December 4 – Dear Blessed Mother. Thank you for keeping our Mother alive. She has so much love in her heart for everything. She brought all of us into the world. If you look at a Cardinal and think about what he did with his life, and then you look at our Mother? No comparison, even if he is a Cardinal. By the way, did her baby go to Limbo?
It’s easy to love a baby, so I don’t know why it surprised me that Mother was so sad when she lost her fourteenth. She still had all of us. It wasn’t even born yet, and the baby didn’t have a name. None of us knew what sex it was, until Mother came home after the weekend. Then we found out it was a girl, although Mother never said anything. We just found out. I don’t know if I overheard Madcap telling Jeannie, or if it just seemed so perfect that it was a girl and then everyone agreed that it had been a girl. Daddy said it was a miscarriage. The fetus was about the size of a newborn kitten and it weighed as much as a bowl of Cocoa Puffs in milk. Newborn kittens are pretty cute, but they sure are small. A lot of women have miscarriages. A lot of babies never get born. Daddy says, “It’s a baby who wasn’t meant to live.” So why was Mother so sad about this one?
Something had tilted in the universe, because when we got home from the hospital, we learned how fantastically awry things had become. Daddy got an urgent call from the rectory. Cardinal Stefanucci had a heart attack on Thursday night after Thanksgiving dinner at our house. And while we were shopping at the base, he died. Just like that. It felt like the whole world was splitting at the seams; children were being sucked into manhole covers; pigeons were exploding; people inside photographs began to move.
The only thing we knew how to do in response to all this was say Hail Marys. The sound of our voices chanting the same thing over and over became a relief with its familiar, hill-and-vale sound. If we prayed, we could feel boredom in the face of frightening circumstances. It was a way of being normal. And of course we poured our thoughts and fears into the prayers. For Cardinal Stefanucci’s soul to enter the gates of heaven (I think he was pretty much a shoe-in). We prayed for the soul of Mother’s lost baby, although it had done absolutely nothing wrong. We prayed for Mother. I prayed for Clara—her baby was still alive, as far as I knew.
I had two urgent questions for God. Number one: Why did He let Father Stefanucci die? If someone had been in the room when he had that second heart attack, the Cardinal would be alive today. Instead the nurse was probably on the telephone, or doing her nails, and didn’t notice that he had stopped breathing. Just a little detail like that. God is so good at those details. He wasn’t paying attention!
And number two, after all the kids Mother brought into the world, why did God let that baby die even before it was born? Every time I thought about it, I started to feel mad. At God. It was probably a dangerous way to think, but I couldn’t help it.
Then I wondered what happened to it. Did it just get flushed down the toilet with all that bleeding? Or what? Where was that teeny baby whose kick I felt while watching President Kennedy’s funeral? I felt so sorry for Mother. Why didn’t they baptize the baby and give it a name and have a proper funeral? That way it wouldn’t be in Limbo while the rest of us were across the way, waving from heaven.
The least that God could do now would be to let Father Stefanucci intervene and get that baby out of Limbo. It’s so unfair! You’re hardly even a person, and you’ll never be able to really be in heaven. And it’s not your fault. It’s God’s fault.
Once Mother came home from the hospital on Monday there was an expectation that things would go back to normal, but she stayed in her room with the shades drawn. Daddy asked Mrs. Hopkins, a kind, thick-hipped woman with squishy-sounding nurse shoes to help us with dinner and laundry. Everyday he went from Shea Family Motors, back home, then to the rectory so he could hear the latest details on the rosary and the funeral. By that time Daddy had regular employees, including Paul, on regular shifts to make sure the drivers could get their gas.
When the day of his rosary arrived, the entire parish came to pay their respects. The Mayor of Pasadena, the Mayor of Los Angeles and a few Cardinals were going to be there. When Daddy drove Stefanucci to our house for Thanksgiving in his Rambler, I didn’t know this, but Cardinals have big black Cadillacs with chauffeurs. And today, a few Cadillacs pulled up in front of St. Andrew’s tower. All the boys wore their suits with the ties. It was the first time Jude had a tie on, and he kept pulling it off.
The Cardinal’s body was laid out in a heavy-looking coffin in the center aisle at the front. The dark and shiny wood glistened with gold fixtures along the side. From a distance, you could see Father Stefanucci lying on his back on a huge white pillow with his hands folded across his belly. He had a white pointy hat and a white cassock with red and black colors for accent.
Mother walked up the center aisle on Daddy’s arm, her head down, a black see-through veil over her face. I was right behind her. When she genuflected, she bumped the pew and spilled her missal, stuffed with holy cards of the martyrs, all over the marble floor right next to the casket. I turned beet red as I gathered up all the holy cards. I handed them back to her when she had a chance to sit down. But when I went to genuflect myself, I noticed another card. It was a faded snapshot of Mother sitting in a wheelchair in front of a window, looking down at a bundle, like a huge bandage, in her arms. The walls were white and shiny and reflected off a flash in the window. I couldn’t make out her expression. It looked like she was wearing a white hospital gown. The picture said Feb1945 on the white jagged edge at the bottom. I looked closer. I could see a very small hand just up out of the blanket, held in the cup of her palm. It was a baby’s hand, but it wasn’t grabbing Mother’s finger, like newborn babies usually do. It loosely rested there, in the palm of her hand. Now I thought of the blue bead bracelet and the lock of baby hair I had discovered with Mother’s wedding pictures, months ago. Here was a picture of the missing baby! And I knew that every time Mother went to Mass, she looked at this photograph, and prayed for this baby, which must have been hers. But right now we were all in the middle of a rosary for a very important man who had died unexpectedly. I couldn’t stop thinking about that hand. I was just dying to know what happened to that baby.
To my left was the casket holding our friend, Cardinal Stefanucci. When I got closer, what I noticed were his hands, which I had held when we were introduced at the entrance to the kitchen on Thanksgiving. They were draped with a rosary. He still had the ring on, and I could see the veins; they made his hands look like the bark of a tree.
I had never seen a dead person before. He was completely drained of anything, although you might be able to imagine that he was asleep, except he didn’t breathe. It was hard to look at him. He was so still. He would never open his eyes again, or talk, or read Green Eggs and Ham. Already, I couldn’t remember the sound of his voice. Only on Christmas day would we find out who he had picked for Kris Kringle, because that person wouldn’t get a present from him on Christmas morning.
It was standing-room-only in the church. There was a lot of murmuring as everyone filed up to have a look at him. And it’s not like they caught a glimpse and then walked on. Some of them stood around and stared; a few reached out to touch his hand. Were they curious as to what a dead hand felt like? The nuns filed up together in a black swish, looking somber and official, each one crossing herself when she passed him. Jeannie put a small wrapped gift into his coffin; he must have been her PX. It was really sad. He wasn’t even there.
All the guys processed up the aisle in cassocks flowing to their shoes, like they were being canonized. John-the-Blimp and Christopher Feeney held the cross and swung the incense. Daddy was next in line, followed by Monsignor Boyle and a few Cardinals, all dressed to the max in flowing robes.
Mother’s eyes were red and puffy, and I stared at her, wondering what she was really thinking. She reminded me of Jackie Kennedy dressed in black walking behind the coffin. Then I wondered if Mother was thinking about the funeral of her first love. She must have had a service for her soldier husband, and it would have been fancy, incense and honor guards in uniform with shiny shoes, saluting and folding up the American flag and giving it to the widow, just like at President Kennedy’s funeral. But Jackie Kennedy was holding it in for the whole country. Mother was not holding it in. She stared at the floor, tears streaming down her cheeks. I was glad there was a real funeral going on around us, otherwise I would be terrified, because of what was on her face. Her mouth was slack, her eyes dream-world staring. It was as if she wasn’t even there; she was somewhere else, far away. Daddy looked so important and official lighting the candle. Normally I’d be enjoying this privilege of my father up on the altar, but today everything felt creepy and weird.
We sat in the front two rows right next to the open coffin, as if we were truly the Cardinal’s family. Once everyone had settled into the pew, I realized I was trapped in the seat next to the aisle, with a dead body, maybe twelve or fifteen inches away. Even if it was Cardinal Stefanucci. He lay there like a heavy weight. Even though he was probably as light as a feather, floating around heaven right now. (Unless he had a few outstanding sins and was burning in Purgatory.)
People filling the church gave the feeling of being pressed close. Their breathing, their resounding voices when they recited in unison the words of the Hail Mary over and over again. It felt like huge cotton puffs filled in all the space around us. I gulped in, trying to find air to keep me alive. I looked across the pew in front of me. Mother was seated with her eyes closed. Why was she even here? She had spent the day in bed in the dark of her room. Daddy had to escort her on his arm out of the car, into the church, and up the aisle. She leaned on him, like he was holding her up. People thought she was crying about the Cardinal, but I know it was her little Cocoa Puff making her sad. Unfortunately the Cardinal wouldn’t be able to answer this question: Would we be separated from our baby sister for all eternity just because she wasn’t baptized? Can someone that small even be baptized?
We were only on the first decade of the rosary. I knew they were going to drag this out—they usually did. When you’ve got everybody’s attention, you’ve just got to milk it, that’s something I’ve learned from going to church. Monsignor Boyle was probably going to give some kind of sermon. Christopher Feeney sat with John-the-Blimp over to the side with their hands on their laps. They were both laughing under their breaths, then they sat up, looking serious like they were an important part of this ceremony.
It really bothered me. Christopher Feeney on the altar in front of us all. So we had to look at him, lily white and scot-free of any responsibility for his baby, soaking up all the attention. I took one of the envelopes in the pew in front of me, and one of the sharpened pencils. Usually I would write notes to Jeannie on the envelopes where it said “cash” or “amount” and pass it back and forth, making a joke out of it. Sometimes we invented new words, we were so bored. Today I wrote Feeney is a baby then scratched over the is and put has. Feeney has a baby. Feeney has a baby. I repeated it, so it would seem true. I knew it was. I put the envelope back. Maybe if someone else discovered it, he would have to admit it.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. My knees were sweating into the stuffed leather kneeler below me. My shoulder brushed against Jeannie on my right; I was trying to escape the dead body on my left. Jeannie pushed back. I can always count on Jeannie not to give me an inch. I looked across the pew in front of us at all our elbows and arms hanging over the edge one after another, jammed in like sardines. I felt hot, in spite of the marble pillars surrounding us. Maybe I was a fish squished in a can with all my fish brothers and sisters, not quite dead, out of breath from being out of water, but waiting for the lid to be closed forever. Like Stefanucci. I closed my eyes. How could I escape? I felt my heart beating stronger and quicker in my chest and I was afraid it would burst out.
Just then it occurred to me that the solution to my problem with my reputation had worked itself out when the Cardinal died. He would never visit our classroom, and I would never be exposed in my lies. What a relief. No one would find out that I made up every single story I told about Father Stefanucci. Teresa Feeney would not be able to lord it over me in front of all her friends. I wouldn’t be humiliated when the Monsignor and the Cardinal came to our classroom to ask questions and reminisce about how we all followed the Cardinal’s progress through Reports From The Vatican delivered by Miss Annie Shea. All of a sudden, this feeling came over me like none of it mattered at all. Instead, I wanted to cry.
I tried to distract myself from breaking into sobs, by looking up at the high ceiling above the columns. There was no one up there but my thoughts. My guardian angel was on a cruise, probably. Blessed Mother could be in Africa, saving someone from the boiling pot, even though at the same time she was cradling the Baby Jesus in a statue on the side altar, right over there. I had no idea where Jesus was, after all this dying he caused. My thoughts were probably sacrilegious. While all the high-ranking men were going on with their sermons about this important dead person lying fifteen inches to my left, I finally had to admit that the thing that had been haunting me was Lily. When I held her small body in my arms and had a look at her strange face. When I met and talked with her adoptive parents, while her real mother sat in her hospital bed, wondering and despairing. All her life Bee Bee would be remembering that other baby and thinking it was her Lily. All her life she would be missing her. All her life, Lily would answer to the name Christine, without knowing why it didn’t quite fit.
It was a festering secret; I could barely contain all the anger and sadness I felt about it, but there was no one to tell it to. “Dear Blessed Mother,” I said, but the words bounced back to me. I felt like I was going to burst.
Monsignor Boyle said, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”
We replied, “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”
Our voices died down. All the feet and bodies shuffled as we sat down with a noise that rippled up and down the church. I looked over at the statue of the Blessed Mother, her neck eternally cricked, smiling down at the Baby Jesus.
Then I remembered the photograph getting smeared in my sweaty hands. The photograph of Mother in the hospital gown looking down at a baby in her arms. What happened to that baby? None of us ever heard anything. As far as we all knew, there was no baby; the only thing left of it was the lock of hair in the wax paper envelope. And that baby is our half-sister or half-brother. Mother’s heart must have been broken all the way through when her baby was gone so many years ago. First her husband died, then her baby disappeared. Did the baby die? Or, did Daddy make her give it up like he’s making Clara give up hers? If we were forbidden to even talk about it, then Mother was forbidden to talk about it, too.
I looked over at her, slumping in the pew, quietly sobbing next to Daddy. I realized her expression was one I had never seen before, like she was far away and there was no way back. Even as she mumbled her prayers, I was afraid of the world coming apart.
There wasn’t anything I could do about our little sister up in Limbo forever. There was nothing I could do about Cardinal Stefanucci to bring him back. Or anything for the baby attached to that small hand in the photograph.
Maybe I was only twelve-going-on-thirteen, but there had to be something I could do for Clara and her baby.