3.3 Saintly Ms. Grisham

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Sunday.

Political correctness didn't exist in 1994. Livy was “black,” Whitney was “handicapped,” Danny B. was “deformed,” and my new chum Dominique was “Mexican” even though his parents were from Puerto Rico. If Dom had been an alter boy ten years later, the PC Police would call him an “alter server.”

He was a tiny boy with a smooth face and a gap between every tooth. He looked seven years old but swore he was ten. “I figured it out last year,” he told me in the opulent seclusion of the cathedral's cry room. “There's a vent above the second stall in the boy's bathroom--”

“You crawl through the vents?”

“Heck no! They're too small. But one day I'm hangin' a rat in that stall and I hear voices, so I finish up and stand on the seat. And what do I hear? Mrs. Crenshaw is confessing her sins. She's tellin' Father Stevenson how she got bit by a snake in the Walmart garden center--which is already big gossip in the congregation--and that she was the one who put the snake in the rosemary plant and jabbed it 'til it bit her.”

“Why would somebody do that?”

“To sue the pants off Walmart!”

“What does this hafta do with--”

“It's hard to stand on the toilet and I can only hear every other word, so when Mara came along--” Dominique paused and traced a cross on his chest, “--I figured she'd hafta confess eventually, right? So I get the idea to use my super-sonic listening gun that came with the science kit I got for my birthday. I sneak it in under my robe, then stand on the toilet and push the microphone way back in the vent, then I put on the headphones and pretend like I'm peeing. And boy oh boy, I can hear it all! Just like I'm right beside 'em in the confessional.”

“Did you hear Mara?”

“It's two months before she makes a confession on a Sunday that I'm serving. But then I see Ms. Grisham shove her in that box with Father Stevenson so I hang up my robe, hook up my super-sonic hearing gun, and listen to the whole sha-bang.”

“Un-stinkin'-believable,” I said. Although my fairytale was still on hold, I had convinced my parents that--whenever I found a new camera--I would need a scene in a medieval church. On the first Sunday of summer vacation, Dad dropped me off at The Holy Trinity Cathedral of the Dunes on his way to morning coffee.

It was imperative that Mara didn't catch me spying--I needed to distinguish myself from the real zombies--so I had ducked behind a plaster column and eyed her from the back of the church. The girl sat in the sagging crook of Ms. Grisham's arm in the first row. She wore an ivory gown with an ivory sash, and her hair was crimped in rosy waves that tickled the hymnal on the back of her pew. Behind her, a boy leaned forward and sniffed her neck.

I first noticed Dominique as he shuffled down the center isle in a delicate procession of boys in white robes. Some held brass spears with candles and crosses; Dom swung a smoking bowl from silver chains like a pendulum. They all wore wooden crosses around their necks and red sashes over their shoulders. 

The congregation watched the parade in silence.

As the altar boys approached the front of the sanctuary, the little Mexican began to fall out of sync. He veered to the left and his fancy bowl began to swing faster and faster in a whirl of white smoke. He swayed right to rejoin the procession, but his head was turned and tilted. I followed his eye-line across the church; sure enough, he was fixated on the little girl in the first pew.

The other boys lifted their feet for the two steps up to the pulpit, but Dominique--too distracted to notice--bumped his toes into the bottom step, dropped his bowl with a clang and puff of soot, and knocked over the kid with the cross.

Somewhere in the frazzle that followed, Mara and Ms. Grisham made their escape.

When Mass was over, I ran outside, found Dad waiting in his car, and asked for ten more minutes to look around. Being a tremendous supporter of the arts, he agreed.

Back in the sanctuary, the clumsy delinquent was scrubbing dust and incense from the burn holes in the carpet. To get his attention, I whispered a password that would unlock countless secrets from tight-lipped boys: Mara.

“I shouldn't be telling you this stuff.” Dom continued while glancing nervously around the empty cry room. “None of the other boys like this job, but I do. And if I get busted twice in one Sunday, I'm gone.”

“There's nobody here. And I won't tell a soul.”

“Cross your heart?”

“And hope to die, stick a needle in my--”

“I trust you.” He lowered his voice. “So I'm sitting on the pot listening to Mara and Father Stevenson.” He crossed himself again. “She tells him that she has bad thoughts about her aunt, but that she prays for her every night.”

“Ms. Grisham...”

“Yeah. I have bad thoughts about her too. She's always got Mara--” (another cross) “--under her ugly arm, and whenever Mara--” (another cross) “--talks to a priest, that geezery old lady paces back and forth outside the confessional.”

“Then what happened?”

“So Father Stevenson tells Mara--” (another cross) “--that her aunt means well, but that the old bat isn't worthy of raising such a special Little Madonna.”

“Madonna?” I asked and imagined Mara sticking pointy birthday hats under her shirt.

“Our Holy Mother.”

“Oh.”

“Then he tells her that Mary was only a few years older when she gave birth to Christ.”

“What a weirdo.”

“Mara--” (another cross) “--says she's been having bad thoughts about boys too. Father Stevenson asks if they're wrathful thoughts, or a different kind of bad. She says she doesn't know... they're just bad. So then he asks, 'Is it the same as the last time you had these thoughts? With Trevor?' and she says, 'No Father, I don’t think so.' Then he tells her that her aunt is as crazy as a naked blue jay and that she's a perfect child who doesn't need absolution.”

“So what?”

“So that never happens! I'm in catechism so I know a thing or two about the Good Book. It teaches that everybody does bad things once in a while. Heck, Mrs. Crenshaw got twenty Hail Mary's for gettin' bit by that snake.”

“Geez.”

“Don't blaspheme.”

“Huh?”

“So when Mara's finally done--” (another cross) “--Ms. Grisham steps in--”

“Oh boy!”

“--and she totally skips the whole 'Bless-me-Father-for-I-have sinned' part and flat-out calls Mara a demon!” (another cross).

“A demon? Why?”

Dom inched closer. “There's somethin' else strange goin' on.”

“What?” I whispered.

“Ms. Grisham had that pretty little girl baptized three times.” 

“Is that bad?”

“You're only supposeda be baptized once! But Father Stevenson approved it and even performed every one of them.”

“Weird...”

“So Ms. Grisham's in there callin' my girl a demon; says the baptisms are wearing off and that she might need a fourth. Father says that's not why we get baptized. Grisham says her niece is obstinate. Father says Christ was obstinate too and that confession is a time to admit your own sins and not the sins of others. Then--this is the best part--he sends the witch home with fifty Hail Marys.”

“James Parker!” My Dad's sanctimonious voice echoed through the chambers.

“Crap,” I said. “Looks like I gotta bolt.”

“No prob. I gotta get that carpet clean if I ever wanna carry another thurible.”

“James!”

“Coming Dad!” I shouted. I stood up, then turned back for my final question. “Hey, Dom.”

“Yeah?”

“Why do you make that cross on your chest every time you say her name?”

He looked at me with lovesick eyes. “'Cause every time I think about that girl, my mind commits a sin.”

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