The Patron Saint of Liars (12 page)

God came to us in the form of Father Bernard, who made the drive down from Owensboro three Sundays a month to say mass in the grand ballroom. He came around two o'clock, after his Sunday duties were completed at home. First he listened to confessions in the coat checkroom, which had a small wall that separated it from the front desk. It meant that everyone had to stay out of the lobby while waiting her turn. I never went myself, but Angie told me she could hardly keep from laughing, thinking of him sitting on a small folding chair that once must have held a young girl in charge of putting mink coats on hangers. "It's not the best setup," she said. "He keeps saying,'What? What?'"

It was a difficult day all around, as many of the girls refused to eat before communion, leaving them irritable and nauseated. The minute that mass was over they flocked to the kitchen and picked at dinner until there was nothing left, then wanted something else to eat before bedtime. Sister Evangeline and I worked overtime on Sundays.

Except for the first Sunday of every month, that is, when the ladies' auxiliary sent down the church bus to collect us early and bring us to the Church of the Incarnation in Owensboro. Although Saint Elizabeth's was funded by the archdiocese, the government, and several substantial private donors, the women of Incarnation's Saint Vincent de Paul Society saw us as their special project. They saved their maternity clothes for us, had bake sales to fund special medical needs, and sent us all their old magazines. We were their good deed, and in return for their charitable work they expected to see us clean-scrubbed and heavy with child at the front of their church once a month, with two nuns in front and back of the line.

The average age of a Saint Elizabeth's resident in 1968 was twenty-three years old, but on those Sundays we all felt fourteen, schoolgirls told to be quiet and walk straight. We were the lost lambs brought back into the fold. Our immorality was past tense, and in this bath of forgiveness we were washed clean of our sins. Twenty-five pregnant virgins on parade. The pews were hard on our backs, and kneeling was just impossible, though we felt obliged to try. The girls in the early classes went right to their knees, but the further along you were the more difficult it was. You didn't want to admit that last month you'd made it down fine, and this month you were sliding the pew into the small of your back, pushing the knees you couldn't see out in front of you, and praying you would make it. Even if you could get down, forget about getting back up again. I saw girls suffer the entire mass wedged in at a slant, neither in their seat nor on the ground. The mass seemed endless, and I kept my eyes on the rack of candles where so much of my youth had been spent. What could I have been thinking of?

Saint Elizabeth's was full of girls who were not Catholic. They said they were, because it was a lying time in our lives, and no one pressed the point. They had no place else to go, as there were no homes for unwed Protestant girls in those days. At mass they took communion to avoid questions. You could see it flash across their faces for a moment as the priest reenacted the Last Supper, said, "This
is
the body of Christ. Happy are those who are called to His table." They would be joining up with us, the flesh eaters, the people who believed not in the symbol but actually claimed to digest the thing itself. Body and blood. But maybe, they thought, if I keep it clear in my mind, my portion will remain bread and wine and no one will be the worse for it. Better to just eat the damn thing and have a roof over your pregnant head. They dropped their Baptist chins to their Baptist chests and said, "Lord, I am not worthy to receive You, but only say the word and I shall be healed," then scooted sideways, uncomfortably, through the pew and up the aisle to balance the savior of the world on their own pink tongues.

Except me.

I had not received the sacrament since I left Thomas. I could not confess my sin because I was not remorseful, and I could not take communion without confession. For a person whose life was comprised of lies, this was the one thing I felt dead certain I had to be honest about. It would be fatally wrong to lie on the altar of God, to say I was clean and at peace when I was neither. I'm sure that to second-guess God is the greatest sin of all. I decided He had no right forgiving me and I held my ground. It put Mother Corinne beside herself.

"What you do at Saint Elizabeth's does not please me," she said, her voice completely without inflection, which was her way when she was angriest. "But that is among us, in our family. When, however, we are at the Church of the Incarnation, you are to take your place in line with the other girls. Is that understood?"

