Here is Mary Liz. She climbs trees; carries a tall stack of books home from the Irondequoit Public Library every other day; once rode a neighbor’s pony through a blooming peach orchard, picked a ripe peach, ate it, and knew herself to be the luckiest girl in the world. She also crouched at the foot of the stairs leading up to her family’s locked apartment. She knew that her mother and baby brother were behind the door. “Your mother might be getting sick again,” Dad had said. He had the code to her mother’s mysterious and terrifying behavior. He was shelter. But, until he came home from work, Mary Liz was alone.
Is it any wonder that little girl fell in love the first time in kindergarten? The boy was skinny, his left shoe broken down at the heel, his long hair a wind-blown chaos. They never spoke a word. He was gone by first grade – and there was a new boy – another scruffy waif who never looked her way. That didn’t matter. As long as there was a boy, Mary Liz was safe in her imagination.
****
I am luckier than many in these plague times. I can walk in my neighborhood any time of day or night. I live a ten-minute drive from a quiet dirt road and forest, both of which I know as well as my roll-top desk. But, snow rules – and a few days ago I was snowed in – in a cluttered single-wide trailer. It was time to find space.
I found an old notebook, a 59-cent stenographer’s pad. I can tell from some of the entries that it dates to the late Eighties, when I lived in a cabin south of town, was blessed to run a few rivers and believed in a form of Change that seems these days, to be in short supply. I had written::
Fun has rarely been my first thought. No surprise. When I was a kid…oh no, not that, not another heart-rending revelation of what and how and who twisted up yet another woman’s spirit. Yes. But not another woman’s. Mine.
Spirit. Yes. Which was – when I was that little girl – represented as a chalkboard in a Catholic “Religious Instruction” class. Sins were chalk marks. Venial sins could be erased. Mortal Sins, many of which involved the Private Parts and mysterious juxtapositions of those Parts, and disgusting activities which no sane person would want to think about, much less do, Mortal Sins could never be erased. That much for Spirit.
So there you were, with a few sweet hairs on your “down there”, a premature taste for kisses, and a smeared chalkboard somewhere in the region of your heart. I once nearly stepped out in front of a car because I wanted to die – because I liked kissing Ricky B. more than I figured I’d like heaven (which was a place with no boys in black leather jackets, no slow dancing, and, what with us being freed of our mortal bodies, not even an occasional kiss to break the boredom of eternity.)
I had no use for heaven. Purgatory at least had challenges. In Heaven, you just sat around in opal light near the right hand of God – praising HIM. Purgatory was a bunch of stairs. You could take your time, not doing much – or you could go slowly up those stairs, which apparently were a little like an escalator. So, as you went up, thinking about your life and missing the “fun” parts, the chalkboard got magically wiped clean. When BINGO!! it was spotless, you got to be at the right hand of God, going “Oh, Lord, thou art so mighty, etc. etc. etc.” FOR ETERNITY!
Footnote on Purgatory: Since most of my chalk marks were probably going to be caused by boys, it made sense that there would be boys in Purgatory. And, if there were boys, there would be kisses. Hence, more chalk marks. It would take me and those boys a long long time to get to heaven. And, who knew, maybe in Purgatory, which did seem kind of like a mall, what with the escalators and all, there would be fresh-fried donuts.
Share on Your Social Media
