St. Joseph’s Catholic Church is wide, covered in blonde wood and lit primarily by natural light that floods in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Unlike other churches in town, there’s a coolness to it, its exposed beams gesture out and extend to let the air slide off their smooth exteriors. When you approach the altar you can see your reflection in the shiny granite. When a kneeler falls, the sound vibrates through the space like an echo. It was louder when a person fainted, which happened often but was jarring every time.
Monsignor Bennett was so proud of his brand new, modern church. There was supposed to be more space, more comfort, and yet every Sunday I could hear the smack of someone’s forehead hitting the pew in front of them during Mass. If they fell to the side, bodies arched like blades of grass when wind blows through. We tried to avoid looking at the person, not wanting to embarrass them.
Bodies were falling all around us, but the priests never flinched. In the time between the homily and the Consecration they often looked like they were sleeping. Their heads rested in the palms of their hands, meditating on their thoughtful words when thwak, someone behind me would fall.
Monsignor blamed the heat and called the church too stuffy. So they cranked the air conditioning and soon I could feel the rush of wind against my bare arms. We shivered in the sunlight. I gave in and wore a too-big sweatshirt over my uniform. On Sundays I wore a jacket over my cardigan over my dresses. But people still fainted.
We were expected to be there, no matter how uncomfortable the temperature was. We showed up, said the words. I suppose there is comfort in routine, reliability. There is also comfort in pain, especially when you’re told pain makes you special, pain as part of your identity. Eve felt the pains of childbirth after being banished from the Garden of Eden. We should be so lucky.
It’s still freezing in St. Joseph’s. Someone told me once that now they turn it up to keep women from baring our shoulders. This could be true, but whenever I go back for Christmas or Easter, a handful of women stand straight around me with their prickly, goose-bumped skin exposed to the air. They only break posture when they lean over to pick up their bags and exit.
*
I think it’s funny that lot of people assume I hated Catholic School. I didn’t hate school. I hated retreats.
Every year, the girls were separated from the boys and we went to a house in the middle of nowhere to sit in circles and discuss our relationship with God. The boys played sports. My friend Daniel, bookish, gawky, who couldn’t control his long limbs, was horrified. I didn’t enjoy sports, but I would have done anything to trade places with him when I saw our guest speakers enter the church.
The two young men in button-down shirts were harmless enough. In my mind they’re generic, preppy boys of the early-2000s with combed hair and thin frames. Thank you for coming, they told us, even though we were threatened with an in-school suspension if we skipped. We shifted and adjusted ourselves on the wooden pews, cringing when our movements echoed in the hollow church. Someone dropped a book. A nun shushed us.
“College,” one of them proclaimed, then paused. They looked similar, although one had styled his bangs while the other needed a haircut. They were skinny, pale, and kept their eyes on their scripts. I’m sure we looked terrifying: one hundred and fifty sixteen-year-old-girls covered in dark blue and green plaid, staring at them through our heavy eyeliner. My hair was pitch-black at the time, and it washed out my face so that I looked gaunt and ghostly. I loved it. My mom often wondered out loud why I didn’t have a boyfriend.
“College,” they began again, “is filled with challenges. Your school is a wonderful place where you can learn the skills to take on these challenges. But more importantly, you learn how you can help others conquer even harder challenges. It is a place to learn how to stand up for yourself and your faith as you enter a world that thinks morals aren’t cool.”
I was skeptical. My parents had recently divorced and the Church generally concurred that divorce wasn’t the way to address the “challenges” in their marriage. I was the only one with divorced parents in my small circle. Critiques about my family were rarely mentioned but I often got the impression that they thought divorce wasn’t the answer. I watched the boys laugh nervously, their breaths musky in the microphone. I wasn’t sure our idea of “challenges” was going to be the same. Still, I felt bad for them.
“The world tries to normalize sex. Make it seem cool, fun, something that you should be doing."
I heard my friend Regan mutter something under her breath.
“For young men especially, it is a struggle to see so many women reveal their bodies.”
We all knew where this was going.
