A Place Of Light

by Mary Bucci Bush

  “Don’t you dare,” her mother told her.

  “I am not,” Hannah said. She reached across Anthony and pinched Katie’s arm. Katie let out a scream as if something had been broken on her.

  “Judas Priest,” their father shouted.

  “This is supposed to be a holy time,” her mother said from the front seat. “Remember, you went to confession yesterday.”

  Hannah turned her face to the window. She was still shaken from having spoken her sins out loud to a stranger. Worse, she was afraid she had sinned further by being so vague with him: She had had “bad thoughts” three times, she’d told him. She had talked back to her parents four times, disobeyed them twice, used bad words three times. She knew what she had done. She was afraid the priest knew, too. And now she was certain he would recognize her in church this morning.

  “Before you go up for Communion,” her mother told her, “you’d just better say a prayer and ask God to forgive you again.” She pronounced it “Gawd.”

  “So there,” Katie said. Hannah took another swing at her, but she pulled back.

  In truth, Hannah’s heart was tortured. The thought of hell terrified her, yet she could not stop sinning. She knew her mother was right: She would have to confess again. But she didn’t know if it was safe to do it herself, in private, or if they would have to call the priest for a special hearing in order to make it work, and the thought of facing him again made her shudder. She couldn’t let on to her family, though, that she had any doubts or was afraid. And of course she couldn’t let her mother think she was right.

  During the ride to church, Hannah’s father had said nothing more than “Judas Priest” to the bickering and “Yes” when their mother had asked if he’d remembered the church envelopes. Hannah knew he was miserable. He couldn’t stand to dress up any more than she could, he hated church and family get-togethers, and he hated his children’s fights. He began to whistle, which is what he did whenever he was nervous or annoyed. That is, he tried to whistle. Since he’d lost most of his teeth, he couldn’t make a decent sound, but that didn’t stop him from trying.

  His pitiful attempt made Hannah ashamed that she’d thought of murdering him – and afraid, too, that she’d have to confess it. “Daddy,” she told her father, “as soon as church is over I’m going to help you plant the corn.”

  “You’re going to Grandma’s with the rest of us,” her mother snapped. “Don’t go getting any of your funny ideas now.”

  “I’m going with Daddy,” Hannah insisted.

  “Fine,” her mother said. “Because he’s coming with us.” She looked at him as she said this, but he didn’t say anything back.

  He whistled and tapped the steering wheel with his fingers, keeping his eyes straight ahead as he drove.

  The most awful thing in Hannah’s life was about to happen, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. As they pulled into the church parking lot, she tucked the miraculous medal back inside the dress.

  “I’ve brought the hairbrush,” her mother announced. “Now let me fix that hair of yours before anybody sees you.”

  Hannah drew back as her mother turned to face her, and the gesture pushed her mother over the edge. “You think the world was made just to suit you, don’t you?” she exploded. She turned farther in her seat, and pointed the hairbrush at the girl.

  “Goddamn Almighty,” their father grumbled.

  Katie grinned at Hannah.

  Her mother shook the hairbrush in Hannah’s face. “You’re going to have a rude awakening one of these fine days,” she told her. “Then we’ll see if you don’t change your tune.”

  Hannah watched the others in the parking lot. They seemed so cheerful, as if nothing terrible was happening to them. She knew that once she got out of the car she would have to act cheerful, too, or else they would learn the awful truth about her: that she was abnormal, after all.

  “I can brush my own hair,” she told her mother.

  “Well,” her mother said, relieved. She handed Hannah the brush, and she dragged it through her own hair.

  They got out of the car. Not one other family looked like theirs. No one was making a scene. No one else was miserable.

  “Don’t forget to put your veil on,” her mother said. The baby squirmed in her arms, but she wouldn’t let her down because of the cars. Katie held Anthony’s hand and swung it while he tried to tug away.

