My father passed away today. I wrote this story about him a while ago.
(Isn't he cute?)Normal People with BellybuttonsThe priest was supposed to be a secret.
The front door opened and the floorboards creaked after Leslie and I had gone to bed. If he was still there in the morning, asleep on the black and white checkered pullout couch-bed, we couldn't tell anyone.
The priest looked ancient to me, gray hair thinning behind his ears, deep laugh lines around his eyes. He was bald on top except for a wispy tuft of hair that stuck straight up in the middle. In my illustrations of The Last Supper, Jesus became the priest and he was a smiling pumpkin head. That wispy tuft of hair became a green-brown vine.
We'd never been Catholics before, but now we went to morning Mass and afternoon Mass and we washed our sins away in the silver bowl of water at the entrance to St. Anne's Chapel. Now we took and ate, this was the body of Christ. Now we took and drank, this was the bittersweet blood of Our Savior.
The priest wore a long white robe and a red and orange Guatemalan stole. When everyone stood to recite the Lord's Prayer, I stared up at the stained glass crucifixion scene. All the people in the congregation whispered the strange mantra, riding their
fs and their
ss, and the whole prayer ran together like a single word:
Ourffffatherwhoartinheaven. . . I moved my lips to remember the sounds, but I was silent. Then we all traced triangles from our foreheads to our shoulder to our other shoulder:
Inthenameofffftheffffatherthe ssssonandthe holysssspirit."Where does God live?" I asked the Priest. I was perched at the foot of the black and white checked pullout couch-bed in the living room, holding my little blue tambourine at my side.
"Oh--" the priest sat up, surprised to see me there. "God lives everywhere," he said.
I could hear the shower running in the bathroom. "Does he live in this house?"
"Yes, of course," the priest assured me.
"Does he live in that tree?" I pointed out the window to the old oak that had my swing hanging from it.
The priest twisted his body around to look. "Yes, certainly. God lives in that tree."
"Does he live in this tambourine?" I gave the thing a shake so it jingled.
"Yes. God lives everywhere," the priest said.
"What shape is God?"
"God is no shape--" The priest pushed his blanket aside and swung his long legs over the edge of the bed. He was wearing red long-johns.
"God has to be some shape. Square, circle?"
"God isn't one particular shape," the priest told me. "God is all around us. Everywhere, in everything."
"I'll bet he's a triangle," I said. I was thinking of the father, the son, and the holy spirit. Or maybe I was thinking of my mother, my father, and the priest. I set my tambourine down on the floor and tip-toed back into the bedroom. I fished around in my big wicker toy chest for my steel triangle and the metal stick that went with it.
Leslie peered over the edge of her top bunk. "Whatcha looking for?"
"My triangle." I found it under a neglected handmade China doll and brought it out to the living room show the priest.
He was dressed now and replacing the cushions on the checkered couch.
"Here." I held the triangle up by its cord and hit a high note that lingered in the air. "Is that God?"
"Yes," he said as he sat down on the couch and folded his hands in his lap.
I thought maybe the priest had a bright flame hidden behind his eyes because his whole face glowed when he smiled. So I had it. God was a triangle. "Why don't you wear a black priest suit?"
He wore a cardigan sweater, like Mr. Rogers. "I was never terribly comfortable in my cassock," he said. "Haven't worn it for years."
"But you're supposed to wear it, aren't you?"
"Phooey on 'supposed to,'" the priest said.
"Phooey on poohy--" I said, giving the triangle a good whack. "Phooey on poohy!"
The priest cleared his throat, "You don't say."
"Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons?" I lifted up my shirt to show the priest mine.
The priest clucked his tongue as he pulled on his socks. "Well now--ha--obviously they wouldn't need them, would they? The Bible doesn't say, but most of the art shows them looking like normal people."
"Normal people with bellybuttons?"
"Well, you see, Adam and Eve are mythological creatures, so you can picture them any way you like. Before people knew about biology, they had to make up stories to explain things to themselves."
"If they had bellybuttons, do you think they were in-ies or out-ies?"
But before the priest could answer me, the doorbell rang and my mother came rushing out of the bathroom, pulling on the flowered dress that made all the kids on the block call us Gypsies.
The priest stood up, confused and panicked, held his large hands up in the air and I pushed him into the living room closet.
My mother nudged the door open just a crack to see who was there.
Leslie shuffled in from our bedroom, rubbing her eyes. She climbed onto the couch, looked out the window to see who it was. She shook her head, glanced around the room. She grabbed the priest's glasses from the table next to the couch, slipped them into the pocket of her gold Chinese robe, then pointed at the giant slippers in the corner of the room and I kicked them under the couch. "Don't say anything stupid," Leslie warned me.
"We're doing wonderfully," my mother was telling the person at the door. "Thanks so much for stopping by. We should get together for lunch sometime soon--"
I could tell that my mother was trying to wrap up the conversation, but the caller was persistent.
"Oh, yes," my mother said. "The girls are still in their pajamas, but do come in--"
The blue-haired lady from church followed my mother inside and wrinkled her nose at me when I hit my triangle. She had a big black purse she held tight at her side.
My mother gestured toward our bedroom, "The girls sleep in there--" then led our inquisitive guest into the kitchen.
The blue-haired lady didn't say much, just sniffed around the corners of our house. My mother had told me about the witch who tattled on the priest's brother when he was a priest, too. Witches came snooping after rumors and tattled on the priests when they snuck out at night to see Harold and Maude and didn't come back to their rooms until morning. I was sure the blue-haired lady was a witch, with her big black purse and her pointy nose.
"It really was so sweet of you to stop by--" my mother said, smiling too wide. "So sweet, really." Her voice seemed to be getting higher and higher.
I thought I heard the priest cough in the closet, so I gave my triangle a hard whack. I felt sorry for him, crouched there in the dark with our winter coats.
The blue-haired lady wrinkled her nose at me again. "Good day, then," she said as she left.
We watched from the window as she drifted down the walkway clutching her big pursue, glanced back, and then disappeared.
My mother was laughing when she opened the closet door, but the priest looked rattled, his little tuft of hair slightly askew.
Leslie handed him his glasses.
He nodded, smiled his jack-o-lantern smile, and slipped out the back way.
Sunday morning we washed away our sins in the silver bowl of water at the entrance to the chapel. We'd never been baptized, but the priest told us himself that it didn't matter. We were born pure and were pure still, our bodies temples of the Holy Spirit. The priest stood by the door in his long white robe. "Good morning, father," the parishioners all said as they filed past. The priest smiled at my mother. She was wearing her Sunday red bandana and big gold-hoop earrings.
"Good morning, father," I cooed up at the priest. I wore a blue cotton dress my Grandma got me. It had ruffles at the collar and matching blue bloomers I wore underneath.
"Good morning, Chickadee," he whispered.
I sat in the pew at the back of the church between Leslie and my mother while a woman up near the altar strummed her acoustic guitar, singing Moonshadow. Jesus hung on his cross in the stained-glass window, two women crying at his feet. His blood dripped down from his palms like a warning.
Here's what can happen."Let us pray," the priest began from the pulpit.
And I prayed to my triangular god that soon the priest would be my father for real.
