did you do that”?! And she said “yes I am still your Mother but I cannot take you out of Maryville without their permission”.  I asked her again “why did you do that?” and she said “because I can no longer afford to pay to keep you at Maryville, it is too expensive”. I just looked at her - I was so angry and devastated and also very frightened. My status in this world had been decided by a billing matter.

So, every other Sunday parents were allowed to visit.  It’s not that they did, they were allowed to.  Who was going to show up on any particular Sunday was anyone’s guess.  The kids were informed their parents had arrived through a public address system which was piped into every hall room.  Every other Sunday two girls would volunteer to sit near the PA system and listen for the announcement of whose parents had arrived – one would listen for the names and the other was the runner.  I always volunteered to be one of the two. In some ways it was boring and monotonous to sit there for hours listening, hoping and praying I would hear my Mother had arrived.  Being close to that speaker and being the first to hear anything gave me a sense of control that I so badly craved.  Sometimes she visited, but often, she didn’t.  Sometimes, she would arrive so late we could only visit for a few minutes. The nuns lived their life by a schedule, and they were not about to make an exception for anyone in the outside world.  If you had 3 minutes left in your visitation window, you received 3 minutes… that was it.   This whole process was torture – needing and loving someone so much as I did my Mother and yet having no control to get or give the love I needed and deserved…and in my 5 years at Maryville I ended up enduring this Sunday ritual roughly 162 times.

Religion

As Maryville was a Catholic facility, religion played a very important role in our lives.  We were young, vulnerable and did exactly what the nuns wanted.  If you did not go along with whatever they preached, you paid a terrible price.  Power and fear are deeply motivational tools when you want children, or anyone for that matter, to obey; just look at any dictatorship. 

Most mornings Sister Madelyn would flip on the overhead dorm lights and start yelling “let us praise the lord, let us praise the lord”. Now, although it was her request for us to praise the lord before thinking of anything else, praising the lord was rarely the first thought in my mind.  The idea of going back to sleep usually won.  We were expected to fall out of bed, fall on our knees and pray.  The prayer we were demanded to recite went like this: Jesus hanging on the cross, tell me what did I, did I make the tears drop dear lord, did I make you cry, I’m a naughty child, as naughtiest as can be…….. It wasn’t bad enough that we felt destroyed because our parents didn’t want us, but we had an additional burden that we were the children who made Jesus cry, because were so bad - it is truly remarkable that any of us survived.

Every Sunday and on other religious holidays we attended Mass. We were expected to kneel through most of the Mass which was hard and challenging for small children.  There were five priests assigned to Maryville and we never knew which priest was going to say Mass.  This was important because of our desire for breakfast.  At Maryville, our meals fit in around Mass.  We would eat dinner at five every day, so by eight the next morning we were famished, the only obstacle between us and breakfast, was the speed with which the priest could orate the Mass. Some priests said Mass with a rapidity that kept the service moving and breakfast closer, while others languished on their words in a way that made you wonder if it would ever end.  As the priest entered the church, there would be either a collective sigh of relief or a very unhappy quiet groan; all of us knew who said Mass quickly and who drug it out endlessly. 

Despite my general desire not to be there, there were certain good moments that came during the services. In the 50s, the Mass was given in Latin and there was a lot of singing of the hymns – I liked the singing particularly during the Christmas season.  During Christmas we would sing the Gregorian chants as well as other well known Christmas songs – it was fun, it made me feel like a kid. It was nice to get those windows of happiness no matter how small. I still miss that part.