My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress Read Free Page B

for our orisons to be repeated ad nauseam.
    We were floored by Christ’s Passion and invigorated by his Resurrection. There was an extravagance about Miss then which no other subject could evoke; the dramatic gesturing of crossing and breast-beating of herself as she told of His gruelling journey to Calvary and final expiation. She wept real tears then and we did too, as only children can, trying to understand His suffering and wondering all the while how we could have caused it. I would see His bloodstained face and beseeching eyes every day as He looked down on me from the glossy scroll that hung on the classroom wall, and was conscious always that Jesus was watching me closely for the merest sign of weakness.
    Miss had the ability to fuel our fantasies to an intoxicating degree. Heaven was where it all happened. The boys could drive around for all eternity in pink Cadillacs and we girls could wear frothy white gowns with matching wings and golden crowns. At the wave of a silver wand, showers of sweets would pour from an ever-blue sky. There would be rivers of chocolate and mountains of cake and the sun would always shine. We all yearned to go there, but there was just one small problem: we had to die first. And not only that, we had to die in a ‘state of grace’. So we learned our prayersfervently and struck our chests harder with our tiny fists, knowing that the more we prayed and suffered, the speedier would be our entry into paradise.
    Not surprisingly, all this religious brainwashing took up so much room in my head that it tended to block out the rudiments of my early education. And no more so than when I reached P4 and was required to undergo the twin terror-inducing ordeals of confession – the fearful preamble to First Holy Communion – and the Religious Examination.
    Our teacher was nothing if not inventive, improvising with a cup of water in place of wine, and pieces of ice-cream wafer for the host. We stood in a solemn circle, sipped the water, threw back our heads, stuck out our tongues and waited for the proffered wafer. Afterwards there was a tense silence as we hung our heads and contemplated the wafer doing its work of pouring all that grace and goodness into us.
    I was looking forward to the pomp and ceremony of my First Communion. Nobody, however, had told me about the reality of confession. Confessing sins to Miss was easy, but nothing quite prepares a young child for the tyranny of the confessional – the inky darkness, the stranger behind the grille and the stilted litany of one’s misdeeds.
    Father Monacle’s confession box had been designed for adults, not for very short people or little children like me. I entered its dark interior and, obeying Miss’s instructions to the letter, knelt down on the prie-dieu – and disappeared from view. The bewildered priest waited and waited. I heard a tentative ‘Yes, my child?’ and became so petrified that I could not get up. Miss had impressed upon us that we must always remain kneeling in the sight of God and the priest.
    On getting no response, the good Father stuck his head out the cubicle door.
    â€˜Who’s next?’ he asked gruffly.
    A lady at the head of the waiting row blushed fiercely, got up at once and entered the confessional – to find me cowering there. She hesitated.
    â€˜What’s this?’ Father Monacle roared at me. ‘What are you doin’ down there, in the name of God?’
    â€˜M-Miss s-said—’
    â€˜What!’
    â€˜Miss said I was to kneel down, so she did, and I—’
    â€˜Miss isn’t the priest, is she?’
    â€˜No, Father.’
    â€˜Well, tell Miss that I said it’s all right if you stand up on the kneeling board from now on.’
    â€˜Yes, Father.’
    â€˜So I hope you’re not going to waste any more of my precious time, are ye?’
    And with that I was hotly dismissed with a very red face and a decade of the