There was a line for confessions. Waiting in my pew I read my Instructions for a Good Confession. What is a sin? A cruelty to others; a false representation of ourselves; a failure to honor God and the Saints in all the times and places we can, in all the ways we can, as often as ever we can.
I had falsely represented myself to Thad and Willy and so I guess I had sinned. I hadn’t been sure.
In the dark of the booth I confessed to Father Michaels. I asked him himself to forgive me, because the priest has the power to do that. Father, forgive me for I have sinned. When I was done with my one sin he spoke in Latin and blessed me (I could see the faint motion of his hand through the screen) and he told me to say a decade of the Rosary and he was shutting the grate when I said Father, can I ask you something? And he said Certainly.
Is it true that older people can’t see their guardian angels and talk right to them and hear them?
He paused for a little and then said: They hear them in a different way. They see them in a different way.
But I knew from the little pause that it was a priest’s way of saying Yes it is true. And he said: Our Lord tells us that faith is the evidence of things not seen, that what we believe but can’t see has substance.
I said Oh. Thank you, Father. And he shut the grate.
I went to kneel in the pew in front of the Mary altar, where Mary is holding the baby and also holding out a rosary, which makes her look a little like a busy mom doing two things at once; but her face was as serene as always. I said my penance, the beads passing through my fingers as I murmured the prayers one by one, and with the saying of it my sin went away from me and my heart was cleansed. That’s a nice feeling, your sin going away like dirty water down the drain. It would probably be a sin in itself to go out and sin just to feel that feeling. But I thought of it.
I went out of the church and sat on the steps and took my Brownie cap off (it was the only hat I could find that afternoon) and a group of nuns from the convent next to the church were going by together, their habits sweeping up the dry leaves that lay on the pavement. The beauty of them moving all together, the airs lifting their veils, their smiles and voices—they sang together, the younger ones, out of simple good cheer. I thought of being a nun, singing and never sinning again. Yet maybe the beauty of it was that it was something to see and not something to be, like geese you see in the autumn sky following the leader, all the same but each itself, and you want to join them. I felt I was among the nuns even though I wasn’t, and wouldn’t want to be, not really.
It’s so nice, I said to my guardian angel. The voices. Singing.
It is, she said. It’s the only way we angels ever talk to one another.
September
One night at dinner Dad told a joke. It was because of the new (or rather old) school bus that the parish had just got for the grade school, given to them by the Twin City Bible Camp because it was so broken down and shabby they wouldn’t use it any more and had got another. The bus was needed to bring the children who lived out on the Timber Town road to Coalsburg to school and back again. It said Twin City Bible Camp on the side, but Sister Fausta the art teacher said she would get some yellow paint and paint that out and put St. John Bosco School on it. On Monday the priest was going to bless the bus.
The joke Dad told was this: A little public school had got a brand new bus, and wanted it to be blessed by the different clergy of the town. So the Protestant minister came and read some verses out of King James’s Bible. And the priest came and said some Latin and dashed the bus with holy water. And then the rabbi came up and instead of any of that he cut two inches off the tailpipe.
My mother blushed and smacked my father’s hand. But nobody would tell us why the joke was funny. I thought maybe it was just funny because rabbis do funny things.
When we got to school on Monday the side of the bus was painted and the new name lettered on very carefully. But it was really pretty old and battered. I looked at the tail pipe for no good reason and it was very rusty at the end and sort of decayed. After school was done Sister told us all to go out into the yard and those who were going to Timber Town road and Coalsburg should get on the bus and everyone else gather round. When we all got on and found a seat—there was a lot of arguing about that, and pretty soon Mr. Kowalski the groundskeeper, who was now going to be the bus driver too, got up and yelled that we should all pipe down—we could see that Father Paine was coming, and he was wearing his stole and his biretta and an altar boy came after him with the bucket of holy water and the thing the priest uses to sprinkle people and things with. Yes I know what they are really: the bucket is the aspersorium and the sprinkler is called the aspergillum. Robbie told me that and he is studying Latin and will maybe be a priest. He thought I would forget as soon as he told me but of course I didn’t. I cannot ever be a priest.
Father Paine had a look of patient suffering, but he always does; it makes me think his name is the right name for him. He is so very kind and gentle and isn’t suffering really, I don’t think, any more than anybody. He crossed himself and said the In nomine Domini and we all did too, even we on the bus. And then the priest said Aspergo te omnibus and more and he splashed the water on us, and drops hit the windows and I thought of rain falling in the months of school still ahead even though this day was sunny and warm.
Then Mr. Kowalski started the bus, but it didn’t start. It sort of shrieked or groaned, but nothing more. We all waited. He tried again, and this time the bus tried to start; it shook and made noise and then a loud bang came out the back and black smoke. Then it stopped. “It died,” Mr. Kowalski called out the door to Father Paine. Father Paine thought a moment, and then he turned to the students and the nuns and the lunch lady and with his hands he told them to kneel. When they had knelt he crossed himself and prayed. We on the bus couldn’t kneel but we folded our hands, except some boys. Mr. Kowalski turned the key again and the engine started. It was as if it didn’t want to but it had to, like Dad getting up in the morning. The bus rocked and coughed and made small bangs out its rear end and a boy said a bad word about that and got shushed. Then as the priest stopped speaking and the people waited, the bus ceased to suffer, and began to breathe easy. The bad smoke smell went away and a good smell of September air came in the windows. The bus seemed to be happier, not so tense. And cleaner. It purred.
