Where I Belong

by Alan Doyle

  “They most definitely are not,” Mom answered. “No meat on Fridays. You knows that.”

  “Mom, a turr is a bird. Like a chicken or a turkey,” said my über-smart and equally perplexed sister Kim.

  “No, honey,” Mom said. “Turrs are caught in a fishing boat, so turrs are fish. Also, turrs eat fish. They aren’t meat.”

  Kim went quiet for a moment, then said, “Mom, a cow eats grass, right? So therefore we should be allowed to eat beef on Good Friday.”

  Mom would get upset and put her fork down. “Ye crowd thinks ye knows everything. The priest said we were allowed to eat turr, and I am not stunned enough to argue with that. Not like ye crowd. Now go run up and down the hill.”

  I wonder sometimes if my mother really worried her children were destined to burn for their sacrilege. Every once in a while, Mom would insist we say a family rosary. For you non-Catholics, a rosary is a series of repeated prayers that corresponds to each bead on a crucifix necklace. You may have seen these in The Godfather or in Madonna videos. When a family rosary was called, we’d all gather around the kitchen table. We’d kneel on chairs that had been spun around so the seats faced away from the table and the backs served as resting places for our forearms in prayer position. We’d recite ten Hail Marys in a row, out loud. By the time we hit the third one, my brother would fart or I would say “Snail Mary” or something, and the whole thing would go off the rails. My mother would be so upset, she’d run upstairs crying. Then we’d all feel guilty about her having to raise children bound for hellfire. I don’t know how Mom ever expected the family rosary to go well. Dad behaved only because his wife insisted. My sister behaved because she always followed the rules. Bernie and me: we were just hopeless.

  I wonder if part of my constant suspicion and curiosity about religion came from the fact that I tested some of its most sacred certainties at a very early age. Consider the story of a boy who sold his soul to the Devil … or at least tried to.

  When I was around ten years old, we had very little in our house in the way of fancy or modern things. There was no car in the driveway. In fact, there was no driveway. We had no colour or cable TV. No stainless modern appliances or heating or cooling. No closets full of nice clothes or coats or blankets or cups or plates. The floors had no expensive hardwoods or carpets. The walls held no glorious artwork. There were no crystal chandeliers, no grand staircases and certainly no servants. But there was a piano. Mom and Dad bought it used for five hundred dollars, a minuscule amount for a piano but by far the most expensive thing our family owned. The piano was Mom’s only respite from the long and hard days of cooking and cleaning for a family of six. She loved that piano.

  One night, while Mom and Dad were out, a babysitter was looking after us kids. Kim and Bernie were huddled around the hand-me-down black-and-white TV adjusting the makeshift antenna made out of an old, rusted coat hanger. Kim and Bernie had been trying to tune the set to Little House on the Prairie for far too long and I became bored. I turned my attention to the piano. I could play a few scales and chords and could even hum a few bars of a few songs. As my confidence grew, so did my volume, just as a clear enough picture emerged on the small TV screen.

  “We got it!” yelled Kim. “Give it up with the piano and let us watch our show.”

  I refused. I thought I was entitled to keep enjoying myself at the piano.

  “Give it up or I’ll punch you right in the face,” Bernie said.

  But still I would not give it up.

  The argument that followed grew so loud the babysitter came running downstairs from where she had been putting Michelle to bed. “Quiet, all of you, or you’ll wake your sister!” she said. “Watch your show and stop at that piano right now!”

  I did not think this was fair at all. I flew into a rage. “No!” I said, slamming my fist down as hard as I could on the keyboard. I expected to hear loud, discordant piano notes, but there was no clang, no sound at all—except the cracking of tender wood and the crashing of felt hammers inside the sound box.

  The silence in the room was sickening. Kim’s mouth opened wide as she drew her hand up to cover it. Bernie backed away and pointed back and forth between me and the piano. I was numb with disbelief. I pressed the three keys I had slammed. They were light, weightless. They dropped under the pressure like broken fingers or injured limbs. They made no notes at all, except the dull knock of ivory on wood.

