Heartbroken Mothers of Adult Children Alcoholics and Addicts

WHERE DO MEAN NUNS GO TO WHEN THEY DIE?

(A blast from the past story of my youth, being told because telling it helps me heal and move on.)

When I was in elementary school, the nuns would teach us to do our best never to start a sentence with the work “I”.  When you did, you were not being creative enough and it also would tell others that you were a very self centered person.  To this day, when I write sentences in letters it as if that nun is whispering in my ear, as that is how close I have kept that instruction to my mind.

You need to start some sentences with an “I” of course, so why is it so hard for me to do that?  Could be because the Catholic school that I attended from first through eighth grade was where I obtained the strictest discipline in my life.  Not all the teachers were nuns, but a great many were.  It was the sixties and seventies and when I began, their head-dresses were huge.  If you could remember the flying nun, they you can envision what I am talking about.  The dresses were black and white and down to their ankles.  Their shoes were black and never shiny.  When I was very young, to me their belts were made of rosary beads, but perhaps it only seemed that way because these huge rosary beads were near the waist area.  The white around their head-dress sealed in their face so only their skin would show.  During class as a little girl, I would sit in my chair and stare at my teacher thinking that her face was stuck in there and thought for sure it would never come off.

In third grade I had a woman teacher.  She was to me a regular person.  Not a nun.  She was in her fifties and her name I will never forget because it reminded me of the bright sun outside; Mrs. Shine.  Third grade was my favorite class of all time.  Mrs. Shine was always so very kind to me.  At recess she would tell the most amazing stories of all the trips she had taken during her summer vacations.  One of my favorite television shows at the time was The Munsters.  Mrs. Shine was going to California during Easter vacation and she told us that she was planning on visiting where they filmed the T.V. show The Munsters.  To this day, I remember about ten of us out in the school playground huddled around Mrs. Shine the first day back from Spring break listening to her tell us of how she visited the set of The Munsters.  What was so confusing to me was how I did not understand what she was talking about when she explained the house was a huge painted flat house and that there wasn’t anything behind it.  Today, any third grader for sure would get that but for a little girl growing up in the sixties that had me puzzled for many years.  Now, every time I am channel surfing and an old rerun of The Munsters is on, I have to tune it and think of Mrs. Shine as the show begins and the song begins playing as the cast names scroll on the screen with the image of that Munster house in the background.  Thank you Mrs. Shine!

Seventh grade was my worse class.  My seventh grade, the head-dresses toned down some.  No longer did they have the large take off wings jutting out the sides.  It was 1970-71 and the head-dress was reminded me of the nun costumes you can now buy at Party City for Halloween.  The skirts also got a bit shorter, and were just below the knee.  My seventh grade teacher was Sister Marie DiPazzi.  She was short and chubby and her face was very round and always red.  She had the most violent temper and I wish I could find her so I could look at her and ask her “why”?   This nun did not possess anything remotely similar to Sister Maria from the Sound of Music.

We were taking those skills tests for math and reading.  The tests were all week.  Testing was something that I was really bad at.  For one thing, I was not a great student.  Thinking back on my learning experiences during my school years, I probably had some type of learning disability because I recall in the classroom my mind was always finding other things to concentrate on and if I had to open the textbook and read, I would just zone out.  If I had to read aloud or silently to myself; either way whatever I read, it went in one ear and out the other.  Nothing retained in my grey matter.  Studying for a test at home was just misery.  My mom never helped me with my homework.  She was great Mom, but was busy making dinner and cleaning the house.  When I would get home from school, I would change out of uniform and go sit in the kitchen with my homework and watch Mom coo at the counter.  I did the homework that came easy and left studying for tests to last.  Mom would say that Dad would help me study after dinner.  After dinner my sister and I would do the dishes and then I would go into my Dad’s office where there was the weirdest dark red and gold lamp hanging from the ceiling. If it was dark outside, this room seemed even darker.  I would sit at my Dad’s desk with my textbook open and try to study.  In the room were the World Book Encyclopedias.  We had the white and green editions; the ones with the color photos. My parents still have them in their house.  Mom threw out my Barbie collection when I was ten, and my sister's Beatles collection when she went to college, but no way were those World Books ever seeing the inside of our trash can.  On the top shelf of the book case were the big brown leather editions; no photos. Those I never touched.  After about a half hour or so of reading, or at least trying to read; my eyes would wander off to the World Books.  I crept over and would sit near them on the floor and close my eyes and then slide my finger along the books and count to ten and wherever my finger stopped when I stopped at ten, which was the volume I would open.  In the dark little office with the glow from the red –gold stained glass lamp, I would skim through the volume only stopping at the pictures.  Closing it quickly as I heard my Dad’s footsteps from two rooms away knowing he was heading to check on me studying.

