Breaking Cover, Speaking Out

I have a story to tell, one I have never written down before, though I’ve told it at times in pieces, making small jokes about having been raised in a convent. It was a way for people to visualize what it was like to spend eight years in a school taught only by nuns fresh from Ireland the year I entered first grade. The only grade I attended in public school was kindergarten. My kindergarten year was spent with crayons and finger paints, playing kitchen, hula dancing, and learning the alphabet and numbers. I remember being different from the other girls, because my two best playmates in class were boys.

In first grade, my teacher was strange and foreboding in a full-length black habit, giant rosary and starched white bib. Her veil assembly rose half a foot from her forehead into a long peak to support the black veil that fell to her waist, from which no hair was ever visible. She liked to widen her eyes to glare through her coke bottle glasses, nodding regularly at a chosen child, baring her teeth while she gritted them with displeasure. When she crossed her arms underneath her bib, she seemed to expand even further with irritation. What I remember most about that grade was worrying over a small hole I had doodled in the reader without realizing it. I took seriously the bug-eyed threats of “Woe betide ye” if any book was returned in anything but perfect condition. There were lots of books now, carried home every night for homework in the required leather book bag. I was to grow calluses from the handle, alternating the bag from hand to hand for the thirty-minute walk between home and school. I can remember the relief I felt the rare times the bag was light. At the end of first grade, I had earned exactly one A, one D and an assortment in between. My father paid me a quarter for the A, but I was required to give it back immediately to make up for the D. I remember the A was in reading, and my one point of pride in earning it disappeared into tears. He never did find out that I had read the reader start to finish, the first few weeks of class.

It was a harsh lesson, but my 7-year old mind figured out that next year I needed more A’s, and in second grade I worked very hard. My teacher was a tense perfectionist, a relief from the terror of first grade. I remember most a certain assignment early in the school year: to read a chapter in the bible studies book and to spell every word in the chapter by the next school day. The book was not really 2nd grade level, and although I could read it, I struggled with memorizing all the words. I remember lying in my bunk at home, panicked because I could not seem to learn to spell “daughter.” I kept repeating and repeating it to myself to make it stick. My mother came in and heard me, and went out again after understanding what it was I was trying to do. The next day, there was no mention of the need to spell the words in class, and that assignment was never repeated. I still remember it on some level whenever I spell words with “aught” in them. I got the A’s I needed on my report cards, and made my quarters without loosing a single one that year.

The effort in second grade had been difficult, and my 8-year old mind figured out that I would only work hard in even numbered classes. I relaxed the effort to be perfect in third grade. It did not occur to me that this would not be possible to pull off any longer. I got into trouble, not big trouble, but enough trouble to make trouble my dominant memory of third grade. I remember learning to hold out my open hand for the ruler to strike, and not flinching away because that was not allowed and there would be double hits. I remember when I was caught letting my eyes wander out the wall of windows. I had to stand in the corner, while some joined in the punishment with snickers from behind me. There was no dunce cap, but I distinctly remember feeling like there was one floating over my head nonetheless. Nicknames from first grade, because my last name had been hard to pronounce, now resurfaced as taunts from the boys most often in trouble themselves. Towards the end of that year, one of the boys I had played with in kindergarten arranged to meet me after school. I remember wanting to talk, but I could find nothing to say, and he never tried to meet me again. Even at that age, I knew I was different than he remembered, and that he was disappointed. I finished that year, a slightly better than average student.

Some kids left, and a few others came to replace them, but mostly we moved through the grades together as a cohort. Our roles became set, and I was the quiet one who bit her nails and always did her homework. My mother tried every possible remedy to stop the nail biting, especially the one that had worked on her. She was bewildered when I did not even pause at the bitter taste she painted on my nails. After third grade, I gave up my plan to alternate the grades when I made a special effort. I needed to stay out of trouble, and the only sure way to do that for me was to get good grades.

The school decided to assign teachers to classes they had already taught, and my second and first grade teachers repeated teaching our class several times. I learned ways to adapt. I made detailed use of the required assignment notebook so that I never missed any work, making up my own acronym, LBH, for the constant instruction to learn something by heart. I started homework by 5 pm, broke for dinner, and worked till bedtime most nights. My parents were pleased that they never needed to ask me to do my homework. I made up a mind game with the clock on the back wall of every classroom. I would convince myself that the clock hands were moving slow, so that when I could look around without getting caught, there was a brief moment of pleasure when more time was gone than I expected. One of the nuns, who never taught my class, was particularly kind and I loved to be near when she was outside at recess. I would only stand at the edge of the children who constantly clustered around her, because it was hard to get closer. Often, other teachers waved us off when the circle of children grew too noticeable.

