Easter never feels like a real holiday...not the kind you get excited for. I guess, more so than Christmas and its capitalism and Thanksgving with its orgied marathon of food, Easter has held onto God. Or God has held onto Easter...
I will go to an Episcopal church for Easter. Grace Cathedral. I will wake up early and wash my hair. I will try my best to keep up. For the sake of ritual. Five minutes into the service and I've drawn seven people, circled every funny word in the program and whispered back and forth with the put upon stranger beside me about whether or not I can take communion. And how do I do it? And will we really all drink out of one cup? She stops answering when I ask her if she has anything contagious.
Then, as I'm retracing the logo on the front of the program with my retractable pencil and trying to get a good look at a fat pastel woman in head to toe white fur, I feel the thin shadow of crazy peeking over my shoulder like a giant mouse. Is it a giant mouse? I shudder.
Apparantely, so does she. Shudder. Constantly. You might call it more of a visible pulse though, as it never effects more than one region of her body at once. She is standing right besinde me (behind and to the side) tapping her feet even though there are seats. I know she must be a renegade and I cannot keep her, especially as I am a bit of an outcast here myself, but I decide to name her anyways.
Grace Cathedral. Just to keep things simple in the face of complicated architecture, the strange woman and the strange place get the same file.
A stranger in black...leather jacket hitting below the waist and above the wrist, black pants that seem decent but badly tattered on the bottom (so much so that thin little black strings drag along the marble floor when she stops to rub it.)
Her feet...Grace Cathedral's feet never stop, whether pacing the aisle between the center row of pews and the stage right rows of folding chairs, or tapping absently the impatient anti-rhythm of a child with a full bladder. Her feet keep moving along with her mouth as if both were competing to insist something be said.
She said "Fuck." I heard it. And "shit" while her worn out grey tennis shoes shoooook. The laces appeared to have been chewed and I'm trying to act devout while imagining her gnawing on her own feet like a thin coyote. And I'm trying to act devout because I feel like a standout in church enough as it is. Like I need a fucking parrot on my shoulder...
Not sure why I feel that way. I was raised in a church, but something about going back makes me feel like just by breathing the holy air I'm telling a lie...like wandering into an open house just to see what someone else's life looks like and they've shoved everything in a drawer and Febreezed the hell out of the place.
Why are the crazy people drawn to me? Grace Cathedral is standing right by my folding chair. Her tennis shoe is tapping right on top of my purse strap. I look longingly at the rows reserved for families with children, the purses and bags stacked neatly under the pews, away from insane person feet. So it seems one must reproduce in order to get complimentary bag security. But the foot is not planted. It's tapping. So there are these infuriating seconds of missed opportunity. I could nudge the purse out of the way with my own foot, but I risk mingling my feet with hers and already I am convinced people think we are together. Like I need a parrot.
I catch fractured words "this...dysfunction...will go well." I can't be the only one trying to listen to her. Others seem to be watching as she drops to a crouch on her ankles and makes a wide rubbing sweep over the floor with both hands, cupping them upward and surveying whatever invisible treasure she must see...invisible to me? Is it invisible to all of us but her? I might believe "crazy" people know something we don't. I might believe that. They thought Galileo was crazy.
"Cut the crap Bobby" has a bit of a whisper to it and I grin a little with the satisfaction that no one would ever think I was named Bobby. Grace Cathedral has established herself as a free agent. She drops to her knees this time, ass in the air like an animal, sweeping the marble block floor with both hands again. And again she lifts both hands in a cupping motion and again...wait, this time her hands seem to be going higher. Will she drink the floor? I mouth "Agnus Dei" or "Praise be to...Mercury" and keep watch in the very far corner of my eye as she has distanced herself a bit from me and is...sliding her hand immediately into the neck line of her shirt, or jacket I suppose you would call it.
I am struck by two thoughts:
1. Is Grace Cathedral wearing a shirt under her leather jacket?
2. She's doing it to feel the cold of the floor on her chest.
I understand now. I stare at her face. No makeup, hair uncolored and everytime she dips to the floor again it falls over her face and the pink plastic child's barrette that holds half of it back, no specific center part to the style but it's clean. She uses her fingers to smoothe the edges of her mouth a lot and twist her lips nervously and it seems, no matter how hard I stare at her, that she either doesn't notice, or doesn't care. She doesn't care. This woman is a renegade. This woman may know I am attempting to draw her face which is three feet (or less) away and isn't making eye contact with me. Why, Grace? Why won't you look at me? I'm looking at you.
