The Stranger at the Palazzo D'Oro (15 page)

With this hiss, which startled me, a hand snatched my ear and I saw the angry face of a nun—pale skin and a half-plucked mustache and a black hood like a villain, no lips and crooked teeth and a bristly chin. She twisted my ear and then punched my arm, harder than the attacking boy had done.

“It's a sin to be late,” she said in a harsh sour breath. “It's an insult to Jesus.”

I was startled and felt helpless again. Nuns were hardly human, bearded women, like demons, somehow incomplete, hidden beneath black gowns and starched collars. I could not imagine what their bodies might look like when I considered their scary faces and claw-shaped hands.

She had punched my coat where the boy's muddy stick had whacked me.

“You're filthy. Your shoes are soaked.” She held on to my arm. “This is the house of our Lord and Savior!”

She twisted my arm and pushed me so hard I scuffed my feet for balance, and some people in the last pew turned to see what the fuss was about. I ducked down the side aisle and into the nearest pew to get away from the nun, and as I knelt I heard the chanting of the congregation and the loud “Amen!”

“Sixth Station,” Father Staley said aloud, and raised his eyes to the image on a pillar. He stood there, an altar boy on either side of him, each one carrying a lighted candle. The priest went on announcing: “Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus.”

Palm fronds were folded behind the carved wood image that showed Veronica's cloth imprinted with the face of Jesus, the hanging cloth like a mirror, another miracle.

“Veronica in her mercy was guided by the angels,” the priest said, “although there were devils all around.”

Knowing human cruelty—boys who looked for fights, nuns who pinched me and tried to frighten me with threats, and other human scares—made it hard for me to believe in the devil. Human wickedness worried me and made me want to be alone, or else to find a friend.

She was not in church. I squinted into the dim light that was dulled by the soupy color of the stained-glass windows. I thought I saw her at the Tenth Station, Jesus Is Stripped of His Garments, but it was someone else, a bigger neater girl and not as pretty. I knew that in looking for the skinny girl I appeared attentive and pious, my face forward. I watched for her and heard Father Staley's shoe leather squeak. I watched for her and heard the chinking of coins in the collection basket. I dropped the nickel in and kept my quarter.

Father Staley had left the last Station, fourteen, Jesus Is Placed in the Sepulchre. He turned to face the people in the pews and said, “Confession will be heard tomorrow. You must be in a state of grace or else you can't perform your Easter duty.”

As he spoke I saw the girl on the far side of the church—her lovely face—under the Eighth Station, The Women of Jerusalem Weep Over Jesus. I turned to get a better look and my arm went numb as though I had been bitten—it was the nun, bugeyed in fury, pinching me.

“Kneel down!”

“I want ejaculations from you,” she said in my ear. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, forgive me!”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, forgive me.”

“Five hundred times.”

I knelt with my head down reciting them, and when I was done the church was empty, the girl gone. But it wasn't only punishment; we were promised that each ejaculation knocked one day off the time we would spend in Purgatory.

I still had no idea who she was, but after two days I had a better notion of what she looked like, her thin face and green eyes, the way her clothes hung straight down on her, her thin neck and narrow shoulders and bony legs, her limp skirt and the way her slip drooped beneath it, different clothes on different days but the same torn slip. She was like a certain kind of skinny doll.

I did not want to talk to her—didn't have the courage, had nothing to say. I just wanted a chance to stare at her. So outside the church on Wednesday afternoon I waited by the grotto, a statue of the Virgin Mary balanced on a ball, and standing there I realized for the first time that the ball was the earth and her bare feet were crushing a snake.

Earlier in the year we had had a special ceremony and a sermon on this spot, consecrating the statue, the pastor explaining the Assumption, that when the Virgin Mary died she rose to Heaven.

“The Blessed Virgin was not buried, her body did not decay, she was assumed into Heaven, body and soul, because she was the mother of God, the second Eve. This is Our Lady's year, the Marian Year.”

I kept hearing the expression “Marian Year” and I knew it had something to do with Mary, but what was I supposed to do? It did not seem so odd to me that she had uprisen, flown to Heaven on rooster tails of flame: it was shown in all the pictures, even the oldest ones.

