Father Staley was speaking directly to me. I could not look at him.
“And so Christ’s message on Holy Thursday,” he said, and he raised a flopping sleeve and shook his white finger at me, “Christ’s message on Holy Thursday is, prepare to suffer.”
She was sitting in front of me. I thought she had seen me on the way in. She had seemed to hurry ahead. How I loved her. Who was she?
“Tomorrow is Good Friday. Christ knew that he was going to be crucified. He knew that nails would be driven into his hands — big spikes, like the ones carpenters use. Driven into his feet. And a crown of thorns. Not the sort of thorns you see on rose bushes. These are big thorns — inch or so — you find them in the Holy Land. They didn’t set the crown of thorns on his head like a hat — they jammed it down so the thorns pierced his flesh. Drove the thorns into the bone of his skull!”
Father Staley waited a little, picking at the dead skin on his fingers.
“He knew this was going to happen. He had been told. It was written in the Scriptures. Holy Thursday, when Christ was betrayed by Judas, he knew he was going to suffer and die. ‘That thou doest, do quickly!’”
She was listening with her head and shoulders, a stiff attentive posture, her hair out of place. I loved her loose hair, her untidy clothes, her twisted collar — one side up, the other down, the smudge on her upper arm where she had brushed the church door perhaps.
Something also told me — the way she sat at a slight angle — that she was aware that I was behind her. If she had turned just a fraction more she could have seen me. Though I was listening to the priest, I was watching her the whole time.
“The example of Christ’s suffering has inspired many people to suffer themselves — to become better Christians. Maria Goretti was just a poor pious girl in a small Italian village. She was twelve years old. She did not know that Christ had chosen her. What was the choice he offered? It was to give way to the devil or to die. The devil lived in the village. His name was Alessandro Serenelli.”
I almost laughed out loud when I heard this funny name, especially the “nelly.” I looked down smiling at the floor of the church and did not look up again until I had swallowed the smile.
“Serenelli watched Maria Goretti. He followed her. Wherever Maria Goretti went, Serenelli also went. But his heart was filled with impure thoughts. Serenelli stared at Maria Goretti’s innocent body. He stared at her modest clothes. Maria was never alone — Serenelli was always behind her, watching her with his lustful eyes. Waiting for his chance.”
I picked up a hymnbook and leafed through it to take my eyes off the skinny girl in front of me. I felt the priest was warning her about me — she was Maria, I was Serenelli. I wanted it to be a love story, with a happy ending, but I was nervous: in church I never heard love stories, and there were no happy endings.
“Serenelli followed Maria even into the church. He watched her praying. But instead of admiring Maria for her faith, Serenelli harbored impure thoughts. Imagine! In church, this devil was sinning in his heart!”
I tried to read a hymn, I put my fingers on it.
“Serenelli sat in the church and watched the poor girl praying. Wicked thoughts kept him watching. He couldn’t take his eyes away from her.”
My eyes were so dazzled with fear for Maria and swallowed laughter I could not make out the words of the hymn.
“The devil was inside Serenelli.”
The name Serenelli made me think of a small fat man with a big nose and black mustache and flat feet, a clown in a brown suit with spaghetti stains on his necktie and a smelly cigar in one hand.
“He followed Maria to her home. She took a shortcut through some woods. The pure innocent soul did not know that this demon was watching her. And when he got a chance he grabbed her and demanded that she commit a sin of impurity.”
Until that point the whole story made sense to me — I could see each separate word as a vivid detail. But “sin of impurity” baffled me. I saw Maria, I saw Serenelli — Serenelli was me. But what did he want? Whatever it was, the sin was so enormous that she would be damned if she did what Serenelli wanted her to do — which was what?
“Maria said that she would never give in to him. She would not commit a sin.”
But in this description — Maria in the woods, talking back to Serenelli — I began to suspect that she was tempted. That the sin attracted her. That she needed to pray, because part of her wanted to give in to Serenelli. In my mind the sin was something to do with kissing her, hugging her, touching her — Serenelli slobbering over her, still holding his smelly stogie in one hand and squeezing Maria Goretti’s cheek with the other. I smiled because I saw this clearly — the fat hairy man, the brown suit, the skinny little girl in her ragged skirt and muddy shoes; the woods; the shadows, the puddles, the lighted windows in the girl’s distant house.
“When she refused, he stabbed her. Still she prayed to God for strength. Serenelli stabbed her again and again. Even after she fell to the ground this devil stabbed her.”
I was so horrified I let the hymnbook slip to the floor. I saw the knife plunging into Maria Goretti’s body. I saw Serenelli transformed from a guinea wop like Chicky DePalma’s father, with a mustache and cigar, into a devil with crazy eyes and a bloody dagger. Maria was like the girl sitting hunched and attentive in front of me, so small in my imagining that it seemed especially cruel to stab her more than once. And so thin that I imagined the knife going in one side and the blade point sticking out the other, each thrust of the knife making two wounds, blood spurting out.
“All told, Serenelli stabbed Maria Goretti fourteen times.”
I wanted Father Staley to stop using the name Serenelli, because it was still hard for me to picture a devil named Serenelli.
“As she was dying, her last words were merciful — forgiving her killer. ‘I want him to be with me in Paradise!’ Christ on the cross turned aside and said the same thing to the good thief. That is why she is going to be canonized in a few months. She will be a saint! Christ provided the example for Maria Goretti. But who provided the example for Serenelli? It was Judas, the sinner, who betrayed Our Lord and Savior. Let us pray.”
I knelt and prayed but all I saw was the skinny girl in front of me, and wherever I saw bare skin I saw bleeding stab wounds.
More priests appeared in purple albs and frilly smocks at the altar, and the service continued with chanting and incense and foot-washing and the raising of a monstrance, a big spangled trophy with the host inside a round glass door, and the whole gold thing shaped like a blazing sun.
But I sat and stared at the girl’s shoulders and head, and I tried to sniff at her hair when she sat back in the pew. When the service ended I watched her leave. She did so in a hurry, not looking at me, which I felt was her way of noticing me.
5
Good Friday was a holy day of obligation: it was a sin not to attend church. I knew I would run into my friends. The week had developed slowly for me, the progress at church had allowed me to be near the pretty girl I devoured with my eyes from behind, the girl who, to my confusion, to my guilty flustered pleasure, had confessed to “impure thoughts.”
John Burkell was sitting on the church steps chewing his tie. When he saw me he started complaining about the length of the service.
“This thing is going to last a year.”
He was snapping a stiff card the size of a playing card.
“What’s that?”