Back at the desk with the book open, I would sit up straight so that when Dad came in he would find me studying and ready for him to ask me questions.  History was so very hard for me.  So many dates, so many places and getting them all connected was just a nightmare for me.  Math though was even worse.  What would send me into the zone where my head would shut off and my ears would ring, was when the questions where in sentence form.  The adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing problems when they appeared as numbers were manageable, but whoa…I was totally off in space when the chapter started asking you, “If Bill was selling ice cream bars at $0.50 and four people stopped by ever fifteen minutes to buy ice cream and Bill’s top seller was vanilla and he started out with fifty vanilla ice cream bars at noon, and by four o’clock he only had seven bars left and a total of $125.00, how many customer bought vanilla ice cream bars?”  Really?  Who wrote those questions and was their purpose in life to make a child’s life miserable?

Dad would come in and I know now of course he must have been exhausted.  He started got up every morning at six a.m. and had breakfast and was off to run his own electrical contracting business from the finished offices in the basement area of our home.  He did the physical labor too on the jobs as well as being the boss and owner.  He is 100% Italian and the most wonderful father in the world.  He was loving, kind, caring and we were his whole world, but this vein in his forehead would pop out if he got aggravated and helping me study could accomplish that.  He would ask me questions and from the long periods I would sit there thinking of the answers, it was plain for him to see that I had no idea and I am sure it was frustrating him.  I would get so tired and that darn red lamp was not helping.  After about two hours, Dad would call it quits and tell me it was late and to go get my bath and ready for bed.  He told me to read over for the test in the morning.  Every night Dad would come in before he headed off to sleep himself and stand over us and put his hand on our heads.  I would ask him, “Dad, why do you do that every night?”  Dad answered, “I am asking God to bless you.”  Then he would quietly leave the room.  (One of my best memories ever growing up.)

So, back to Sister DiPazzi.  Testing that week…all week.  Since we do these tests every year, by seventh grade I finally got this amazing idea.  The teacher would tell us, “Class today I want you to do questions 1 through 100.  Tomorrow we will start again where we left off.”  You would answer by filling in the little circles with your pencil for the one you choose as the correct answer.  My brainstorm one day as I was sitting there during the test, thinking of a way that I could get ahead was to do ten questions over what the teacher told me to do.  So that day, I answered to question 110, thinking to myself…”Wow, I will have more time tomorrow to think because I will have a head start.”

The next day, we were sitting in our classroom and the morning announcements were just getting over with.  Soon, the testing would start.  I was so excited.  I felt like I had a secret and I just knew this year my score would be so much better.  Then Sister DiPazzi went over to the door and said, Miss Rosato please come with me.  I got up and went to the door.  Across the hall was the nurse’s office.  We walked into the nurse’s office and the nurse, Mrs. Holtzlander was sitting at her desk.  Sister DiPazzi didn’t say anything to her.  She just got up from her desk and walked out of the room and closed the door behind her.  All I could think of was, how odd.  I wonder what is going on.  Maybe I thought something happened at home to my parents.  Last year, the twins in my class lost their father and when that happened, they left school early.  Sister DiPazzi stood on the far side of the room.  Behind her were big long windows and I could not see her face too well because the lights were not on in the room, and only the light from outside was coming in.  The walls were painted light green and the furniture dark.  The ceilings I remember were so high.  I was so little too.  My adult height was only five foot two, so in the seventh grade, I am sure I was not even five foot yet.  I wasn’t a skinny kid but healthy.  In seventh grade I had the Marsha Brady look.  Long straight dirty blonde hair parted down the middle with huge big green eyes.  The only thing that made us all long different in Catholic school was our faces pretty much, except for Doreen.  Doreen was my friend and she was the only black student in the entire school. 

“Do you have any idea why I called you in here Miss Rosato?” Sister asked?  “No Sister” I quietly and nervously answered.  Now, Sister DiPazzi like I said was pudgy.  She just was a short huge woman.  Her bust in that uniform just seemed to go out forever.  To us kids, she was a short black and white large mass with a red face that was always mean.  She never smiled or was nice to us, only when parents were around or other teachers.  In class alone, she was sarcastic and could drill holes through you with her eyes as they stared through you as if soon steam would start coming out of her ears.  Everyone knew that getting her mad was not a good thing.  Here I was in a closed room with her. 

