Too Close to the Falls (35 page)

After dividing our M&M's on the curb in front of the store, we were strolling home licking our popsicles, when a boy who looked even older than Harriet's brother blocked our way on the sidewalk, smiling broadly, and said in a kind of singsong voice I'd never heard before, “Hey, Harriet, what's ya got there?”

She turned on him viciously and screamed, “Get out a my way, you sorry ol' thing —
hear me now!
”

He didn't seem offended but just moved to the side. “Emm, emm,” he said in a mocking tone and laughed, clearing the sidewalk with alacrity. I was shocked that Harriet could scream like that. I had goosebumps from the whole episode.

She went right back to discussing the meet and how we could go for our deli sandwiches afterward. She wondered if we were too young to dine out alone. She thought maybe no one would wait on us. I assured her I'd been dining out for years and I was sure anyone would wait on you if you could order and pay the check. That is, unless they had different rules in New York. I informed her that in Lewiston they seemed happy to take your money for services rendered, no matter what your age. She remained dubious for some reason, so I suggested we take Mr. Colderos with us and she seemed much relieved. As we changed for bed, Harriet locked her room door and left it locked all night.

When we got up, Harriet's mother had gone to a job cleaning houses on Fifth Avenue and the man on the couch must have silently slipped away. We made our own breakfast, which was kind of exciting, and then we headed out for the subway.

Harriet knew every turn of that subway and she had a shopping list from her mother as well. I was amazed at this catacomb for commuters under the earth. I felt like a Christian hiding from Nero and was amazed when we rose above the ground and found Mr. Colderos standing at the top of the subway steps. We were in a suburb with trees!

We drove to a huge stadium where there were announcers overhead in a little lean-to on the top of the bleachers, and people had to pay admission just to see us. I was flabbergasted to see the hundreds of spectators. As Harriet and I stretched on the lawn, I
noticed the majority of the athletes were black. I thought this was odd as I hadn't seen any in Lewiston, and only one or two at the regional event. Harriet knew some of the people and she immediately told them we were going out to lunch at the Carnegie Deli, which seemed to her to be a bigger deal than the meet. With my blond hair and pale skin I never did well in the sun and Roy had reminded me to wear my hat right up until my jump, since he'd seen me get sunstroke on a few occasions when we took out my mother's convertible. Unfortunately I'd left it on the plane in the overhead luggage rack, but I figured that God would help me out. Most of the black kids looked sort of scrawny, nothing like the intimidating German girls from Syracuse. They were laughing and chatting and didn't seem very focused on the event, so I allowed myself to fantasize about walking away with the state championship. I mentally prepared my speech, thanking Mother Agnese, McClure's Drugstore for the sponsorship, and the kind hospitality of Mayor Wagner.

They called our age group first since we were the youngest. I was amazed to see there were dozens of us and mine was the only white face in the crowd. I suddenly realized how Roy must have felt in Niagara Falls. The New Yorkers outnumbered everyone in the high jump, the only event that I was competing in. The field had a track around it with people running races, bright colours were flashing by in my peripheral vision, contestants were laughing, slapping each other's hands, start guns were firing every few minutes, and finally the sun was making me see spots in front of my eyes. There was no respite from the noon-day sun when I stood awaiting my turn in the middle of the track. These athletic events happened simultaneously, cameras flashing at each one,
especially when Mayor Wagner approached our area. Bulbs flashed everywhere, contributing to the spots before my eyes. It was like a three-ring circus with a ring for the broad jump with its sand pit, one for hop, skip, and jump, and one for the most popular event — the high jump. The runners circled the three rings on a peripheral oval track. This area was teeming with officials trying to keep out the crowds and other officials.

First there would be preliminaries and then there would be twelve finalists. I watched and noticed that no one made the sign of the cross, so I was in like Flynn with God on my side. I told myself the things that Mother Agnese always said, like count on your guardian angel for the lead up and then switch to the Holy Ghost for the spring — after all, He had the wings, and He was in the sky.

Finally it was my turn. I had three trial jumps. I told myself not to worry, after all this was only the preliminaries. I thought the pole looked higher than usual. I followed a girl from Brooklyn who had a real fan club in the audience. She went over the pole in the strangest way I'd ever seen. I noticed between sets, while I sat at the sandpit, that some other girls were going over the pole in this same kind of flop. They began their approach straight toward the bar. Then they arched their backs over the bar and kicked their legs out to clear it, landing on their shoulders and back. As they arched over the bar they were clearing it by inches while I was clearing it by a hair.

I missed the first time and the pole fell over. I was jumping the gun and sprang too early to clear both feet. The second time I made it, but the pole just caught on the back of my foot. I was shaken by the third time and nauseous from the sun. But I told
myself that I really had to stop quivering and jumping too early. My legs were wobbly and I suddenly realized I was in the middle of New York, Mother Agnese was not here to guide me, there was no one in the audience who cared, and that I really had to pray and offer up all my sins. In those two seconds I thought of more sins than I ever remember reciting in the confessional. I took deep breaths. The crackly voice on the microphone told me impatiently again and again to go ahead. I called out all the armies in the heavens. I made the sign of the cross and called upon my guardian angel, my patron saint, my namesake, Saint Catherine of Aragon, and God, the Father. I decided to call on the big gun, forget Jesus and the Holy Ghost. I told God how sorry I was for all my doubting Thomas behaviour. I told Him Mother Agnese was right that it had hurt Him more than Judas, who betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver. I also knew I made fun of people and imitated them just to get laughs from the other workers at the store. I winced when I pictured how I made fun of Crazy Eddie by turning my baseball hat sideways and crossing my eyes and speaking with rapid-fire urgency the way he chattered about the Dodgers. I would never again, as Mother Agnese said, make fun at the expense of others. I promised God that I would become a nun in the Belgian Congo and never try to be the centre of attention again.

