There came a shuffling of communicants to the communion rail. Among the stooped and elderly was my mother, clasped hands before her. Was I the only observer in the church to recognize the rage in my mother’s body? In the very set of her shoulders, the bow of her head? Passing by the shiny casket she’d have liked to pound on it with both hands, shout at the old man within.

Hate hate hate you! Hate how my life was sucked into yours, had to wait on you like a servant.

Hate how you commanded me. How you looked at me. Undressing me with your eyes. Filthy old man.

As child I hadn’t known. Now I was no longer a child I understood. Daddy had forced Mom to surrender her life to the old man as she’d surrendered her life to her family when we’d been children.

As she’d surrender her life to him.

In the car driving to Highgate Avenue that day she’d revealed her bitterness to me—married, babies, seven days a week. But before that, she’d cleaned other people’s houses.

Never had I heard my mother’s voice so bitter, yet so exalted in bitterness.

Communicants were kneeling at the rail. Others shuffled forward on canes, walkers. My grandfather’s generation was elderly, unsteady on their feet. Even their children were becoming gray-haired, slow-moving. My father would have been tall, dark-haired and vigorous among them but Daddy remained sitting, would not rise to take communion. Probably, Daddy hadn’t taken communion since he and my mother were married.

Since I’d come to live with my aunt Irma I had stopped going to church. Each Sunday Irma went faithfully to ten o’clock mass but I had accompanied her only a few times and each time I’d fallen asleep—a stupor of boredom and anxiety. Irma had had to arouse me at the end of the ceremony—Violet! Wake up! Unlike Mom my aunt hadn’t the power to coerce me into attending church with her nor could she have frightened me into believing in God and sin and the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

You know what touching yourself is—you know . . . That’s a sin, a very bad sin, disgusting. That’s the sort of sin you must confess if you want to take communion. And remember, the priest knows when you are lying.

Father Greavy hadn’t wanted to know when I’d told the truth. I remembered that.

At last the solemn high mass was ending: Go in the peace of Christ.