The Life and Loves of an Ex-Nun

“You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than the other girls.”

J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

1

The Early Years

Brushing past my mama in the crowded kitchen I sensed something was not quite right. The kitchen was our everything room. There was no living room in our second-floor tenement in Brooklyn. This was home. All our aunts, cousins, and friends attended my brother’s baptism party. At ten years of age, this was the biggest gathering I recalled ever occurring here. The smells of my mom’s Italian cooking permeated the entire space and loud voices made it impossible to distinguish one conversation from another. I was hungry and wondered when we were finally going to eat. Peeking over the crowded room to my mom I observed her stirring the gravy, but it was odd that she was stirring with both hands on the wooden spoon. I had never observed her doing that before. The rest of that day is a blur until seeing my dad standing outside, holding my mom up with both arms around her waist, just waiting. My older sister and I pressed our foreheads against the window, erasing the fog that kept blurring our vision to the outside. A yellow cab suddenly pulled up and they were gone. “God, please don’t let my mama die. Take my life but not my mom’s.” I can’t recall if I said those words out loud or to myself? The impact of this childhood plea would soon have a profound effect on my life.

I heard my dad talking to my grandmother after he returned home that night. She would recover. A blood clot burst and spread over her brain but caused only a temporary numbing of her left side. Until she could function normally she would remain in the hospital.

My favorite grandma, mom’s mom, stayed with us until she came home. I was named after my grandma Josephine. I didn’t realize that for a long time because I was never called by that name. Jo Marie was my name and that is all I knew. Recalling those early years are filled with some sweet and haunting memories; like the time I wanted an ice-cream pop from our local candy store and my mom said no. Grandma got up from her chair in the kitchen, picked up her purse and left, determined to fulfill my request. Within seconds we heard a noise and then moaning. Grandma had slipped and fell down the stairs and was rubbing her bloody left leg, clearly in pain. Mom rushed to help her up and angrily shouted to me; “See what you did.” My eyes filled with tears and I could feel my heart sink. I was the cause of grandma’s fall. Her badly bruised leg was all my fault. Guilt haunted me for years that poor grandma got hurt because of my desire for ice-cream. I learned quickly that expressing my desires came with too high a price for the people I loved.

We lived on 62nd Street in Brooklyn, New York. There were four apartments in each building, and five attached buildings just like ours, with steps, we called stoops, leading to the entrances. Neighbors talked to each other by shouting from their windows at each other. My friend, Joe, was our closest neighbor in the building next door and his mom, Mary, and my mom talked all the time.

In the yard there was a fig tree. We enjoyed eating the figs when they were in season. There was also a scary dark cellar where my parents stored our seltzer bottles. One night, my mom asked my sister and I to fetch more seltzer. Like most siblings close in age, we egged each other down the spooky stairs, quickly picked up the seltzer bottles and began swinging them back and forth at each other. When one accidently made contact, the bottle exploded, and the glass shattered into a million pieces. It is a miracle we didn’t get hurt. We knew we were in trouble. I recall getting yelled at, but my mom was so relieved we didn’t get hurt that we escaped punishment. We obviously never did that again. We continued to argue whenever one of us were asked to go to the “dungeon.”

I remember feeling shame about where we lived. We had to pass a scary grumpy old man that lived with his wife in the first apartment. He often yelled at us and sometimes opened the door in his long johns. We would run up the stairs and then pass our old neighbor Lena who always had her door open. She lived with her daughter Millie that don’t recall ever leaving the house. She had a mustache that made her look more like a man, and the house dress that just covered her round body was always unkempt. We were told to always be understanding because Millie was mentally disabled. We would get them groceries when we went to the store to help them out. Lena also had an attractive daughter named Francine. She visited my mom often and they would talk over coffee and cake together. Once I was in our apartment, I felt safe and the smells of my mom’s cooking and pine clean house made this home. I never brought friends from school to our home because I dreaded getting passed the occupants. The factories on our block were always open and the workers took their breaks outside. They spoke Spanish and seemed friendly, but we couldn’t understand what they said to us as we passed them on our daily walks to and from school. “Dukes Plaster Molds” was in one of the stables. Benita and I would spend time watching Duke make molds of bunnies, dolls, elves and all sorts of figurines. I remember that he had a calendar on the wall showing a sexy looking model. On a class trip to a museum, I learned that we lived on an historic block because of those stables. They were the only stables that still existed in all of Brooklyn.

One afternoon, I saw a real cowboy on his horse headed for the stables. Clacking hooves in a slow trot, the rider seemed quite comfortable in his saddle. At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A real cowboy was in Brooklyn?! I got so excited I ran up the stairs and put on my cowboy boots. I skipped three steps at a time back down and ran to the stables. Maybe the cowboy would talk to me for a bit? I was so disappointed after searching each stable and couldn’t find them anywhere. I was mad at myself for making the decision to waste the time to put on my boots and thus missed my opportunity to meet a real cowboy.

Crossing the driveway of the stables, wheeling my baby sister Susan in a carriage, was a recurring nightmare for me. I was six years older than Susan and, in my dream, I would not see a car coming through the stables’ driveway and it would run over the baby carriage with my sister screaming for help. I couldn’t get her out of the way fast enough to protect her and I would wake up crying in a cold sweat.

Stoop ball, stick ball, handball, hop scotch, roller skating, and jump rope were our games which we played right on the sidewalks and in the streets. One of my fondness memories, was playing handball with my dad and Benita until my mom would yell out the window to come up for dinner. I was always so proud of my dad. He was handsome and strong. He had been a prize fighter before my mom married him and I used to carry a newspaper picture, so I could show my friends. The article read something like Vince De Angelo, welterweight, one of the best-looking boxers….

I remember waiting for my dad to return from work each night. He was a “chipper and corker” in the Navy Yard. I never knew what that entailed, but I knew he worked hard and was an honest man, doing everything he could to provide for us. We could stand on the corner and wait for him. We were happy to see him as he approached us, always carrying the Daily News tucked under his arm.

On most Saturday’s, we walked over three miles to see my dad’s mom. Grandma Benita lived with my aunt and uncle. She always would give us kids a little pocket change. With twenty-five cents we could buy great treats in the open market under the EL. Even now I can almost taste and smell the breads, pastry, and pizza that came from Reliable Baker; long lines and waiting by the counter for the fresh made pizza to come out of the oven was a frequent experience.

Grandma Benita was an enigma to me. I respected her and knew she had a hard life bringing up four children without grandpa. He died when my dad was only two years old from pneumonia because he was allergic to the medicine they treated him with at the hospital. Grandma worked as a seamstress after being asked to leave my uncle’s farm in New Jersey that my grandpa and his brother owned after moving here from Sciacca, Sicily. I was always told that he just didn’t have enough money to take care of his family and theirs. At seven years of age, dad was on the streets selling pretzels. At ten, he would sell fruit. We always laughed when he told us how he would shout out, “CALIFORNIA ORANGES, come and get your CALIFORNIA ORANGES.” Eventually dad became a Price Fighter and sent any money he made to grandma,

Years later, I was told by my aunt that we were part “blue bloods.” My Grandpa was an aristocrat and when he fell in love with my Grandma, who was a “commoner,” his family disowned him and that’s when they moved to America.

It is strange how a little incident could cause so much turmoil in our family. When I was about three years of age, I was playing with my cousin. She was about my age. The adults were all sitting around the table talking and I decided to run to my grandma for a hug. Apparently, she pushed me away and picked up my cousin who had...