ONLY THE NAMES ARE CHANGED

Moving Across The City Away From The Catholic School

Memoirs 14

For the rest of the winter, the depression that began each day in school would follow me home and too often I would crawl into some dark closet once I got home, hoping no one would find me. My mother became angrier with me for disappearing just when she needed me to play with B, to watch over my youngest brother L, or to do some other small task.

I was having nightmares as well and would wake up screaming and explaining how thin, pale snakes were crawling into my mouth wanting to eat me up from the inside. But no one cared, discounting the dreams to my imagination.

I would often come hope with bruises and sometimes a bloody nose. The kids at school had begun to torment me on a daily basis. It seemed the harder I tried to be nice, the meaner they got.

When one day I returned with my jacket torn, my father demanded to know why I had ruined the jacket when we didn’t have enough money to get a new one for me.

I cried as I spilled out the story of being punched, pushed, shoved, tripped and called a little cocksucker by the kids in my class and from some of the older boys in other grades.

My father didn’t have anything to say though his face got dark and threatening making me think that I was going to get another punishment, more painful than anything the boys at school could ever do to me. But, he didn’t hit me or say anything else. He told my mother to repair the damaged jacket and then took me to the Boys’ Club and signed me up for boxing lessons.

“Bobby, you’re going to learn how to defend yourself against those boys,” explained my father. “You can’t just turn the cheek. I don’t care what those god-damned priests tell you. Do you understand?”

“But I don’t want to hit people, Dad.”

“Think of it as stopping them from hitting you. If they can’t hit you, they can’t hurt you. And, it’ll make them think that you can hurt them if you wanted to. You don’t actually have to hit them to make them afraid of hitting you. Okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed.

And for the next few weeks I went to the Boys’ Club and learned how to hold up my hands to protect my face and how to throw a punch. Every time I went for lessons, my brother D would stand outside of the practice area and watch me, proud of me for being a boxer.

One Saturday afternoon, while I was in the boxing ring with another boy, in early 1957, the Canadian Leader of the Opposition, John Diefenbaker, came into the Boys Club followed by a number of photographers and newspaper people.

While I was getting a bloody nose, D got his photo taken with the future Prime Minister of Canada. D and Diefenbaker were featured on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen newspaper the next day. Rather than being happy for D, I was jealous. I was the one who had taken a beating in the ring, and I didn’t rate being noticed at all. I just didn’t seem fair. I took my revenge by cutting off D’s ear in the newspaper photo.

Easter was approaching and we were getting excited about treats and the big meals that always came with special holidays. Easter was also when we got together with the extended family. However, for me, the excitement was tempered by the role our class was to play in a parade down the aisles of the church.

I was to, again, lead our class in the procession. Again, I was called to the priest’s school office for special lessons. When I saw his penis, I saw the snake of my dream and I began to cry. When the priest finally calmed me down and found out about the dream, he spoke gently and convinced me that the dream would disappear if I again prayed with him to deal with the deadly temptations of the body.

The priest prayed in Latin as he had me hold his penis while he held mine. Making the sign of the cross on my penis, he bent down and then kissed the blessed penis. Guiding my mouth to his penis, he began another prayer while making the sign of the cross on the top of my head.

Again, a flood of semen began to choke me. He held my head in his hands while looking up to heaven and asked for forgiveness for me, for the sins that gave me nightmares. Then, with a kind look into my eyes, he wet the tip of his fingers on the semen that was on my lips and cheeks with which he then blessed me. He promised that the nightmares would now end if I would pray every day for forgiveness for my daily sins of thoughts, words, and deeds.

The nightmares continues and it became obvious to my parents that something was seriously wrong. However, it wasn’t until one morning when I saw both my parents in bed, asleep that I felt pulled to uncover my father and look at his penis which was so different from the priest’s.

My father woke up startled by being uncovered, and flew into a rage, grabbing me and throwing me across the room. He spat out words of my being a fucking cocksucker, a priest’s go-to boy. I saw the disgust in his face and his real hatred for me.

In spite of the pain, I picked myself up and ran out of the room, went into the closet in the kids’ room and crawled into a cardboard box putting empty clothes hangers above me, hoping that they would hide me so that my father couldn’t find me and punish me even more before throwing me out of the family.

It wasn’t very long after this scene that we moved again to a distant part of the city. D and I were put into a public school called Woodroffe School. Our being placed in public school was my father’s response to what he knew about Catholic schools and what he presumed was happening to me.

Our new home was a rundown little cottage on Woodroffe Avenue, close to the Ottawa River. Near the river was a set of railway tracks that separated the undeveloped area where only a few old houses such as the house we lived in were to be found.

Across the road from our house was a big house where there was a huge garden area. An older girl, likely a teenager, lived there with her father. The girl soon found herself hired on occasion to be our babysitter.

My father seemed to be always angry with me at the time, an anger that I realise as an adult, was really directed at the church. As an adult I know that his life in a Catholic school had its own crosses he carried with him.

Mémère had, for more than a year, been telling everyone how I was the one chosen in the family, chosen by God to be a priest. I was to be the offering for the family which would finally allow the extended family to have a more blessed and fruitful life.

I could sense the bristles rise on my father’s neck each time she would speak this way. My father had never asked me what had happened at the Catholic school in Overbrook, but it was evident that he had a good idea. I wasn’t the first nor would I be the last little boy to come to the notice of a pedophile in the church.

Previously

Thanks to the following for following along with the story this far:

Carrie, Benighted, Patrick OConnell, Adrian CDTPPW, JB The Talker, Maddy Mirza, Block Wife, katoshi, Sweet Honeylu, Edward Swafford, TzeLin Sam, Taryn Ariel, and Author, D. Denise Dianaty