But now that the pastor kept insisting that Mary was assumed into Heaven, that this was official doctrine, saying “It's true,” I started to think that it might not be true. Looking at the stone statue, the big hard folds of the Virgin's blue cloak and her heavy body, I tried to imagine her rising from the ground, over the tops of the telephone poles and past the trees in Hickey Park, into the glowing clouds, the whole grotto, scallop shell and planet earth and all, shooting like a rocket ship upward on a plume of smoke.

Then, staring past the Virgin, I saw the skinny girl hurrying along the sidewalk alone, wearing the jacket she had worn to the Novena—it had dried out—but a blue skirt, the same shoes, falling-down socks, and the scrap of drooping slip. Her tangled hair made her seem nervous and unhappy, as though someone was chasing her.

The devil was always after us, the priests said. Maybe she was being dogged by the devil, walking lopsided, one shoulder higher than the other.

She turned to climb the church stairs, and I followed her, keeping my distance, waiting a few seconds after the big door closed on her before opening it again. The bad light blinded me as I entered, I stumbled in the shadows, and I paused behind a pillar until I could see clearly.

Two confessionals were in use. In the pews near them people were waiting, some of them kneeling, some sitting, waiting their turn to tell their sins.

The skinny girl was walking slowly up the center aisle trying to decide where to go. We knew that in confession some priests were stern and some friendly. I had no idea which priests were in the confessionals, but I knew where to go when the girl chose. I wanted to be near her but not next to her. Her confessional had two compartments for people to confess. The girl was in the line that fed into the right-hand side, and so I sat two pews behind her, in the line for the left-hand compartment, five people ahead of me, five ahead of her. She knelt and prayed.

Above her was a stained-glass window—Saint Rose of Lima, first saint in the Americas, from a rich family; but, the nuns told us, she decided to serve God. The next window showed Saint Theresa of Avila. She was famous for having a vision of Hell, another nun's story: a tiny room made of white-hot metal in which she could neither stand nor sit, flames on the walls, where you burned for eternity.

Every time I saw Saint Theresa's odd comical headpiece and pleated cloak I was reminded of this hot room in Hell.

That was why we were going to confession. If you were not in a state of grace, with a stainless soul, you went to Hell when you died and you stayed in the flames forever.

Saint Francis, in another window, was a relief to me, the way the birds fluttered around his head—he spoke to birds, they talked back to him. On his hands were wounds, the stigmata. The cuts did not surprise me. If you were very holy, God made your hands and feet bleed, the way Jesus had bled during the crucifixion. I saw the wounds as a Jesus-like achievement, not something that was painful but a sort of reward, a bloody badge, and the proof of holiness.

People left the confessional with their heads down, and other people entered, looking anxious. We slid along the pews, awaiting our turn. Each time the priest began to hear someone's confession a window inside was jiggled open, like a kitchen cabinet. Then the priest pronounced a blessing, and when the confession was done he shut the slider with a smack and opened the one on the other side.

The girl was kneeling, praying. I tried to pray, but above my head the stained-glass window showed Saint Michael spearing the devil, his snaky tail whipped to one side. The windows were full of snakes. Saint Patrick holding a staff was casting wiggly snakes out of Ireland, and the Virgin in her window was squashing a squirming snake with her bare feet.

I looked from one snake to another, marveling at how fat and healthy they seemed. These evil things were the only images in the windows that were full of life, even struggling to survive as they were, and the saints were overcolored, with big sleeves and fat faces and dead eyes, and halos like gold donuts.

Thup-thrip,
the jiggling slider closed on one side of the confession box, and
thrip-thup,
opened on the other. The girl was gone from the pew in front, so I assumed she was inside the confessional and perhaps the mumble I heard was hers. Since I knew the confession formula, I could follow the high points of what she was saying. Beneath the loose curtain I could see her scuffed shoes and falling-down socks.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” After a pause, a breath, she continued. “It has been blee weeks since my last confession. Blee blee fault blee times. Blee my mother blee.”

