Too Close to the Falls (31 page)

I could tell things weren't going well, but I hadn't figured out exactly where they'd been derailed. “Catherine, do you know what Thomas said to the other Apostles when they told him that Jesus had been resurrected from the dead?” I didn't answer because Anthony McDougall was shooting rubber bands at me every time Mother Agnese turned her head and Clyde Ayers was firing moist spitballs out his lunch straw. She gave an exasperated sigh, and answered the question herself. “Thomas said that he wouldn't believe Jesus had arisen from the dead until he put his fingers into the nail wounds and put his hand into His side. Eight days later, after he checked the wounds of Jesus, he believed that Christ had arisen. Catherine, what is wrong with the doubts of Thomas?”

I thought for a minute. Still in grade two I hadn't yet realized that there was a perfect Mother Agnese Answer. I gave the answer I
felt
. “Well, I don't think there was anything wrong with it. After all, there could have been impersonators. I'm not criticizing God, you know.” I really wanted her to get that part straight. “Sometimes in the drugstore people impersonate others to pick up their prescriptions or make up fake prescriptions by stealing a whole prescription pad from the doctor's office. You have to double-check if you don't know the customer and it's a narcotic. Maybe someone was imitating God, and Thomas wanted to be sure he had the right guy. You've heard of double-checking, haven't you?” Her face looked impassive, so I continued. “Better to be safe than sorry; that type of thing.” There was a thick silence which I pushed through for one last kick at the can. “If someone rose from the dead, I'd want some proof that it was really the dead guy. After all,” I added lamely, “if people as unimportant as Ed Sullivan and Jack Benny have impersonators, why wouldn't God?”

Mother Agnese just shook her head as though there was no hope for someone as truly evil as me. “Catherine, I used to think that your soul needed a spring cleaning, but I now realize its entire structure is in peril. Could you please step up on the pull-down-map ladder and locate the crucifix.” I stood on my tiptoes on the ladder, touching the cold ceramic crucifix, awaiting more instructions. “Please place your fingers upon God's hand and side wounds and then tell us what it feels to be a doubting Thomas.” As I climbed down the ladder with shaking legs that made the ladder jiggle, I tried to understand what I had done wrong.

“Now, Catherine, do you know what Jesus said in rebuke to Thomas when he felt his wounds?” I had
really
lost touch of this exercise. You could hear a pin drop in the room. She continued, “‘Because thou hast seen me, Thomas, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and have believed.'”

Maureen Toohey raised her hand and said, “We have to believe in the soul. It doesn't matter how much it weighs.”

“That's right, Maureen. We
believe
that Joe Smith has a soul. We accept that as an act of
faith
.” I started to head back to my seat and Mother Agnese caught me by the back of my Peter Pan collar and said, “Catherine, you have my sympathy. It's a terrible burden to lack faith. You have been given many gifts — athleticism, leadership, intelligence, to name the most prominent. These gifts are only tools of the devil without the gift of faith. Each one of these traits makes you more appealing to Lucifer. You must pray for the gift of faith, pray harder than those whom you imagine to be more lacklustre. Remember, strong people have strong temptations.”

I nodded, wanting to get back to my seat before I began the search for faith. Sighing with relief as I finally sank back into my
desk chair without further humiliation, I found a crumpled note on my marred wooden desk which read, “You stink Mrs. doubting Thomas.”

As I walked home from school that day, I realized that I was really a mess. I'd had to go to Dr. Laughton because I jumped around so much. He'd said maybe I had worms since I never sat down, and now Mother Agnese said I had worms in my soul. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe all the worms were connected. My faith had been eaten alive from within. Everyone else in my class got it but me. I was just stupid. After all, I got a D in self-control, and was going to hell if I didn't get hold of this faith thing. I prayed to God, asking Him to help me and to strengthen my worm-eaten faith. Then I thought that maybe I'd be like Saint Paul, who was struck off his horse by faith, or like Mary Magdalene, who was a penitent. I now realized that lots of people who knew me were aware that I didn't have faith, but they just didn't want to embarrass me by alluding to this obvious defect.

When I got home my mother noticed I was pensive so I told her what happened and she was madder than I'd ever seen her. She went right to the phone and made an appointment to see Mother Agnese the following day. I was shocked to see my mother galvanized into action. She said Mother Agnese was being medieval. (I assumed that was about the middle of evil.) My mother said you could still have faith and exhibit intellectual curiosity. She said that measuring the soul was slightly impractical, but overall not a bad idea. She gave the example of Charles Darwin, who questioned the universe. Although unfortunately not a Catholic, he
did
believe in God. In fact, he'd previously studied to be a minister. He was simply interested in figuring out
the rules that God used to govern the universe. Because Darwin wrote
On the Origin of Species
did not mean he lacked faith. If Thomas Edison had waited for God to light the world, we'd still be in darkness. As far as my mother was concerned, there was nothing wrong with science, and blind faith was as ill-informed as atheism. These were new words to me but I recognized them as “fightin' words” and I was relieved that someone, somewhere, thought I might not burn in the fires of hell.

While hiding on the stair landing, I heard my mother telling my father that there was nothing more important than the Catholic faith. However, she was not going back to the Middle Ages to get it. Besides, it was mean to ostracize a little girl. What kind of way is that to treat an inquiring mind? My father said it was not good to undermine authority and he hoped they, as parents, wouldn't pay for it later. My mother said, “Well, do you want her to be like Irene?” My father asked what was wrong with Irene and my mother responded, “Nothing, I'm just using her as an example of an uninquiring mind. That's no way to go through life.”

