“But I want to talk to Mama!” I say. It’s not fair. Mama’s already been gone forever, and even now that she’s on the phone, Uncle Donny wants to hide her from me.
She’s your mama, not Uncle Donny’s, Teddy agrees.
“I think it’s better for Siobhan to get off the phone now,” says the lady.
“Uh, yeah, I could see that,” says Uncle Donny. “Aoife, say goodbye to your ma, okay? She has to go now.”
But I don’t want to say goodbye to Mama. I can already feel my eyes filling up with tears, because what if I hang up the phone and I never talk to her again? She said she’d be home soon, but grown-ups say things like that sometimes—like when Mama says that Christmas is soon, or that we’ll see the movies in the theater soon when they come out on DVD. But by the time that happens, I won’t even remember them, or I’ll be too old to want to watch. And it’s still only July, it isn’t even almost Christmas.
“Aoife, hang up.” Uncle Donny has found me. He must have walked through all the rooms. I didn’t even hear him on the stairs. I guess all his practice climbing up and down them really paid off.
He kneels down next to me on the carpet and picks me up. I’m still trying to be a big girl and not cry loud enough for Mama to hear me. He takes the phone out of my hand and holds it up. “Say bye, Aoife,” he says quietly.
“Bye-bye,” I whisper.
“Bye sis,” he says, into the other phone in his hands. “I love you. We all love you. Take care of yourself and get better, okay?”
He puts his phone on speaker so I can hear Mama. “I love you both, too,” she says, sounding little and far away. “See you later.”
Then Uncle Donny puts his thumb on the power button, and all we can hear is the dial tone.
* * *
I thought Uncle Donny would be mad at me for sneaking around on the phone, but for a long time he doesn’t say anything, just sways back and forth with me while I cry. He puts his hand on my back, and I can feel his heartbeat through his palm. He doesn’t even yell at me.
The tears dry up and then I’m just tired, leaning on his shoulder.
“You know I would have called you when your ma got on,” he tells me. “I just wanted to make sure it was okay first.”
“Teddy told me to do it,” I mumble. Which isn’t all the way true, because I got the idea from Hannah. But it’s the sort of thing he would say.
“Someday you’re going to have to explain to Teddy that he’s getting you into big trouble, telling you to do things you know you shouldn’t do,” says Uncle Donny. “You ought to know better than to listen to him.”
I don’t say anything. Teddy sticks his tongue out at us.
“Do you still want to go to church?” asks Uncle Donny. I nod against his shirt. “Okay. I’m going to change clothes and then we’ll go.”
He puts me down, squeezing my shoulder. I listen to the familiar sound of him walking away down the hallway.
“You know, we could just stay here and watch cartoons,” he suggests, from the guest room while he’s changing.
“We don’t have a TV anymore,” I say when he comes back. “Mama says that the TV is how Satan gets into your mind.” But sometimes we watch it at Hannah’s house—and I just try not to listen too much.
Uncle Donny looks squish-faced when I say that. He goes into the living room to open the cabinet where the TV used to be. But it hasn’t been there since Mama put up a plastic crucifix and a picture of Mary of the Immaculate Heart instead.
“Huh,” he says. He closes the cabinet again.
* * *
We walk to church, which is just at the other end of the neighborhood. We’re running late by the time we walk up the steps. There’s nobody handing out programs at the door and saying, “Good morning,” but that’s okay, because lots of times Mama and I are late, too, when she has a bad night. So I’m used to it.
I like the inside of the church. It looks like a princess castle. There’s lamps hanging from the ceiling and pillars between the pews. Mrs. Hannigan is sitting at the piano in front playing gentle music. It’s never very full but it’s never empty.
Mama says that church is a good place to think. I have a lot to think about today.
Usually Mama gives me the program and I color in all the Os with a ballpoint pen, and by the time I’ve gotten to the last O it’s almost time to go downstairs and drink apple juice. Then we go get ice cream, and if Mac is around he might meet us there. Sometimes it is better to get ice cream without him, if he is being an old cuss again. But Uncle Donny didn’t take a program, and now there’s nothing to do but watch everybody else while we’re sitting in the pew waiting for apple juice time.