"Understood," I said, and waited for my dismissal. It was the same exchange we had at the first Sunday of every month. There was no point in arguing with her, or trying to explain. I would simply agree and know the next month we would go through it all again. I was pregnant, and there were only so many first Sundays left on my calendar.

"You're a liar, Rose," Mother Corinne said to me. She kept her voice steady, but I could feel it straining, I could see the tender veins rising on the sides of her temples.

"Yes, Mother."

"You admit it, then?"

"Yes."

"But this time I'm telling you to promise. You must promise to take communion on Sunday."

"Yes," I said. "I promise."

And on Sunday I would twist my swollen stomach to the left and make the other girls climb over me. I didn't enjoy it. I didn't care about the embarrassment, it was a quality you had to lose to survive such an outing in the first place. I simply missed communion, that feeling of walking back to your seat with the host in your mouth, certain that God was with you now. Once Mother Corinne sat beside me and dug her nails into my wrist deep enough to draw blood while one by one the others whispered amen to each body of Christ. She couldn't possibly have thought that would be all it would take to make me join them.

After mass we were given doughnuts and milk in the church basement and made small talk with the women there as part of our responsibility to charity. The room was long with gray cinder block walls. There were metal tables and folding chairs set up for us. The ground-level windows were above my head and were nearly covered up with banks of leaves that had blown in front of them. On the wall were the old felt banners from masses and Sunday school projects, crayon drawings of Daniel and the lion. The social was harder on us than the mass, as many of the women had babies and small children and in the basement we were close enough to smell them. Once I saw a woman give her baby to Angie, laid a newborn gently in her arms, putting Angie's hand beneath his head, and said how sweet he looked there. I thought at first she must have been insane, when in fact she was only thoughtless. Angie stood pale and rigid, the weight of this child resting on top of her own. "You make such a pretty mother," the woman said to her, and fixed the blankets around the baby's neck. It was like seeing Angie attached to an electric fence, able neither to let go nor to hold on, to simply be there while a thousand volts of current cleaned her veins.

"Let me," I said, and took the child from her cold arms. Angie slipped away, stumbled toward the front of the hall, and was gone without a word. It was, perhaps, the only truly good thing I had ever done in my life, because now the pain was mine and I wanted it not to be. The baby wasn't more than a month old, and somewhere far away I heard the woman talking about her long labor. That sweet face. The domes of the cheeks. The milky smell. I ached to put its hand inside my mouth, my face on its chest. It was as if I had never held a child before. "Please," I said finally, wanting her to take it, wanting her to never take it.

"They get heavy awfully fast," she said. "Come back here to me," she said.

I said something, made sounds, and went toward the doors where the air was. I felt broken.

"I want to get completely fucked up," Angie said once I found her outside. "Goddamn ladies. Goddamn Incarnation charity cases. Fuck them." Her hands were shaking as she reached in her huge purse and took out her bracelets and long earrings, which Mother Corinne would not let her wear inside. She turned and faced the church. "Fuck you," she said.

There were no bars in Owensboro, Kentucky. The town was dry. If there had been one, it wouldn't have been open on Sunday anyway. It had been a long time since I'd had a drink, but if we'd found a bar that Sunday we would have taken down the town.

After the social we were given an hour and a half to walk around town and spend whatever money we had. We were given a small allowance from the sisters, and some of the girls got money from home every now and then. I still had part of my travel money, which I kept safe in the trunk of my car in case I ever had to leave again in the night. Not much was open on Sunday, a Woolworth's, the drugstore, a small grocery. Two or three other stores would open up for us for that time and we would wander up and down the aisles, just happy to look at things, pick them up and smell the store-bought smell. I tried to remember the I. Magnin's where my mother worked, one whole department for purses and scarves and gloves. A hundred different pairs of gloves, every color, kid or cotton or satin that went up to your shoulder. There was a woman there who asked you what size your hands were. Some days I would pick my mother up from work and we would go and try on the hats. I remember a jade green cocktail hat with two feathers that came down along one side of my face, a little wisp of veil. My mother pinned it into place and said it looked so perfect that she would buy it for me with her discount. "Even if you never have a place to wear it, everyone should own a hat like that once in their lives." But I didn't let her. It seemed too far beyond me.

