He curled up on the bed again, basking in her warmth as long as he could.
Chapter 49
Rev. James Wallace…moved to Lexington District, within a few miles of the city, and devoted his declining years to meditation and prayer…
— Father J. J. O’Connell, Catholicity in the Carolinas and Georgia (1879)
Joseph held the aspersorium while Father Baker blessed the ashes with holy water. His pastor dipped his thumb into the damp black dust to make a cross on his own forehead, and then on Joseph’s. Finally, they offered this symbol of Penance to each of their parishioners. Over and over, they admonished: “Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.”
They echoed God’s words to Adam after his Fall. The ashes were supposed to remind them all to repent before it was too late. For a Christian who died in a state of grace, death was not something to fear. On the contrary, saints like Teresa of Ávila longed for death, because it meant they would finally be united with their divine Beloved. But Joseph could not help but think of his sister, alone in her tomb—or his brother-in-law, alone in their bed.
The ashes had stained Joseph’s fingers black and worked their way beneath his nails long before Tessa approached the altar. Her eyes flitted up to his for only a moment. But a moment was all it took. Just as the crucifix was veiled for Lent, Christ vanished from Joseph’s mind.
As he felt that black cross on his forehead, as he placed that symbol of death upon Tessa’s soft flesh and he recited those ominous words, Joseph longed for another kind of union—while he and Tessa still had breath in their bodies. Eight weeks ago, he’d almost lost her to childbirth. A few days from now, on his journey to Columbia, Prince might stumble and throw him; Joseph might break his neck before he ever knew the taste of her skin. Thanks to his father’s carnal catechism (imprinted in his mind as surely as Priesthood was imprinted in his soul), Joseph knew there were ways he could make Tessa “unspeakably happy” without hurting her.
Every one of which was a mortal sin. As a Penance, he tried to reread the “Meditation upon Death” from The Imitation of Christ. “In every deed and thought, order thyself as if thou wert to die this day,” counselled Thomas à Kempis. “When it is morning, reflect that thou may not see evening…” Before her surgery, Hélène had said nearly the same thing, but she’d argued for an entirely different purpose—not that Joseph should prepare his soul to meet God, but that he should seize Tessa while he could. “Now the time is most precious,” agreed Kempis. “While thou hast time, lay up for thyself undying riches.”
The only riches Joseph cared about were the gold rings in Tessa’s eyes, the ruby curtains of her lips, the pearls of her teeth, the ivory of her throat…
He was writing another chapter of the Canticles, apparently. At least he hadn’t compared her hair to a flock of goats.
A noble benefactress in Europe had sent their diocese two monstrances. Even without the Real Presence inside them, these vessels were dazzling: rays of gold radiating from a center inlaid with jewels. Their benefactress wished one monstrance to remain in the cathedral and the other to grace St. Peter’s Church in Columbia, since it was dedicated to her late husband’s patron saint. Father Baker had decided not to entrust such an important delivery to the postal service.
Besides, the Priest who made the journey could visit the Catholic families between Charleston and Columbia, families who enjoyed the consolation of the Sacraments only a few times a year. Joseph had volunteered because he had Prince. He also saw it as a trial: how might he and his horse adapt to permanent mission work?
Prince seemed eager to stretch his legs in earnest. With the monstrance wrapped up securely, they travelled through Colleton District, south of the railroad. Joseph spent each night and morning with the scattered members of his flock, baptizing infants, hearing Confessions, and celebrating Mass. He even blessed a Marriage. Work only a Priest could do.
Yet every moment in-between, Joseph prayed—and dreamt—about Tessa. Might not God grant him this solace? If Joseph was gentle, might not Tessa grant him more than a clothed embrace?
Fortunately, Joseph had brought along Dignity and Duties of the Priest by Alphonsus Liguori. The saint devoted whole chapters to “The Sin of Incontinence, or The Necessity of Purity in the Priest.” He reminded Joseph: “the unchaste priest not only brings himself to perdition, but he also causes the damnation of many others.” He confirmed the wisdom of Joseph’s first instinct when he’d learned Tessa loved him: to flee at once from his occasion of sin. “In this warfare cowards, they that avoid dangerous occasions, gain the victory.”
