The Knot in the Back
I was eight years old when I was taken from the farm and my Great Aunt Lillian’s care. My half sister Helen and I went to live with a mother and stepfather I did not know named Ernest in an apartment on Gillis Street in Nashua New Hampshire... There whippings came on a regular basis, prompted by my bedwetting. I would go to bed, dream terrible things and wake up soaked. Ernest would wake me up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet then stand over me as I tried to urinate. Once in his desperation he came to the toilet with the butcher knife and threatened to cut it off.
Believe me that did not help one bit. Another night he took me in his car to the Canal Street Bridge and, held me over the side. “You see that river down there? If you don’t stop pissing the bed, I’m going to throw you in it.” As I stared down into the black waters Merrimack I was sure that he would. I promised to stop; he put me back in the car and drove home. That you can be sure did not help either. Ernest, who was Catholic, placed me in a boy’s school run by nuns.
I remember that silent house with the cross on the top of it clearly. It was a large two-story building made of dark red bricks and cold black stone floors. There was a cafeteria with many wooden tables and long hard benches. Three times a day we all would all kneel on those stone floors and in unison say our prayers. ‘Hail Mary full of Grace; The Lord is my Sheppard I shall not want” I hated it, I hated the prayers, I hated the nuns, I hated the nightclothes I was made to wear. And most of all I hated the dormitory because every night the nuns would tie a towel around my waist and make a big knot in the middle of my back. This was supposed to keep me from sleeping on my back, which was supposed to keep me from wetting the bed. No water after supper was also another of the house rules. I would go to bed every night to snickers and laughs of all the other boys. All of this misery and still I wet the bed like Old Faithful.