Imagine, they told us, giving up candy for Lent. And during this fast you walk into a candy store. You are surrounded by colorful, delicious, sweets. They are wrapped in smooth, shiny packages and it becomes harder to avoid them. You tell yourself just one won’t hurt. But soon one turns into many.
The shorter one told us he wasn’t afraid to tell his girlfriend to go change if her jeans were too tight. If her shirt was too low. They asked us when shopping for bathing suits to consider the question: Would Mary wear this?
We filed out of the retreat center and Regan asked me, “Would Mary even wear a bathing suit?"
Back at school we were given red roses with tags that said you’re worth waiting for. I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever seen. By the end of the day the hallways were putrid with fallen petals. Tags had slipped from their stems and laid crumpled and crooked near trashcans. I think I put mine in my locker so I wouldn’t have to carry it around, lost behind my pre-calc textbook and my history papers.
Years later it occurred to me in a flash, like a vision, how bloody the flowers seemed, and not so pretty anymore.
*
No one knew what was wrong with me. My body kept hurting in strange and undefinable ways. I’d shake and double over, my face would become white and my vision would blur either from the pain or the panic. I got x-rays, CAT scans, an MRI. I drank as much iodine as I could before I started to cry and my mom gently urged me to drink more. They need to see your body, she told me. Give them a clear picture so you won’t ever have to do this again.
“What is wrong with me?” I begged my mom. She shook her head and held the half-empty bottle of iodine, a blue bendy straw in it to make drinking easier. She restrained her sigh, because releasing it would be admitting she didn’t know.
The MRI was the worst. Not because of the small space, but because they gave me a panic button. Press here, they told me, if you feel like you can’t take it anymore. If you feel panicked or overwhelmed. It’s okay, they told me, people have to press it all the time. But if you do, it starts the process over again. Take a few deep breaths and then begin again. I laid in the narrow tube and listened to the machine’s whirr. I closed my eyes and smoothed my thumb over the button. It tempted me, offered me a comfort that appealed to me no matter how false it really was. Press it and it’ll stop, they said.
There is an infamous fight in my family between my sister and I. It was over the car, and Katherine needed it to drive to a cheerleading fundraiser., I grabbed the gigantic hairbow perched on her high ponytail and yanked her head back. Katherine fought back, and our mom intervened, but we attacked each other with fists and power and blindness. Now, we remain impressed with ourselves, knowing what lengths we can reach. We had been fluent in violence for a long time but hadn’t spoken it out loud before.
I think Catholics have a gruesome sense of humor. In St. Joseph’s, a massive crucifix floats over the altar. Jesus is gaunt, his stomach concave, his head lolled over his chest in death. You can count the ribs running down each side of his chest as they protrude from behind his skin. You can see the whites of his eyes. He has ten fingers and ten toes with thin lines of muscles running over his limbs until they get to the bloody nails in his wrists and feet.
You get used to it.
A popular priest who taught at my high school now teaches somewhere else. He is beloved. He follows me on Twitter and posts things about politicians I hate. People write on his Facebook wall asking personal questions, seeking advice. He is so well read. He has seen so many movies. He used Batman to teach us about good and evil.
People tell me to stop following him if he bothers me so much, but I find it all so funny.
This same priest had an anger problem. Once, he brought a golf club to class and slammed it on a student’s desk to stop them from talking. In my class, he picked up an industrial sized bottle of hand sanitizer and threw it at the back wall. The clear gel splattered from the top and dripped down the cinder block wall. Someone wrote him a letter asking him to stop. He waved the off-white paper in the air and said thank you this is so helpful no one is perfect. His words were clipped, and the familiar red flush crept up his neck. No one moved. I thought whoever sent the letter had made things worse for us. He would perhaps get moved, but not fired, put into a smaller town an hour from Lincoln. But he was charming and brash, a combination so interesting and rare, and so he stayed a few years after I graduated. People respected him for his ability to admit the obvious problem of his anger.
It requires strength to admit your faults.
Some students provoked him; most were used to it. But it was this class where I started to feel my first spikes of physical pain. Doctors drew blood, said maybe I’m lactose intolerant or have a gluten sensitivity. We finally figured out it was all in my head. It occurred to us that fear is not always expressed in a scream or tears. Sometimes, people like me, will hold onto it tightly, consolidate it, force it down so we can keep running efficiently.
