Rea Killeen

When I am nine, we pray all the time because Sister Patricia Anne says somewhere on the other side of the earth ìour boys are dying in the jungles.î
St. Pius X Church is my familyís new church after we move into a fancy neighborhood away from downtown Albany. Itís shaped like a cross and has an orange wall-to-wall rug that muffles our steps. I donít like this church. It doesnít have a railing or kneeling pads at the altar and thereís no Jesus hanging on the cross suspended high over the altar, way out of reach.

One night we all go to church. Snow falls under the streetlights, like white whispers.

ìDraw the seasons,î says Sister Patricia Anne. I draw the spring in tulips, yellow and red. The summer in green. The fall in a waxy mat of layered reds, yellows and orange. And here is winter. I draw a gray sky with branches, black and thin. See my winter? I hold my paper up to Sister. See my grove of birch trees? See the snowflakes neatly trimming the top edge of my paper? See?
ìAll the snowflakes are different,î she says.
ìYes Sister,î I say.
ìTheyíre beautiful,î says Sister.
ìThanks Sister.î

Someone drops a missile on the pew; someone else coughs. A mother hushes her children and a young child cries like a foghorn. Tittering, chatting, yipping and yapping. Our whole school is here. All the parents are here too. I genuflect and then scoot as far away from everyone as I can. I think that God can hear me better if I pray away from the other voices. We pray for peace in Vietnam. We are praying for peace in America. Our parish priest, Father Durgin, tells us that if we pray together, God will hear us.
Doesnít he hear us all the time? Sister says he knows what we think. Sister says we donít even need to speak our thoughts. God knows all our thoughts, she says. I bow my head anyway. I pray with all the other voices in the church shaped like Jesusís cross with the orange rug beneath us.

Lord have mercy.
Christ have mercy.
Lord have mercy.

Sister says there is hope in the seasons. ìEvery season has its own color. Every season has its own shape and time. Every season returns to us.î

I pray as hard as I can because Jimmy Tucker is in Vietnam and even though none of the adults like him because he was always lighting off firecrackers in the mailboxes, I like him. He called me ìSprout.î ìHey Sprout,î heíd say and mess up my hair with his hand that smelled like the sulfur of a newly lit match. ìHey Sprout,î heíd say, like he knew me. Like I was his little sister or something.
I pray as hard as I can because Jimmy Tucker is wearing army boots instead of his sneakers, which dangle on the telephone wire in front of his house. I can see them when I pull up my bedroom shades in the morning. I think, ìItís night where Jimmy is.î I wonder if Vietnam has seasons. I try to picture snowflakes in Vietnam. I try to picture maple leaves. I cannot.

ìHi Sprout,î he says to me. I can hear his voice in the cross- shaped church.
Dear God, bring us peace. Keep our boys safe. Bring Jimmy home. End war and poverty and suffering and sickness. Amen.

Sister says waiting is a winter thing.
I wait for God to hear me, to hear all these voices.
I look for a sign.
The snow falls sideways. Is the earth spinning faster? Will the seasons happen sooner?

I lift my head and listen to the winter. And I wonder if God hears us in the muffled brightness of St. Pius Church, if Jimmy knows I prayed for him.
And I wonder if Jimmy is scared, all alone, taken from everything he knew and put someplace where he knows nothing at all.