Father Paine smiled, and he waved to Mr. Kowalski to go ahead, and Mr. Kowalski very slowly moved the bus away from the school, as though he still wasn’t sure it wanted to. But it picked up speed, and we all took a deep breath, and somebody laughed and somebody else cheered, and the bus was happy now. The seats seemed less stained and shabby, and the windows fit better in their frames. We turned onto the road that goes along by the school and then onto the road that goes along the river and then we couldn’t any longer hear the kids and the nuns cheering from the lawn of the school beneath the pale statue of Our Lady. And after a time we on the bus were quiet and felt the shadows of leaves pass over us.
October
On the day of Hallowe’en Sister Rose of Lima, our principal, told us in school meeting to be careful how we dressed up that night. She reminded us that this night is the Eve of All Saints, and in the morning tomorrow we will go to church and honor all the saints, not only the ones we know but those many, many saints in heaven whose names are not known except to God and to those who have been visited by them, their families or their friends or their enemies. The night before the day of a great feast can be a risky time, she said, and this feast more than any other. We should be careful of how we dress up and what costumes and masks we pick, she said, because to dress up in costumes as ghosts or demons or figures of Death like skeletons or corpses might draw those very figures to walk with us. On this night they are allowed to walk abroad, and though the Church knows very well how they can be prevented from doing the harm they may wish to do, children out and about in the streets might not know that what seem to be other kids following them in costumes like th
eirs really aren’t, and careless children can be threatened and their souls drawn out from the houses of their bodies unwitting and into the world to come.
A word to the wise is sufficient, Sister Rose of Lima said. She said this once every day more or less.
I was pretty safe because I wore a Brown Scapular (scapulars are sort of itchy and always get tangled around your neck but everyone puts up with that) and Our Lady of Mount Carmel has promised that no one who dies wearing it will die in a state of mortal sin. I had a Miraculous Medal as well, which my favorite teacher in first grade gave to me. Because of these things I wasn’t afraid to walk in the night on All Hallows’ Eve, at least not more than a little. But because of what Sister said I dressed up as Snow White.
Kids in my neighborhood of Timber Town would go to the houses in better neighborhoods, where you can knock on doors and say Trick or Treat and get better treats (not that I knew how to play tricks on anyone who gave me nothing). The way to get to those houses was to go up the street away from my neighborhood and cross the bridge over the old canal that runs to the river, which in the book has no name. I had heard—we all knew—that down under this bridge hoboes had their camp, and there were remains there of fires and cardboard shelters and tin cans. Kids told stories about the hoboes, that they could rob you or even kill you, but I didn’t believe them; I said I don’t believe that story but in that way you pooh-pooh stories you don’t want to worry about. My brothers and their friends told the stories when we crossed the bridge, and they made claws of their hands and tried to be scary.
We knocked on the doors of the houses that had jack-o’-lanterns on their porches fearsome or silly, with their fiery smiles and eyes, and my bag was full of treats to bring home, and so we started back. Then the boys got the idea to run to the bridge and across and leave me alone on the street. That was very mean of them and stupid and I called after them and said I would tell when I got home. I was more angry than afraid, and I walked on toward the bridge in my Snow White dress as though nothing was amiss. I set out on the bridge over the hobo camp, where maybe once a child had been killed though probably not. I could see a kid ahead of me on the bridge, in a white sheet like a ghost. When I looked again he wasn’t there, but I thought he wasn’t actually gone. And then again he was there, but only sort of. He was dawdling, as though he wanted me to catch up with him and maybe be with him, and he’d take me with him as Sister Rose of Lima had said; but he didn’t seem dangerous or evil to me, just lonely and sad. I spoke an Ejaculation under my breath: Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me and on all the living and the dead. I felt the Miraculous Medal grow warm against my chest and I knew that I was safe. And after I got across the bridge I could no longer see the little ghost child. He had remained behind.
November
On the Feast of All Souls, the second day of November, I went to church after school to pray for the release of souls from their sufferings in Purgatory. On this day alone prayers of the living faithful can absolve them of their sins and admit them to heaven. The church was pretty full and smelled of damp wool and candle smoke and people, a smell I always liked and didn’t like at the same time. On the cards that were placed in every pew was printed the Prayer of St. Gertrude, in white script across a colored picture of a gravestone and a praying child. Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.
Sister Rose of Lima said that God had promised St. Gertrude that when her prayer was said on this day with a righteous heart, a thousand souls would be freed from their sufferings in Purgatory. I looked around me at the others gathered there also praying for the dead, and some of them wept, perhaps for someone once in their own home and within their family, and I thought of Cousin Winnie. I didn’t know if it was allowed to pray for one soul in particular, but I thought of the kid I had seen on the bridge in the night and I asked in my prayer that if he was a soul in Purgatory he might be one among my thousand. I prayed also that if Cousin Winnie was in Purgatory he might be one too. And I said the prayer for the dead: Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. I felt the rush of the thousands of escaping souls winging upward into perpetual light. I was happy and sad as well.