  Their father stood off to the side, his hands in his pockets, impatiently jingling his change. Something struck Hannah, then, seeing him like that, standing apart with his hands in his pockets. She was his favorite, his helper. Yet he had not spoken one word in her behalf during all her ordeal. She realized what a coward he was, and it stung her.

  “We’ll be watching for you,” Hannah’s mother said. Her voice had lost its edge. “Good luck.” She clutched the baby and looked down at Hannah, and her eyes filled with tears.

  Hannah was afraid her mother was going to start crying, right there in front of everyone, so she backed away. “I’ll see you,” she mumbled, and she turned and headed for the church hall. The dress made a hideous rustling sound as she walked, and a lump rose in her throat.

  The classroom was dark and cold. A few girls huddled together, whispering and giggling. Some of the boys ran up an aisle and then slid across the floor in their new shoes. Hannah stayed by herself, feeling too ugly to speak to anyone.

  The nuns seated them for prayers and last-minute instructions. She refused to pray. She refused to listen to a word they were saying. But when she saw one of the nuns scowling at her bare head, she put the veil in place. The headband dug into her scalp, and the lace scratched her ears.

  Finally, they filed outdoors and into the church. On one side of Hannah knelt Juanita Bell with her oily hair and smelling, as usual, like dirty underclothes. Hannah squirmed as far from her as she could without touching the girl on her other side. The girl gave Hannah a look as if to say she understood, then bowed her head to pray. Hannah had seen her on the school playground. She was short and fat, with a Buster Brown haircut, the only other girl who could kick home runs in kickball. Hannah glanced down at the girl’s hands and was shocked to see the square fingernails painted with light pink nail polish.

  When the Mass started, she adjusted the headband again, to keep it from digging into her. She watched the altar boys kneel and stand and give the priest a cup or book and follow him to one spot, then another. When they knelt, she stared at the scuffed soles of their shoes.

  Now that her First Communion had actually started, things weren’t as awful as she’d expected – except for the scratchy clothes and the thought of going up in front of everyone and having the priest put the host on her tongue. She was afraid of having the body and blood of Jesus Christ in her mouth. And she worried about having to eat it without chewing, the way her grandfather who didn’t have any teeth ate his food.

  As the priest droned on in Latin, Hannah looked at the gilt altar crucifix and tried to imagine the eternal damnation her mother was so certain was waiting for her. All she could muster was a gnawing fear at the thought of time everlasting – whether spent burning in hell or singing the glories of God in heaven. She didn’t want to belong to God, although she didn’t want to belong to Satan, either.

  But if she belonged to neither of them, that would mean spending eternity alone, absolutely alone, without her mother and father, without even a stranger. As the thought of it sank in, her stomach did a terrible empty flop inside her.

  She decided then, as she had so many times before, that she would be good. She would be saved, in spite of everything. She confessed silently right then to all her sins: slapping her sister, trying to ruin the dress and veil, fighting with her mother, plotting the murder of her family. From now on she would do whatever God asked of her. She would stop fighting, and she would become a saint. To prove that she meant it, just in case God was listening, she inched back toward smelly Juanita Bell.

  The girls in front of her stoo
d. The nuns were directing them to the altar. She had lost track of everything, and now there was no time to prepare herself. Her row stood up, and she with them.

  She walked in a daze, feeling like she’d just waked up and wasn’t quite sure where she was going or why. Everyone craned to get a look at them as they marched to the altar. Hannah couldn’t see her parents, but she knew that they, too, were straining to pick her out of the crowd.

  She took her place at the railing, her palms sweating and pressed together. She wondered if she would feel anything when the host was put in her mouth. She imagined an earthquake or thunder, or at least a shock wave going through your body when God entered. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the priest and altar boy approach, heard the mumbled words repeated. Then the priest stood in front of her. He held the host before her eyes and mouthed the Corpus domini while she looked up. His hand was fat and pale, as if it had never seen the sun.