Hearing her say the word “sinned” made me eager and hot, and there was more.

“Blee blee blee impure thoughts blee times.”

Lifting my hands to my face and blinding myself I saw in my dark damp palms someone new, not a pale skinny girl but someone friskier and fleshier, who committed sins and suffered guilt; someone like me.

“Blaw blew blee occasion of sin?” the priest asked.

“Yes, Father.”

“Blah blay else?”

“No, Father.”

“Blay blee Hail Marys and blaw Our Fathers and a good Act of Contrition.”

“Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee,” she replied. “I detest all my sins because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell.”

As she gulped and recited in a quavering voice I realized that I was in love with her—hearing her confession, her uncertain and guilty voice, her pathetic expressions of sorrow, a tone that said: I am sorry but I know I will sin more and I will have to come back here and confess my sins all over again.

Thup-thrip.
Then she was pushing the limp brown confessional curtain aside and ducking out, and as she did, heading for the altar, her hands clasped, her head lowered, her eyes were on me, and she looked happy.

Instead of going into the confessional I slid out of the pew and followed her to the altar rail. I knelt beside her. The heat of the vigil lights, the flickering bank of candle flames, the smell of scorched wax, the warmth of the altar, and the sooty lingering whiff of incense. She was mumbling prayers, her forehead resting on the altar rail. I watched her out of one eye, but when I turned away and pretended to pray she got up and left the church.

So only then did I go to confession, and now I had a descriptive phrase for my sins: impure thoughts.

“What happened yesterday?” Father Staley asked from the pulpit on Holy Thursday, and he waited a while, too long, and I was worried, because I was thinking about yesterday. Finally he said, “Judas was plotting to betray Jesus yesterday. What happens today?” The priest leaned forward and spoke angrily. “Today, Judas betrays Our Lord.”

Father Staley was speaking directly to me. I could not look at him.

“And so Christ's message on Holy Thursday,” he said, and he raised a flopping sleeve and shook his white finger at me, “Christ's message on Holy Thursday is, prepare to suffer.”

She was sitting in front of me. I thought she had seen me on the way in. She had seemed to hurry ahead. How I loved her. Who was she?

“Tomorrow is Good Friday. Christ knew that he was going to be crucified. He knew that nails would be driven into his hands—big spikes, like the ones carpenters use. Driven into his feet. And a crown of thorns. Not the sort of thorns you see on rose bushes. These are big thorns—inch or so—you find them in the Holy Land. They didn't set the crown of thorns on his head like a hat—they jammed it down so the thorns pierced his flesh. Drove the thorns into the bone of his skull!”

Father Staley waited a little, picking at the dead skin on his fingers.

“He knew this was going to happen. He had been told. It was written in the Scriptures. Holy Thursday, when Christ was betrayed by Judas, he knew he was going to suffer and die. ‘That thou doest, do quickly!'”

She was listening with her head and shoulders, a stiff attentive posture, her hair out of place. I loved her loose hair, her untidy clothes, her twisted collar—one side up, the other down, the smudge on her upper arm where she had brushed the church door perhaps.

Something also told me—the way she sat at a slight angle—that she was aware that I was behind her. If she had turned just a fraction more she could have seen me. Though I was listening to the priest, I was watching her the whole time.

“The example of Christ's suffering has inspired many people to suffer themselves—to become better Christians. Maria Goretti was just a poor pious girl in a small Italian village. She was twelve years old. She did not know that Christ had chosen her. What was the choice he offered? It was to give way to the devil or to die. The devil lived in the village. His name was Alessandro Serenelli.”

I almost laughed out loud when I heard this funny name, especially the “nelly.” I looked down smiling at the floor of the church and did not look up again until I had swallowed the smile.

“Serenelli watched Maria Goretti. He followed her. Wherever Maria Goretti went, Serenelli also went. But his heart was filled with impure thoughts. Serenelli stared at Maria Goretti's innocent body. He stared at her modest clothes. Maria was never alone—Serenelli was always behind her, watching her with his lustful eyes. Waiting for his chance.”