Wrapped in the Flag (5 page)

A few weeks later, my brother shocked me with an absurd story about Mother, Dad, and some European vacation. “You’re crazy,” I said. “They would never go now. Mary is only a month old.”

“Just wait,” he said. “They’re
going with Uncle Harry and Aunt Ever.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“You will.”

That evening, Dad proved Jay R. right. Over dinner, he announced their big trip: a cruise across the Atlantic with side visits to Portugal, Spain, and Italy. “Your mother and I planned this last summer while we were in Gloucester,” Dad explained. “Your grandmother [Dad’s mother, Mabelle] will take care of the five of you. Your mother has been looking forward to this vacation for a very long time; she finally will get to see Fatima, Madrid, and Rome.”

“It will be glorious,” Mother added. “You children are to be obedient and helpful. It won’t be easy for your grandmother with so many of you.”

“Your grandmother will give a full accounting when we get home,” my father said. “Don’t cause any problems for her, or you’ll deal with me.”

I looked across the table at Jay R. I could read his lips as he mouthed, “Told you.”

The day our parents left, the four of us—Jay R. (thirteen), Janet (nine), Larry (five), and me (twelve)—stood in the hall while my parents and our grandmother finished their conversation. Mother kissed the baby and handed her to me. Five minutes later, Mother and Dad were away, and our grandmother, who insisted we call her “Vanny,” started complaining. She kept it up, almost nonstop, for the next six weeks.

Anyone listening would figure that the poor woman was being worked to death at her son’s house. The reality was quite different.

Alberta and Maddie, our African American maids, came every day for those six weeks. They usually arrived at eight if the street cars ran on time and worked seven hours cleaning, washing, and ironing. Both of them loved our little sister and took turns caring for her during the day.

Vanny was careless with these women, forgetting to set out their lunches or put out their pay. Sometimes she added a last-minute chore that kept them past quitting time. Of course, she didn’t apologize or pay them for that extra hour. Alberta and Maddie never complained. All I ever heard was one comment: “Best to put up.”

These women needed their jobs; being fired, even by a crabby old lady, would make it hard for them to find another position.

For those weeks, I felt like I had to “put up” too. Vanny missed no opportunity to criticize me or my brothers and sisters. Clearly, the last place she wanted to be was in Chicago babysitting. “You are very difficult children,” she often said. “I’ll need a long vacation when I finally get home to Gloucester.”

“How much longer?” . . . “Is it time?” . . . “When are they coming?” Every ten minutes, five-year-old Larry poked me and asked another question. Finally, I drew a clock for him on a sheet of paper. “When our real clock looks like this one, they’ll be here,” I said.

At suppertime, we stood in the living room watching out the front windows. When a cab stopped and Mother and Dad got out, we all lined up in the hall. The door opened, and there they were. Mother lifted Mary out of Janet’s arms. “She’s so big. I hardly recognize her!” Dad greeted each one of us. When he reached me, I threw my arms around his middle and hugged him tight.

When the adults wandered to the living room for cocktails, Jay R. and I hung around in the hall eavesdropping. We wanted to know what Vanny was reporting. “Maybe we’ll get lucky,” my brother whispered in my ear.

I put my finger to my lips and shook my head. We inched a bit closer to the doorway. “Fatima was glorious,” Mother was saying.
⁴
“All across the plaza, women crawled on the stones, praying the Rosary.”

“She skipped the ‘down-on-the-knees’ part,” Jay R. whispered. I agreed. Mother loved the Rosary, but she hated getting her clothes mussed. Snagged or torn stockings from crawling on stones, absolutely not. Finally, Mother said, “Enough now. Let’s go in to dinner.”

Jay R. pushed me down the hall.

Mother blotted her mouth and set the napkin aside. She pushed her chair out from the table, crossed her right leg, tapped a Viceroy from the pack, and lit it. She inhaled deeply and exhaled smoke from both nose and mouth.

“Children, I have a story to tell you about Spain and patriotism,” she started. “It was marvelous to see our holy faith flourishing. In every village, the church is the center of life. Children flock to daily Mass with their parents. The Rosary is prayed, and devotion to Our Lady is strong.

“This grand Catholicism flows from Spain’s leader, General Francisco Franco. Because of him, Spain shines as a monument to faith and freedom,” Mother explained. “Twenty years ago, the Spanish were fighting a great civil war against the Communists, who wanted to make Spain into Russia. Franco led the fight to save his country.”

My father explained who was who in 1930s Spain. “The good men, under Franco, were the Nationalists,” Dad told us. “The bad guys, the Communists, were the Republicans. Commies and left-wingers from all over the world flocked to Spain to help the Republicans. Even Commies from the U.S.
got in on the act. Ultimately, Franco won, but at the time of your Mother’s story, no one knew who would win.”
⁵

Mother continued, “In Toledo, a town south of Madrid, there were terrible battles. The Republicans attacked over and over; they committed atrocities too terrible to mention. In the face of this, however, the Nationalist general refused to surrender. Instead, he used skill and prayer to best the enemy. Then, during one ferocious battle, the Communists captured the general’s thirteen-year-old son and imprisoned him in a secret location.

