Saints and Sinners

growing old is not for sissies

and

even at seventy she wanted Mammy some days,

it did not matter how old you were…

…sometimes you wanted your mum…

and

she rocked in her Bentwood

and

thought and remembered her young days and a warmth came over her, enveloped her and held her and she knew that Mammy was with her in spirit, comforting her and telling her that all was ok and to keep on going, on and forward

and

she remembered how they thought what a good girl Kathleen had been…

…everyone thought that and they had all said so. They had said that she would marry quite soon, wait till she was sweet seventeen to be promised, a virgin bride,

and

Kathleen went to church to pray each day, to dust the altar and to polish brass with Mammy and that he who would marry her was a fortunate man indeed…

…that’s what they all said…

…that’s what was expected…

She knelt and prayed for all the things she wanted and needed and they were not like the things other girls her age craved to possess, not ribbons and pretty bags with studded sequins or shiny rings on their fingers…for Kathleen it was an amethyst dragon claw ring but she could hardly wear that in public in the village now, could she?

I need black!, her mind screamed, B L A C  K, black! Everything black! Black lippie I need, black polish for my nails, black wrist protectors with silver studs but where will I get what I need? A whip to lash, fishnet stockings to wear and black boots with laces…but would anyone ever see? Oh yes, YES!, the whip, just whom would she whip? She would find someone somehow, she had to get even. No one hit her with a ruler across her open hand for a lie she had not told…but here was no one in the village. She would have to run away but being the age that she was, was really not good, and a virgin still was such a drawback…more prayers were what’s needed…as in the end you got just what you wanted…is what Mammy said and Da looked up over the top of the paper, nodded his agreement: a nice handsome young man for the girl of his heart he would say and chuckle and carried on reading the news…

Praying to Saint Gabriel might help, thought Kathleen or Archangel Uriel or Michael the Good. And Mammy must never find out why she prayed such a lot and she must never know  she found the whalebone comb that Grandma had, that she plaited her hair, held it up with the comb and sat naked in front of the mirror and kissed it to see how the first kiss might feel…and if I can’t have black her mind shouted, I’ll go for the red but how, how am I going to get it? For now praying for it all would have to do…

 …the new priest was a kindly fellow Kathleen pondered, he had seen her often in the church and he was bound to keep her secrets…perhaps give her a penance for the telling, a few Hail Marys maybe but might he not also help her? Work it through as it were? Get all those things for her to break the habit of her sinful thinking?  She’d get sick of it all in the end, he would say, give it all up with relief and live up, at last, to the expectations of her Mammy and her Da to get married in white in the church…

…I’ll go to confession and I’ll talk to him then, is what I’ll do, she decided…but what’ll I say? And how will I say it? Bless me Father for I have sinned? But I haven’t, protested her mind,  not YET, only in thought and in the thrill of the planning… who would run his hands in caresses on her nets and who would smell her gothic almond scent, take her, ravage her and love her forever? Ohhhhh, bless me Father for I want to sin?  I SO want to sin! Doesn’t count that, though, does it? No penance for that, is there, for unsinned sinning?

Well, I will talk to him and I just know that he will understand me and he’ll help…

…it wasn’t an easy walk, the walk to the church that day, her blood flowed like lead in her veins but it had to be done, Kathleen was sure…

…I have needs Father

and

I want a tattoo

I want cuffs

and

suspenders

and

fishnets…..

in black Father...black or in red ….

She held her breath… there, she’d said it, it was out! Heart pounding, she’d done it now and she sat very still, closed her eyes waiting for the wrath of the guardian of her church. He was breathing hard and she knew he would condemn her not in whispers so all in church would hear her shame….

…she heard him stand, and heard his cassock rustle and an intake of his breath

and

a red stockinged netted knee appeared to her behind the grill…

…like these my child?, he said barely audibly, like these?

Kathleen looked at her special box quite often and remembered…she’d kept all the gear and looked back at her time as his keeper and the fun they had had…Mammy and Da had not been happy that she did not want to marry but be instead the keeper for the priest…but then she was such a good girl…as everyone had said…her heart in the right place, to be housekeeper was the saving grace….

and

a warmth came over her then as she rocked

and

she knew that Mammy approved….

and

she would carry on

and

keep on going

and

that growing old was not for sissies….