The next thing I knew, this short fat woman lunged across the room her hand went back and went swinging towards my face where her palm landed across my cheek sending me reeling to the ground.  She stood over me and reached down and grabbed me by the shoulders and began slapping me on my face; first the right side then the left.  My face felt like it was on fire.  I remember trying to ask her what I did wrong and why she was mad.  She stopped me from talking by hitting me even harder.  Then she grabbed my shoulders and started shaking me and her face was right up to mine.  Her big red face and she began to tell me what I did wrong and as she told me she spit the words out of her mouth and I felt the spit hit my face.  “YOU WERE TOLD TO ONLY DO UP TO QUESTION 100 MISS ROSATO!  WHAT QUESTION DID YOU DO UP TO!  WHO TOLD YOU THAT YOU CAN DO UP TO QUESTION 110 MISS ROSATO!!!!  YOU ARE IN BIG TROUBLE MISS ROSATO DO YOU HEAR ME!!!!  I TOLD YOUR PARENTS ABOUT THIS AND THEY HAVE GIVEN ME PERMISSION TO SCOLD YOU MISS ROSATO!!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I AM TELLING YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “ Smack, as her last hard smack came across my face.  I fell to the floor and just sobbed and I was so very afraid.  She stood over me and screamed for me to look at her.  I looked up at the big red faced fat woman who had her hand on her wide hips and held my stare there afraid to look elsewhere.  She told me to get up.  I was shaking so bad.  I got up and stood there and she told me that she hoped that from now on I learned my lesson and will never disobey an order again.  She went to the door and opened it and stood there.  She told me to go to the bathroom and to wash my face and go back to class.

I walked down the hall and as I headed for the girls bathroom on the left, Mrs. Holtzlander passed me on my right.  She just looked down at the floor as we passed one another.  I opened the girl’s room door and walked into an empty stall and threw up.  Then I cried.  I didn't want to go back to class, but I didn't want to go home either.  My parents told them to do this to me.  Sister DiPazzi said they gave her permission to do that to me.

About ten minutes later, I had calmed down and had soaked my face with cool water several times.  My cheeks still felt so hot and red.  MY straight hair was all messed up and I tried to flatten it back down the best I could.  The white blouse had come out of my plaid skirt, so I tucked it back in and headed back to class.  When I opened the door, Sister DiPazzi was standing behind her podium in front of the class and told me to take my seat and to begin my test.  At my desk my test was turned over.  I sat down in my chair and turned over my test.  Questions 101-110 had big red X’s through them.  I started on question 111.

In eighth grade, our class went on a class trip because we were graduating and all the 8^th graders went on a class trip.  Our class went to a dude ranch in the Poconos for the day.  Sister DiPazzi went and wore shorts and rode a horse.  Every chance I got, I would stare at her and inside my mind I would wish that she would drop dead of a heart attack like my Uncle Carmen did and die, or at least have the horse buck her off so she could fall on her fat large butt and be the laughing joke of the trip.

For years I held inside that pain. That misery of what a child felt like to be abused by a grown woman that by so many people was seen as “holy”.  I was too ashamed to tell others because I had been convinced that the nuns had permission from our parents to discipline us. 

 It wasn't until my own children were in school; public school and I shared that story with my parents.  I remember telling it one night when my family was gathered in my parent’s kitchen for a family get together.  We were all sharing stories about growing up, and we got on the subject of going to Catholic School.   My eldest brother went there, as well as my other siblings, but my brother sent all three of his children to the same school.  They had a very different learning experience from ours.  My brother began to tell us about how this one nun slapped him across the face one day, and how he slapped her back.  That was what opened the door for me to tell my story.  It was a night of laughing and joking, so I told bits and pieces of it in a light hearted way.  Not going into detail of how frightening the experience had really been for me.  However, when I was done I looked at my parents and told them hold the Sister had hold me that she had their permission to hit me that day.   My mom looked down and told me, “Of course not. Why didn't you ever say anything to us, “she asked looking back up at me?  “I don’t know Mom, I guess because I believed her.  She was a nun.  She wore a cross around her.”

Over the many years, I have searched the Internet for the Sister’s name. Guessing I was looking for a clue that might connect her name to an obituary or perhaps a jail sentence for abusing children, but unfortunately never was able to come up with one piece of information linked to this nun.  However a few years back, there was a web page started for alumni of the school.  I joined and posted a comment on how Sister DiPazzi beat the heck out of me one day in the nurse’s office for answering ten questions more on the yearly tests.  A few weeks later, someone else posted how they remembered how Sister Denise threw a projector at some boy’s head. 

Within months, the website was gone.  The school closed down that year too.  All information on these Sisters of Mercy from the Diocese of Trenton that taught in that school seems to have completely gone from sight.  The only trace left is those still embedded and scarred in the memories of their victims. 

I am a Christian.  I have forgiven Sister DiPazzi, and that I did not learn to do by attending Catholic school.

Today when I reflect back on this, writing about it helps me to heal but although I have nothing to feel grateful for having had this experience, as a mother I made sure my own children knew growing up that if any adult tried to physically discipline them that it was wrong and to tell me about it right away!

So, where do Mean Nuns go when they die?  Most likely if they die and they still are mean and haven't asked for forgiveness they are in the same place with all the other mean unsaved souls.

God bless the public school system.