A week before Christmas of 1967 I received my midterm report card from Our Lord’s Health High School. Bruder Karl had been gracious enough to pass me with a D+ in German, but Brother Valentine failed me in religion. The accompanying letter stated that my scholarship had been revoked for the remainder of my sophomore year.
“Sorry.” I showed my mother the report card in the kitchen. My brothers and sisters were in the den watching TV.
“What is wrong with you?” She was sitting at our table. Her eyes blinked in disbelief. The devout Catholic had been so proud of my winning a scholarship to Our Lord’s Health High School .
“Nothing.” I hadn’t the nerve to tell her the truth.
“Nothing?” Her finger jabbed at my grades. I had scored B plus in History and Geometry. My other subjects were straights As. “A D+ in German I can understand.”
My Irish grandmother was only family member speaking in a foreign language, which was her native tongue of Gaelic.
“I t-t-t-tried my best.” German was too difficult for my stuttering tongue.
“Yes, I know you did, but how do you explain an F in religion?” My mother had me on the stand. There was no wiggling out of her interrogation.
“I got a 90 average in the t-t-t-tests.”
“What about your homework?” My mother was a true believer in the One True God.
“A B+.” Religion required faith. I had pretended to possess that virtue since the age of 8. My tests and homework were the best in my class, but they weren’t enough to get a passing grade from Brother Valentine.
“How can an altar boy get an F?” My mother threw the report card on the table.
"I don't know." I had served at Masses throughout grammar school.
"Even Stalin didn't failed religion." The late Soviet dictator was a famous altar.
“I know.” I fought off the urge to say ‘mea culpa’, however my mother wanted to hear the truth and not that I was sorry.
“What will Nana say?” She repeated the question.
“Why do you have to t-t-tell her?" don’t know.” My Irish grandmother had taken my older brother and me into Boston once a month on the trolley throughout the early 60s.
Our first stop had been St. Anthony’s shrine, where we had lit candles for the dearly departed. She visited the confessional to tell her sins. We followed her and mumbled our wrongs. The priest forgave my trespasses with five Hail Marys. I muttered the prayers without contrition. My sins had been only sins to the Church and I had ceased to be a Catholic in thought and deed after the drowning of my best friend.
“Stop saying ‘I don’t know’.” My mother picked up the phone.
“Don’t call Nana.” Nana's faith was a fire and mine resembled a dead match. She didn’t need to know about my apostasy.
“Heavens forbid I call my mother. I’m getting to the bottom of this.” Her finger spun numbers on the Princess phone and she said to the person answering her call. “I’d like to speak with Brother Valentine."
"PLease don't." In truth I was happy with failing religion.
"Go into the living room.”
Whatever she had to say to my teacher was for her ears only and I sat on the sofa. A plastic covering protected it from ruin.
My ears were not good enough to hear the muted conversation, but I heard her rack the phone in the receiver. She entered the living room and stared at me with disbelief. “Brother Valentine said he failed you, because you don’t believe in God.”
“I got all As in the tests and did all my homework. I don’t deserve that F.”
“But you don’t believe in God. Tell me that isn't true."
"I have doubts." Telling a lie seemed the easy way out.
"Brother Valentine didn't say doubts. He said disbelief. Which is it?"
I shut my eyes like a parachutist jumping out of a perfectly good plane.
"Disbelief." No righteous god would have allowed Chaney to die in Lake Sebago.
"My son is a disbeliever." Her sigh left her lungs, as if her last breath had been stolen by the Devil, and her right hand made the sign of the cross. The Church had burned heretics for challenging the divinity of Jesus and atheism was an even greater anathema than communism in Cold War America.
"You're fourteen years-old. How can you know if you don't believe in God?" Children were to be seen and not heard in her eyes. Free thought ran against her best wishes.
"I thought about it a long time." About three seconds after she told me, "Chaney is dead."
“But you were an altar boy.” Her head was spinning with my challenge to her beliefs.
“I did it for you.” I also served, because my older brother and I received $5 for funerals and up to $20 for weddings.
“Your teacher said if you recant, he will give you a B and your scholarship will be reinstated.”
My high school offered a better education than the town school, but it was all-boys. My girlfriend attended the town high school.
Failing religion seemed like the fastest way to end my Catholic schoolboy career and I told my mother, “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?” She was not used to any resistance to her will.
“I don’t believe in God.” The Christian god had exterminated non-believers. Genocide was wrong. I believed in anything, but Him.
“Wait till your father gets home.” These words were my mother’s standard threat of last resort.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Corporal punishment was my mother’s job, but I was scared of my father, even though the Maine native had never hit me in my life, for my fear was based on the desire for his love and I had a tendency to make mistakes.
My father was an electrical engineer. They liked order.
That evening I waited on the front steps. The night was cold even for December. I thought about running away, but the low sky promised snow and I liked sleeping in a warm bed.
My father walked up to the house and groaned upon seeing my face, “Now what?”
“I failed religion.”
“How did you fail religion?” He had played football in college. Discipline was a key to survival in his world.
