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Sarah Dale

Alan Stedsan: Thank you for coming, Ms. Dale. I’d like to ask you some questions about life at Coram House. Is that all right?

Sarah Dale: Yes. All right.

AS: To your knowledge, were the children ever punished by the nuns or priests?

SD: Oh, yes. That happened quite often.

AS: What sorts of things would you be punished for?

SD: Speaking during meals. Talking back to the nuns. Not doing our chores well enough.

AS: And how would you be punished?

SD: Hit, you know, with a ruler. Or they’d make you stand in the corner with your arms out for hours, until you felt like they’d break. That sort of thing. If they were really angry, they’d send you to the attic.

AS: The attic?

SD: It was cold. And dark. There was no—what do you call it—insulation, I guess. Just wooden boards and then the roof above. In some places, you could see cracks where the light shone through. There were windows at either end. Huge round ones taller than me, even. But still it was dark all the time. I don’t know why. Maybe because it was so big. And cold. Half the windows were broken so the wind just blew right in. And it was full of ghosts. [Laugh]

AS: You believed it was haunted?

SD: No, the ghosts were real. They were statues—big stone ones. Of the saints, I think. But they were all covered in white sheets. I can’t imagine how they got them up there. They must have weighed hundreds of pounds. When the wind blew in, the sheets would move around. They looked like ghosts. Dancing all together in the dark.

AS: That sounds frightening.

SD: They would take you upstairs. Usually Sister Cecile. And there was this old wardrobe. She made you get inside and then locked the door.

AS: She locked you inside the wardrobe?

SD: Yes.

AS: For how long?

SD: I don’t know. Once they sent Mary up and she stayed the whole night. It was winter and her lips were blue when they brought her down. We thought she was dead.

AS: Ms. Dale, I’d like to ask you about something that Karen Lafayette mentioned.

SD: Fourteen.

AS: Excuse me?

SD: Karen was number Fourteen. I was Eleven and she was Fourteen.

AS: Do you remember an incident that happened when you were washing windows? This would have been sometime in the 1960s.

SD: Oh, you mean with Sister Cecile.

AS: Could you tell me what happened that day?

SD: Nothing much.

AS: Nothing much?

SD: Well, nothing out of the ordinary. I was washing windows up on the second floor, along the back of the building. It must have been one of the classrooms because they had these very tall windows made up of tiny panes of glass. They were a terrible pain to wash because you had to do each one individually with a cloth wrapped around your finger.

AS: It sounds tedious.

SD: It took ages. I was at the House for nearly twenty years, you know. That’s thousands of windowpanes. Maybe tens of thousands. If you added it all up, I wonder how many months of my life I spent washing those windows.

AS: Ms. Dale, the day you were speaking about—

SD: Yes, of course. Anyhow, I was washing windows with Fourteen—Karen—and another girl. Missy, I think her name was. She hadn’t been there long. Sister Cecile came in. She was furious about something. Nothing to do with us, but that’s how it worked. She said something about the windows looking filthy and Missy pointed out that all the dirt was on the outside where we couldn’t reach. She was right, you know, but it was a stupid thing to say. She was new.

AS: What happened next?

SD: Oh, Sister Cecile raged for a while and then told Missy that she better clean the outside then.

AS: The outside of the windows?

SD: The windowsills were very wide. So Sister Cecile told her to stand on the windowsill and we were supposed to hold her ankles from the inside.

AS: Jesus.

SD: Let me tell you, Jesus had nothing to do with it. We held on to that girl tight as anything. My hands ached after.

AS: And Missy—what happened to her?

SD: I’m not sure. Adopted, I think. She was a sweet little thing. Blonde curls like a doll. Those ones went pretty quickly.

AS: She didn’t—I mean, that day—she didn’t fall out the window?

SD: [Laugh] Of course not. I mean, she was frightened. We all were. But it wasn’t—you have to understand—it wasn’t even unusual, that type of thing.

AS: Ms. Dale, I have to tell you. Ms. Lafayette—Karen—she remembers the girl being pushed out the window.

