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Chapter One – Giselle
For a religion that lauded itself on forgiveness, Christianity sure was violent. Just take their most well-known symbol: a crucifix. And not only that, but a crucifix with Jesus, God’s alleged son begotten by a mystical encounter with a virgin, nailed to it. His head hanging low, his body thin and gaunt; they never stray away from how terrible Jesus supposedly looked before his death.
Of course, he didn’t stay dead, but that’s beside the point.
Whether or not he knew he’d stay dead didn’t matter. He sacrificed himself to save humanity. Sure, there might be something to applaud for that, but going back to the religion itself: why so violent? Shouldn’t religion be an escape from the already violent world we all lived in?
I was a daughter of a self-made mafia king, so I knew all about the violence this world contained. The true depths of mankind’s greed and sick hunger.
And I shouldn’t be here. Not only should I not be here, sitting in the front pew of this church after mass had ended, but I shouldn’t be alive. Just three weeks ago I’d tried to throw myself off a bridge because I couldn’t handle the weight of being alive in this world anymore—and unlike Jesus Christ, I had no godly father to bring me back from the dead days later.
No, I didn’t have God, but I had the next best thing: Father Charlie.
I supposed I was here because of him, because he’d saved me that night, listened to me talk, told me the hardest part of this world was to live in it, to continue on even though there were no promises the struggle would get easier.
Father Charlie had saved my life, and now… I didn’t know why I was still here. I felt purposeless. Forsaken. Alone. My father would never understand; he was the one who sold me out to Rocco Moretti, so he obviously didn’t care.
No one cared about me. I had no friends, no loving mother to combat the acidity my father threw at me. I had no one, and I think that’s what made it worse.
What was I supposed to do with my life? How was I meant to go on when I couldn’t imagine what my life would be like in a week, or a month, or a year from now? How the hell could I be expected to go on alone for the rest of my life?
Father Charlie had walked down the main aisle at the end of the mass, and everyone had gotten up and gone with him. From what I’d seen before, some people didn’t leave right away. They stayed to talk to him, to talk to other parishioners. That had given me the option of moving to the front once it was emptied, and now I sat, staring up at the statue of Jesus Christ hanging on the wall behind the altar.
Violence. It always came down to violence, one way or another. Jesus was proof of that. I was, too. I guess when humanity was involved, asking for non-violence was simply asking for too much. We, as a species, were vicious and vile, angry and self-absorbed. Hateful.
And I was one of them. Try as I might to find peace in this whole religion business, I just didn’t think I could. My mother might have found herself in this, she might’ve enjoyed listening to Father Charlie drone on about similar things each week, but it just wasn’t me.
Now, that didn’t mean I’d stop coming, because what the hell else was I going to do with my life? At least it gave me something to do while I wasn’t in school.
Hah. School. Surrounded by other teens with normal lives, normal problems.
No one knew me. No one tried.
I didn’t know how long I sat there, staring at that cross, wondering why everything always had to come back to violence and blood, but it had to be a while. I picked at the gloves on my hands. Short things, satin, the color white, the color my father wanted me to wear in public.
White was an angel’s color, and I was his so-called angel. With my yellow hair in such contrast to his pitch-black locks, I supposed he wanted to play up my innocence to the world, even if it was a lie.
Because it was. It was the worst lie of them all.
“What’s on your mind, child?” Father Charlie’s voice entered my head, snapping me back into reality. He must’ve finished with everyone else, because he was in the process of sitting down beside me. He groaned as he sat in the wooden pew with me, gathering up his robes so he did not accidentally touch me with them.
Father Charlie was always careful about that. He was the only person who knew what I’d gone through, how it had made me feel, how I cringed at the thought of touching anyone, and so he let me have my momentary peace.
I did not tear my eyes off the cross in front. I couldn’t. I stared hard at the statue of a crucified Jesus as I thought about the violence and the hate; everything religion stood against, it seemed its followers contained in droves. How many wars were started throughout history because of one religion or another?
How could anyone find peace in something like that? I just didn’t get it.
“Do you remember my mother?” I asked quietly, still staring at that statue. My mother had died so long ago; if it wasn’t for pictures, pictures which I had to dig through the house to find, since my father had long since packed them up, I wouldn’t even know what she looked like.
She’d been beautiful. Thick, pretty yellow hair, like mine. Blue eyes that I did not inherit. She’d been a beauty, a stunner, a woman so gorgeous that my father had to have her.
But beauty was like religion. Just another reason for violence and hate.
Father Charlie was quiet for a while. He’d told me in the past he remembered my mother, but we never really spoke about her. I didn’t know if she simply came to mass and went to confessionals every week, or if they spoke beyond that.
And then, after a minute of silence, he spoke softly, “Yes, of course I remember your mother. She was a beautiful soul. You remind me very much of her.”
That got me to draw my eyes off the Jesus statue and bring them to Father Charlie. The moment I met his warm, amber stare, I realized just how sad he sounded when he spoke of her. Even after all this time, to still sound so despondent about her… she must’ve been an important member of this church.
