EXCERPT

from Did I Ever Thank You, Sister?

Chapter 2: A Long Time Ago
35 years earlier, 1963, Joliet, Illinois

A dirty little boy with a shaved head of hair is staring straight up into the face of an old nun. She has her hand on his face to make sure he can't turn away while he is being scolded. While he is being scolded, you can see he is uncomfortable.

"Mr. Di Leo, how many times have I got to tell you that there is no fighting in this orphanage? There are 300 girls and boys here who have no family or place to go other than these walls and you all have to learn to live together. Like it or not. What am I going to have to do with you this time to make my point? Your sisters and brother seem to get along with everyone and are perfect role models for all of the other children," she said with a bit of anger and emotion in her voice. Then she took off on a long dissertation, "You, however, are entirely just the opposite. Just yesterday, you got thrown out of class for making smart remarks and throwing spit balls during geography class. I think old Sister Davies is going to die one day and it will be your fault. That poor Sister should have retired years ago but she has had a place in her heart for you orphans and stayed on way past her time for a much deserved rest. This is how you treat her. Now today, you gave Philip a black eye at lunch. What are we to do with you Mr. Di Leo? I don't think I have ever seen a third grade boy as bad as you in a long time. The other one ended up right here in the Joliet Penitentiary. Is that what you want?," the old nun finished with.

I stood with my hands in my pockets, squirming and searching the back of my mind for any good answer I could come up with that might save me. It seemed like eternity as the larger figure of the brown robed nun hovered over me, while I searched for an answer. I knew I had used up all my good excuses and I was running out of rope. Sister Lucresia stared at me with her stern face behind all the wear nuns had on in those days. She barley showed any physical signs of being a human being underneath all the head gear and clothing that hid her body from the rest of the world. Needless to say, I was scared this time that I was going to get it.

Just when it seemed inevitable that I was not going to get away with this one, Sister Nepomecine walked into the office just in time with an important question for Sister Lucresia. It was enough to pull her away. It would buy me at least a few more moments, I thought. However, it drew her away from me until she forgot I was out there, or at least I thought she had forgotten. I was left out there until just before dinner time. I had been there for two hours before she came back.There was nothing I hated more than being stuck indoors after school, looking at the walls of the office with its oversized pictures of kids and angels. It was a death sentence for me. The only sounds to be heard were the ticking of the old grandfather clock and the bongs that echoed when it hit the chimes on the hour. I wanted to be outside in the apple orchard, where I could always go to hide, and dream about being with my family and away from the orphanage. Even if it was March and cold, I could sit in a tree and see a long ways off from up on top of the hill. It was here I usually found myself wondering all over again about why my father had run off. I would relive over and over again the last time I saw him and the night he left for good. The last time we were all together as a family.

The dinning hall in the orphanage was in the basement and ran across the whole length of the building on one side. A long dark corridor outside the dining hall separated the two halves of the basement. Groups of kids were escorted to their seating areas with the nun who was in charge of that group of kids. The girls and boys were separated and kids were grouped according to their ages. I was in 3rd grade and in the little boys group. Mario (my older brother) was in the senior boys group since he was a 6th-grader. My little sister Kitty, who was only five was in the little girls group and our sister Maria, was in the Junior Girls group since she was in the 4th grade.

That night, when I entered the dining hall with the other little boys, we were the last group to be escorted in and I was at the end of the line. As we approached our tables and walked past the older boys, my brother Mario gave me a look that he was disappointed in me. It had gotten all over the orphanage that day that I had gotten in trouble again and he was ashamed of me. I just stuck my head up high and walked right by his table, pretending not to care if he was mad at me.

On the other side of the dinning hall we could hear the girls begin their grace before dinner. Their voices almost sang in unison "Bless us, Oh Lord, for these thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty, through Christ, our Lord, Amen." Their voices faded as we boys began our prayers. I and my troubles and needs were immediately lost in the number of kids in that room that night who's needs also must have been great and who probably also felt alone in the crowd. As I looked down toward the end of the table and saw Philip with his black eye, I felt bad for him and sorry for myself. But I was resolved to the fact that he shouldn't have called me a liar. "We really did come from a good family and our grandparents were of royal blood," I thought. My father always told us that and I was going to defend that to the end.

That night, as I lay in the dark dormitory room with all the other little boys, who were lined up in their beds in rows and rows, I remember looking up at the ceiling late into the night. I found myself watching a soft light on the ceiling that crept in from the moon outside and it was shining in our room. The winds of March whistled outside our window and sounded angry as they whipped up against the old stone structure with vengeance.

I could hear the banging of the old radiators as the sounds came up from the bowels of the building while everyone else silently slept. I wondered if it was true when Philip had said that there were bad kids in the basement banging on the pipes to let someone know they were there and they wanted to get out. I also could not get out of my head the incident of that day and my wish that I was not there and things could be different.

I stared for a long time into the night at the glimmering moon light on the ceiling and I found myself making a vow I would never forget. I said, "Oh God, help me make sure that if I ever have kids someday, they never have to feel pain and be alone." The tears rushed down my face and I finally fell asleep from exhaustion late into night.

Recess was my favorite time of the day at the orphanage. All of the kids from all the groups could mix and it was almost like old times for me and my brother and sisters. Mario, Marie, Kitty, and I always got together on one corner of the old blacktop in the back of the orphanage. There was an old elm tree just to the edge of the playground that we Di Leo's dubbed our place and no-one else dared hang around it during recess without the risk of being thrashed by two potentially violent Sicilian boys from the poor side of town. One good look at a kid from Mario or me, that just happened to pass by too close without maybe even thinking, usually stirred their adrenaline. They sobered up quickly and picked up the pace to get the heck out of there. We seized this valuable piece of real-estate by clobbering two of the biggest boys on the playground almost the first day we got there. This spot remained ours until Kitty couldn't hold on to it after I left the Orphanage in 1968.

My brother and older sister were my idols and I wanted to be with them whenever I could. "You shouldn't have punched Philip in the eye," Mario said to me the next day at recess. Kitty and Marie leaned against the elm tree with their hands in their coat pockets and hummed in approval as we sat together in the back corner of the playground. "I don't care," I said. "Mom and Dad were from great families, weren't they Mario?" I asked. "Dad always said we were from the House of The Lion in Sicily. He said our name Di Leo meant "The Lion" in English, didn't he Mario?" I continued to ask in desperation.

Mario and Maria were the oldest now and they understood the importance of making sure Kitty and I felt proud of our family, even if they were only in the fourth and sixth grades themselves." Sal, Mom and Dad did come from great families," Mario said to reassure me. "Philip probably did deserve it," he added to make me feel better. But I knew even then he didn't believe it but that he just wanted to make me feel ok. "I know it's true!" I thought. "I am going to show everybody it's true someday," I settled with in anger and desperation in my mind, even though I had doubts of my own. I understood the situation we were all in on that cold March afternoon but didn't understand why. Maria, Mario, Kitty, and I hung together through those first years and tried to hold each other up the best we could. I loved them for it.

That was the way we made it through those first years. We stayed together, Mario, Maria, Kitty, and me. But, with time, things began to change for the little world we had reconstructed for our survival. After a year or so, our mother stopped coming to see us even once in awhile on the two visiting Sundays a month the orphanage allowed. Her life seemed worse than ours. We began to separate our emotions from her and our father in order to go on.