Rejoice

“Well, if God knows everything, why do I have to confess to a priest?”

Sister Alma looked up from her work. She couldn't have been more than twenty years older than I was then. In her late twenties, probably, but she looked my age and wasn't much taller. She was a slight, petite girl pretending to be a nun. She stared at me a moment.

“Shouldn't you be playing the piano?”

I didn't have my own piano at home and the nuns let me use theirs when I needed to practise. I had other things on my mind though. My First Communion was coming up and we couldn't take communion if we didn't confess our sins first, and I didn't have anything to confess for starters and no desire to do so, secondly, and was quite angry at God at the moment for not making my hands do what my brain told them when I was practising piano.

“I mean, you confess and all, but you could not really mean it. So you could say your Hail Marys without really repenting, right? But, if you really repent, God knows, right? So why tell the priest when God already knows?”

“I think I hear Sister Martha calling you”.

I listened for Sister Martha's shrill voice. All I could hear was the ditto machine going in the other room. It was newsletter time of the month and as soon as the machine was finished the copies would have to be folded nicely, put into envelops, and have stamps placed on them. All the children would come round then and I wouldn't have time to finish my conversation with Sister Alma. I rambled on hastily.

“You said he knows everything about us, right? He already knows our sins, so why do I have to tell Father John? It's kinda nosey on his part, don't you think?”

She laughed then. She laughed wholeheartedly, first with her eyes and then her whole face would light up.

“You are something” she said.

I had to think this over. I wasn't really sure if it was a compliment. I was eight and going through my first of many religious crises.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Do I have to confess my sins to Father John?”

“If you want to take your First Communion, you will”.

I thought this over carefully. I had already got to taste the host; we were given non-consecrated trial pieces to get the hang of it so that on our communion day we wouldn't gag or anything. Keeping it from sticking to the top of your palate without touching your teeth was some feat, but with a little practice...It didn't taste like anything I'd ever eaten before. It really didn't taste like anything at all. Paper, probably, but I would only know that much later when I had to swallow the proof that I had been cheating on my maths test in high school, and that would have ink on it.

“What would happen to me if I didn't take my First Communion?”

She sighed. I don't think she had imagined this was what I wanted to talk to her about when I wandered into her office some minutes earlier. 

“I mean, God knows everything and I'm a pretty good kid, really. And the host doesn't taste like much and it gets stuck to the top...”

“Oh, Joyce, it has nothing to do with the taste of the host. It's the body of our Lord...”

“That would be kinda like cannibalism, then. Except he's already been dead a long time”.

She put her hand to her veil then and started fidgeting with the few hairs that had escaped from under the band.

“Maria said that nuns are all bald, but I guess you aren't, right? Is it because you're so young? Why do you have to cover your hair? I don't get it. Father John doesn't cover his hair. He doesn't have much to cover, I suppose, but anyways...”

The thoughts started to get tangled up in my head and confession had been replaced with bald nuns and I paused a moment  to collect my thoughts. Sister Alma took advantage of the interruption, shot up and told me she had to go to the other room to check up on the ditto machine.

I roamed around her office for a while until it started to dawn on me that she wasn't coming back  any time soon, so I picked up my music sheets and went to the music room.

I could listen to music forever, but playing was a whole different matter. My fingers just refused to do what my brain told them to. It was pretty frustrating and all the practice in the world wouldn't help me. I was kinda angry at God for that. It was the first of a long list of things I would be angry with him for. I could have stopped taking lessons, I suppose, but I was prone to persevere.

Sister Martha had waxed down the piano and covered it with the green felt strip she had embroidered colourful notes on. I hated to put my fingerprints all over it. It was so shiny. So I decided to wander into the church upstairs.

I have always liked churches and even when my belief in God has wavered, which it has most of my life, I still like the silent, incense smelling interiors of a not too fancy church. Ours was not too fancy; there were no precious works of art or gold gilt halos on blonde, blue eyed Madonnas, and when I slipped into the shiny maple pews my heart would rejoice, just like the song says.

I liked it best when it was empty - which is sad because most churches aren't open today, except for mass - because the people who filled it on Sundays had a way of disturbing my thoughts.

Alone now, I ran my hands over the soft wood. I counted the stations of the cross along the walls, like I always did, just to make sure I got the number right should anyone care to ask me. I knelt down and joined my hands in a reverential pose. And I thought that maybe communion wouldn't be so bad after all: my mother had already bought me a pair of wonderful lace gloves to wear on my special day, and a beautiful mother of pearl First Communion book in a little white box, and a rosary, of course. I didn't know yet that the rosary would get caught on the pew and break, or that Cindy Randolph would take my lovely First Communion book from the bench and replace it with her older sister's worn out copy, nor that I would lie through my teeth in the confessional and make up all kinds of things to say, because of all the sins I would later commit in my life, at eight I was just plain innocent.

That day, alone in the church, after my long and fulfilling talk with Sister Alma, just before I was called down with the other children to the office to fold the newsletters, I wondered about God and his proclaimed omnipotence, and about Sister Alma, and bald nuns, and especially about how much I loved music but couldn't get my hands to do what my brain told them to. And how it really wasn't fair, when you thought about it, because God was supposed to help people, and I really loved music, especially the song that said  'rejoice, rejoice, let every tongue rejoice'.

Matilde Colarossi