Joseph’s course was clear. He must leave Charleston permanently. He must turn his back on the best thing that had ever happened to him, because it was also the worst thing that had ever happened to him. If he truly cared about Tessa’s welfare or about his other parishioners, he could not delay any longer. As soon as he returned from Columbia, he would speak to Father Baker.
But whatever strange bed he inhabited, Tessa always found him. Sometimes she only sang to him or stroked his hair. Sometimes she was as wanton as Delilah. That night, she began by whispering in his ear: “I need you.” The truth was: he needed her far more than she needed him. Whatever she could give him, he would accept it gladly. But he dreamt of union.
The following afternoon, Joseph and his horse took refuge from a thunderstorm in a barn. As lightning streaked the sky, Joseph returned to Alphonsus, who often cited the wisdom of other saints: “In the revelations of St. Bridget we read that an unchaste priest was killed by a thunder bolt; and it was found that the lightning had reduced to ashes only the indelicate members, as if to show that it was principally for incontinence that God had inflicted this chastisement upon him.”
Joseph flinched.
He delivered the monstrance safely to St. Peter’s. Then he followed his map and his father’s directions to the home of Father Wallace. The farmstead stood in a handsome setting near the edge of a forest—though the house seemed unnecessarily large. Joseph’s father had told him the Priest had made wise investments and now owned considerable property in and around Columbia. Father Wallace likely had his mastery of mathematics to thank for that.
As Joseph approached, he heard what sounded like a Paganini caprice drifting down through one of the windows. So Father Wallace was a violinist. Joseph had assumed his father wished him to meet this Priest because Father Wallace had broken his vow of obedience by leaving the Jesuits. But perhaps their shared love of music had some bearing on this visit, too. When Joseph had asked his father’s reasons, he’d been frustratingly vague: “You’ll understand once you’re there.”
Half mesmerized by the music, Joseph pulled Prince to a stop, dismounted, and tied his lead rope to the fence around the kitchen garden. When Joseph climbed the porch stairs and knocked on the front door, the violinist did not stop. But a patter of footsteps punctuated the notes, and the door swung open to reveal a mulatto boy of about seven.
“Good afternoon!” the boy cried.
Joseph frowned. “G-Good afternoon.”
“Are you Father Lazarus?”
“If you mean ‘Father Lazare,’ I am.”
The boy scrunched up his nose. “I ’membered wrong! Your pa wrote us you were coming.”
“I’m…looking for Father Wallace?”
“You’re in the right place,” called a woman’s voice. Joseph turned to see a negress approaching from the kitchen. She wiped her hands on her apron, then shielded her eyes from the afternoon sunlight. “He hasn’t returned from his mission to the Fairfield District yet. We expect him for supper. You’ll join us, won’t you? And spend the night with us?”
“I— Yes, thank you.”
The negress (Joseph guessed her to be forty) was close enough now to see the mulatto boy standing in the doorway, and she turned to him. “James, would you run upstairs and ask your brother to take care of Father Lazare’s horse and put his bags in the spare room?”
�
�I can do it, Mama!” young James insisted.
The negress smiled indulgently. “Why don’t you help George?”
James pouted but ran to obey.
Joseph had known Father Wallace must have a housekeeper. But it was unusual for such a woman to bring her children into a Priest’s household. Their noise was hardly conducive to meditation and prayer: James clomped up the stairs and shouted to his brother. The violin ceased.
“Are you thirsty, Father?” the negress asked him. “I have some switchel ready. James says it’s the best restorative after a day in the saddle.”
“Thank you.” Still Joseph scowled. By “James,” he assumed she meant Father Wallace, not her young son. Did Father Wallace know she referred to him by his Christian name in his absence?
“I hope you don’t mind following me to the kitchen? I have supper going.” The negress turned before Joseph even responded.
