Demons Read Free Page A

wooden crucifixes,
like swords. She still remembered their names and would recite them
like a litany. Sister Joan, Sister Carmel, Sister John Bosco,
Sister Mary, Sister Bernadette, Sister Andrew. They were not only
fierce, said Mum, they were also tougher and meaner than most of
the toughest, meanest kids. They belted kids including Mum once
when she’d been only a tiny bit naughty.
    Mum’s description made me feel scared of
them even though I’d never met them and never would. Because the
days of the black-belt nuns were over. They’d all got old, retired,
gone mad (according to Mum, who still felt bitter about the
treatment she’d received from them) or died. There were hardly any
new nun recruits, not surprisingly. The school didn’t have any nun
teachers at all when I was there.

    I used to think my school was a pretty
normal, everyday, common-garden school. I believed that every kid,
no matter which school they went to, got taught how to pray.
    Young Ms. Proctor taught us religion,
including prayer formation. One day she started teaching us the
rosary. She was very pleased when I said I already knew all about
it. We prayed it at home, I explained. How many families did that
anymore these days, she said. Not many, if any. She must have
thought I was going to be a star student. I liked Ms Proctor a lot
and was very sorry that, not long afterwards, I had to let her
down.
     
    The family rosary
    Unless you’re a Catholic you probably have
no idea what rosary beads are or what you are supposed to do
    with them.
    A brief lesson, a la Ms Proctor and
Gran.
    A rosary is a string of prayer beads divided
into five groups. Each group has eleven beads, a lone bead followed
by a clutch of ten. There are four prayer cycles to choose from so
you could, if you were a saint or in a masochistic mood, recite the
rosary four times in four different ways. Each cycle is called a
‘mystery.’ They are: The Joyful Mysteries, The Sorrowful, The
Glorious and The Mysteries of Light. The nicest rosaries look like
jewellery. Like necklaces, with pendant crosses hanging from a main
circle.
    Praying the rosary was a bit like swaying to
trance music, I discovered. More about that soon.
     
    Gran was a big influence on me.
    Before I even started school Gran insisted
that we kneel down to say the rosary aloud every night at home,
before I went to bed. ‘So if you die in the night, you’ll be
received by God, purified,’ she said.
    Mum and Dad went along
with Gran (after all, once a year or so Father Brady exhorted
parishioners to pray the rosary and Mum and Dad had promised to bring me up in the
Catholic faith, so . . .) but they carried on like big kids,
giggling behind their hands, which made me giggle a little too,
even though I didn’t really understand what was so funny. My knees
hurt and that wasn’t funny at all.
    Gran tried to ignore the stifled laughter,
her gaze fixed ahead as we knelt on the lounge floor. Ignoring us
was, as far as she was concerned, a necessary
    compromise. Having won the battle to make us
recite her all-time favourite prayer she didn’t feel she could
complain too much if we didn’t meet her own
    prayerful high standards.
    When I turned five Gran gave me a rosary of
my own.
    At first I was confused. I
saw in front of me a cluster of sapphire coloured beads nesting in
cotton wool. I made the mistake of thinking it was a necklace. I draped them over
my head before I learned my mistake.
    Before Gran pointed it out.
    She quickly leaned over
and removed them from around my neck. Luckily, she wasn’t angry, or
sharp, only firm. Very firm.
    ‘ They’re for praying,
Andrea McNamara, not preening.’

    Later on, a funny thing happened. Funny in
that no one explained why. During my first year at school, after
I’d already boasted to Ms Proctor about my rosary-saying skills, we
stopped reciting it at home. Ms Proctor was disappointed when she
found out. She didn’t voice her disappointment but I was sure she
looked