Saint Hilda's Tears

We were always a little ash white, the girls always a bit cleaner; the soap always green carbolic the toilet paper always slick and hard to scrunch, six year old bottoms always a little sore. The nuns who ran these grey bricked barracks called it the: Covent of 'Saint Hilda's Sacred Tears.' There were lots of tears but no saints. No black kids either, though there were many seen on the grimed streets. They looked well fed and happy. We were different. Our parents had sinned, had broken the golden rule and got caught birthing the unwanted. Back then the birch cane was an instrument of love. From here-on I must paraphrase... Each Sunday, The scrawny priest would look down upon us - speaking thusly: "You're all sinful fit only for cannon or factory fodder, forever doomed to poverty." A pause while he did the sign of the cross while mumbling to himself in Latin. "The righteous must resign themselves in good grace to their natural place, to humbly throw themselves upon the mercy of their betters." Such sermons filled us all with much joy, and we were all briefly uplifted until the hatchet-faced nuns led us back to our own special hell.