My Life in St. Anne's Orphanage Part Three

(This is Part Three of a continuing story of my two weeks in an orphanage) I used to love the smell of bacon and eggs or griddle cakes cooking in that ageless black frying pan and that even older black Glenwood stove with the crack in it at home, BUT THERE WERE NO SUCH SMELLS IN THIS PLACE! It was corn flakes and with milk from the steel pot with the sugar mixed in and passed down from a silent nameless kid sitting in a long line of nameless kids....every day! Oh, it was nutritious enough, but I still had not seen that ORANGE that Jeanny had talked about!
It was now the second day. After breakfast at that long long table we marched to the Blessed Virgin Room and got our two pieces of felt. Then the "catatonic shuffle"....around and around and around....under the watchful eye of the unsmiling plaster Madonna. (I have often wondered in later years whether this "playroom" could ever have been used for what it was intended for. It would have been such a shame to make any marks with toys on that magnificently polished floor.)
How long did we spend each morning on the "catatonic shuffle"? It has been so many years that I cannot recall now, but I am sure we were not overworked, but I do know that every minute was taken up doing something. As they said then, "Idle hands made work for the devil." We did not go to Mass every day as some people might think, but we did go and when we did, we naturally MARCHED there. Our lovely Sister in black used her "clackers" as signals for all us children to signal us as to when to move: "CLACK": Kneel down....."CLACK, CLACKCLACK"...stand up...These "claps" of these black pieces of wood held by the nun in charge were all that we children needed to act in unison: "kneel", "Stand", "sit". However, Mass was not a daily function as I recall. One other thing that was a daily function at this time at least, was SEWING MATTRESSES. Why we did this I have no idea even now. Perhaps it had something to do with the war effort. Perhaps someone will read this and tell me now. But, here I was as a little boy knowing nothing about sewing and being handed a needle and thread and a bunch of rags to stuff mattresses! We children had a regular mattress stuffing assembly line. After awhile my fingers were full of holes from sticking myself with the needle. You can imagine! Half of the rags were sticking out the end, but somehow the darned mattress got stuffed. Whoever slept on the bed I will never know. We did this every day for two weeks. I didn't care if I ever saw another needle and thread after I got out of there for the rest of my life!
My mother came to see me on the Saturday night of the first week that I was there. I was surprised that nobody asked her about her hospital stay. I begged her desperately to get me out of this Godforsaken place but she would not relent. She said she had made a bargain with me that I would stay for TWO weeks. Besides, she had already PAID for the TWO weeks and I was going to stay come hell or highwater! That was that--end of discussion! (Hail holy queen Mother of Mercy our life our sweetness....I stood there as I watched my mother depart the premises. My mother was teaching one heck of a lesson to a little boy. Half of the time was up but it felt like an eternity to me at that age. I had not set eyes on Jeanny Benoit nor an ORANGE and I still faced another week of "the catatonic shuffle",sewing mattresses, marching, "clack, clack", and God knows what other adventures the ladies in black could dream up for me.... TO BE CONTINUED