In the kitchen, she offered him a chair and poured him a mug of switchel, which had the perfect amount of ginger. “I’m sorry, Father; I realize I haven’t introduced myself. My name is Sarah. Your father’s letter wasn’t clear—but judging by your reactions, he didn’t tell you about me?”
That sounded ominous. “No…”
Sarah seemed uncomfortable too. She rearranged the fire. “I wish James were here to do this with me,” she sighed. “But I know I cannot leave you in suspense.” She crouched down and gave her Dutch oven a quarter-turn. “Twenty-two, nearly twenty-three years ago, James purchased me from a plantation outside Charleston.”
She was a slave. That was hardly surprising.
“Six years later, I gave birth to our first son.”
Despite the sudden dryness in his throat, Joseph lowered his mug to the table. This was meant to inform Joseph’s decision about Tessa? A man who forced himself on his slave so often there were children? Wallace was not only her master, he was her Priest; she’d had no choice but to submit. Joseph kept his eyes on the ginger water. “You must despise him.”
Sarah had been reaching toward one of the herb bundles hanging from the rafters. She paused. “‘Despise him’?” she echoed in confusion.
“Wallace—not your son.” The ability of violated women to love the products of their violation was one of God’s miracles.
Sarah laughed. “James did not force me! I understand how you could think that, viewing us from a distance. But it isn’t true.” She smiled and plucked down a sprig of rosemary. “What happened between me and James was a slow, gentle thing—and I began it, not him.”
Joseph frowned. Twenty-three years ago, she’d been seventeen? eighteen? “But when he purchased you, he must have done it with the intention of…”
“He purchased me to save me, Father.” Sarah used a hook to swing her cooking crane out of the fire. “Me and the man I was with then, Marcus, we’d tried to run, even though we knew what would happen if they caught us: first our master whipped us, and then he sold us. Master had meant to sell me and Marcus both ‘down the river.’ But James came to say Mass at our plantation that day. He understood what ‘down the river’ meant, especially for a woman.”
Joseph did too: in New Orleans, she would have been auctioned as a “fancy girl”—or worked to death in the cane fields.
Sarah added her rosemary to the pot. “The college in Columbia already wanted James to be their mathematics professor, and he needed a housekeeper. So he asked my master if he could buy me. I’d still be separated from Marcus and my mother, James argued—wasn’t that punishment enough? It was your father who lent him the money he needed—your father who cared for my back till I was well enough to travel.” Sarah returned the pot to the fire. “At first, I did despise James, like I despised all white men. I thought about running again. I even thought about killing myself. I assumed what you did: that he wanted me for more than cooking and cleaning.” She took up a pile of radishes fresh from the garden and crossed to her sink. She had a hand pump right there in the kitchen. “But James saw how frightened and unhappy I was. He started doing these little things for me, never expecting anything in return. Big things too: he taught me my letters. Through a Priest friend of his, I was able to write to my mother. James missed his mother too, you see. As the years passed, we got to know everything about each other—until it wasn’t enough. We couldn’t say what we wanted to say with words anymore.”
Joseph stood and stared out the open window toward the sinking sun. “He is still a Priest; he had no right to—”
“The Church says we cannot marry; the law says he cannot free me; the neighbors say our union is ‘unnatural.’ But none of that matters, Father. Once you close the door behind you, there is no white or black, master or slave, Priest or parishioner. There is only a man and a woman—two bodies and two souls who need each other. Slavery took my body away from me, but James gave it back to me. He saved my soul, too—not by being a good Priest, but by being a good man.”
A boyish shout drew Joseph’s attention to the road. He saw a bespectacled white man approaching, riding alongside a young colored man of perhaps seventeen. As her youngest son ran out to greet the riders, Sarah joined Joseph at the window. “That’s Andrew, our eldest. He’s apprenticed to a bricklayer in Columbia. It’s not often now I have him and James both home for supper!” She poured another mug of switchel and hurried outside.
Joseph remained at the window, watching their reunion, wishing he hadn’t agreed to spend the night.
Wallace gulped half the switchel while he caressed Sarah’s back. “Thank you, princess.” Her name was Hebrew for princess, Joseph remembered. “How are you today?”
