Bless Me, Sister

J’ai ete-z-au bal au soir
Tout habille en noir
Je fais serment de ne plus boire
Pour courtiser la belle.

I went to the dance last night,
All dressed up in black.
I promise never to drink again
To court my beautiful girl.

Poem by Ivy Lejeune from the Les Acadiens d’Asteur

The only path to grace, a momentary state at best for me as a young Catholic schoolgirl, was to raise enough money every Lent to buy at least one pagan baby. It was an endless struggle of impure thoughts, unkind words, and wasteful actions locked in a battle with unattainable ideals. Little white paper boxes came to the Catholic classrooms the week before each Lenten season. Sister Benignus began distribution from front to back, each dirty soul grabbing his chance at redemption as the cardboard coin receptacles passed to the edges of the room. I vaguely knew where in Africa the money might be going as I struggled to visualize the face and body of paganism. For me, it took the form of dark, wet and unclothed people. I could feel a mother’s agony in a grass hut as she enveloped an unwanted infant in her saggy, empty breast. Years of National Geographic, a Catholic’s Playboy magazine, probably painted these images for me. All I knew was that I could put rice in bowls and milk in chests by giving up Saturday morning trips to Mr. Biddle’s candy store. Five dollars was all it took to feed one African baby and baptize him into a new life. All I had to do was stare down my depravity for 40 days.

It seemed simple at first. If I didn’t get on my bike and ride to Mr. Biddle’s with my brothers Anthony and Greg, I wouldn’t see the layers of boxes and colorful rows of B-B Bats, Turkish taffy, ruby red wax lips, peanut butter-flavored Mary Jane’s, day-long Black Cow suckers, and firesticks. Pretty soon, however, I felt left out of the lazy day ritual and rode along “just to read” recycled comic books stacked in the store corner, ten cents apiece if you wanted to bring them home. Walking along the counters, as my brothers loaded up on the three for a penny and two for a nickel treats, my torture was shoved to a conscious level. But, I quickly basked in piety and reasoned that eternal salvation was within my grasp. I could almost smell the soapy, clean scent of my spirit receiving its saintly bath. I was evolving into Holiness. Sister Benignus was going to be so proud.

Trips to the Saturday afternoon twenty-five cent movies were a little more of a challenge. Mom dropped the three of us off and I was in charge of two ungrateful scoundrels, my younger brothers, who of course, had money to burn on Dots, Junior Mints, and Milk Duds. I could get a dill pickle the size of a small refrigerator but the esthetics of it was all wrong for me. The retrieval of the rubbery, frog-like object from a jar of green swill with swirling seeds usually resulted in shriveled hands and lips, squinty, tearing eyes and a soggy napkin, the side effects of over-vinegarization. This seemed like way too much suffering for a continent I’d never visited. Popcorn was the usual substitute. As we took our seats close to the screen and prepared to watch black and white newsreels and serials featuring walls that move to squash beautiful women trapped in rooms with handsome heroes in dark suits, smacking sounds emitted from my two brothers. It was interminable anguish to watch them suck the life out of the fragrant boxes crammed up against their faces and dislodge caramel from their stuck teeth. I began to question my choice of suffering. Why didn’t I give up movies, Indian Baseball, Red Rover, Four-Square, Hopscotch, or Jacks. Sister Benignus said to give up something that’s difficult to live without. Candy met this criterion and still allowed me recess with my friends at school. And, the biggest payoff was how much money I saved. It would go into the white box with the cross on it!

I won my engagements with evil by becoming fortified through a Monday classroom ritual. Each morning, we stood by our desks, faced the American flag, recited the Pledge of Allegiance aloud, and then sat and listened to Father read prayers over the intercom. On Lenten Mondays, Sister Benignus lit fires of passion for more pain. There she stood, her squatty body swathed in yards of black fabric. Her pinched, pale face poked through a starched, white, bib-like construction of selflessness. Her enormous black belt supported an oversized rosary and leather strap (weapon), which she alternated with a wooden yardstick to strike reluctant readers. She pontificated eloquently about the needy around the world and restated how each child’s $5 was the hand needed to snatch souls from those muddy huts and thrust them into the comfort of God’s waiting arms. Circus carnies, take lessons here. She was so good at selling God that I never questioned the method, even when repeated requests from my classmates and me to go down the hall to the bathroom were cruelly ignored or rebuked. This often resulted in at least one child per classroom wetting the schoolroom floor during arithmetic at the board or choral reading, including me. We were extruded through the church’s purification framework, nuns crafting the die into which we were cast. Spunk, individuality, and creativity were the broken cookies in this factory.

Visits to the confessional provided another opportunity to stay the course of self-righteousness. I built up a large cache of mercy as I usually got credit in the confessional for larger sins than I actually committed. I discovered this quite by accident one day in a clumsily worded divulgence. A priest got the impression that I actually had sex with a boy when my description was only meant to cover unchaste thoughts. The result was a mere extra two or three “Hail Marys” and “Our Fathers” penance and a bona fide bonanza of a redemption strategy. It was a simple way to keep secret reserves in the event of Complete Conscience Collapse, which I sensed was in my future.

After a series of stockpile confessions, rosaries, and graphic tours around the church tracing the Christ’s steps through the Stations of the Cross, Easter came and we indulged our greed, gorging ourselves into a sugar-induced stupor. We all became like Uncle Brud, my grandmother’s youngest brother. Brud, a corruption of “baby brother,” still looked like the infant name he bore as an adult. He was over six feet tall, weighed in at around 300 pounds and sported a red round angelic countenance. He visited Mamam’s home every Easter and Christmas but we never had verbal exchanges with him. He usually plowed through the door with his compass set on "dining room table" uttering only grunts if young ones blocked his path. He heaved his corpus load onto fragile, cane back, homemade chairs and we held our breath and privately saluted the furniture. Brud emptied serving bowls of potato salad, jambalaya, pork roast and gravy, and mache choux. And with utensils ready for battle, he dispatched the next round of fresh, coconut cake, sweet dough pies, and fudge. Brud beat the food in his mouth with the precision of an electric mixer. And then, as if the breaker to the home's light source had been flipped, he froze, wide-eyed and motionless. My brothers and I caucused in hushed whispers about how much food was still lodged in his cheeks, waiting for retrieval and more chewing later in the day. His next move was to the living room sofa where he took root and stared off with no hint of delight or satiation. I watched Brud and marveled at his endowment--this child-man sibling of Mamam, Tante Nola, and Tante Swit had three tireless women in service to him.

I still stand in awe of the messy mysterious courtship of Catholic Louisiana and springtime. In February, the strict, Catholic ritual and kaleidoscopic celebration culture escort each other arm in arm at masked Krewe balls and noisy street dances. Each wretched sinner waltzes in a delirious trance with his own greedy excess. And by design, the transgressor recognizes his defects, gives them a costumed form, and ushers them out through the dogma and liturgy of the church that is Lent. Easter provides each ragged spirit with a rehabilitated soul and the promise of Love for eternity. Sinners call this grace. Cajuns call it living.

J’ai ete-z-au bal au soir
Tout habille en noir
Je fais serment de ne plus boire
Pour courtiser la belle.