Before the orphanage had been built, orphans were housed in the nuns’ motherhouse downtown. And that had been too much temptation for the orphans. They did not sufficiently understand their otherness. They believed that they too were a part of city life. They were meant to be servile. It was better here in isolation.
The building was teeming with abandoned and orphaned children. Although many actually had parents, they were taught to consider themselves, for all intents and purposes, orphans as well. There were two separate dormitories, one on either side of the building, one for boys and one for girls. There were identical beds in the dormitories. The children lay tucked up in their blankets like rows of dumplings on a plate. There was a small wooden trunk at the foot of each bed in which each orphan was to keep their personal effects. These trunks usually contained a nightgown or pajamas and a toothbrush and a comb. There was sometimes a special rock hidden inside too. There was a pillbox with a broken butterfly in one.
There was an extensive garden behind the orphanage that the children tended. There was a chicken coop where little round eggs appeared as if by magic every morning. Tiny fragile moons that were necessary for survival. The children reached into the nests ever so carefully to retrieve the eggs without breaking their shells. With the sleeves of their sweaters pulled over their hands, their arms were like the trunks of elephants swallowing up peanuts.
There were two cows that had to be milked every morning. The task of milking a cow always required two orphans. One to whisper sweet words of calm into its ear and the other to do the milking.
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THE CHILDREN were all quite pale. They never had enough to eat. Sometimes they would find themselves just fantasizing about eating. While they were sitting in class, sometimes they would look down and tell their bellies to hush—as though there were a dog underneath the table begging for scraps.
They never had enough clothes in the winter either and were cold for months. The tips of their fingers went numb when they shoveled the path to the chicken coop. They would hold their hands up to their faces and breathe against them to generate just a handful of heat. They would tap-dance about to keep their toes warm. They would never completely thaw out under the thin blankets at night. They would pull the blankets over their head and wrap their arms around their legs, trying to hug themselves, trying to make themselves into little warm bundles.
They were never quite certain when a blow might fall, but they were struck by the nuns for virtually anything. It was the nature of such a system of beatings that a child could never really determine when he was going to be hit—they could not predict or control it completely. In the wisdom of the nuns, the children were wicked just by virtue of existing. So it followed, really, that all their actions were wicked. And they could be punished for actions that, if committed by other children, would be considered benign.
Herein is recorded a brief summary of certain infractions that were the cause of corporal punishments, meted out to children from January to July 1914.
From The Book of Minor Infractions:
A boy raised his legs up in the air and made a bicycle motion with them.
A small girl looked at a chipmunk and made clucking noises in an attempt to communicate with it.
A boy was standing on one foot while holding his refectory tray.
A little boy was staring too quizzically at his reflection in a spoon.
A little girl was humming “La Marseillaise.”
A boy was stomping the snow off his boots in an overly aggressive fashion.
A girl had a hole in the knee of her stocking that she hadn’t darned.
A girl drew a smiling face on a zero in one of her math equations.
Seven children wiped their noses on their sleeves.
A girl could not resist the temptation of snow and grabbed a handful of it and shoved it in her mouth.
A boy managed to come to breakfast with every article of the clothing he was wearing inside out.
A girl claimed that she woke up in the middle of the night and saw a man with goat feet tiptoeing around all the beds.
Three children could not remember the name of the ocean between Canada and Europe.
A girl spelled out words in the air with the tip of her finger.
A little girl looked into the sun at an angle to make herself sneeze.
A boy pretended to pull his thumb off his hand.
A girl was treating a peeled potato as though it were a baby and hid it in her pocket to protect it from being boiled.
For reasons unknown to him, a boy decided to deliver his Confession in the voice of a duck.
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IT WAS SAD for all the children. They were so in need of love. The beatings affected their self-esteem. Because they were beaten every time they found themselves lost in thought, they began to find that their minds were afraid to wander. Their little brains were not allowed to amuse themselves or to dally happily in the magical Elysium of the mind that was childhood. But Pierrot’s and Rose’s personalities both survived this cruel regime.