“I don’t b-b-believe in God.” I struggled with each word.
"You don't believe?"
"No, sir."
Are you sure?" My father had converted from the Episcopal Church to marry my mother.
"Yes, sir."
Shaking his head my father lifted me to my feet.
“If that is what you believe, then that’s up to you, but don’t expect any Christmas gifts this year. Christmas is for Christians.”
My mother and he had words that night. My older brother put his hands over his ears. Frunk was a believer, but didn’t criticize my decision. He had been Chaney’s friend too.
Christmas morning I received gifts and our family attended the 8 O’Clock Mass. The pastor’s sermon was dedicated to Christ’s sacrifice of divinity. His eyes fell on me several times. I didn’t not take communion. My mother told her friends that I was sick, but the rumors of my heretical stance were spreading around town. My girlfriend stood by me. Kyla loved me more than she loved God.
After New Year’s the phone rang every morning. The brothers at Our Lord’s Health wanted to speak with me. They pleaded for my soul.
“Come back to the faith and we’ll give back your scholarship.” The vice-principal was playing good buy.
“I don’t believe in God.” I belonged somewhere other than Our Lord’s Health High School and that was closer to Kyla.
I wasn’t biting at the bait.
"Then you'll be damned to Hell." The Vice Principal could switched to bad guy with the ease Mr Jerkyll.
Things got rough that January. Football players in my hometown called me a commie faggot. I was neither.
Our Lord’s Health suggested to my parents that I see a psychiatrist.
"Atheism was a sickness."
I agreed to this experiment for my mother's sake.
My mother and father drove me over to Commonwealth Avenue in our Delta 88. We didn’t have much to say and I looked out the window at the long-haired hippie girls of BU. They were the inspiration for the Standells’ hit DIRTY WATER.
We arrived at the Jesuit seminary ten minutes before our appointment. My mother was as devoted to punctuality as she was to Jesus. We parked before the Order of Jesus' main building.
“You’re my son. I will always love you, but you know how I feel about God. Please have an open mind.”
“I will.” Her God hadn’t lifted a finger to save Chaney, but I loved my mother. She knew me for nine months before I was born.
“And don’t slouch in the chair.” My father was a stickler for a good impression.
“Yes, sir.”
I got out of the car and walked into the building. The cardinal lived on these grounds. He chanted the Rosary every evening at 5. My mother joined his raspy voice along with thousands of other Catholics around Boston. He had anointed me on my Holy Confirmation and I lowered my head hoping that he wouldn’t see me.
The diocesan shrink had an office on the second floor. The chubby man in a three-piece plaid suit met me at the door.
"I'm Bob. Please sit down.” He pointed to a pair of leather chairs with a soft hand and shut the door.
I sat, but said nothing, because his head was covered by a thick mat of hair. Its color didn't match his sideburns.
"We both know why you're here." Bob sat next to me. “I’ve read your file.” “I see this problem all the time and it concerns the Cardinal when a gifted boy loses his faith. You were an altar boy and attended a few retreats for boys with a calling.
I looked at the huge crucifix hanging on the then and then out the window. Snow was falling on a withered lawn. The room was warm and the chair was too comfortable for a meeting about a young man's soul.
“Do you believe the Bible?”
I remained silent, because I couldn’t see myself as a Biblical figure, unless it’s was an extra in a BEN HUR chariot race and that movie had nothing to do with New or Old Testament.
“Are you going to tell me why you don’t believe in God.” His hands rested on my knees. He had a nice touch.
“I have nothing to say.” I pushed this hands off my lap.
“The truth will set you.” He leaned forward and his right hand settled his toupee on his head.
“Why should I tell the truth to a man who lies to himself about being bald.”
"Bald?" He was surprised by my audacity. Teenagers weren’t supposed to speak to adults with such irreverence.
"Yes, and you're wearing a rug." I stood up and ripped the toupee off his skull.
“You’re damned.”
“You only believe in Jesus, so he can cure your baldness.” I threw the wig in his face before slamming his door.
I walked back to the Olds defiant in my lack of belief, until spotting my mother in the car. She was praying for my soul and my father was staring into the distance.
I didn’t care about the Holy Trinity, heaven, purgatory, hell, The Holy Eucharist, the infallibility of the Pope, or the Blessed Virgin.
My birth had taken twenty-two hours. My mother had gone down to the Valley of Death to bring me life and I wished that I was a six year-old boy in a white communion suit. Chaney had worn the same suit for our Holy Communion. We fought over something that spring day. My mother had order me to say that I was sorry. He was my best friend.
I opened the door and sat in the back seat, knowing the next few minutes would be hell on earth for at least two of the three of us.
“How did it go?” My father started up the engine. The 88 had a big V-8, but it wasn't loud enough to drowned out my answer.
“Not good. The man said I was damned.”
“Damned?” The word struck the pit of my mother’s heart.
“He’s not a priest. He can’t damn me.”
“My son damned by the church.” Her hands covered her mouth in shock.
