High Crime Area: Tales of Darkness and Dread

  Might’ve been a few weeks ago, doctor. Maybe two months.

  How often did you see the Sister putting this “cloth” on her head?

  Maybe three times, doctor. I never thought anything of it, you know how old people are sometimes.

  Dr. Godai laughed. He was the newest consultant on our staff, from the University of Minnesota Medical School. He had a burnished-skinned Paki look, dark-eyed, sharp-witted. Knowing that certain of the elderly patients and certain of the medical staff did not feel comfortable with him, as non-white, Dr. Godai was what you’d call forceful-friendly, engaging you with his startling-white eyes and smile sharp as a knife-blade. Between Dr. Godai and me there flashed a kind of understanding as if the elderly nun was in the room with us, helpless, yet furious, glaring at us in disdain and in hurt, that she could not lash out at us to punish.

  Eccentric is the word, Francis. A kindly word. For you wouldn’t want to say demented, deranged, senile—eh?

  Dr. Godai and I laughed together. I wasn’t naïve enough to think that Dr. Godai could ever be my friend, though we are about the same age.

  I told Dr. Godai that each time I’d seen Sister Mary Alphonsus behaving in this way, putting a “shroud” on her head, I’d made no comment of course. I didn’t even ask her if she was cold, or needed an extra blanket. Nor did Sister Mary Alphonsus encourage conversation with me or with others on the staff. In my memory it had seemed to me that the woman was just slightly embarrassed, and annoyed, by my having seen her with the “cloths.” And so out of courtesy I turned away from her, as if I hadn’t seen.

  It’s a strange life isn’t it, Francis?—I mean, the religious orders. Poverty, chastity, service, obedience these nuns swore to.

  To this, I made no reply. Dr. Godai was speaking bemusedly, and may have been thinking out loud.

  Of course, I don’t understand the Catholics, maybe. Are you Catholic, Francis?

  No, Dr. Godai. I am not.

  You are an arrogant young man. I will report you.

  I know YOU. YOU will not get away with this.

  There are two categories of geriatric patient. Those who persist in behaving as if they aren’t elderly; or as if their current condition, inability to walk, for instance, is a temporary one; individuals who shuffle slowly, in obvious pain, leaning against walls, against the backs of chairs, out of pride. And there are those who have conceded that they are not “one hundred percent,” but must use a cane, a walker, a wheelchair. (It’s possible to think that a wheelchair isn’t really “permanent”—it is always expedient, helpful more for the staff.) Each step you think is temporary and you will soon return to your real self, but that’s not how it goes.

  Sister Mary Alphonsus had been in the second category. She may have been elderly but not old-elderly; and she would resent bitterly your behaving as if she were. Her hearing, like her vision, was impaired, but Sister Mary Alphonsus was more likely to blame you for not speaking clearly, or loud enough, than she would blame herself. In fact, Sister Mary Alphonsus would never blame herself.

  If she spilled food, or dropped something, and you were present—somehow, the fault lay with you. At first I’d thought this was a sign of dementia but later I came to realize, it was the woman’s perception of what is: blame must be assigned, only just not with her.

  Unlike most of the elderly women in the facility, Sister Mary Alphonsus hadn’t been what you’d call frail. Her body was thick, waistless; her skin was leathery; her eyes were suspicious and close-set; her legs remained heavy, especially her thighs, that strained against the polyester stretch-pants she sometimes wore. Her most characteristic expression was a peevish frown.

  Sometimes, Sister Mary Alphonsus seemed annoyed by rain outside her window, as if it had been sent to provoke her. For there was a small courtyard into which we could wheel patients, in good weather.

  Once, I’d wheeled Sister Mary Alphonsus outside into this courtyard and had to go away on an errand, and by the time I returned it was raining hard, and Sister Mary Alphonsus had managed to wheel herself beneath an overhang, by an effort of both hands.

  You did that on purpose! You are mocking me.

  No one considered that it might have been poison that Sister Mary Alphonsus had taken. Poison that was her own soul.

  It was general knowledge in Eau Claire: in recent months the children’s home at Craigmillnar, that had acquired a “controversial” reputation since it had been shut down by state health authorities in 1977, had re-surfaced in the news.

  Now, interest in Craigmillnar was part of a broad investigation into Catholic-run charity homes, hospitals, and organizations following a flood of disclosures of sexual misconduct by priests in the United States, with the complicity of the Catholic hierarchy. A militant group of former residents of the home at Craigmillnar, that called itself Survivors of Craigmillnar, had been picketing the archbishop’s residence in Milwaukee, demanding acknowledgment of what they charged had been “widespread neglect and abuse” at Craigmillnar. The state attorney general was considering criminal charges against some former staff members who, the former residents claimed, had been responsible for a number of deaths at Craigmillnar in the 1950s and 1960s.

  At the very least, the Survivors were demanding financial settlements, and a public apology from the Catholic Church.

  Public apology!—my father laughed, bitterly. The Church will apologize when Hell freezes over.

  Both my mother’s and my father’s families had been Catholic—they’d emigrated to Wisconsin from Glasgow in the 1920s—but no longer. My father and his older brother Denis had expressed disgust with the Church for as long as I could remember and when I was asked my religion on a form I checked None.

  In Scotland there are many Catholics. People think that Scotland is all Protestant—this is not so. But lately, since the scandals of the pedophile priests and cover-ups by the Church, there has been a drop in the number of Catholics in Scotland, as in Ireland.

