Good Graces - Lesley Kagen [40]
Ethel says, “That Father Mickey sure is something. Easy on the eyes, too.” Music is coming out of her bedroom. I can’t barely hear it, but her body is having no trouble keeping the beat. It’s swaying. “Ya know what I been thinkin’, Miss Sally?”
“What, Ethel?” I say, snitching a berry out of the bowl.
“I been thinkin’ I’m gonna switch myself over to the Catholics.”
“Oooh . . . nooo . . . nooo . . . I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I say, in the same no-nonsense voice she uses on me when I come up with an idea that she thinks stinks. “That . . . that would be like takin’ that shiny orange dress of yours and tradin’ it in for a . . . burlap sack.”
Mother lets Ethel take me down to her church on 4th and Walnut Street sometimes. It’s in an old store that has the sign: JOE KOOL’S SMALL AND LARGE APPLIANCES FOR THE DISCRIMINATING hanging above the door. The basement windows of the church are stained, not with glass, but who cares? The whole congregation dances and shouts even when the Reverend Joe Willow is sermonizing. I have already decided that when I grow up, that’s what I’m gonna be. A Baptist. Mary Lane said she’d do it with me. I’m sure more for her hungry tummy than her hungry soul. She went down there with me and Ethel a coupla times so she knows all about the fried chicken and colored greens they put out after the service.
“You’ve got the wrong idea about our church,” I tell Ethel. “You’ve only been up there for funerals. You don’t know how bad it can get.”
“Mmmm . . . hmmm.” In southern, that means, Go on, tell me more.
“You gotta starve yourself for hours before you receive Holy Communion.” Ethel would especially not like that part. She adores a big country breakfast with ham first thing every morning. She wouldn’t like the taste of the body and blood of Christ. He’s really bland. (I’m too nervous to bring this up to anybody who might know the answer, but isn’t swallowing down Jesus kinda like being a cannibal?) “And the nuns, they got ways of torturin’ people that are worse than the Red Chinese.”
“That’s nothin’ but your big ’magination talkin’,” Ethel says with a snort.
“No, it’s not! Swear to God. The sisters tied Mary Lane down and dripped holy water on her forehead after they caught her peepin’ on them.”
“Sounds to me like that girl was spinnin’ one of her no-tripper tales,” she says, still slicing away at those berries, making them not too thin so they fall apart, but not too thick either. “I only know the one nun. Sister Jean seems real nice.”
“She’s only bein’ nice to you because ya aren’t a Catholic.” Ethel doesn’t understand how those crabby penguins work. “You can’t believe how bossy they are. They’re the brides of Christ so that makes them almost as powerful as priests,” I say, hoping that I’m getting through to her. “If you join up, you’ll be under all a their thumbs. Even in your dreams they can come after you.”
“Well, I sure wouldn’t like that.” No, she wouldn’t. She needs her beauty sleep and takes pride in her freedom. “Here I been thinkin’ that was a place of worship all these years. That only goes to show ya how wrong a body can be about something, don’t it? Thank you kindly for the warnin’, Miss Sally.” Ethel’s teeth are enormously white. She sucks on lemons to make them that way. She shouldn’t be smiling, though. I’m not kidding around. “But I’d be keepin’ my voice down ’bout that church stuff if’n I was you,” she says.
As usual, the smartest woman I know is right. Catholics are not supposed to even think something bad about the church, so saying it out loud has gotta be worse.
Ethel lifts her chin and nods it at the window. “Ya wouldn’t want Father Mickey to hear ya.”
I jump up off the stepladder and almost knock it over. “Father’s right outside?”
“He’s out back with Miz G. Surprised ya didn’t see them when ya got here.”
Shame on me. I was in such a hurry to escape from Fast