My father also seemed slightly taken aback by my mother's vehemence and spoke in measured tones, “I'm not saying I want her to be an unthinking dolt. It's just that she is quite wild and possibly Mother Agnese knows more than we do about how to inculcate faith in a child. Maybe the inquiring mind should come later. Clearly Mother Agnese feels the way to educate
young
girls is to instill faith in them and then
later
allow them to see the complexities of the world and to learn how to question authority, whether it's God, the Church, teachers, or plain adults. Questioning should come after a healthy respect is instilled in them. I'm only saying this because she has taught girls for many
years and presumably she is the expert in the area. Cathy is already a spirited child and maybe Mother Agnese feels that she needs to be curbed.”

My mother listened to my father and then said quietly, “I'm just wondering what she is expert at doing.”

My father replied in a kind voice but one that said he knew from whence he spoke. “Don't forget,
I
work with Cathy all day. You have to sit on her way more than you think, especially if she gets a bee in her bonnet about something. Don't kid yourself. Roy keeps her in line far more than it appears. He has her respect.”

“So what's the problem?”

“I've seen her rip Irene up one side and down the other if she thinks she is wrong or attacking Roy. Cathy is a great worker, she does the work of an adult, maybe two, and she is loyal with a great sense of justice; however, when she feels wronged she will attack, no holds barred, and unfortunately she seems to feel entitled to do so. I don't think that is good for a little girl. In fact, I sometimes worry that she doesn't know that she
is
a little girl. What will happen when she is older? Teenagers can get out of control if respect is not laid in a careful foundation. Look at what happened to Sarah Welch. Girls can go astray and they need a firm hand. . . . That's all I'm saying.”

I listened to their breathing silence from the stairs. My mother always agreed with my father but now she was silent. I became frightened. Did this mean they were getting a divorce?

Finally my father said, “Naturally you have to do what you think is right and obviously you feel strongly about this and I agree with you. I'm just trying to look at it from all angles.”

I felt much less as though my soul was besmirched. I did learn,
however, that I had to put any religious questions on ice because I never wanted to go through that inquisition again. I learned that there were Mother Agnese Responses and then there was how I really felt. I also learned to differentiate between them and keep mine under lock and key if they didn't match.

About two weeks later, while I was perusing the biography shelf, searching for another book on Clara Barton in the children's section of the Lewiston Public Library, Mrs. Canavan, the librarian whose children attended my school, greeted me by sarcastically chuckling, “What can I get for you today, Little Miss Doubting Thomas?” I had gained back my equilibrium and told her in no uncertain terms that it was good to question things and it was not a sin to wonder about the soul, and I preferred to be called “Catherine” in all future library inquiries.

In 1952, at four, I believed that my opinions on the world, faith, and the soul were of value to myself and others and that television was designed to entertain and talk to me. By 1955 I'd learned that my views were not only uninteresting, they were heretical and if it had been another era I could have been burned at the stake. RCA Victor, someone who I had once thought of as a friend, who had tricked me into believing that he addressed only me, had now been turned into a country-wide phenomenon with TV dinners to match. In fact, by 1956 it was unusual
not
to have a television. Our home was no longer a mecca for the uninitiated. Those who wished to revel in the wit of Topo Gigio on Ed Sullivan could do so on their own time in their own living rooms. I had become completely blasé — even dismissive — about television except for the galvanizing moment when Elvis Presley appeared on
Ed
Sullivan
. That appearance rocked Lewiston to its very core and not a soul who watched it ever forgot it.

The week preceding the big appearance, Nee-Nee McGrath (her name was Denise but her baby sister could only say Nee-Nee), my teenage babysitter with the page-boy hairstyle and fringed bangs who carried around a transistor radio with rabbit ears, told me that this was the most exciting week of her life and in fact would make “human history,” the week that Elvis Presley would be “on the air.” The phrase bewildered me. I thought birds or the Holy Ghost were on the air — not Elvis.

Not wanting to be out of it, I charged to the dictionary to find out who Elvis Presley was. I found a Priestley who had in fact discovered oxygen. No wonder he was “on the air.” In order to strut my knowledge of popular culture, I pointed out to Nee-Nee that Elvis Priestley was the great inventor of oxygen. In complete agreement, she said Elvis had invented every breath of air that she inhaled as well as having invented rock and roll. It was several years later in chemistry lab, when I saw a picture of Joseph Priestley, that I realized that although Joseph and Elvis breathed the same air, they were in fact not one and the same.

In order to be able to converse with Nee-Nee and be part of the electricity of the moment, I began to read all of the magazines in my father's store that had to do with Elvis. I read them aloud to Roy until he couldn't take it any longer. I had him over a barrel because he wanted me to read everything that had to do with Marilyn Monroe to him. Naturally I informed him that for each Marilyn article we read, he had to listen to one Elvis. I made him listen to Elvis on the radio; he paid me back by dragging me to endure dozens of screenings of
Niagara
,
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
,
How to Marry a Millionaire
,
The Seven Year Itch
, and his favourite,
Bus Stop
. (We could spend a whole day with me acting the role of Cherie to his Beau. In fact, we had been known to regale Shim-Shacks tavern on occasion with excerpts of our dramatic renditions from
Bus Stop
.) I spent a great deal of time trying to get why Elvis was so popular, or Marilyn Monroe for that matter. When I asked Roy, he said some things are understandable the first day you wear stockings and high heels. He promised if I still didn't get it by then, he would explain it all to me. So I decided to shelve it and live vicariously through Nee-Nee's enthusiasm.