“‘Release your prisoners by nightfall or you’ll never see your son alive,’ the Communists said. The brave general refused.

“In a last, desperate attempt to get what they wanted, the boy was put on the phone to talk to his father. The general had a message for his son: ‘Say your prayers, my son, and die like a true Spaniard.’ The general hung up the phone. A Communist put his gun to the boy’s head and pulled the trigger.”
⁶

Mother raised her napkin to wipe her wet eyes and looked at me. “That’s real sacrifice,” she said. “True devotion to duty.”

“Did the boy die?” I asked.

“Yes, Claire, the boy died. I don’t know the other details, but I do know the young man was an obedient son and he died for his country.”

Mother and Dad were blind to the fascist leanings of the Franco regime because the general was a staunch anti-Communist and a strict Roman Catholic. They paid no attention to his ruthless suppression of dissent and his destruction of the Spanish economy.
⁷
For my parents, a Roman Catholic anti-Communist dictator, no matter how brutal, was always one of the good guys.

Later that night, I couldn’t fall asleep. I stared at the ceiling above my bed and I thought about that poor boy, all alone in a cold prison cell. He must have cried for his mother. He must have prayed for his father to rescue him. I could “see” a snarling man push a pistol to the boy’s head. I heard the trigger cock just before . . . blackness.

I finally fell into a restless sleep swirling with guns, shots, and screams. Suddenly, I heard my father’s voice: “Claire, say your prayers and die like a true American.”

I sat up in bed, shaking and crying, “Please come for me, please.”

Something happened to me after that night. I had frequent headaches and stomachaches. A rash appeared on my neck, arms, and legs. It itched so much that I scratched until my arms bled. The doctor prescribed creams and ointments, but nothing seemed to stop the onslaught.

Bad dreams disrupted my sleep. Sometimes it was the Spanish nightmare. Sometimes it was some other ghoulish imagining. When I woke up frightened and shaking, it was hard to get back to sleep.

I didn’t connect all of this with my parents. But I did realize that Mother and Dad had returned from Europe with a heightened fear of the Communists. It was easy to assume that the culprit in all of this was Uncle Harry, but as I became more aware of my parents’ connections with Robert Welch, I was less willing to heap all the blame on the Captain.

I do know this: Before I’d turned thirteen, I was terrified of the Reds. I was positive that they had already identified my parents and singled them out for execution. After Mother and Dad were dead, I knew that one of the Commies would put a pistol to my head and pull the trigger.

In the mornings, still groggy from too little sleep and too many bad dreams, I had to face my own waking nightmare: seventh grade.

In the classroom, footsteps tapped on the wood floor. The click-clack of rosary beads and the rhythmic clap of the ruler on skin told me she was close. “Where?” I mouthed to a classmate.

John pushed his book to the edge of his desk and pointed to the page number, but I couldn’t make out the small print. Realizing my problem, he placed three fingers followed by two on the book in front of him. “One second,” I prayed while flipping pages as fast as I could.

Behind me, I heard the first slap. Followed by a second.

She’d found a target; I was safe . . . for now.

My headache—the one that simmered behind my right eye—exploded. I reached into my pocket and found the tissue where I’d stashed half a dozen Bayer. As I spread the tissue on my desk, I saw white and black swing toward me. “What are
you
doing,” the nun hissed.

“Taking aspirin, Sister. I don’t feel well.”

“Get a drink and come right back. Do not dally in the hall.”

I did exactly as I was told.

Before that year, I had loved my school and my teachers. My friends used to tease me for being teacher’s pet, but I didn’t care. I worked hard, finished all of my homework, and handed in reams of extra credit. When other kids got in trouble for misbehaving, I thanked God that I’d never be in that situation.

Then seventh grade happened.

Our teacher needed only the tiniest reason to drag some poor kid into the cloakroom and slap him—or her—around. Anyone who made a low score on a test or struggled to read a passage aloud or wiggled at his desk became a target. The kid who missed an arithmetic problem or mispronounced the Latin words of the Mass got slapped. Sister took out her ruler for forgotten homework or talking back. Sometimes she hit, pinched, pulled hair, and twisted ears . . . just because.

As her smacks and the cries of her victim echoed around the room, the rest
of us stared at our desks and waited. We knew we’d be in that place eventually; we just didn’t know when.

In good Catholic families, like mine, kids who “had” to be punished at school “had” to be punished again at home, for good measure. We had been taught that the nuns were the “Brides of Christ”; any disrespect toward them was a direct affront to our Savior.

Child abuse didn’t exist in the Catholic schools of the 1950s and ’60s. No matter how much damage was done to children, the adults—from the bishop to the parents—covered their ears and their eyes. They heard no smacks and saw no ruler marks. Any whiff of scandal was vigorously denied, while the offending priests and nuns were quietly shuffled from parish to parish and school to school. I prayed that seventh grade would improve as soon as my parents got home from Europe. Despite the fact that Mother and Dad had never disagreed with a teacher—as far as I knew—I was sure they’d realize that this nun was not strict. This woman was downright sadistic.