by Joseph D. Milosch
How She Called the Family. It is eight in the morning, and the nuns filed from Sunday services into the dining room. My great grandmother brought in breakfast, consisting of gruel, sugar, and milk. It was the depression. Someday she’d cook eggs and bacon, but in the thirties, there was toast dipped into cream of wheat.
Sunday afternoons my great grandmother set the dining room table for supper. She placed a basket of bread and a large bowl of soup in the center of the table. After grace, she spooned a bowl for each of the seven nuns. “Good soup,” a couple of the younger nuns said. My grandmother nodded. To her it was barley cooked with vegetables and cow hooves.
Last September she picked the peas from the small garden between the convent and the brick wall. She knew that canning those peas would relieve the blandness of meals during the long days of January. She sweetened the broth with cow feet that the butcher planned to toss to the dogs; she cajoled him out of it. “How will God judge you, starving the nuns to feed a pair of mongrels?” As the nuns ate, her family visited her in the kitchen.
On Sundays, Mother Superior allowed her to share the convent meal with her family. “Why do we pay her if we’re going to feed her family?” Mother superior asked. The nuns replied, “Feeding the servant’s family fulfills our obligation to the poor.” The nuns said in order to convince Mother Superior that it was a good idea to feed the help once a week.
Working 12 hours a day, seven days a week and earning enough only to pay the rent was a memory lost among the memories of the good times the grand children experienced entertaining the nuns. Her grandchildren remembered Sunday meals as one of the best benefits the convent offered.
After dinner, the children entertained the nuns as the adults cleaned the kitchen. Mother superior seemed to enjoy the children’s games and especially their songs. “Oh what a beautiful Irish voices,” Mother Superior said loud enough to be heard over the washing of plates.
Mother Superior was aptly fitted for her position because of her absolute conservatism and hatred for foreigners, especially the Irish. “Give them a bag of potatoes, and they will sing and dance all week.” She said often when she believed her housekeeper was almost out of hearing range.
Mother Superior knew that before evening prayers there was enough time for my great grandmother to straighten up the kitchen and to entertain the convent before locking up for the night. The Parish knew that before her marriage, my grandmother supported herself as a concert pianist. She was past her prime when the Depression arrived. Unfortunately for her, there was no market for an old aspiring pianist. She still had enough ability to take an old, slightly out of tune, strait backed, pine topped piano and make it sing.
Maybe it was principle that helped her refuse to play for the nuns. Maybe the Irish woman drew a line between employer and friend. It didn’t matter for Mother Superior enjoyed coaxing the children into asking their grandmother to play because like a good employer she knew how to benefit from the soft spot of her employee.
Thus, it began. First the pleading children, then a slow entrance into the parlor, then a piano concerto by Bach, then a lullaby, and finally a pounding tune popular in her youth. The grandchildren danced. The adults clapped, and the nuns politely exchanged winks. As for the pianist, she closed her eyes and returned to a point of her past when she believed she was happy.
The world returned when the music stopped. The nuns filed into chapel for evening prayers. The stove damper turned down before my great grandmother locked the servant’s door. After counting heads, they began the journey home. Accompanying the family’s walk home was the winter, and the consequences of the shortage of money, work, and food. My great grandmother with her family made the sign of the Cross as they walked past the graveyard on their way home.
Once inside, everyone gathered in the parlor. No one removed his or her coats before bedtime. “How did you call us to prayers?” my uncle once asked her. She replied, “I didn’t. It was hard times, but somehow music accompanied our laughter in the parlor. Don’t ask me how we found happiness. Maybe, it was Sunday. Maybe, we ate well.
There we would be in the same room wearing our coats and hats. Removing his gloves, your father acted like a conductor as he made a game of lighting the pot bellied stove with the first match. We were happy, and it was time for prayer and bed. So we prayed and slept.”