  It was the babysitter who finally spoke. “You broke your mother’s piano. Get upstairs right now.”

  “Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit,” repeated Kim, though she rarely swore, never once taking her gaze off the piano.

  Bernie had a much clearer message and said it only once to me as I rushed past him to the stairs: “You. Are. Dead.”

  I ran to the small room where Bernie and I slept and slammed the door behind me. There was a single small window that let the moonlight in and some glow from Granda’s porch light across the dirt road. There was barely enough room for me to fall to the floor and cry. But I did. I wept the sorriest tears a boy ever wept. I felt as low as anyone could feel. I had broken the one nice thing in our home and the only thing my mom had ever bought for herself.

  After much anguish and still through tears, I got up. The door had drifted slightly ajar and through it, I saw the carved wooden crucifix hanging in the hallway. My days on the altar taught me that the Lord heard our prayers and performed miracles for those who prayed long and hard enough. I slipped into the hall, took down the wooden cross and laid it on the floor. I made the sign of the cross on my forehead, lips and heart. Then I prayed.

  “Dear Lord. Please forgive me for I have sinned. I got pissed off and broke Mom’s piano. She’ll be very mad and sad if it is not repaired. Please fix it and I will be your servant on Earth for my whole life. Amen.” I said this prayer over. And over. And over.

  After the tenth time, I figured that ought to do it, so I crept downstairs past my brother and sister, now near catatonic with worry. With some confidence, I approached the piano and pressed the broken keys. I truly expected a miracle. After all, I had said my prayer ten times in a row, like Mom insisted was worth doing in rosary. But when I heard nothing more than a dull knock, I ran back up the stairs and into my room.

  Not one to give up easily, I started a second round of prayers, but this time repeated the plea twenty times. Surely this would do the trick. I went with a little more caution to the piano this time, but I’d always been told that this whole praying-to-God thing worked. I pushed the keys. No note.

  I went back upstairs once more. I prayed again. I counted the prayers on my fingers. Fifty more prayers. But when I went downstairs, the piano was unchanged.

  I was getting desperate. Prayer on high was not working. My parents would be home soon, and I was running out of time. I ran upstairs and closed the bedroom door behind me. I needed a miracle and I needed it fast. Tears came to me again, but I had no other choice. If God and the Angels could not help me, I had to turn to the one who surely would.

  I knew from Father Maloney’s homilies that the Devil was always watching, ready to win boys’ souls at their weakest moments. And this surely was my weakest moment. I turned the cross upside down like I’d seen on TV when people want to call Satan forth. My voice was weak, but the words came clear enough.

  “Dear Devil. Please take me for I have sinned. I got pissed off and broke Mom’s piano. She’ll be very mad and sad if she finds out. Please fix it and I will be your servant on Earth for my whole life. Amen.”

  I did not repeat the request. I suppose I was sure the Devil would hear me the first time around. I rose, and I swear I felt lighter, as if an invisible army of demons was hoisting their most recent acquisition onto their shoulders. I felt exactly like the damned souls Father Maloney had mentioned so often in church, damned to hell to live with the Devil for all eternity.

  I descended the staircase. I remembered the mirror at the landing and turned slowly towards it. I was not sure what I exp
ected to see, or not see, now that I was one of the damned, like that Dracula fella, but to my surprise and slight disappointment, I was fully visible in the mirror. Hmm. I walked to the piano, slowly, like the guys from Caul’s Funeral Home did when they marched a casket up the church aisle in honour of the deceased.

  “What are you doing?” Kim asked.

  “Did you hurt your leg or something?” Bernie asked.

  I ignored them and went to the piano. The damned were, after all, special folks and need not bother engaging in idle chat with mere mortals. I was about to seal my contract with Satan. One fixed piano for one life of Devil Service on Earth. I took just a moment before pushing the keys down. I wanted to enjoy my last few seconds before being cursed for all eternity. I placed my fingers on the keys and pushed down to seal my fate.

