my godmother, determined not to let Soeur Boulé know about it. How I ever received an
unopened envelope, escaping Soeur Boulé’s light fingers remains a mystery to me. Yes, I
covertly placed that dollar in my pocket for a major spending spree to occur at a point later.
Over time, the dollar simply vanished. Lost in the laundry, maybe? My fault, no doubt.
Boulé wins.
I profoundly disliked this bandit, shrouded in the gray cloth. After I returned to the
convent from Christmas break at home in Lewiston, my brother Lionel’s bought me an
exceptional gift. It was a medium-sized handsome brown teddy bear, a singular gift from Lionel—no one else. It was my only Christmas gift. I treasured it as the greatest thrill of my
life at age eight. I never let this toy leave me until… one of the boys at St. Louis and I were
seen by one of Soeur Boulé’s snitching sleuths as we played a game of catch with this teddy.
Soeur Boulé evidently found harm or fault with this amusement. She pointed out that a teddy
bear is, after all, not a ball, and should not have been treated like one. I must have failed to
note the difference and apologized profusely. No go. This wickedl witch of the cloth
snatched the teddy away from me. I humbly begged for its return many times later. My sole
Christmas gift of 1955 was never recovered.
Meals at St. Louis Home were of mixed value. So, too, for the ambience of dining
with Soeur Boulé as the maître d'. We could have some steamed hot dogs (no rolls, no
condiments) served with over-boiled potatoes, pâté Chinois (loose hamburg and creamed
corn, layered with mashed potatoes)—a respectable crowd pleaser. Spaghetti was, of course,
popular, too. Suppers were not very different. There were two preparations that were
unappetizing and hideously sickening: Chinese chop suey with celery and sprouts in a
phlegm-like paste. Another was loose hamburg in a warm but flavorless lubricant served with
mashed potato. Either one made me vomit. And gag, I did! I truly tried fantasizing that I was
eating the greatest ice cream in the land as I was swallowing this swill. The reality of the
refuse entering my digestive system set in before the swallow. No throwing up around Soeur
Boulé. I tried to just put down my dish, untouched, hoping that my full plate would somehow
make it to the swill can before she arrived at my table. Oh, no. Ever vigilant, Soeur Boulé
insisted that the food I was given was good for me and, after a pop upside my head, she proceeded to spoon-feed me like an infant, one spoonful at a time. I hurriedly left the dining
room after this intolerable excuse for a meal and heaved this mixture ill-suited for a squalid
skunk. Relief, at last.
My fellow mates found some concoctions at St. Louis to be appallingly gross. For
instance, there were the baked saltine crackers in hot milk with melted orange American
cheese dried on the top. For me, that was a delicacy. I would eat the servings of others at the
table, hoping not to get caught doing so by Soeur Boulé or her appointed bloodhounds. Ditto
for desserts like super-soft over-ripe banana slices in sweet slime sauce. Perhaps
masochistically, I loved that muck. So, too, for boiled sweet rice with raisins. Where did they
dream up these putrid recipes? Surely not in Québec?
Several meals called for boiled carrots on the side or, worse yet, lima beans. What,
other than Chinese chop suey or ground hamburg pieces could be worse? Solution: trade off
with my table peers. Get caught? Major infraction. Off to Soeur Boulé’s castigatory devices
again.
The pattern was ever evident: meals around Soeur Boulé were not very pleasant
occasions. She frequently engaged an envoy among us to serve as an infiltrator. She was
always on her guard trying to catch someone speaking (a very big no-no) when we were not in
recess. Worse yet was the sharing of food at the table, though we did it as often as we could
get away with it as in, “I’ll give you my dessert if you’ll take my carrots.” There was one
entrée that no one would accept: lard-laden chopped hamburg. It was consistently the prime
perpetrator of puke. I could not, would not stomach this sewage. As time neared for everyone to receive dessert, there set my vomit-to-be, and the omniscient Soeur Boulé knew it.
She spoon-fed this swill to me until I gulped it all down. When the meal ended, I would rush
to the toilet for the satisfying release of that venom from my system. This took place perhaps
once each month.
Meals at St. Louis Home were varied, wholesomely healthy—far more so than
anything I would be able to consume back home in Lewiston. For example, Soeur Boulé
would serve either lumpy oatmeal, lumpy cream of wheat, or cold white toast with milk for
breakfast. Kitchen staff in a building adjacent to ours prepared the food, but to us, everything
we ate came from the bully. On the other hand, with her, we could load up on dry cereal with
butter and sugar at will—nothing like that at my home where we would be lucky to have two
stale slices of bread to toast and embellish with real butter from government surplus
provisions. She knew that, and reminded us of our caste status with frequency. So, every
meal was to be treated as a lavish banquet, no matter how horribly prepared they sometimes
were.