I bet I could out crazy this bitch, I think. I bet I could out crazy her good. But then, doesn't "outcrazying" someone mean you actually have to believe the crazy shit you are doing? I might just be faking it. Even so, I wait until I think she might be watching me and slowly, with the confident and cautious reach of a zoo worker, lower my right hand to the floor. And I'll rub the floor once with my right hand...a real wide arc. Except, just as I'm about to do it some Deacon or hall monitor or really old altar boy makes a purposeful beeline for me.
Is this woman a constant feature? I jerk my hand back. What I am doing must be dangerous. I had wondered privately several times why he was standing there like a sentry at the front of the aisle. Emotionless. I'd drawn his face. I'd craned my head to check out the stage left aisle and see if it too had a man you might think of as "in charge." It didn't. So maybe this was it. Maybe this man's sole responsibility was to make sure no one made actual or even approximate contact with this woman. She's probably a millionaire. She probably built this sanctuary with her dead husbands money and I was going to try and outcrazy her and I was going to try and imitate her and they're obviously prepared for her position. She has her own guard and religious people are suppposed to be crazy...with a routine. Crazy with a routine and I was about to disturb it and now I will be kicked out of Grace Cathedral the place because I had the cute idea to cross Grace Cathedral the person who the place is named after and they've probably been thinking about ejecting me anyway since I showed up in cowboy boots and didn't use my hands to lift the communion cup or hit the high note on any of the three verses of Hymn 210.
I will practice my breath control when I get home. I will pracice it. Brother serious grey suit comes to a stop.
"Excuse me Miss?"
My head jerks up like a dying bee. I had hoped to convey a look of wealth. I squeak something in reply.
He ignores me. "Miss?" He's speaking to Grace Cathedral. I face front keeping my sneaky eyes off to the side. I am not in trouble. I am fitting in. He's talking to crazy.
"Miss, have you taken communion yet?"
I must not be the only one eavesdropping and he's asking her this because she's standing inappropriately. This is not protocol and I am witness to a minor scandal. I am an anonymous gossip monger waiting to hear her response. It's vaguely rude and vaguely unintelligable. She waves him off. He returns to his post, obviously annoyed. With her.
She doesn't have a guard. She's not some wealthy eccentric. She's just some poor coffee brained burnout who likes to rub the floors of churches. Serious grey suit might even be my body guard. As I ponder that posibility I start to notice a firm but gentle nature to his face, like "I'm looking out for you kid. You're new here, but the kind of face we want to have around." He won't let that crazy cockeyed bird even flap her tongue in my direction. A tongue I imagine is probably forked. I sigh with the righteous. I can sigh with the righteous.
Just some crazy old wire she is...but they thought Ghandi was crazy. They thought Martin Luther was crazy! I sling my eyes over the faces of the room...most eyes dead on front, or fidgeting, hushing children and milling loosely about the aisles, slapping their footsteps in the offbeats of holy words. No! I am not part of this. Seven year old boy with feet like a puppy shrugs off his father and stomps the ground to make his tennis shoes light up. Elderly women with fabulous hats study the content of their noses. No no no no no I am not part of this crowd. Grace Cathedral-
Grace? She seems to be missing. Must have moved back a bit. Maybe muttered her way into an aisle. I engage the vertebrae of my neck and move my head like some periscopish gadget. Nowhere. No. She's gone. Grace Cathedral? I almost say it out loud. I never gave her a real name and now she's...In some alternate universe I might have dropped to my knees and screamed "Stella!" I might have even managed a tear. But here comes the Finale over the organ from Symphony III whatever that means and I know she is lost.
I drop to a crouch on my ankles and rub the floor in a wide arc of tribute. The floor is not cold. My hands are covered in thick-grained dirt and other people's skin cells, but I finish the ritual, cupping them upward and sliding my right hand across the skin of my chest. Grit. Palm full of dirt. Nothing.
So the service is over and after lighting one candle "for my father who lives alone" and desperately waiting until it had melted enough so that just a bit of the wax would fall onto my finger (which it never did and I'm sure the tilting I was giving it and the look of impatience in my eyes caused several to back slowly away) I wandered a bit, trying to get into some room I wasn't really supposed to be in. And after pretending to kneel at the candle station to pray and after pretending I hadn't been ignored when I tried to clarify the argument two men were having as to whether it was Memphis or Chattanooga that was in East Tennessee, I found that room.
And I saw her again. Crouched behind a wall of spare flags and banners stacked up backstage, I saw her almost alone in the massive sanctuary. Most people were chatting through the process of filtering out or linked by eye contact and a firm hand hold to one of the religious leaders or one of their children, while she muttered through the rows on her dear itchy feet like a zigzagging angel, agitated and old.
I decided to pretend I hadn't seen her again. I wanted it to end with the palm full of dirt and the nothing.
