Heavy lifting would be required to deal with the emotions I held inside from early childhood, and, in my case, more than a few Kleenex boxes processing it all in therapy. As I’ve gotten older and somewhat wiser, I’ve come to better understand and deal with the past. But the scars are always there. We just deal with it the best we can. Even the very act of recounting these old stories has had a definite healing effect.
CHAPTER 3Growing Up Fast
One of the brighter spots of my early life came in the form of Oscar. She was my saving grace and my best friend from the time we were five years old until she died all too early from asthma at age fifty-three. I’m not sure exactly how my lucky break happened, but Oscar was going to attend St. Francis Academy, the Catholic high school on the other side of the Ohio River in Kentucky. She came from a well-to-do family, and I think her grandparents didn’t want her taking the Greyhound bus alone every day back and forth to school. I never found out how it was paid for, but regardless, it was all arranged. I got to go with her on the bus.
On those bus rides, we’d laugh and talk about girly things: school, making fun of teachers, boys, and movies—usually in that order. But beyond that, we usually didn’t dwell on our problems. Oscar had her share of misfortune with her home situation too, albeit markedly more benign than mine. Her mother gave birth to her at seventeen. Due to alcohol problems, her father was not in the picture, but she was raised by his parents.
Oscar would visit her mother, who rented a room in the home of a wealthy Rockport family. Sometimes I’d come too, and we’d spend the night together in that room, all three of us packed in the same bed. Often I would stay at Oscar’s house as well. During one sleepover, Oscar had an asthma attack. She couldn’t breathe and got very frightened. We were alone, and I didn’t know what to do and felt powerless to help. I tried to comfort her. It was terrifying, but it shocked me into a real state of compassion and gratitude when the calm was restored. It reduced things to basics. We supported each other the best we could. We were both trying to fit in and live as normal a life as we could imagine.
In that regard, going to St. Francis with Oscar was made to order, even down to the fact that we wore uniforms, since I didn’t have any decent clothes. Still, often I’d get off the bus in the morning with a soiled uniform or wearing something other than the clean white blouse required as part of it.
“Why aren’t you in your uniform?” Sister Mary Auxilium, the wonderful mother superior wearing the full nun’s habit, asked me when I was sent to her office.
“I spilled hot chocolate on it,” I replied, trying to mask the truth. Hot chocolate? I hadn’t even had breakfast.
“Oh, I see,” she said in a neutral tone. She offered me something to drink. Sitting there with the cup in my hand, I was completely clueless that she or any of the other teachers knew of my circumstances. How could I have been so naïve?
Thinking it might help, Sister Mary would send me to the school’s spiritual director, Father Saffer, for counseling. I don’t remember any particularly profound insights from our conversations, but there was something more powerful in the unspoken, in his gesture of caring kindness. As I sat in his presence, there was another thing about him that I couldn’t resist. Even back then, I guess I was preparing to be an actress and conducting my own character study. He had a nervous manner about him that I found fascinating. And I had the audacity to imitate him, to everyone’s delight, including his (I think!), when we had school assemblies.
“How’s everything?” was how he’d usually start the conversation.
“Great,” I’d say, but he knew I really meant, “Not so great.”
“Would you like a candy bar?”
“Oh, thanks.” So we would just sit and talk, and I’d eat the candy bar. That treat seemed extra sweet with his nurturing energy.
On a few occasions, my geometry teacher, Father O’Bryan, would make me leave the classroom because I was talkative and laughed a lot in class. He had been a Navy chaplain during the war, and he ran a tight ship in class. If you misbehaved or weren’t listening, he was prone to throw erasers at you. Chalk does not taste good even when you’re hungry—take my word for it.
I was staying temporarily with my older sister Marty during this time. She was not a happy person, and for good reason. She was married to a man who had a short fuse, to put it mildly. Being fifteen years old and his wife’s youngest sister gave me no immunity from his treatment. I once tried to pull him off my sister when he was hitting her. He was a big man. He picked me up and threw me against the wall. Then he picked me up again and literally threw me out the
