My mother attended Mass at the little clapboard church for years before she formally joined it. Until then, she wasn’t a full member of the congregation and did not receive Communion—she didn’t want to upset her own father, the lifelong Methodist. Tucked away in a remote corner of southeast Alabama, my grandfather had never laid eyes on a Catholic before he met his future son-in-law.
The day before the wedding, one of the retired farmers who gathered on the Holsum Bread bench outside the community store had some news for my grandfather: the priest who performed the wedding ceremony would also mount my mother that very night. Hadn’t anyone mentioned it? It was a Catholic rule, the old farmer said. The bride must sleep with the priest the night before the wedding to confirm that everything was in working order, to be sure that other crossbacks would appear in due time.
In his wisdom, my grandfather said nothing. Only when my mother was confirmed into my father’s church did my grandfather confess the terrible story he’d heard. He hadn’t believed it, he said, and anyhow he was relieved she had finally seen her way to becoming Catholic: “I didn’t want to say a word, daughter, but a woman belongs in her husband’s church.”