  Again, nothing but a dull knock. No chiming note to trumpet my passage to the dark side. No fire and brimstone leapt from the floor and no laughing cloven-hoofed fella emerging from the smoke to claim his prize.

  I could not understand it. What was happening? Were my prayers and promises ignored on high and down low? Was it possible that not even the Devil would take me? This was depressing. And, worse, the friggin’ piano was still broken.

  Soon after, my parents came home and Mom was very sad and mad when she found out what I’d done. She sent me to my room immediately. I was made to understand that this was never to happen again and I would have to pay for the repair out of the money I raised working with the fishermen on the wharf. And that was all.

  Sitting on the altar a few weeks later, I was glad that I remained undamned and glad that no Devil showed up to take my soul. In fact, I started to think that maybe there was no Devil at all. My daydreaming was broken by the shouts of Father Maloney. He preached a loud warning to all to behave or burn in the fire and brimstone.

  “Ye shall be pulled into the depths of hell by Satan himself!” he yelled.

  My friend next to me was shaking in his robe, scared half to death. I turned to my friend with a grin that comes from the confidence of experience in such matters and said, “No, we won’t.”

  As an even younger child, I recall sitting on the floor in the choir loft of the church in Petty Harbour as my mother played the organ and led the singers. She let me hide behind the organ and sneak a comic book in with me.

  From my secret hideaway, I heard the mass many times before sticking my head up to actually watch it. I remember the sound of the organ speaker puffing and sweating, the sound of Mom’s foot pushing the squeaky pedal and the click it made when she released it. I remember the individual voices that made up the choir, the good singers, the okay singers and the ones who barely made a sound. There was the swish of turning pages as hymns were flipped in unison, the clap of the kneelers as they hit the floor, the booming voice of the priest through the speakers and the chant of the congregation’s reply.

  “Peace be with you.”

  “And also with you.”

  “Lift up your hearts.”

  “We lift them up to the Lord.”

  “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.”

  “It is right to give Him thanks and praise.”

  By the time I was five or six, I could recite pretty much the entire mass from beginning to end. To me, it was like the words to a song, one long hymn from start to finish.

  Later, when I came out from behind the organ, I started to notice the sights of the church—the massive wooden arches that began at the floor and met in the centre of the roof beam, the stained glass windows that were almost ten feet high and bathed the church in an ever-changing mix of soft yellow and red. I loved the altar with its shiny red carpet and multiple levels, a perfect place for a concert. Too bad it was used only for mass.

  I also really liked the costumes worn by the people on stage. The priest always wore a long white vestment with a bright image of a golden cross down the middle. He looked like a magician, with all sorts of tricks hidden in that big cloak. I also really liked the plain white hooded robes that the altar boys wore with rope belts cleverly tied around their waists—magicians in training.

  But there were sights in that place I found quite scary. The centrepiece of the church was a life-sized statue of a man nailed to a cross. His hands and feet were bleeding and tears ran down his face. He had a cut just above his waist that bled into a cloth, and that cloth was the only thing that kept him from being totally naked. Worse yet, someone had rammed a circle of thorny branches down over his head, and it had cut him in several places. And his eyes, those eyes, wide open and staring upward through the blood and the thorns. To me, he looked alive. He was alive and suffering through extreme pain.

  “Mom,” I said one day. “Why can’t I watch cowboy and Indian movies where people shoot arrows and bullets but I have to watch Jesus on the cross every Sunday?”

  “Because Jesus reminds us of the sacrifice He made for us. And pretend violence in the movies is not good for young boys, Alan.”

  “But, Mom, the movie is make-believe and the statue in mass isn’t. Father Maloney pointed to it and said, ‘Don’t forget, this really happened!’ ”

  “Alan, go run up and down the hill.”

  Equally troublesome to me were the Stations of the Cross that represented the arrest, torture and murder of Jesus. We were supposed to walk from the earliest arrest all the way to His death, pausing at each portrayal to consider the sacrifice and say a prayer of thanks. The trouble was that these images were graphic and horrifying—a bound man falling as He carries His own gallows past His own mother, all the while being whipped by men in uniforms. For any kid with open eyes, it was the stuff of nightmares.

