psychiatry class, I’d learn that loss of appetite and weight loss can be signs of severe depression. My sadness at Rosary was starving me.
Years later, my mother told me that her decision to send me to Rosary was financially driven. It was less expensive to board me there than to send me to a day school and pay for after-school care. It seems that in those days the Catholic Church, with money to spare, had special interest in holding children captive round-the-clock. The Church subsidized the indoctrination of its children. And for my mother it was a welcome relief not to have to deal with me on weeknights.
Soon after I left Rosary to live in the Watertown flat with my mother and aunt, I found myself standing alone outside our front stoop, face-to-face with three brilliant red tulips. I was struck at being able to see such beauty so close. Usually, I had to crane my head up to see something pretty, such as gilded statues at Church or a lady’s necklace. The sun beamed down and warmed me while it released a faint fragrance of spring from the tulips. It felt good to be home.
I stood next to my mother in front of a large, dark-red brick building. It was July, 1958. We had just moved from Watertown to a flat in Brighton, a working-class section on the western edge of Boston. I was so happy to be living with my mother and Margie again that I didn’t much mind the move to a new apartment. As long as I could be with them, I’d live in a shack. When I was home, it was always my mother, Margie, and me. Margie held a variety of amorphous roles in the family. She was a second mother to me, the one I ran to for banishing the pain of cuts and scrapes. She sometimes acted like a daughter to my mother and a sister to me. Then, when she was angry with either my mother or me, she’d pull back and act like we were roommates.
I now shared a room with my mother. Sometimes she made me lie next to her in her bed for a morning snuggle. I hated being that close, hated the vinegary smell of her before she washed and applied perfume. I didn’t dare complain about this new arrangement for fear that my mother would get mad and send me away again. At least Margie still gave me big hugs at night and rubbed my back to help me get to sleep.
Some of my dresses that used to hang loose were snug around the waist, now that I’d had five months of my mother’s cooking and Margie’s goodies to fatten me up. My shape was getting closer to its genetic roots—my mother was always overweight. She’d bemoan her girth frequently. “You just have big bones, Mary,” Margie would say.
“Where are we?” I asked my mother as we gazed up at the brick facade.
“That’s your new school, God willing.”
I shivered in spite of the heat. School meant being sent away and sleeping in a strange room with children I didn’t know. It meant I would hardly see my mother and Margie.
“I feel sick,” I said.
We had walked the mile to the school, keeping to the shady sides of the streets. On our block, we passed two- and three-family houses that housed typical, large Irish Catholic families, each with a father, a mother, and half-dozen kids. We avoided the Projects, a public housing development filled with the larger Irish families, often with twelve or thirteen kids. Many would be “Irish twins,” born ten months apart. We walked along a street of single-family houses that my mother said were where the well-to-do lived, the middle-class couples who might have only two to four children. These were a mixture of Catholic and non-Catholic, Irish and non-Irish families. The fathers were professionals—doctors, lawyers, accountants—but not making quite enough to live in the wealthy suburbs to the west of Brighton.
My mother dressed nicely today, like she did for work, even though it was a Saturday. She wore a yellow shirt dress that reached just below her knees. A thin belt matched her white patent leather pumps. Pearl clip earrings, a single-strand pearl costume necklace, and white cotton gloves completed her outfit. Her short dark hair rose straight back from her forehead, and pancake makeup reached perfectly to her hairline. She made her thin lips visible with a careful application of red lipstick, and her eyeglasses with turned up corners matched her hair color exactly.
My blue and green plaid taffeta dress crinkled as I moved. I carried a miniature version of my mother’s purse, which housed my white cotton gloves. A tight ponytail and plastic headband controlled my blond hair. I felt very proud to be all dressed up and walking with my mother.
If I’d known how to read, I’d have seen “St. Columbkille School” engraved in large letters over the rounded stone alcove. My mother hesitated, took a deep breath, and opened the dark wooden door. Inside, cool stale air and red linoleum-covered staircases greeted us. I stopped, unable to move. The dimly lit stairs and strong Lysol scent reminded me of Rosary Academy and caused a wave of nausea.
“Come on, Anne Marie,” my mother said. “We’ll be late.”
I climbed the steps slowly, my feet like blocks of wood. My mother grabbed my arm, her fingers pressing in deep. We stopped at a door to our left. My mother opened her purse and pulled out a piece of paper on which I recognized her sloped handwriting in blue ink.
“I think this is it,” she said.
She pulled off her gloves and knocked on the door once, softly. There was no response. She knocked again, louder this time. After a minute, the door opened. A lady appeared, dressed in a black gown like the Rosary nuns. A stiff white material framed her face and reached upward like a small pastry box, topped with a long black veil. Her black eyebrows stretched out in front like cat whiskers. I wondered if this nun would give me baths and put me to bed at night.
“May I help you, dearie?” the lady asked.
“I’m Mrs. McTiernan. I’m here to see Mother Superior about my daughter.”
“Oh, yes, dear, I’ll tell Mother Superior. You can have a seat right there.”
We sat side by side on a wooden bench, each with our hands in our laps holding onto our purses, me with my legs swinging, my mother with her legs crossed at the ankles. My mother looked straight ahead, her face expressionless.
“Stop moving around, Anne,” my mother said. “You’re rocking the bench.”
Sitting as still as I could, I decided to count the tiles of linoleum around us. I had reached thirty-two when the door opened. The nun said Mother Superior could see us now. She led us into an inner office with narrow windows covered with dark green shades that didn’t keep out the hot sun. Another nun sat reading papers on her desk. Suddenly she looked up, as if surprised to find someone else in her room.
“This is Mrs. McTiernan, Sister,” said the older nun. “And this is Anne.”
“Hello,” said Mother Superior. “Have a seat.” She motioned to two wooden chairs in front of her desk. My mother sat in one. I shimmied myself up into the other. My mother held her purse so tight the pink went out of her fingers.
“Well,” said the nun, “I understand that you’d like Anne to attend Saint Columbkille’s in the fall.”
“Yes, I . . .”
“You
