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He was busy looking out at the audience to see the good turnout. “Yes child, a quick one.”
“I was just wondering, is God always with me, Father?”
He turned to her with a perfect, practised smile she’d been conditioned to once love. “Yes, child. Of course he’s always with you. Don’t worry, he’ll look over you in college.”
“Lord above”—she rose from the wall to take a needless step closer for how loud and in false dismay her next words were—“Even when I’m masturbating Father?”
It was then the holy spirit he’d been raving about for forty years must have possessed him judging by the sheer levitation of his robed arms and wobbling jowls.
“Here, look, they’re calling us out, Father,” Áine said as she gestured for him to lead.
Áine followed behind the weary shell of him, almost feeling bad for Fr Murphy by targeting the whole religion on his back. But then she recalled the Mother and Baby Homes, and the endless sexual abuse, and the many lives ruined, all handed out by his comrades and brother’s if not him, and so all she considered him was a man, just a man, complicit to the atrocities.
And that wouldn’t do.
Taking her place in the back of the choir because her teacher said that was all her charisma would grant her, she searched into the audience for comfort. Bypassing her family, she found him; Fionn O’ Rourke. He sat in the second row with a bunch of boisterous classmates, their shoulders together like paper link cut-outs for kids. Even hunched, he was taller than the others, his spiked fringe only adding to his form.
The organ consumed the nave, its transition out of silence always a frightening one that made Áine’s own organs somehow feel displaced. As she calmed from the fleeting sensation, she noticed something off about Fionn; he looked so unhappy, vacant.
An urge overcame her then as she reflexively opened her mouth to sing; she wanted to walk right down off the altar to him. Reach out and pluck his heavy hands from his knees. Bend to his line of sight and ask him what was on his mind. Because for once, she didn’t know.
Pulling from his vacant stare, he looked up to the choir in general, all their mouths rounding forAve Marialike the dentist had told them all to open wide.
No sooner, his eyes fixed on Áine specifically, right out of the line-up, drawing her in by sheer concentration of how blatant this stare was. It was so enthralling, she found herself notallowedto look away, as if some deity was controlling her bodily function for their entertainment alone.
Tension constricted her stomach and stopped her singing entirely. Because why now? Why give her any bearing of interest after how awful things had gone on the riverbank when she was forced, forced byhim, to undergo so much humiliation.
No more, she’d told herself in bed that night, her body still shivering from the cold. To her credit, it was one of the few promises Áine had ever kept to herself. In the weeks after, while he continued to sit next to her in English and they occasionally spoke, it wasn’t a progression of liking each other as before. It was stunted and stiff and awkward, and mainly focused on revising with how close the exams were.
But for all of this, she never felt an ounce of anger toward him.Never.
When the song ended, Fr Murphy began his sermon, dedicating much of it to the class leading into their new lives with the guidance of the Almighty and how through said guidance they must live in his mirror.
Áine refrained from huffing at that, acknowledging she was just at the height of her emergence and was inclined to disagree with even the kindest parts of Catholicism.
This was all followed by some more lovely singing, and lovely clapping and lovely handshakes as their ending of school life was condensed into the offering of a laminated certificate, which Áine actually held no value on despite how hard she clenched it as she met her mother and father outside the church.
“I suppose a congratulations are in order,” Áine’s dad had said without a hello, which was often the way with him. If Áine had inherited this ‘way,’ she had done away with it long ago.
Wearing his fancy striped, black shirt tucked into the jeans, he hugged Áine, albeit awkwardly and more so with one hand to pat on her back.
“Thanks, Dad,” she muffled into his arm.
“I see you didn’t take Communion,” her mam piped up between narrow-toothed smiles at passersby she might have gone to school with herself at one point.
Áine settled with an excuse, “I didn’t want to lose my place with the choir is all. Father Murphy didn’t mind anyway.” The words came out stern but not argumentative how Áine had intended.
Her siblings would say it was brazen of her to speak toMammyandDaddylike that and Áine wouldn’t disagree. That was another thing changing; her view of her parents in return. More than she’d care to admit, when she was younger, Áine warbled into mind the fantasy of them competing for her love. Not in the Hollywood gestured kind of way with flamboyancy and outward protections, but in the subtleties such as who would offer to collect her from Camogie training when neither wanted to. Who would go into her room to check she was alright when she’d been in there the entire day reading.
What struck her now along with the brewing evening wind on her cheek was those subtleties of competitive love weren’t done out of that very thing at all.
They were done out of duty.
But then again, it was Áine who had chosen the word fantasy when thinking all this. She should have known better than to think they truly loved beyond the expectancy. In fact, she was sure the only way they could love her right was if she were to die. So that they could mourn what she could have been in their own warped fantasy.
Her mam tutted and unfurled her folded arms to reach her hand out to have a look at the certificate.
Áine feeling tired, complied.