Now I was looking at a rack of mittens and stocking caps, warm and practical, thinking about those two green feathers. I would have liked to have that hat, maybe wear it alone in the bathroom while I brushed my teeth, just to have a beautiful thing.

How each girl spent her money changed over time. Beatrice, who bought detective magazines at first (the kind she loved the most, the kind the ladies from Incarnation never sent in their monthly boxes), now spent her money on cocoa butter and hand creams. Angie, who used to buy lipstick and perfume, now spent every cent on yarn and embroidery floss. I didn't change, though. All I ever bought were postcards to send to my mother, which I wrote on and then tore up later. We all bought candy. We all said we would make it last through the month, but inevitably it was nearly gone by the time the bus pulled back into Saint Elizabeth's.

Angie and I were both in bad moods that Sunday coming back. We'd gone through the stores quickly, picking up a few things we didn't want: a spool of black thread, a package of emery boards, paste. Then we spent the rest of our time sitting on a park bench in silence. In a few days we would be full of regret, think of a half dozen things we needed, but for the time we felt too hurt to enjoy such luxuries as shopping. Holding that baby had hurt us, made us angry and full of longing. I looked out the bus window and watched the Kentucky landscape speed by. It was the first Sunday of December, and the trees were black and bare and wet along the road. In southern California, such a day would have been unimaginable, but in Kentucky, it was the beginning of winter like the beginning of every winter. The air hung over the fields like a heavy gray marsh; you'd have to cut it to get through. If I was going to buy anyone anything for Christmas, I would have needed to do it that day, and I had forgotten. I had wanted something for Sister Evangeline, for June, for Angie.

"You have a car," Angie said. "Why don't you go later? You could go all the way to Louisville if you wanted."

But that was the point. I could go all the way to Louisville, or Lexington, or Cincinnati. I was afraid if I went anywhere, I wouldn't be able to stop going. I was nearly seven months by then and the baby was kicking me hard. I shifted my weight around in the seat.

Beatrice leaned over the aisle and offered us some of her Junior Mints. She was so huge that her stomach nearly touched the seat in front of her. The doctor said it was one baby, one giant baby, but Beatrice swore it was twins, and Sister Evangeline backed her up. "That's four feet in there," Beatrice said, "not two."

I let the candy dissolve slowly in my mouth, and in truth it cheered me up a little. It was a time in my life when a Junior Mint could mean the difference between happiness and unhappiness.

"I want you two to help me," Beatrice whispered.

"Help you what?"

"I've made up my mind. I'm going to have the babies at Saint Elizabeth's."

"You're crazy," I told her.

"No I'm not. I can take pain. I broke my arm once, clean through, and I didn't cry out at all. I want to see these babies, you know, for a little while. It takes a good hour to get to Owensboro. That's all the time I need."

"Beatrice," Angie whispered, "if you're so sure you're having two, then don't you think you ought to go to the hospital?"

"It's only the first one that's hard. That's what my grandmother said. You pay the full price for the first one and the second one just comes out free. I got me a book on midwifing at the library," she whispered. "I read it through. If you read it, you'll know how to tie off the cord and all."

"Don't say this," Angie said.

"I am saying it. I'm going to do it. Regina can't help me, she'd be too afraid. I need you two."

Regina was Beatrice's quiet roommate, who walked the halls at night in her sleep. Beatrice had taken to putting a chair in front of the door before they went to bed so that she could catch Regina before she got out and the nuns found her. Being found like that, asleep and lost, embarrassed Regina so badly that she wouldn't eat in the dining room for days. Beatrice was right in thinking she'd be no good in a crisis.

"All right," Angie said, rifling through her purse. "We'll do it."

"What?" I said.

Angie kicked my shin, and Beatrice settled back in her seat. "Good," she said. "Thanks."