Soeur Boulé knew that Danny was no easy kid for me, his peer and caregiver, to tend
to, especially at mealtime. Yet, one slip-up, one lapse in judgment from him, and I was to be
blamed because, as Soeur Boulé continually reminded me, “Ce n’est pas sa faut qu’il est
comme ça.” [It’s not his fault that he’s like that.”] The other admonition was more positive,
with regard to my duties for tending to his needs, that there would be a reward in the “next
world” for me if I do this job well. Until then, heaven must wait.
One day over lunch, Danny’s tall bottle of Father John’s Medicine somehow tipped over. I discovered the spill too late to thwart it. To me, the stream was but a curative russet
sea. To Soeur Boulé it must have appeared to be a volcanic eruption of the convent’s septic
system. Nonetheless, I did not commit this transgression. Truly, I was innocent. Not so, here
comes the Nazi commandant: arrived, primed for the kill. Lifted up and escorted from my seat
by both ears to the front of the dining hall I was thrown to the floor to, shedding whatever
dignity I may have had, and assumed the canine position—all fours. Listening to her rifle
through the drawer for the most torturous tool, fear overtook me afresh. She had no rubber
sole, no stick, and no traditional bludgeoning instrument. Awaiting me was her preeminent
finishing touch: a large stainless steel serving spoon. The simple ordeal was a repeated
whipping with this object across my keister. “Arêt de brailler!” [“Stop the weeping.”] Again.
One more strike. “Arête de brailler”! In agonizing pain, I was lifted from the floor again
from the ears, and back to the table. No doubt audible not so much to me but to the others in
this silent gathering, was her last command, “Clean up this mess, you fool.”
From this ineffable experience, I was determined to exact justice. Danny was to
blame. No question in my mind. The right time for vengeance had arrived. As it happened,
Danny had soiled his pants, something he rarely did, since he was toilet trained. Yet, here was
an accident, and I knew it. I also knew that if Soeur Boulé knew of this accident, I would be
admonished for failing to avert this display of crudity. One step ahead of Soeur Boulé, I asked
to take him to the bathroom. Permission granted.
What I was about to do to this kid was unspeakably hideous. I seized a wire hanger
and beat him to a pulp with this weapon, as he was en route to the lavatory. No one could hear him cry but me. When he stopped crying, I cleaned up his mess. He and I gracefully
returned to the fold. I felt self-righteously proud and unrepentant. I sometimes think of
actress Joan Crawford’s repulsive child-beating scene involving a coat hanger captured in the
1981 film, Mommie Dearest. This violent incident from the fifties must have been inspired in
some psychically perverse way by the commission of my cruelty 3000 miles away from
Crawford’s Beverly Hills. It was a wickedly appalling act that I will forever remember as
evil. Genuinely repentant as I eventually was, I asked for forgiveness and received absolution
from the Good Father. Nothing approaching this act would ever recur.
Surely, all nuns must abide by the oath of their vocation. Yes, Soeur Boulé, like any
other nun must do that. The fundamental tenet of all Roman Catholicism, if not especially for
the women of the sacred cloth and crucifix-on-a-chain, would be that lying is a commission of
an transgression against God. Ah, but a devine accommodation must have been made for
Soeur Boulé’s canards. Indeed, the mendacious Soeur Boulé taught us petits garçons that
lying was evil. Telling one’s parents, for example, that life at St. Louis Home was an
agonizing experience of corporal punishment, abuse, and neglect would have to be termed a
fabrication, a deception, a common lie. After all, one would more accurately describe living
in a penal complex as an agonizing experience as opposed to the nurturing environment we
would presumably enjoy by living in a Church-operated boys’ home. Perceptions are truly not
what they seem. Besides, Soeur Boulé so often reminded us little cherubs that St. Louis Home
was not a reform school, but a good Catholic home and school for us children from
dysfunctional homes. If anything, we must be grateful to the Lord for the nuns’ awe-inspiring conduct toward us. Right, she was. This was not a reform school. But it did seem enough
like one to most of us. Hence, the topic would be fair game in “private” conversations with
parents or other visitors. Of course, some parents and visitors queried about such alleged
oppression. Sometimes the snitchers enlisted by Soeur Boulé who were within earshot of the
conversations eavesdropped. Soeur Boulé’s retribution would inevitably follow.
Imagine, too, her reaction when a parent would repeat what her son reported to her, such
as accepting a thrashing for dangling one’s tongue during mealtime silence. The furtive Soeur
Boulé was very well prepared to sentence the little perpetrator of perjury. Whenever that
happened, the child, still lamenting the exit of his loved ones, would be held up to all of us as
an exemplar of a fraud. She delivered many, many Sunday evening homilies, each of which
always featured the same caesura and topic, “A cette heure, la lecture de la politesse.” [“Now,
for your politeness lecture.”] Following her harangue came her acrimonious exhortation---in
this case, a demonstration of the consequences for lying to one’s parents about maltreatment
that was, gulp, non-existent at St. Louis Home. A penalty must be paid for perpetrating
calumny, as Soeur Boulé reminded us. That would likely be three lashes of the rubber
flooring strip on the elbow’s sensitive underside or on each wrist. Perhaps she had the best of
intentions in keeping the chronic abuse under cover: making the “home” look good to
outsiders. Image was everything. As noted earlier, no one among us would ever receive
unopened mail. Soeur Boulé would open our letters, read them, and be sure to take out
(“borrow?”) any money that might have been enclosed. I surmise that she was, of course,
either too dim-witted (or more charitably, that she was illiterate) to notice the line in one’s letters, that read, “Here’s a dollar for you so you can buy some stamps” or that her English
skills were too marginal. No money. No stamps, either. That was stealing, and I think that
offense was among those carved on a tablet that perhaps a twentieth century Moses should
have photocopied for this malevolent, unholy woman. SoeurBouléwas a crook.