December
I wanted snow for Christmas very much. The last Christmas it had only rained, a small gray ceaseless rain that made the town’s decorations look miserable and hopeless, like a birthday party no one has come to; and then the floods had come and turned Timber Town into Mud Pie Town. Empty buildings on Second Street along the river still had dark shadows showing where the river had risen to.
My guardian angel didn’t know how to ask for snow on my behalf, because though there are saints to pray to for rain, and saints for fine weather, there aren’t any saints to pray to for snow. But I thought I could get a hearing. That’s what Dad would say when he went to talk to the union shop steward: I’ll get a hearing. God will do what we ask, I knew, if we ask in the right way; but it’s not always easy to know the right way.
I took down the Book of Saints from the shelf and started from the beginning, but there are a lot of saints (about twenty St. Johns) and it was hard to pay attention. In due time I found that there are certain saints who are called Ice Saints in far northern countries, where they need to know when cold weather will come. One was St. Servatus, and there was St. Agnes and St. Prisca, St. Mamertus and St. Boniface. If their feast days are cold it will stay cold a long time after. So maybe they could bring snow as well.
When Dad asked me what I was doing—making lists of saints’ names, drawing charts and birthdates, writing prayers—I told him I was praying for snow. He said he didn’t think God would answer such a prayer. Snow or no snow happens because of big weather patterns, which they show in the newspapers and describe in the short-wave radio broadcasts he liked to listen to. If God wanted to bring snow on a certain day—even His own Birthday—He’d have to start up the right weather patterns a long way back, long before you asked Him for snow. It can’t just be Ta-da, here it is.
I said If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you. That’s the Gospel of John. And Dad looked down at me sitting on the floor with the crayons and I knew he loved me even if he didn’t think you could pray for snow and have your prayer answered.
No snow fell that week; the weather was cold but clear, day after day. I wore leather gaiters under my wool plaid skirt and watched the breath come from my mouth as though to tell me I was alive and warm inside; and I kept up my prayers to the Ice Saints.
On the Third Sunday of Advent Father Paine gave a sermon about prayer, and about asking for things in prayer. As though he knew about me and my plan. Dad looked at me beside him and winked.
What Father Paine wanted to explain to us was a question that he said many had. If God knows all that has befallen the world, and has known since before the beginning all that would befall the world, why should we pray that things will come out well for us and for everyone? Hasn’t it all been decided already, the good and the bad?
And he said that time for God is different from the way it is for us, that to God everything that was or will be is happening in … well, you could say in one moment, but moments are parts of time, and there is no name for what God sees. And when God sees a thing that by chance the world in its progress is bringing about, and the thing doesn’t conform to His will, He can easily reset the conditions in the past, even at the beginning of the universe, so that the thing won’t happen after all: because there is no “after all” for God.
That is the power given by God to our Holy Church, and by delegation to each of us, Father Paine said, and his sad pained face was alight. If we petition Him correctly, and if what we ask doesn’t conflict with His larger purposes, He can’t refuse us. At
each moment He can reform the whole history of the world again from its beginning so that it will come to be. We may ask what we will.
And we call those things miracles, and answered prayers, and sins.
I thought then, sitting with the others in the newly rebuilt church that still smelled sweetly of wood and tartly of plaster: It’s like a movie.
It’s like a movie, where you know that the good guys will win in the end, no matter how often they lose and lose, how much they suffer: you just know they’ll win. And even so, through the movie you are afraid for them every minute, and cry out to them to watch for the bad guys sneaking up on them, and your heart races and you get tears in your eyes just as though you didn’t know; but you do know.
And the reason is that those who wrote and made the movie know you want the good guys to win, and so do they; and whenever in the story they are writing it looks like they can’t win the writers change the story of the movie so that in the nick of time it happens that they can, and they do. Just as we watching hoped and prayed they would.
When we went out of the church on that Third Sunday in Advent so long ago we found that it had begun softly to snow. By the end of the day it had worked up to a pretty good blizzard. That night with the wild flakes flying in the street lights and the sound of tire chains in the street I knelt beside my bed and said my prayers and gave thanks to St. Mamertus, St. Pancras, St. Servatus, St. Agnes, St. Boniface, and I seemed to see them high in the heavenly places, like great snowmen striding above Timber Town and Twin City and the high hills beyond, the snow falling like seed from their hands.
The boys and girls I knew in St. John Bosco School, and my brothers, and Sister Rose of Lima and Father Paine and Father Michaels and the mill workers and the men who helped to build the new church, all still live in Timber Town, and so do I. But in another way I left a long time ago. I lived in many places, and things happened to me that I could not even have known were possible in the world, and some of them were not good and were my fault and some of them were dreadful and the fault of many people or everyone; and yet even as I grew up I thought that whatever bad things happened, however we stumbled as Father Paine used to say, overall in the world things were getting better, and old bad things were going away. And it has grown harder and harder to think that way.