  When allegations of abuse and negligence were first made against the Craigmillnar nuns, the diocese had defended the Sisters of Charity. There were Church-retained lawyers, threats of counter-charges. The archbishop, who’d been a bishop in Boston at the time of Craigmillnar’s worst abuses, had issued a public statement regretting the “unprofessionalism” of the orphanage, but absolving his predecessor-archbishop, now deceased, from any blame associated with its administration. It was leaked to the media that church officials believed that the Craigmillnar Sisters of Charity were “not representative” of the Order; that there’d been in fact a “very small minority” of Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul who’d been involved in this “unprofessional” behavior. Those nuns still living had been “retired” from the Order.

  In the Eau Claire elder care facility such subjects were not usually discussed. At least not openly.

  The former lives of our patients are not our concern unless our patients want to talk about them, as sometimes they do; for it’s important to some of the elderly that their caretakers have some sense of who they once were. For most of them, showing photos of grandchildren and boasting of careers will suffice.

  Sister Mary Alphonsus, who’d been a resident at Eau Claire for the past eight years, had never spoken of her former life as Mother Superior at Craigmillnar—of course. Some time before I’d come to Eau Claire to work as an orderly, there’d been a coalition of investigators who’d sought to interview the elderly nuns in the facility, predominantly Sister Mary Alphonsus, but an attorney hired by the diocese had rebuffed their efforts with the argument that the nuns had long been retired, and were not in good health.

  In 1997, in the wake of the slow-smoldering scandal, the name of the nuns’ order was legally changed from the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul to the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul.

  Still, there was a lingering wonderment not only in Unit D but elsewhere in the facility, regarding the sudden death of the former Mother Superior of the Craigmillnar Home for
Children. As if the staff didn’t want to surrender their most notorious resident quite so quickly.

  Maybe (some were saying) Sister Mary Alphonsus had had a hand in her own death.

  Since there’d been no autopsy. You could conjecture such things, that were not likely to be disproven.

  (For what did Dr. Bromwalder know, or care? The senior consultant’s hours at Eau Claire were the very minimum, if not less.)

  Managed somehow to cease breathing. And her heart to cease beating.

  The gauzy soiled “veil” or “wimple” wound around her head, hiding her face, had to be deliberate—didn’t it?

  Could be, Sister Mary Alphonsus felt remorse. For the children she’d had a hand in torturing and letting die of disease.

  Could be, Sister Mary Alphonsus’s death was a penance.

  Put herself out of her misery?

  Speculations wafted about me. But I was too busy working—pushing trolleys, gurneys, wheelchairs—sweeping and mopping floors, disinfecting toilets, hauling away trash to the Dumpsters out back—to be distracted.

  Honorably discharged from the U.S. Army with the rank of corporal when I was twenty-six, four years ago this January.

  Because of my training I’d been assigned to the medical unit. The work was tiring but exciting, always unpredictable. You were made to feel For the grace of God, this could be me. It makes you humble, and grateful. It’s a feeling that will never fade. The first time a soldier died in my arms it happened in a way to leave me stunned, I could not talk about it for weeks. I have never talked about it even with my father. I’d thought Is this what it is? Dying? So easy?

  There is nothing so precious as life, you come to know. Firsthand you know this. And a sick feeling, a feeling of rage, that some people treat the lives of others so carelessly, or worse.

  My first work back in the States was in Racine where I trained; my second job was Balsam Lake Nursing Home twenty miles north of St. Croix where my family lives. My third job has been here at the Eau Claire elder care facility where I am currently employed.

  When we were growing up my father never spoke of his own childhood. I knew that he’d had a younger brother—who would have been one of my uncles—who’d died when he was a child. But I didn’t know anything more.

  Anything of the past was forbidden. We did not ask but we did not think to ask. My mother had warned us—Your father isn’t a man for looking back. That can be a good thing.

  Francis! Come home this weekend, Denis and I have to speak with you.

  It was a weeknight in early November. At this time, Sister Mary Alphonsus had not yet passed away in her sleep.

  Such urgency in my father’s voice I had never heard before, not even when I’d left for Iraq.

  In an exalted mood my father and my uncle Denis brought me with them to the Sign of the Ram which was their favorite pub, to a booth at the rear of the taproom behind the high-pitched din of the TV above the bar. Leaning our elbows on the scarred table, hunching inward. My father and my uncle Denis on one side of the table, and me on the other.

  I felt a mounting unease. The thrill of such intimacy with my father and my uncle was not-right.

  In fierce lowered voices they revealed to me their long-kept secret, that no one else knew: not my mother, and not my aunt who was Denis’s wife. Not anyone in the family at the present time for those who’d known had died, and had taken their knowledge of the secret with them, in shame.

  Here was the situation. My father spoke, and my uncle interrupted to complete his sentences. Then, my father interrupted. Then, my uncle. These are not men accustomed to speaking in such a way in lowered voices and with an air of commingled shame and rage. For it seemed, articles in the local papers had stirred in them memories of Craigmillnar. TV interviews with “survivors” of the home whose faces were blurred to protect their identities. One night Denis had called his brother during one of these interviews on the local station—Jesus God, I think I know who that is. And you do, too.

  As boys, Denis, Douglas, and their young brother Patrick had been committed to the Craigmillnar Home for Children. Their father had died in an accident at the St. Croix stone quarry when he was thirty-three. Their mother, only twenty-six when Patrick was born, had had a mental breakdown and could no longer take care of herself and her sons; she began to drink heavily, she fed medications to the boys “to keep them from crying,” she died in 1951 of a drug overdose. One day an uncle came for them to take them to the orphanage saying there was “no place” for them now—but he would come to get them again soon, in a few months perhaps. In time for Christmas, he’d promised.

  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 it in their eyes, that 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—bed-times. 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, bedbug 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.