In eighth grade, I had my first grade teacher yet again, except now she carried a yardstick instead of a ruler to use around the classroom. She broke it one day over the head of a boy in the class. He was the designated “worst boy,” and he always acted like nothing could hurt him. He talked a little slower than most of the boys, and he never talked about his family. As an adult, he entered a seminary to become a priest, failed that, and later died by his own hand. That was the year I found my own nail-biting solution, by chewing on a tough acrylic thumbnail instead. I was a sensation with my classmates, when I finally grew nails.

Years later, three of the eight original nuns eventually returned to Ireland after what was called “nervous breakdowns,” including my second grade teacher. My siblings and I compared notes only after we were older adults. A brother remembered that he knew they “couldn’t touch me because I was smart and the son of a professional.” One sister surprised herself by turning into an actress to “get them off my back,” and fooled the nuns into underestimating her resourcefulness by making them feel sorry for her. We had all made our individual adaptations to our captivity.

I believe that before any group of people oppresses others outside their group, they have first been oppressed themselves. The nuns did not become the way they were “in a vacuum.” They had grown up in a war-torn society full of black and white, us versus them thinking, and the anger born of misery. In social work, we learn we can repeat our childhood experiences with others, unless we have examined ourselves thoroughly, most effectively with the aid of a counselor. The children who stayed in that school existed in an oppressive environment, forced into their assigned roles, even as oppressed groups the world over are forced into theirs. The entire class community was stressed, powerless as children in that environment. Even the powerless, though, can exercise power, or three of those nuns would have not have needed to go home again. I was lucky that I could go home to a family where I was loved, even though we did not communicate well with each other. I chose to work hard as a form of protection. The boy who did not survive adulthood did not have those advantages, trying and failing to redeem himself from the overwhelming role of the class scapegoat.

There was no parental involvement and the authority of the teacher was absolute. For all practical purposes, the nuns stood in God’s shoes. For me, they were right and I was wrong. Their God and mine was an angry God, who looked down on me with a scowl and knew I was bad even when I bowed my head and prayed. Did I know to tell my parents how I felt? Not in words, it never occurred to any of us to do that. There were signs, such as my extreme nail biting, a behavior now recognized as a sign of anxiety and stress (Venes, 2005). Like all oppressed people, I thought this was the way things were supposed to be, because it was all that I had ever known. Although I did not try to make things worse for others, I also sat mute when others were hurt. Even for adults, sticking up for others in such an environment takes courage, and a belief that something must be done. Some participated with the teacher, such as those who snickered or transferred their pain by treating others badly. This has been done from before the Bible existed, when Eve was written into the story and assigned the blame. It was not till I entered a different school that I found out that it could be any different.

I lost a large part of myself because of that school, and became an entirely different person for many years. My memory contains the evidence of my transformations, from kindergarten through adulthood. My journey back to what my Creator intended me to be has not ended. It still surprises me when my perspective shifts and I see myself for a moment while I am doing something well, as if it was natural for me. I speak out now, sometimes easily and at other times when it is the last thing I would chose to do. What I experienced as a child changed with time into a determination to protect others, eventually calling me into the profession of social work, as described by Hardcastle and Powers (2004). I had been doing social work all my life. I never knew to call what I did social work, till I met a real social worker, and saw how hard she worked for others and how much of her life energy went into that work. She had been there too, and now helped others make it through to the other side. In social work, I suspect that there is a higher than average number of survivors than in the general population, with equal or greater determination to change the way it is for someone else. They cannot change the past, but they can affect the future. To paraphrase Hemingway: All people are broken by life. Some become stronger in the broken places. Some guide others to find their strength in the broken places.

Remembering all the guides along my way,
especially the ones who were careful with me.


References

Hardcastle, D.A., & Powers, P. R. (2004). Community Practice: Theories and Skills for Social Workers, (2nd Edition, pp. 19). New York: Oxford University Press.

Hemingway, E. (1957). A Farewell to Arms. New York: Scribner.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929

Venes, D. (2009). Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary. (20th Edition, pp. 1427). Philadelphia : F.A. Davis Co.