I’m sorry.”
“Sorry is not going to save you from hell.” My mother cried into her palms.
“The man touched me.” My only defense was the truth.
“Touched you?” My father turned around and studied my face for deception. He had never lied to me and I tried to return that gift to the best of my ability.
“He touched my leg and not in a nice way.”
“You’re saying he touched you.” My father tightened his fist. “No one touches my son.”
My father had nothing against queers. Arthur across the street lived with a friend. They had served in Korea together. Arthur took care of his mother. Neighbors whispered that he was not like the rest of the men in the neighborhood, but that didn’t stop my father from playing tennis with him.
“Are you telling the truth?”
“Yes, sir.” I felt bad about snitching, but I was an atheist and not a heretic.
“I have to make a phone call.” My father drove to the nearest phone booth and parked the car.
“Who are you calling?” My mother asked softly.
“Uncle Jack. He'll know what to do."
Uncle Jack was a lawyer.
"We can't sue the Church." My mother regarded the Church as never wrong.
"No one is suing anyone." My father got out of the car.
"Now see what you've done?" My mother was crying into a handkerchief.
"Yes, ma'am." Uncle Jack was my godfather.
Several days my Uncle Jack and I sat in the principal’s office. The ex-Marine told Brother Valentine on the freedoms of speech and religion guaranteed under the Constitution. He loved the idea of fighting the Church on this issue. His record in court was well-known throughout the state of Massachusetts. The previous year Uncle Jack had won $500,000 for a deaf girl in a suit against the nuns for torturing their students. The brothers had folded like a wet newspaper.
My teacher changed the F to a C. Brother Karl’s D remained a D+. It was an honest grade. My scholarship cut in half to seal the deal and Uncle Jack told me to keep my atheism to myself.
I wished that the brothers had stuck to their guns and I had been thrown out of school, but my girlfriend was happy that I remained at Our Lord’s Health. Kyla liked her space.
We stayed together until our senior year and religion had little to do with our faith in each other.
Talking about non-belief was difficult in America, which has IN GOD WE TRUST stamped on coins.
Friends and family remain deeply smitten by religion.
I tell them my lack of belief does not subtract from my spirituality, for I have visited some of the most holy sites on Earth and read countless books on devotion. Fundamentalists and born-agains have tried to reconvert my soul, but I was proud to hear President Obama mention non-believers in his first inaugural speech.
Our numbers are not a few weirdos. We are at least 20 million strong.
Two summers ago I was at a pool party at my doctor’s house on Staten Island. We had attended a big Catholic college in Boston. Nick was BBQing burgers and Italian sausages. I was glad to be out of Brooklyn and intended on sleeping over in the spare bedroom. After three Margharitas and a glass of wine I told his wife the story of my scholarship. Her religion was a comfort to her and I said nothing to disparage her devotion, so Rose laughed at the funny parts. We knew each other over twenty years.
Her husband told me to cool it. He had a hard enough time getting his four children to attend Sunday Mass.
"They like sleeping in late better than church."
"I can't blame them." Sleeping late was my favorite drug.
Two parents had overheard my discourse against organized religion and the father said, "Our 10 year-old son is a non-believer."
"And you want him to be a believer?"
"No, as the Jesuits used to say, "Get a boy when he's young and he's ours forever." The father must have studied under the black robes.
“Could you talk to him, so he knows he’s not alone.” The mother was concerned about her son's divorce from the norm.
“No problem.” I walked over to the young boy, who was playing a video game.
The other kids were cannonballing into the pool.
The young boy looked like he was winning his game, which probably meant killing aliens or bad people.
“Your parents wanted me to speak to you?” I flashed back to the shrink in 1967.
“About what?” he sighed, as if he had more than one problem.
“God.”
He lowered his head and asked with resignation, “Are you a priest?”
“No, an atheist. I don’t believe in God and I wanted to tell you that not believing won’t kill you.”
I kept it short and sweet. 10 year-old boys rarely want to hear anything for a man in his 50s. I certainly hadn’t at his age, but I didn't have a sweep-over.
"Everything will be fine." It had been for me.
“Thanks mister.” The boy was genuinely relieved that I had stopped talking. Religion and especially lack of religion was a private matter best left to the soul.
“No worries. I just wanted you to know that you aren't alone."
"I already know that." He motioned to two kids at the end of the patio. They were Goths.
"Then have a good life."
I took off my shirt and bellyflopped into the pool. The impact wave washed over the rim. Nick's children screamed with delight and I almost felt like Moses parting the Red Sea, but only almost like Moses. He had a big beard.
I got out of the pool and pushed back my hair.
The kids screeched for me to repeat my feat.
“Only if we do it together.” I pointed to the young atheist.
The others called him by name.
He put down his video game carefully to not let it get wet.
“On the count of one, two, three. Cannonball.”
Our combined impact create a wave to make Noah proud and I broke surface with a smile.
It was good to be a kid again. I only wished that Chaney was with me, then again he was with me always, for memories of the Here-Before live forever in the Here-Now.
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