SD: Fourteen always did love a story. But I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Stedsan. I can promise you no one went out that window who did not come back in. To be honest, I only remember that day because of how upset Karen was after.

AS: She also mentioned the incident of a boy who drowned. [Pause] Ms. Dale?

SD: Yes.

AS: Do you have any recollection of that?

SD: I meant, yes. That happened.

AS: What can you tell me about it?

SD: It was a few years later. Karen wasn’t there that day, so I don’t know why she’s telling you about it.

AS: But you were there?

SD: Not there there. No one was there except Sister Cecile and the boys in the boat.

AS: Then how—

SD: I was up at the House. I’d come back to fetch lemonade for the sisters. It was strange, the timing of it. If I’d been just a few minutes earlier or later. God, that day was hot. I was sweating from the minute I got up. My dress stuck to me like I’d been painted with glue. There was a summersweet growing right outside the kitchen door. It had these big white blossoms hanging off that made the air smell spiced.

AS: [Pause] Ms. Dale?

SD: I was coming out of the kitchen. Down on the lake, there was a rowboat in this little cove. The water there was deeper so Sister Cecile would take us there for swim lessons. But you couldn’t see it from the rest of the beach. That day, Sister Cecile was inside the boat with Tommy and Fred. Tommy was all hunched over like he was sick, maybe. Sister Cecile said something—I don’t know what, she was too far away, but I could see her arms moving. Fred, he grabbed Tommy under his arms and he pushed, so Tommy went right into the water.

AS: And then what happened?

SD: I just stood there. But Tommy, he never came back up. He couldn’t swim.

AS: And Sister Cecile—what did she do?

SD: Nothing. They rowed back to shore.

AS: How did they look?

SD: What do you mean?

AS: Did they seem upset?

SD: I couldn’t see their faces. They were too far away.

AS: Then how did you recognize them?

SD: You’d know Sister Cecile from miles away just by how she stood. Like her spine was a broomstick. And I’d just seen Fred outside the kitchen, on the path down to the water. I’d been scared. He’d had this huge knobby stick through the handle of his bucket. A boy like that doesn’t carry a stick unless he means to hit someone with it. But even without that, I’d have known it was him in the boat. Fred went wherever Sister Cecile did, you see. He was her favorite. And Tommy, well, I didn’t know it was him until later, when he went missing.

AS: So the boat rowed back to shore. What did you do next?

SD: You mean, did I run screaming down the hill—jump in the water to save him?

AS: Ms. Dale, I wasn’t suggesting—

SD: No, it’s all right. That’s what I should have done. What I would do now. You know, I’d dropped the pitcher of lemonade and it smashed on the ground. There was lemonade all over my legs. I was afraid of getting in trouble, for that, of all things. Back then, I was just so afraid. Of both of them. So I did nothing. Said nothing. At least not right away. A few days later I got up the courage, but no one believed me. And then Sister Cecile came to me after dinner. Told me how Tommy was missing. Had run away. And then— [Inaudible]

AS: Can I get you something—a glass of water?

SD: No. Thank you. She took me to the attic. There was a wardrobe there. She told me to climb inside and she latched the door from the outside. It was dark—so dark. And cold. Even though it was summer. I don’t know how long she left me there for. At least through the night. Maybe longer? I don’t know. At the time, I wondered if she’d leave me there forever. Call it an accident.

AS: Because of what you’d seen?

SD: She never said that was why. But I knew it was. I had nightmares about it for years.

AS: About the drowning?

SD: No. About the dark. Being locked in that wardrobe. Is that terrible of me?

AS: It wasn’t your fault.

SD: I should have done something.

AS: You—

SD: No. I know that now. I carry that with me. There are times—well. There are times when it’s hard to live with that. And that’s the thing you have to understand. The years we spent there. You can leave Coram House but you can’t leave it behind. Not all of it. The worst of it you carry with you. It becomes part of you. And sometimes I worry you pass it on.