Soeur Boulés primitive modes of petty behavior modification were clearly sadistic and
ostensibly masochistic as well. Her methods for exacting reprisal were vindictive, unmerciful,
mortifying, inventive, fierce, and always triggered by her persistently livid autocracy. The
most minor infractions would result in an early-to-bed outcome. Then there was always the
quick, easy and direct face slap. For her convenience, we sometimes were commanded to slap
the mischievous mugs of our best friends as hard as we might under her orders. That made
SoeurBouléhappy.
In addition to the rubber strip of flooring remnants, there was a shoe sole that Soeur
Boulé kept on her person as any other woman might carry a purse. Those two items were her
favorite instruments for tormenting us. As justice would have it, she had a carefully
choreographed system for identifying offenders, covering a wide range of infractions. Some
were violations worthy of the same invective such as overstaying time in the lavatory or
accusing others of doing these things as a result of a snitching peer’s intervention. Once we
children were identified as violators of her official directives, we might receive the three-to-a
hand stinging with the rubber shoe sole. Sometimes it was just more efficient for her to strike
us against the wrist using her bare open palm. At other times, she would incarcerate individuals under her desk where they would sit for an hour or so in a most uncomfortable
fetal position. If the underside of the desk was already taken, there was always the dungeon
like solo bathroom, toilet with no sink, with the six-inch thick heavy metal door at the foot of
the steps leading to that area. The underside of the desk was torture far less medieval. In this
lightless room that was easy to pass by unnoticed, we were frequently confined, often
forgotten for hours. Mental pain through incarceration was a mode of punishment more
severe than, say, whipping with the stick or rubber strap. It was the deafening long-term
solitude in that six-by-six toilet cell. Ah, our transgressions! Boulé’s blind style of
management?
Beatings with a stick were reserved for repeat offenders. Take my brother Bobby, for
example. Once he was held up as an example, too, when Soeur Boulé gave him fair warning,
“ 74, Tu va avoir le mal affaire à moi.” [Loosely: “Number 74, You will receive the worst of
me.”]. Soeur Boulé’s three-foot long pointer stick was used in the same way as the rubber
strap. Bobby could be ornery sometimes, willing even to confront authority as others like him
had done without success. Even a docile, obsequious lad like me knew better than they. My
advice: Go along with it and get over the beating until the next time. Not Bobby. With his
arm gingerly stretched out towar
d his oppressor, he was prepared for one lash on the left wrist
with the stick. Ouch! Yikes! Enter Strike Two! But wait. Bobby ain’t gonna take this one.
No way. Simultaneously but swiftly down goes his arm as the speedy stick shatters over
Soeur Boulé’s knee. Visibly upset about Bobby’s one-upsmanship, she whacks the remains of
her fragmented stick across his worried face, resulting in cuts, a swollen face for Bob, and a yelp far greater than he would have otherwise endured. Another strike. And another across
his side, continuing until her anger abated. What had he learned? He probably learned that he
should be more careful about dodging a bullet from Soeur Boulé. The fool just thought that
maybe this once, he would prevail. Never so with this gray dame.
Not all beatings for misdeeds were equal. For example, talking too loudly on the
playground would trigger a penance such as: “Tien ta langue.” [“Hold your tongue”]. That is
to say, you must pinch the tip of your tongue with your thumb and forefinger—quite literally.
Punishment awaited any of us who sat on the playground swing seat facing the public
Dunstan School across the street where little girls may be noticed from afar. Ah, that was to
risk another creative but common response: placing one’s nose against the wall for several
minutes. Sometimes Soeur Boulé was too lazy to do the beating herself; Consequently, she
Dunstan Public School: Forbidden view of the school from our play area across the street asked one of us to give a slap across the face to the kid next to us. After the slap from a peer,
the child would be told why the slap was warranted. Efficiency at work.
Soeur Boulé trained her surrogates from her home-made text on childcare. No, surrogates
were not so much nuns like the aforementioned Sister Rita, but no-name Madame. Madame
was an aging, frustrated, mean, widowed woman. She was hired to tend to us when Soeur
Boulé or Sister Rita attended to meals with their fellow nuns or somewhere else that nuns go
that we kids would know nothing about. Madame was feared only second to Soeur Boulé; no
nun was worse than these two spiteful rogues. Madame’s favorite punishment was to have us
miscreants sit in the fetal position under her desk for wrongdoings such as talking during