It requires strength to admit your faults, but I’ve always wondered how strong he might be without his buffer. Without the knowledge that his collar would keep him in place.
Suddenly it stopped. I didn’t have any problems for years. It disappeared. Until one day I was watching a movie where in a fit of anger a man shoots a gun into the air. I’m told I started screaming. I don’t remember.
We tell these stories: mine and Katherine’s fight, Father’s anger, the doctor’s visits, smooth and practiced. It’s funny how it’s all so boring now. It’s funny. Funny. It was funny. I’m tired now. It seems too early to feel that way.
*
Father n. 1) one who has begotten a child 2) one who originates or institutes 3) one of the leading men
Sister n. 1) a girl or woman regarded as a comrade 2) one who is similar to or associated with another 3) a member of a sorority
The inevitable question is “did you know them?” and the answer is of course I did because Lincoln is small. One was an uncle of a large family from my high school. One was a former military chaplain that taught my morality class. One got moved from St. Joseph’s after six months and we laughed saying “Monsignor can’t keep an assistant” remembering the time he was caught yelling at an altar boy with his microphone still on.
Isn’t it funny that second-graders and brides both wear white dresses? I ask my mom.
Isn’t it funny we live in the one city that doesn’t allow altar girls? I ask my friend.
Isn’t it funny that Father Matthew has so much alcohol in his office? I ask my husband.
I guess, people respond. They shrug. They tell me I need to stop being so hung up on the fact that the words nun and none sound the same but I can’t stop staring at the letters. In the days following the accusations first from Nebraska and then from Pennsylvania, I logged onto Facebook and saw families I know and love wondering at the grotesque mystery. This would never happen at my church. Not in my parish. He is such a good guy.
I never asked anyone why those two, young, stupid boys came to tell us how to shop for bathing suits. I never asked why roses, why not daisies? They’re so much cheaper. I never asked anyone how to demystify my fear. It’s strange hearing the problem is all in my head when I’ve been told my head cannot be trusted. We are so fallible, those boys told us. Stop laughing, this is serious. They lectured as we squirmed, our fabric itchy. Our cheeks warm. It wouldn’t happen here. Until it does. And all I did was fight myself instead of those who proved the reasons for fear to exist.
We are told to pray and accept what is placed before us. Pain is a cross to bear, and we will be rewarded for it. In schools, we place images of saints with blood pouring down their temples, shackles around their wrists, flames wrapped around their bodies and point to them. First graders participate in The Parade of Saints dressed in thorns, their chosen saint tied together with declarations of their own cuteness. And it happens over and over and over again. My body feels unsafe because I was told it is unsafe, but everything possible inside me also feels unprotected.
When you walk into St. Joseph’s and place your hand against the wall, you can feel the way it angles as you walk forward. It’s smooth, and your footsteps are muffled by the carpet. There’s a slight decline so your steps quicken the closer you get to the front.
It’s not funny haha and it’s not funny peculiar either. It’s sitting in an ice-cold church, waiting for the next person to fall but knowing no one will turn around. It’s the fact that I don’t really like roses, I haven’t for a long time, and I want to dig up every one I see. They should be uprooted, the dirt turned over and over and over. But if I dig up every rose. If I tear them out of the ground and pull out their petals and let them dry and flake apart, then I have to admit I don’t have anything to replace them with.
So they stay.
Untouched.
*
We forget that Mary was the one who crushed the head of the snake. In Fatima, she tore apart the earth and revealed hell to children. In Lourdes, she flooded water over barren dirt. We forget that she knew exactly what would happen to her son, she knew what people would say, and still, she did it. Women often suffer silently. We are closed off in convents, we hide our bodies, and we are to offer gentle encouragement and patience. Our names disappear and we fade into the background so that our children can stand in front of us. Pain is a gift.
It was a woman who crushed the head.
Sarah Benal received her MFA in Fiction from the University of South Carolina. Her work appears in The Watershed Review and Inkwell Journal. She currently lives in Missouri with her family.