The Feast of St. John

 

The Feast of St. John 

How to light a candle in the wind?  That was the question. Lizzie slipped into the back of Our Lady of Dolours Church on Glasnevin Hill. She covered her head with her grey hoodie and blessed herself three times. Then she scoped out the dim interior. There were plenty of what her mother would have called ‘shawlies’ laying siege to the candlelit statues of St.Therese of Lisieux , The Holy Family and the Sacred Heart with His crown of thorns that always reminded her of Romeo and Juliet. Not good, not good at all. 

She let herself feel her rapidly beating heart. Life had a cost but it also had a pulse. Each second it seemed to throb, thum thump, thum thump, thum thump. She would outwait and outwit the biddy patrol that stood between her and her goal. Well they knelt mostly with hands clasped together, backs bent and misshapen under fur collars and expensive tweeds, eyes clamped shut in case the Lord should suddenly decide to reveal himself in all of his glory in response to the desiccated lips that whispered longings of their abandoned and dried up souls. She was younger than them and she had time. 

The Church was dressed to celebrate the feast of Christmas. There was a huge evergreen Jesse tree spreading its sticky resin on the edge of the sanctuary. There were the symbols she struggled to recognise from her Cork childhood. There was a ladder and a hammer, the Ark and a Star, a ram for Abraham whom she still thought of as Abe the Ram as he had tried to kill his own son Isaac. Lastly there was the Tablets of the Law from Moses. She didn’t like the Laws. Laws were not made for people like her. 

She looked around.and spotted the crib. Oddly the auld ones weren’t drawn to the alcove with the crib. It didn’t have any candles but it had a kneeler in front of it. She could kneel there and keep an eye on the other shrines. ‘Shrine on you crazy diamond’, she thought and giggled inwardly. She spotted a set of rosary beads someone had left in a pew and scooped them up. They would serve as camouflage and stop people hasslin’ her. She knew well how to say her Hail Marys and Our Fathers to throw off suspicion. If they only knew, thum thump, thum thump, thum thump.

While kneeling before the nativity scene she noticed that the scene was illuminated with a hot yellow lamp from above so that the colours stood out garishly. The statues were half human sized  like children penned into the scene. The ox and the donkey were relaxed and contemplative. They even had real straw in two small heaps set before them. The three kings wouldn’t arrive until the Epiphany but Lizzie could see where spaces had been left for them. The shepherds and lambs were there and Lizzie felt like telling the lambs to run away because the shepherds were going to eat them. 

Joseph stood with a grave expression on his face looking at Mary and Lizzie was reminded of that day in the court where Judge Mulcahy had stared at her in the dock while pronouncing his sentence. She had stood with her head bowed and her hands hidden below the railings clasped in mute and hopeless appeal. Guilty, guilty, guilty. A tear escaped down her face and fell into the straw. The sacristan passed her by and saw her distress but he just walked on pretending he hadn’t seen her.. She glanced around and saw a spot had opened up at the shrine of the Sacred Heart.

As she knelt before the array of candles she felt in her pocket for something. A girl of about six years of age plopped down on the kneeler beside her. “Why is his heart sticking out of his chest?”, she asked without introduction. Lizzie turned to the child “because someone stabbed him with a sharp steel knife,”she whispered, “ like the one I have in my pocket!” and she gave the little girl a sly wink and nodded down at the sharp point pushing up out of the right hand pocket of her parka jacket. The child got up straight away and ran back to her mother who was chatting at the back of the church to another woman. 

Lizzie whipped out the metal spoon and the Jif lemon squeezer. She tipped the little baggie of heroin into the spoon and squirted in the juice to dissolve the powder. Then she popped her syringe into her mouth to keep her hands free while she heated the spoon. A glance over her shoulder told her that the girl’s mother was approaching her from behind. She took the syringe out of her mouth and sucked up the drug. 

There was a clacking of high heels in brisk indignance.  “Did you threaten my Amy?” came the querulous voice. Lizzie turned around and held up the syringe like a knife. “Why don’t you just fuck off and mind your own business?”she spat.” The woman stared at the needle, the spoon and finally at Lizzie and took off back down the side aisle as fast as her legs could carry her. 

Lizzie pulled back her sleeve and not waiting to tie a tourniquet plunged the needle into a crusted vein. The rush hit her like a bus collision. She back flushed and injected again just in case she had missed anything. She closed her eyes and withdrew the syringe. “Oh God, Oh God,” she muttered, slipping down on the kneeler. She had just enough time to slip the works back in her pocket before they came. 

There was the parish priest dressed in his black cassock . “Get out of my church  before I call the Gardaí.” Lizzie swung up to her feet. Around her the walls undulated and flowed in waves. The lights danced like fairy lights blinking and exploding with colour. She pushed past the priest and swayed off down the central aisle “Glor ohr ohr ohr ohr  ohr ohr ohr ohr  ohr ohr ohr ohr ia,” she sang “In excelsis Deo.” And out into the darkness she went as the white tears of heaven flurried past her face.

It was a mile or so away that the Gardaí caught her. Sergeant Christie had told them that she showed up here every midnight on December the 27th. She was hanging on the railings outside the Georgian house just staring in. The Christmas tree was in the window and beneath it was a little boy playing with his new toys. As the guards grabbed her she hung on to the railings and screamed. The small white face stared out before his mother pulled him away saying, “ Come away from the window Stephen.” 

She fought like a madwoman but they got her face down in the snow and then her hands were cuffed behind her. She spat and bit but they pulled a hood over her and threw her in the back of the Garda Car. They climbed in to the front and turned on the siren. All the way back to the station all she would say is “ He was supposed  to be called John.”