  The weirdest sight of all was the congregation on Sunday. I recognized every person in the crowd, but nobody ever seemed themselves. Fishermen who normally wore coveralls and rubber boots were neatly dressed in pants and sweater vests. Some of them wore full three-piece suits. Their heads were exposed in a way that made them seem kind of naked. Normally, their hair was covered in a wool toque or baseball cap. And they walked and stood differently, too. On the wharf or in town, people walked with confidence. Some even had a skip to their step and a real sense of purpose, heads up and full of pride. But in church, people walked slowly and tentatively, often with their heads bowed slightly. They stood awkwardly and looked around uncomfortably. The strongest men I knew cowered in this one place.

  But church was the only show going on Sundays. And if there was a show going, I wanted to be part of it. I would have loved to have jumped right in the choir, but Mom said I was too young to join. There were only two other parts to be played: priest and altar boy. The position of priest was out of the question, but by the time I was about ten years old, I got the part of altar boy and I was in the show.

  Now, when I say “show,” I don’t mean any disrespect. I’m not suggesting that the ceremony was phony or dishonest. Not at all. What was amazing was that if the songs came and went at the right place and people hit their marks on time and no one dropped the baptismal candle, there was a better chance that the congregation was more engaged and better able to consider the message the priest was trying to impart. Any smart Catholic knows the show is an important part of Catholicism. If you don’t believe me, just go to St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. Again, with no disrespect, it’s the greatest show in history.

  I should also note that the desire to put on a show come mass time varied from priest to priest. I served under some that were very shy or studious, who did not see themselves as the centre of the mass but rather as the facilitator of the Word of the Lord. One of the more studious fathers actually organized pre-show briefings for the altar boys. “Now, boys, I would like a tick-tock service today. Let’s all work as a team!” But there were others who were definitely performers at heart—insisting on singing as many parts of the mass as possible or shouting during the homily while pointing fingers back at the cross or down to hell. One priest insisted an altar boy hold a handkerchief in case he
wept during the homily. If tears were shed, the altar boy would walk out and dab the tears from the priest’s face. It was kind of like the dude who brings the cape to James Brown.

  I arrived early to mass when I was an altar boy. I liked to prepare myself well in advance. I went to the altar boy room at the back of the church (which I later referred to as the locker room) and picked out a white robe that fit well enough. Bernie showed me how to tie the cool knot in the cord that wrapped around the waist. I’d prepare the stage and the books and the candles. The other altar boys I knew from school or road hockey or from cutting out tongues. My first time as an altar boy, I was a bit nervous.

  “You’re gonna trip up in that cord and send the father flying down over the incense,” an older boy teased.

  “He’s gonna catch himself on fire and burn to death in front of everyone,” another taunted.

  “They’re just effing with you,” Bernie said. He’d been an altar boy for years.

  All I did in that first mass was walk in the opening and closing processions. When the time came to sit for the readings, we made our way back to the pew on the side of the altar. The boys before me sat in the pew and spread themselves as wide as possible so that when I got there, there was nowhere for me to sit. I was panicking, pacing back and forth in front of four giggling altar boys. Then, of course, I realized I was being had, a wee hazing of sorts for the first-timer. A rite of passage. One look from the priest and the boys moved over, allowing me to sit with them on the pew, though by this time my face was as red as a beet.

  There were more rites of passage to follow. I would come to learn that the national pastime in the Country of Older Altar Boys was to make the younger altar boys laugh out loud during the most solemn parts of the service. I would also add that there is no place on earth in which you can place a ten-year-old boy that will make him want to laugh more than on the altar, dressed in a white robe in front of the whole community and all of his friends. I cannot tell you how many times some friend lifted his leg over mine during the homily and farted on the side of my crotch. I also cannot tell you how many times I did the same to one of them.