Teddy is curled up underneath the pew, sound asleep. He likes to sleep where it’s quiet.
My favorite part of church is when people are praying. I like to look at people’s faces when they don’t know I’m watching. All the grown-ups are bent over, and sometimes they cover their heads with their hands, but sometimes I can see them and I like how serious they look. Usually adults are more careful with their expressions.
I look over at Uncle Donny, but he isn’t praying. He’s checking his phone. He winks at me when he sees me watching.
Uncle Donny is silly. He didn’t remember to kneel and cross himself when we walked past the tabernacle. He doesn’t hold his hands up when Father Paul says, “We lift them up to the lord.” He doesn’t know when to sit and when to stand. He doesn’t sing along with the hymns. He doesn’t say the creed. When it’s time to hold hands, he doesn’t realize until Mrs. Czapla waves her hand in front of him.
I’m happy that Uncle Donny and I are here, because after we die I want us all to go to heaven and sit on the clouds with Theo and Gramma Aoife, playing harps like the pictures in the stained-glass windows. I never say that to Mama, though, because it would make her sad.
Everything about Theo makes Mama sad.
I wonder if Hannah will get to meet Theo in heaven. They don’t go to church very much, so I’m worried that she won’t, and she’s the one who’s so interested in him. I’m busy thinking about Hannah in the Lake of Fire, so I’m not really listening to Father Paul when he starts talking. He talks for a long time while I look around. The statue in the front of the church is actually Blessed Mary, but sometimes I pretend it’s Joan of Arc. Instead of being dressed up in armor, she’s wearing a flowing dress and her hair is down. She looks very pretty.
Mama always says we should pray to Saint Joan and ask her to help us be courageous. Saint Joan was brave because she trusted the voices of Saint Catherine and the archangel Michael when they spoke to her. Mama hears voices too sometimes—she told me she does.
Saints are like ghosts, maybe, but nicer.
Hannah said Theo is haunting my mother. Is that why she was screaming? He’s waiting for us, she said, like he was sitting in the food court at the mall. Is that what saints do?
Father Paul is reading from the Bible again. “In order to receive the blessings we seek from the Lord, we have to be willing to do the Lord’s work,” he tells us. “Ask yourself what the mission of the Lord is for you, and when He calls on you, take up his mantle and be not afraid.”
“What’s a mantle?” I whisper to Uncle Donny.
“It goes over a fireplace,” he tells me.
I don’t always understand Father Paul so good.
“Trust in the word of God, and there will be no need for fear,” says Father Paul. “The might of the Lord will hold you up.”
“Uncle Donny, how do you know what the word of God is?” I whisper. Is it a special, secret word, like cursing?
Uncle Donny is reading on his phone. “What? Aoife, shh.”
Teddy starts to snore under the pew. He’s so loud that the pew rattles just a little.
Father Paul leads the grown-ups in a prayer, but I have my own prayer: Please let Mama come home in time for the fireworks. Mama says it’s wrong to ask God for favors. She says we should only pray for other people. Bu
t hopefully it’s okay if it’s for me and Mama, because I’m sure Mama wants to see the fireworks, too.
Then the collection people come down the aisle and the time for prayers is over. Mama and I always put three dollars in the collection plate: one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost. But Uncle Donny drops a whole twenty-dollar bill in the plate and then hands it on to Mrs. Czapla without looking.
I think if Uncle Donny put that much money in the collection plate, God ought to look pretty hard at my prayer to see the fireworks with Mama.
We sing some pretty songs, but without Mama I don’t want to sing anything, and Uncle Donny doesn’t make me. I just look at my shoes and wait for the music to stop, and that’s what he does, too. Maybe he’s missing Mama just like me.
When it’s time for communion, Uncle Donny doesn’t go up to the front even though he’s old enough. I don’t go because I haven’t had my confirmation yet. So both me and Uncle Donny stay in the pew as we watch Mrs. Czapla go slowly up the aisle. Teddy climbs up next to me to watch too.