“I am well.” Without breaking their embrace, Sarah glanced back to Joseph. “I am not so sure about Father Lazare. I have been trying to explain our family to him.”
“Ah!” Wallace peered through the window. He’d not let go of Sarah. “It’s quite safe to come out, son! If God were going to strike me down with a thunderbolt, He would have done it a long time ago!”
Joseph sighed and emerged from the kitchen.
Wallace gazed around him with obvious pride. Little James was still hanging about his parents, while Andrew and George were leading the horses into the barn. “On the contrary, God has blessed me with three handsome sons.” Wallace stroked the frizzly head of his namesake, then looked back to Joseph. “And you are certainly the image of your father. Since he and I are of an age, I hope you will allow me to call you Joseph? You are welcome to call me James.”
Reluctantly, Joseph nodded.
Sarah asked the younger James to set the table, then returned to her kitchen.
Wallace—even in his head, Joseph could not use his Christian name—kept smiling at Joseph. He motioned him toward the porch. “I am sure you have questions. Begin!”
Joseph avoided his eyes. “What in Heaven’s name do you tell your confessor?”
“The truth.”
“But he cannot absolve you…”
“My confessor does not believe I am ‘living in mortal sin’ any more than I do. He was also in love once. Still is. She’s the reason they sent him across the Atlantic.”
“And your superior?”
“He knows.” Wallace shrugged. “He pretends not to. There is only one sin our Church cannot bear: the sin of scandal. You and I are hardly unique, Joseph. There are more of us than you realize. How many Priests are there in Charleston now?”
“Six.”
“Mark my words, Joseph: two, probably three of those men have, had, or will have a mistress. And I would wager all six of them have been in love.”
Impossible. Yet Joseph had to force himself not to speculate about his fellow Priests. Father O’Neil? Father Burke?
“The Church turns a blind eye because it has no other choice. If it excommunicated every Priest with a ‘concubine,’ it would lose half its clergy.” Wallace seated himself on the porch, and Joseph settled uneasily beside him. “If the Church had any sense, it would return to its roots and allow us to take wives ope
nly. Saint Peter—the only Pope chosen by Christ—was married! This cult of celibacy not only torments us Priests—it devastates the women and children we leave behind. I have been very fortunate, to remain with my family. Most Priests are moved from parish to parish to parish, especially if they’ve ‘fallen.’ That only encourages them to flit like honeybees from woman to woman, seeking the sympathy and encouragement they could have found in a wife. We are with our parishioners during the most painful periods of their lives: Confessions and sick calls and Last Rites… The work of a Priest is physically, spiritually, and emotionally exhausting. We pour ourselves out again and again until we are empty. We must find someone to fill us up again, or we collapse.”
“God fills us.”
“He does—but He cannot fill us completely.”
That was heresy.
“The Priests who will not allow themselves to turn to a woman often find solace in a bottle. Others choose…” Wallace averted his eyes and did not finish.
Joseph suspected he knew what the man was implying, and he was grateful to let the alternative lie. “Do your parishioners know about Sarah and your sons?”
“Some of them do.”
“And they tolerate it?” Isolated as they were, Joseph supposed Wallace’s parishioners had no other choice.
“Those who object do so because of Sarah’s color. If she were white, it would be easier. We wouldn’t have to worry about our boys’ futures. No matter how much property I acquire, I cannot will it to my sons—because South Carolina considers them property. Your father didn’t mention—the woman you love, she is white?”
“Yes. She is also married.”
“I am sorry. That is a problem not even a mathematician can solve for you.”
At least the man did not stoop to condoning adultery—or murder.
“I can tell you this, Joseph: If you truly love this woman, if she truly loves you, and you turn away from her, she will haunt you for the rest of your life. You will always be empty. Carnal intercourse is the easiest way to still that longing inside you, but it is not the only way. Perhaps together, you and she can manage to be soul-mates without mingling your flesh. The path is narrow indeed, but others have found it before you: there are many precedents amongst our saints. Think of Saint Clare and Saint Francis of Assisi, or Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross.”
Necessary Sins Page 42
