Christmas 1951! It would be Christmas 1957 by the time they were freed of Craigmillnar, and their little brother Patrick dead.
In raw indignant voices the men said to me, God damn these jokes about nuns, stupid TV shows about nuns, on TV a nun is meant to be a comic figure but in life there was nothing funny about these women. They were like Nazis — they followed orders. What the mother superior instructed them, they fulfilled. Some of them were like beasts, mentally impaired. The convent had done that to them, you had to surmise. There was a kind of madness in them — you could see in their eyes, which were always darting about, seeking out disobedience. The mother superior had been the cruelest. For the woman had been intelligent, you could see. And her intelligence had all turned to hatred, and to evil.
How the sisters groveled, like all in the Church when confronted with a superior! The ordinary nun groveled to her superior, the mother superior groveled to the bishop, the bishop to the archbishop, and to the cardinal, and to the pope — a vast staircase, you are meant to think, ascending to God the Father.
It was strange, when you thought about it — years later. That the orphanage at Craigmillnar had been theirs to “administer.” By the standards of the present day, was any one of the nuns qualified for such work? Did the director — this woman identified as Sister Mary Alphonsus — have any training in such administration? Were the “nurse nuns” trained nurses? Were the “teacher nuns” trained teachers? Had any of the nuns been educated beyond high school? (That is, parochial high school taught by nuns.) Very likely, many of the Sisters of Charity at Craigmillnar had barely graduated from middle school.
The brothers had vowed to protect Patrick, who was so small, and always terrified. Yet, at Craigmillnar, at once the brothers were separated and made to sleep in separate dormitories according to age.
The orphanage was overcrowded, drafty, and dirty. Often two children shared a single narrow bed. You were — often — marched from one place to another through high-ceilinged corridors. There were mealtimes — school times — prayer times — bedtimes. There were “outdoor times” — these were irregular, and brief. You were not allowed to speak except at certain times and then you dared not raise your voice. Laughter was rare, and likely to be a mistake. Prolonged coughing was a mistake. Sharp-nosed as bloodhounds, the sisters were alert to the smallest infractions of law. The sisters could detect a squirming bad child amid a room of huddled children.
Most frantic were the sisters about bed-wetting. The children were wakened several times a night to check their beds. Bed-wetters were singled out for terrible beatings, children as young as two and three. They were made to drape their soiled sheets around themselves and to stand in the cold for hours until they collapsed. You were punished for being unable to eat by being force-fed through feeding tubes wielded by the sisters.
There were degrees of “discipline” — “punishment.” One of them was “restraint” — the child’s arms were bound by towels, tightly knotted, like a straitjacket. Circulation was cut off, there was likely to be swelling, and terrible pain. A child might be bound, water thrown over him or her, so that the binding was allowed to dry, and to shrink. (This had been done, more than once, to both Douglas and Denis. To this day, the men carried the physical memories of such punishments in their arthritic joints and jabs of pain in their muscles unpredictable as lightning strikes.) There were beatings with the nuns’ leather belts. There were beatings with pokers. There were slaps, blows with fists, kicks. Striking a child’s head with a rolled-up newspaper — this was surprisingly painful. Husky shot-eyed Sister Mary Agatha beat children with a mop handle. Shut Patrick in a cupboard, saying the “little devil” coughed and wheezed “for spite” and kept other children awake.
We were all beaten, we were made to go without proper food, we were made to sleep in cockroach-ridden beds, bed-bug infestations, and no one gave a damn. Neighbors in Craigmillnar must have known — something. The officials of the Church must have known. All those years! The Sisters of Charity could not have been so crude and so cruel at the start. The younger nuns — they were hardly more than girls — must have been shocked, and frightened. Just entering the convent — and being sent to Craigmillnar. Yet, at Craigmillnar, they became crude, cruel women. “Brides of Christ” — what a joke! Their order of nuns was a service order — service to the poor. Saint Alphonsus was one of their patron saints — he’d founded communities for the poor in slums in Rome. They’d vowed for themselves a life of sacrifice — celibacy, poverty, service, obedience. The catch was, the sisters hadn’t had to vow to love their charges, only to serve God through them. Soon, then, they came to hate and despise their charges. A young child must be difficult to hate and despise, yet the sisters of Craigmillnar hated and despised. They were quick to flare into anger, and into rage. They shouted, they screamed. They kicked and they struck us with rods. The teaching nuns struck us with the rods used to pull down maps over the blackboards. In their fury at our fear of them they threw pieces of chalk at us. They knocked us to the floor. They locked us in closets — “solitary confinement” — no food, and lying in our own shit. We did not know what we did wrong. There were crimes called “insolence” — “arrogance.” A ten-year-old girl in the desk next to mine was struck in the face by our teacher, and her nose bled terribly. Her clothing was soaked in blood. She was forced then to remove her clothing, to stand naked and to wash her stained clothing in disinfectant. The bleach, the lye, was such that our hands burned. Our skins were so chafed, they bled easily. We worked in the kitchen, we helped serve up the maggoty food, and we washed the dishes after meals in scalding water, with such meager soap there were scarcely any bubbles. Everything was covered in a fine film of grease that could never be scrubbed away. We worked in the laundry, in the stinking lavatories we were made to clean the toilets and the floors. We cleaned the nuns’ rooms and their stinking lavatories and bathrooms. Their stained tubs and toilets. We worked as grounds crews. We hauled trash, we mowed the rocky lawn. Denis ran away once, twice — how many times! — always brought back by county authorities, sometimes beaten, for he’d “resisted arrest.” Douglas ran away once, and was brought back to the home in a police van, like a captured criminal.
We believed that we would die in the home at Craigmillnar, as Patrick had died, and so many others. We had lost all hope of ever leaving. We were made to pray on our knees, on the bare floor — the prayer I remember was Christ have mercy! Christ have mercy! Christ have mercy!
It was a custom of the Craigmillnar staff to punish children for being ill by refusing to treat their illnesses or medical conditions — rheumatic heart, asthma, pneumonia, diabetes, influenza; contagious sicknesses like chickenpox, measles, and mumps, even diphtheria, swept through the drafty filthy dormitories. Catholic physician-consultants who were allegedly on the Craigmillnar staff failed to come to the home or, if they did, spent most of their time chatting with the mother superior and did not meet with sick children.
Children who died were often buried before their relatives were notified, in unmarked graves at the rear of St. Simon’s churchyard a few miles away.
We never knew if any child had actually been killed outright, in the years we were there. There were rumors of such murders in the past. It was more likely a child might die of injuries eventually, or was let to die of illness. There were many “accidents” — falling down stairs, scalding yourself in the kitchen. Patrick was always hurting himself, and being “disciplined.” He’d had asthma before Craigmillnar that had not been treated. He got sick, he was never well but always coughing, puking. He coughed so hard, his ribs cracked. We begged the nuns to help him, to take him to a hospital, we thought that we could take him ourselves if we were allowed, we knew that pneumonia had to be treated with “oxygen,” but the nuns laughed at us, and screamed at us to shut up. Mother Superior Mary Alphonsus knew of such things, and did not care. She had her own TV in her room. She ate well, she favored sweets. She had a heavy woolen coat and good leather boots for our terrible winters.