She opens her mouth and has Father Paul put the bread right on her tongue, instead of holding out her hand like Mama does. When the juice person gives her the little cup of grape juice, she bows her head over it before she takes it from him. Then she drinks.
Mac says drinking from a little cup like that is called taking shots.
The church is quiet because people are taking the Communion, and I’m sleepy from how Uncle Donny woke me up last night. The sanctuary is warm and it smells dusty, which Mama says is incense. Incense is a fancy smoke that Jesus likes. Mac likes to smoke, too. I guess it’s a grown-up thing.
Sometimes it’s hard to sit quietly at school when I’m tired after Mama has a bad night, and sometimes Sister Mary Celeste lets me put my head down on my desk, but she doesn’t look happy when I do that so I don’t like to ask.
I try to fix my eyes on the altar, which is where the Holy Ghost lives. Dear Blessed Saints, I say, but quietly, in my mind, the way I talk to Teddy. Please tell me: did somebody murder my brother?
The candles in the front of the church go out, one by one.
I gasp. It’s a sign! I look around, but nobody else is watching except Teddy, who winks at me. The grown-ups are all looking down. I think it is a message.
Dear Blessed Saints, if I find out who killed him, will my mama come home in time to watch the fireworks?
Overhead, very slowly—and then louder—the bell in the steeple begins to ring. The only time we hear the bells usually is at Christmas or when somebody gets married. Now it is getting louder and louder, as if Teddy climbed right up into the tower and he’s riding the bell up there like a swing, back and forth, faster and faster. It sounds like there’s more than one bell, even. It sounds like a whole bunch of them now.
But Uncle Donny doesn’t even look over, and in fact nobody else is paying any attention, not even Father Paul, who starts talking right over the sound of the bells. I think they are beautiful, even better than when Mrs. Hannigan plays the “Ave Maria” and Mama hums along. Then, between one blink and the next, the whole church is lit up, like someone has turned on all the lights, and it’s so bright that my eyes start stinging, but I don’t close them.
Then I hear my name, pronounced just right, the way only Mama says it. Aoife. And now the bells are ringing it: Eee-fah, Eee-fah.
Yes! I say. Yes, that’s me!
Aoife, say the bells. Aoife.
I realize that I must be hearing the voices of the saints, just like when Saint Catherine and the archangel Michael started speaking to Joan of Arc. And I think the word of the Lord must be Aoife, because that’s all I hear.
Okay, I say to the saints. I will do it, I promise. And just like Father Paul said, I’m not afraid. Because I want Mama to come home, and I don’t want her to be haunted anymore. I promise that I will be very brave, just like Joan of Arc. I will take up the whatever-a-mantle-is. I will solve my brother’s murder and bring my mother home.
Then the lights start to go dim and I can feel my eyes filling up with tears, because I don’t want the voices of the saints to go away. They’re so beautiful. The tears are spilling over my cheeks when the bells stop ringing and the lights slowly go out.
And then I’m sitting in church again, and Father Paul is only just wrapping up the prayer. And I’m not even crying for real on the outside.
Uncle Donny looks over and makes a face at me. It’s a funny face and I laugh out loud, and everybody looks over. So then we have to duck our heads and pretend to be serious again.
When it’s all over and Father Paul has said, “The Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his countenance to shine upon you, amen,” Uncle Donny gets up and takes me by the hand to lead me down the pew.
“All right, let’s jet,” he says.
Teddy squeezes behind us, almost too fat to fit.
Uncle Donny is leading us to the side exit. “After service we get cookies and juice and talk to people,” I explain, pointing towards the Fellowship Room where the cookies are. Teddy really likes cookies, and so do I.
“Yes well, I think we’ve had enough of the Lord for today,” says Uncle Donny, still heading for the door. “Okay?”
“But we have to walk past Father Paul and shake his hand.” I point to where all the church people are lining up in the aisle.
“True, that does sound fun, but this way takes us out to the street faster. And Uncle Donny wants his ice cream sooner rather than later. Doesn’t that sound good?”
It does sound pretty nice, I guess. “Maybe we can shake Father Paul’s hand twice tomorrow,” I suggest.
“Tomorrow? Why tomorrow?”
Uncle Donny is so silly. “Tomorrow is Family Bible Study,” I say. “Oh, there’s Stephanie!” I run over to give her a hug. She’s with her mom and dad—I bet they’re going to get juice.
Stephanie is in high school and rides a bike with a wire basket. She lives somewhere in the neighborhood, but I’ve never seen her house. I think Stephanie’s really pretty, even though Hannah makes fun of her pimples sometimes.
“Aoife, don’t run off— Hello, Stephanie. You must be the famous babysitter. I hear good things.” Uncle Donny shakes her hand. “Say, I don’t suppose you’re coming back here tomorrow for Bible study, are you? I was thinking, ah, maybe Aoife could come back with you. I’ll really make it worth your while.”
“Oh, you should come join us,” says Stephanie’s mom, who is in charge of New Membership. I know because Mama says she’s doing a not-so-great job.
“Ooh, sorry, I’ve got a, uh, very important conflict at that time,” says Uncle Donny. “But thank you for thinking of that. Aoife, you don’t mind going with Stephanie, do you?”
“No,” I say. I like Stephanie, even though Hannah says she only goes to Bible study because Peter Henly from up the street is there.
“I can probably take her,” says Stephanie. “I’ll just have to check my schedule, but I think it’ll be okay.”
“You’re a godsend,” says Uncle Donny, and then he laughs and nudges me - because we’re in a church, get it? I laugh, too. “But seriously, Stephanie, Aoife and I would love to stick around, but we’ve got to make like a tree and leave. Very important appointment to get to. Ice cream related. Bye now!”
He takes us out the side door, and all the way across the parking lot he holds my hand tight and I have to hurry to keep up. It’s sunny and bright outside after how dark the sanctuary was once the saints left.
I want to tell Uncle Donny about how the word of God came to me, but something tells me that wouldn’t be a good idea. It’s my own special secret, and I don’t want to tell anybody about it, not even Father Paul. Even though he would be disappointed to hear that the saints came to visit his own service and he didn’t even know about it. I’m going to keep it buried deep in my stomach, where secrets live.
Dear Donny,
I thought maybe I was over the worst of it, but these new pills have some diff
erent side effects and I’m not feeling quite myself. They say it may be a while before I come home. It shouldn’t be that hard: if I take my meds on schedule, and don’t talk to the voices, I could be on my way out in a few days. But nothing is ever as easy as it seems.
There’s something important I need to discuss with you. But it’s waited this long—I suppose it can wait a while longer.
The nurses took me for a shower today, and it reminded me of when we were little, how I used to wash you in the sink when Ma was shut up in her room again. Of all the things I’m grateful for in my life, I think I’m most thankful for those five years between us. I suppose it might be a sin to be grateful, since there were three babies in those years. One of them was even born, but it was too small and blue already. She named each one of them, you know. The last one, I remember, was Saoirse. The rest had saints’ names, I suppose. Do you know I used to see them in my dreams as a child? I dreamed of them dancing above the bed, little blue angel babies, with the faces of the stained glass windows at church.
In those days, I was terrified that the demons would come and take you away, Donny, like they had taken Ma’s other children. That was why we had you baptized in the hospital as soon as you were born: Ma wasn’t sure you would live, and she wanted you to go straight to heaven and not be trapped in purgatory with the others. When I told her I had dreamed of them in heaven, she cried.
Or maybe it didn’t happen like that. I don’t know.
How should I know?
Do you remember my saint’s name? I encouraged Theo to pick Saint Francis, hoping he would be kind and gentle to God’s weak creatures. I think Aoife will pick Saint Joan, and Lord knows she’ll probably need that holy courage. But mine was Catherine, for the Blessed Saint who was pulled apart, arms one way and legs another—and it came true. My heart is stretched further and further, and someday I’m afraid it will pull right apart.
All they’ll find is the shape of a woman on the carpet, and my empty clothes, and I’ll have ascended straight to heaven like a firework.
Throw these letters away, Donny.
Your Loving Sister,
All That's Bright and Gone (ARC) Page 6