Church Lady

My sister R. texted me the night before Easter that she was going to church the next day. I asked if she wanted company, even though I couldn’t remember the last time I went to church. (We recovering Catholics must be careful about exposure to that gateway drug, lest we backslide and get religious again.)  I even offered to drive, and said I’d pick her up at 9:15 for the 10:00, knowing full well I would be sitting outside her house in my car the next morning, watching the minutes tick by as I waited for her to finish dressing and hustle out to the car, carrying her jacket and earrings to put on as we drove, certain that when we got to St. Joseph’s we’d have to park at the far end of the lot and scurry up to church, late, always late. I am the only early one in my family, and it’s always been a source of embarrassment to me, this inability to plan well enough so that we didn’t call attention to ourselves. We are the ones who would fumble over other people in a theater to get to our places right before a play started, across a sea of irritated, grim-faced seat-people twisting their legs to the side to give us room to squeeze by, all that unsavory stranger-knee-touching marring their perfect night out.

Mass was just starting, the first hymn in process, and the priest and altar boys were standing at attention in the back before their big entrance. We held back, shades of our tardiness for weddings, waiting for the bride to make her way down the aisle before sliding into a pew – only this time the bride was an 80-year-old cleric in a white tunic with a gold embroidered cross overlay, broken red veins latticed across his pale face, and bright-white hair loosely covering his shiny pate. He and his grade-school sidekicks finally started their slow promenade to the altar, and my sister and I followed the prompts of an usher smitten by his own importance, crooking his fingers and jerking his head left to motion us to a couple of seats. As I have in the past, I think about how the parish got screwed by whoever designed this church. The pews stick out about three feet farther than the space where you can get to the kneelers and the wooden pockets that hold the service missals and the songbooks, and of course that’s where we were seated, so we were left without the standard options necessary to behave as the rest of the natives – kneel, stand, sit, sing; rinse and repeat.  

Eventually we were passed a songbook, so we kept that between us, R. holding it with her right hand, me with my left. Since I wasn’t in this for soul-saving or holy favors, and it was Easter, after all, I spent most of my time people-watching, loving the petite red-headed girl in the yellow polka-dot dress, matching hair ribbon, white tights and beige patent-leather shoes, and the little twin boys with coffee-bean eyes and fluffy, static baby-bird black hair; vests and bow-ties over the tiny little long-sleeved shirts that were tucked into elastic-waist pants.  In front of us was a woman, platinum blond mane with dusky roots in in dry clumps. She was dressed all in black, and some of those hairs were like prisoners escaping, traveling down her back separate but aligned, as if they were going to meet up later at a predetermined location. When she got up, her skirt hugged her bottom in an unfortunate sideways grin, and I was reminded of the joke my Irish friend Kevin used to tell, complete with a lovely accent, about Seamus asking Paddy how he got his black eye. 

"You'd never believe it," said Paddy, "but I got it in church." He’d been sitting behind a fat lady when they stood for a hymn, and he noticed her dress was creased into her behind. "All I did was lean forward to pull it out and she hit me,” said Paddy. A week later Seamus sees Paddy again, and he’s got another black eye. He said he found himself behind the same woman, and when they stood for a hymn, her dress was again tucked into her hind parts. “Then,” Paddy said, “My little nephew reached forward and pulled it out. But I knew she didn't like that, so I leaned over and tucked it back in."  When Kevin told that joke, he made a soft karate chop with his hand on the “tucked” part, and I found my hand mimicking that action now as I thought of him.  

Ah. The sermon. Only about 20 minutes more to go. The elderly priest is talking about Googling something last night for his talk today; a term I didn’t expect to hear from the pulpit or from an octogenarian priest. But perhaps I’ve just been gone too long.  I zone out again, playing the game I’ve played in church since I was twelve and just showing signs of the extra weight that would plague me all my life. I scan the congregation and look for skinny people. That guy over there, with the scrawny neck and delicate wrists, gets five pounds. Those teenage girls with the tight dresses that my father would have hit the roof over if me and my sisters ever wore them at all, much less to church, get two each. That mom in the yoga pants looks like she can stand a few – she gets three, and her four kids get one each: that’s sixteen total. I put five each on the altar boys – they aren’t thin, but they’re at that chubby stage, so I don’t feel bad – and I just have to unload four more – ha! They go to the young couple sneaking out during communion. 

Minutes left to the end of the service, and I sing loudly on the only words I know to the processional hymn, loving my sister and ready to suggest we go to Starbucks and have a chat before I take her home. We walk at a zombie pace behind our fellow saintly colleagues leaving the church, but nothing bothers me anymore – not the lateness or the poor seating or the tediousness of this service. I’m feeling so light; so very light – after all, I just unloaded 30 pounds – and I scoot in front of a family, push the lever on the door and walk out, blinking, into the sunshine. 

 © 2018 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie