I.
In my childhood bedroom that I share with my younger sister, a dry holy water font hangs above the light switch. The font itself is a small terra cotta cup and above it, a Hummel-like figure, a pastel version of a blond cherub, carved in two-dimension. The idea of holy water in my bedroom vaguely terrifies me, the idea that I need to bless myself before sleep, as if that ritual might ward off night demons.
So much can go wrong in the night. So much terror lurks in the room—beneath my bed, in my closet that houses the attic stairway, dark and drafty and inexplicably creaky at night, at least to my young girl brain as I lie there, wanting sleep, terrified of never waking up.
Religion seemed to me then a kind of shield against worldly terror. The rituals of Catholicism offered concrete methods to protect myself against—what, I didn’t know exactly— all that I couldn’t yet understand.
II.
A memory. One day, when I am twelve, I am listening to the radio with my summertime best friend, Sharon. Back home in my non-summer life, I don’t listen to the radio. I don’t have one in my shared bedroom. I know nothing about popular music but I don’t want to admit to Sharon that I don’t know who Jim Croce is or Paul Simon, that I don’t know the words to Kodachrome or Bad Bad Leroy Brown. From this side of memory, I don’t remember which song Sharon and I are listening to. What I recall is the cracked pavement of the street, the salt air sticky with humidity, our bare feet, leathery-tough soles on asphalt, pebbles and sand between our toes. We might have been wearing our two-piece bathing suits, me already conscious of my body, my tummy, my largeness and lack of grace.
And the song, maybe it was Kodachrome, soundtrack of that summer, and I sang the chorus, my voice as unsteady as my thoughts about myself, but singing anyway, carrying the tune—when I hear Sharon, her voice sweet and high, singing something other than the melody, the first time I realize there were any other words, any other way to sing.
III.
There is so much that is never said outright, at least not in my house.
Religion.
How to be me.
The holy water font, though empty, in spite of my misgivings about Catholicism even then, stays on the wall. I imagine a conversation something like this:
Me: What happens if I take you down?
Font: Nothing happens. You think I have that power?
Me: You seem to—you sit there and I don’t know, you seem to…
Font: Here’s what I think. You’re giving me the power. Me? I’m just offering. I’m here if you want me, but that’s entirely up to you.
I imagine a voice that is quiet, gentle.
It’s hard to know whether to follow the melody or not, to listen for those harmonies. But once I hear the other parts, I can’t not. I hear them everywhere.
What is offered doesn’t need to be chosen. There is a kind of grace that carries us through.
Patricia Smith is the author of the novel The Year of Needy Girls, a 2018 Lambda Literary Award finalist. She has been teaching American Literature and Creative Writing at the Appomattox Regional Governor’s School since 2006. A native New Englander, she received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her nonfiction has appeared in several anthologies, most recently Writing through the Apocalypse: Prose and Poetry from the Pandemic. Her short fiction and nonfiction have also appeared in various literary magazines, including Dirty Spoon, salon, Hippocampus, Feels Blind Literary, Parhelion, and several others. She lives in Chester, VA with her wife.