  He waited for her, but she was too frightened to move. His plump fingers hovered near her mouth, and she could smell their unnatural cleanliness. He waved the host closer. Finally, she put her tongue out, as she had been instructed to. The priest put the host on her tongue and moved on.

  There was no earthquake. But nothing the nuns had told them prepared Hannah for what was inside her mouth. It was dry and weightless and tasted of cardboard, with a faint flavor of glue.

  When they returned to their seats, she knelt and looked around at the others. Girls with surprised and pious expressions moved their jaws and swallowed. She lowered her eyes and tried to move the host with her tongue.

  The wafer turned gummy. And then it became stuck to the roof of her mouth. The nuns had told them they shouldn’t worry if such a thing happened: They would be able to free it with their tongues. Of course, they were forbidden to touch the consecrated host with their fingers. Only the priest was allowed to do such a thing.

  But there was no freeing it. She worked at it; it would not budge. When she saw that all the other mouths were still, she became embarrassed, and decided to leave the wafer alone in hopes that it would dissolve on its own.

  As soon as church was over she would tell her mother she was sick and had to go home. She would strip the dress off, throw on her dungarees and shirt, and scramble up to the tree fort she’d been building. She would lie on the platform under the cool branches and forget the awful day.

  She made a motion to swallow and realized her mouth had filled with saliva. There was so much and it seemed so awful that she could not swallow it. So the trick became to allow her throat its reflex swallowing motions without letting anything go down. If she could just hold on until Mass was over, she could hurry outside behind the tall hedges and spit out the saliva and swallow the host.

  A little pile of crumbs lay on the ledge below the stained-glass window. Hannah stared hard at it to distract herself, wondering what the crumbs could be. Maybe termites were eating the wood and the church would soon tumble down. Or maybe a mouse had taken one of the dry hosts but couldn’t stand the taste either, and had left it.

  The Mass finally ended. But then it seemed to take them forever to get outside the church. As soon as she breathed fresh air, she tried to walk faster and headed for the shrubs, but dozens of people milled around, blocking her escape. And then a photographer lined them up on the church steps. Her throat ached. She avoided her classmates for fear they would speak to her and expect an answer, and when she did meet them she grinned or grunted, then quickly turned away.

  At last the photographer let them go. Hannah’s family found her, and they headed for the car. Hannah dreaded riding all that way with her mouth full of spit. She was afraid, too, that somehow she was committing a mortal sin. Suddenly the thought came to her that by the time she finally was able to get rid of the saliva the host would be dissolved and she’d be spitting it out, too. That would mean she had never really taken her First Communion – and you had to, in order to be able to go to Communion the rest of your life.

  “Well,” her mother said. It was the one word she used whenever anything good, awful, or otherwise noteworthy happened and she didn’t know what else to say. Her face was flushed, as if she was the one who had been through the ordeal.

  Hannah’s father walked along with his hands in his pockets, jingling his change, now and then making a selfconscious nod to an acquaintance. He began to hum to himself, glad that church was over.

  “You looked nice,” Hannah’s mother said, her color back to normal.

  Katie walked ahead, swinging Anthony’s arm.

  “Aunt Rose came,” her mother said. “I didn’t even invite her to Grandma’s. She gave me an envelope for you.” She rummaged in her purse with her one free hand. and gave Hannah the white envelope.

  They got in the car.

  “Well, let’s go eat,” her father said. “Are you hungry?” he asked Hannah.

  She shrugged her shoulders which, of course, he couldn’t see.

  “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” her mother said to her as they pulled onto the street.

  She didn’t answer. She pressed the skirt down into her lap.

  Katie wanted to know if she would get her own First Communion dress or if she would have to wear Hannah’s.

  “We’ll see,” her mother said.

  “I want my own,” she said. “I don’t want to wear hers.”

  “My, you’re being awfully quiet,” Hannah’s mother said to her.

  “Cat’s got her tongue,” Katie said. “Good thing.”

  Hannah turned her face to the open window and carefully inhaled, trying not to choke.