I came to the horrible realization, as I stood with hundreds of people looking at me, that I was really a bad person and that God was allowing me to get to New York to show me how pathetic I was. After all, you can only fall from a height. I had to realize, to have my nose rubbed in it. . . . I was a big fish in a small sea. It was all a plan, an elaborate plot on the part of God for me to
confess all my sins, not just the I-disobeyed-my-mother-five-times-this-week kind of confession, but the gut-wrenching I'm-really-a-person-who-hogs-the-limelight-at-the-expense-of-everyone-else's-needs-and-I-am-truly-in-the-marrow-of-my-bones-a-bad-person kind of confession. Mother Agnese's lines of censure ripped into my brain, sounding like a distorted voice reverberating within an echo chamber, closing in on me. “Catherine, I hope they have a vaudeville show in the burning fires of hell, so you may be gainfully employed” took on new meaning for me. On top of the realization that my antics were hell-bent, I also had to face that my previously touted wildly athletic body was really not able to make it out of the preliminaries in Harlem. To say nothing of the fact that everyone who made it out of the preliminaries flopped over the pole and arched their backs giving them inches more space while I still used the antiquated straddle.

I had been flying too close to the sun and now God wanted to singe my wings permanently. He wanted me to feel the burn. I had to see it, feel it, ask for forgiveness, and
then
fail. That was the humbling plan so I could still have the opportunity to save my soul through humility as Mary Magdalene had washed Christ's feet with her hair and been redeemed. I had to become the penitent and how could that happen if I was determined to entertain? It
is
the meek that shall inherit the earth, the world of eternity.

All this went through my mind as I stood there, maybe in two seconds. I came to the horrible realization that this was my moment in the blistering sun. If I didn't make it through the preliminaries, I would not have a second kick at the can. I would have to see all the expectant faces at the airport. My father and
Mother Agnese would be most disappointed. My father would put on that brave smile and tell me I'd done my best. He was a great believer that hard work reaps rewards. I knew these kids hadn't practised as hard as I had. Some of their approaches were messy and inconsistent, yet they soared over the pole effortlessly, as though gravity only affected those from Western New York and ran out of steam once it came to Harlem. I guess all kids have a point in their lives when they realize their fathers don't know everything. It sure is a painful moment. I believed my father when he said I could win if I worked hard enough. He never told me that talent sometimes wins out and that's just a God-given endowment. I think I could have accepted that if only I'd known it ahead of time.

Mother Agnese now lived inside me and I knew her take on this would be to try and offer up my disappointment to Christ for the souls in purgatory. The whole thing came crashing down upon me as the loudspeaker bellowed,
“Number 63, number 63, Western New York, begin now or claim disqualification.”
I ran at the right angle and straddled perfectly, but the pole was simply too high for me and it clattered to the ground. I was out. My high-jumping career was dead, never to be resuscitated.

My years droned on at Hennepin Hall School. As far as I could see I'd peaked at nine and was now on my way down the mountain. I was just putting in time waiting for something to happen, and what that would be I had no idea. After all, Saint Paul was stricken on the road to Damascus and he hadn't known it was going to happen. I'd ceased even to attempt to be a shining light since I'd bombed in both the athletic and ecclesiastical departments. I was
no more than a lightning rod of discontent in the eyes of Mother Agnese, who had been promoted to Mother Superior, a title she took in stride. I made sure that I kept all my questions and doubts to myself, but with each passing year I felt more and more isolated, different from those around me. I put on a good cover, still captain of the teams, but I kept a different heartbeat, an arrhythmia that only I heard.

One day Father Flanagan walked into our classroom, accompanied by another priest who wore red satin and a matching little red beanie. Mother Superior fell to her knees and kissed the ring on his grandly extended hand. He was a cardinal who had come from the Vatican to see Niagara Falls and to attend an ecumenical conference. He said, in a thick dialect which I had by now learned was not a speech impediment but in fact a New York accent, that he had an announcement from Pope Pius XII for all of the United States. I guess he hoped that we in grade five in Lewiston would spread the word. He said he was sent with our Holy Father's message which would be fully explained in a film strip. He had a tape recorder and a projector. This was amazing to us since our only visual aid thus far had been chalk. Father Flanagan set up the projector, which he referred to as “Mr. Disney's Miracle,” and the cardinal provided the vocal backup. First of all he wanted to show us the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel and the work of Michelangelo. Since I knew most of the biblical characters, at least through the eyes of Mother Superior, I was entranced by Michelangelo's version of their stories. All of the stations of the cross that I had spent so much time looking at suddenly came to life before my eyes as the images were thrown up on our wall in the dark room filled with Gregorian chant.

He showed us a slide of a girl who received a free three-week trip to Rome and got to stay at the Vatican and have a visitation with the pope. A written message flashed across the screen.
“Why, you might ask, was this girl from Wichita, Kansas, chosen to go to Rome?”
The next frame gave us the answer.
“She won an essay contest and became the U.S. emissary for the World Reading Foundation of Catholic Schools.”
The next frame told us who could enter.
“Why, last year, the first year of the contest, we had over 3,000 applicants from Los Angeles alone. If you are enrolled in an American Catholic School and are under twelve years of age, you may enter!”

The cardinal then handed out applications that were to be judged by a panel of archbishops across the U.S. The best twenty would be sent to Rome to be judged by a coterie of cardinals. The application only had a number on it and we were each given a ticket. At the top of the page it said to fill in only one side. He turned off his slide projector and then we were all given thirty minutes to complete our forms. When I looked at mine it read, “Complete this line and expand in no less than 25 and no more than 100 words; READING IS FUN BECAUSE . . .”