Rea Killeen<\/p>\n
When I am nine, we pray all the time because Sister Patricia Anne says somewhere on the other side of the earth \u00c3\u00acour boys are dying in the jungles.\u00c3\u00ae
\nSt. Pius X Church is my family\u00c3\u00ads new church after we move into a fancy neighborhood away from downtown Albany. It\u00c3\u00ads shaped like a cross and has an orange wall-to-wall rug that muffles our steps. I don\u00c3\u00adt like this church. It doesn\u00c3\u00adt have a railing or kneeling pads at the altar and there\u00c3\u00ads no Jesus hanging on the cross suspended high over the altar, way out of reach. <\/p>\n
One night we all go to church. Snow falls under the streetlights, like white whispers.
\n
\n\u00c3\u00acDraw the seasons,\u00c3\u00ae 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?
\n \u00c3\u00acAll the snowflakes are different,\u00c3\u00ae she says.
\n \u00c3\u00acYes Sister,\u00c3\u00ae I say.
\n \u00c3\u00acThey\u00c3\u00adre beautiful,\u00c3\u00ae says Sister.
\n \u00c3\u00acThanks Sister.\u00c3\u00ae<\/i><\/p>\n
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.
\nDoesn\u00c3\u00adt he hear us all the time? Sister says he knows what we think. Sister says we don\u00c3\u00adt even need to speak our thoughts. God knows all our thoughts, she says.<\/i> I bow my head anyway. I pray with all the other voices in the church shaped like Jesus\u00c3\u00ads cross with the orange rug beneath us.<\/p>\n
Lord have mercy.
\nChrist have mercy.
\nLord have mercy.
\n
\nSister says there is hope in the seasons. \u00c3\u00acEvery season has its own color. Every season has its own shape and time. Every season returns to us.\u00c3\u00ae
\n<\/i>
\nI 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 \u00c3\u00acSprout.\u00c3\u00ae \u00c3\u00acHey Sprout,\u00c3\u00ae he\u00c3\u00add say and mess up my hair with his hand that smelled like the sulfur of a newly lit match. \u00c3\u00acHey Sprout,\u00c3\u00ae he\u00c3\u00add say, like he knew me. Like I was his little sister or something.
\n 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, \u00c3\u00acIt\u00c3\u00ads night where Jimmy is.\u00c3\u00ae I wonder if Vietnam has seasons. I try to picture snowflakes in Vietnam. I try to picture maple leaves. I cannot.
\n
\n\u00c3\u00acHi Sprout,\u00c3\u00ae he says to me. <\/i>I can hear his voice in the cross- shaped church.
\nDear God, bring us peace. Keep our boys safe. Bring Jimmy home. End war and poverty and suffering and sickness. Amen.<\/i><\/p>\n
Sister says waiting is a winter thing.
\nI wait for God to hear me, to hear all these voices.
\nI look for a sign.
\nThe snow falls sideways. Is the earth spinning faster? Will the seasons happen sooner?<\/i><\/p>\n
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.
\n And I wonder if Jimmy is scared, all alone, taken from everything he knew and put someplace where he knows nothing at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rea Killeen When I am nine, we pray all the time because Sister Patricia Anne says somewhere on the other side of the earth \u00c3\u00acour boys are dying in the jungles.\u00c3\u00ae St. Pius X Church is my family\u00c3\u00ads new church … Continue reading