  “Let’s see Aunt Rose’s card,” her mother said.

  Hannah was sick. She didn’t know if she could last the car ride. She opened the envelope and handed the card to her mother.

  “Well, a dollar,” she said. “You better not forget to tell her thank-you.”

  Hannah’s father told her mother, “Don’t think I’m staying all day at this party.”

  “You don’t have to stay all day,” she told him.

  “I’ve got to finish putting in the corn, that’s all,” he said.

  “Did I say anything?” she answered.

  They were almost there. Her mother asked Hannah if she’d been nervous when she went up for Communion.

  “Mm-mm,” she said.

  “How come she’s not talking?” Katie asked.

  Hannah’s mother turned in her seat to look at her.

  A queer expression came over her face, and Hannah panicked, thinking her mother could see what had happened.

  “Well,” she said. “I’ll be.” She leaned her head to one side and looked at Hannah. Finally she said, “She’s so moved by the ceremony she can’t speak.”

  The effect of those words sent something cold through Hannah’s heart. “Thank God,” her mother’s face seemed to say, “something has finally touched you. Something has finally straightened you out.”

  She turned back and faced the front. “Now let’s just see how long this lasts.”

  When they got to their grandmother’s, Katie and Anthony ran ahead to look for their cousins. Her mother lifted the baby out, then let her down and held her hand. She had Hannah’s father search back through the front seat for the diaper bag.

  “This?” he said, holding it up. She nodded. He swung the bag for the baby, to be funny, and began singing a tune about the “mosquitoes biting tonight.” Hannah hung back near the sidewalk, away from them.

  “Aren’t you coming in?” her mother asked her.

  “Um-hmm.”

  “I should hope so,” she. said. “This would be a fine time for you to throw a fit.” But then she looked at Hannah with that look again. Her father held the bag still, and his eyes were on Hannah, too, but he seemed to be thinking of something else.

  Her mother headed for the house, clutching the baby’s hand, and her father followed. He held the door for them, then scraped his shoes on the step – a habit from the farm – and walked in aft
er them.

  Hannah went around to the side of the house and looked to make sure there were no cars or people in sight. Then she leaned one hand against her grandmother’s elm tree, and she spit everything out.

  She had not meant for it to be that way. She had expected all along to swallow the host, just like everyone else, and then be released from the whole affair. But now something new had begun for her, something no one had prepared her for.

  She headed for the house, to join the party, where she would be the center of attention and receive gifts for what had happened to her. Tears stung her eyes.

  So this was it, she thought. Her parents had handed her over, both of them, willingly, and this is what she got. She was damned, beyond anything anyone could have imagined. They could not see it, and she could not tell them. Tomorrow at Sunday Mass, and other Sundays afterward, she would have to take Communion again as if nothing had happened. She would never be able to confess.

  She reached the door and wiped her eyes, the one lost girl in the world. Just let anybody try to say one word to her, she thought, and she’d let them see what a real sinner was like.

  LOSING WILLY GLEASON

  We were used to all kinds of characters in town, not to mention those that lived up in the hills or out in their shacks on the mucklands and came in Friday nights for groceries. But the Gleasons were something else. We used to call them “those idiot Gleasons,” and we could always count on them for a good story to keep things interesting. But it was after Sylvia Biddle and Willy Gleason started walking up and down the road pushing a baby carriage, around the same time he took the shotgun to his mother, that those stories began to take on a new life.

  From the distance Willy Gleason appeared to be either a sickly child or a crippled old man. In truth, he was thirty years old, scrawny, with tangled black hair and tight, shiny skin. You’d see him alongside one of those farm roads out where he lived, standing off the shoulder, smoking a cigarette, looking down at the dirt, like he was lost in some deep meditation, or else having a spell of some kind. He never came into town, and he never got within fifteen feet of another person if he could help it. So it was hard to believe that he’d found himself a girlfriend. If Willy Gleason was going to fall for a girl, though, Sylvia Biddle would be the natural choice.