…LIKE A WHORE IN CHURCH
On this beautiful Sunday morning I wake early and dress in my finest before heading off to Mass.
I run my hand down the front of my cream-colored dress, adorned with a yellow flower pattern throughout, before slipping on my navy coat and pinning a few forget-me-nots onto my breast pocket.
My long dark-brown hair is artfully pinned back in a low bun, and my cheeks and lips are dusted with a soft pink, showing off the feminine features of my face.
I look like the woman folks used to admire. Now they just look at me sideways.
Status is funny like that. One day you’re the belle of the town, the next you’re the cautionary tale.
It’s an eight-minute walk from The Oily Cat to St. Ann’s Catholic Church.
In those eight minutes, I greet the townsfolk as I pass them with pleasant smiles and good mornings.
Some respond out of habit, some out of guilt, but most look right through me.
I don’t let it get to me though, because I know their secrets.
I’ve seen their husbands when they pocket their wedding bands and the drawers come off.
The air in the church is dense with incense, the smell of polished wood and candle wax clinging to the stone walls.
The pew creaks under my weight as I settle in, smoothing the fabric of my dress, my fingers gently trailing over the forget-me-nots in my pocket.
My row is always last to fill, if it fills at all.
People would rather stand than sit beside me, and I’ve made peace with that, but today something’s different.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Emil and his wife, Nell.
They shuffle sideways, hands on the wooden bench before them, and nestle up next to me.
I offer a surprised yet grateful smile, since I wasn’t expecting them to join me today.
I continue scanning the room as people deliberately avoid my gaze.
Then it happens.
A ripple moves through the congregation.
Whispers rise like steam and I turn to see what has everyone so agape, then I see them: Elona, Violet, and Maeve, walking down the aisle toward me, heads held high.
I grip my hands together as a tear betrays me, slipping quietly down my cheek.
Damn them, I think, for making me feel so loved in a room full of those who try to shame me.
I’m the only one at the brothel who attends Mass regularly.
But today is different, today means something.
For them to show up for me makes my heart swell, and a lump of emotion rises in my throat, no matter how hard I try to swallow it down.
Elona blows me a kiss, grinning like a devil in silk.
Maeve and Violet smile, radiant despite the hostile location.
Maeve’s bruises have yellowed, her lip healed, but the shadow of what happened with Mr. Cromwell still hangs between us.
Yet her smile, genuine and full, reminds me that we’re not just survivors.
We’re something more . . .we’re family. The church stiffens with discomfort. The whores have come to Mass.
With the congregation still in an uproar, Father Cyrus steps up to the pulpit, not waiting for the murmurs to die down. His voice rises above the judgment.
“Jesus sums up the commandments in the Gospel today in two statements,” he begins in a commanding voice that I find comforting, like a grandfather sharing advice.
“To love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.
We have been talking about loving God, and now I want to reflect on loving our neighbor as ourselves.
" His eyes find mine and the softness there could break a person, if I hadn’t already been broken once before.
“But sometimes, we almost have a need to be taught by someone in our own time how to love our neighbor as ourselves. I think there is one person in recent years who above all has shown us how to love our neighbor as ourselves, and that person is Mother Katharine Drexel. Again and again, she has spoken about seeing Jesus in others. What we do to others, we do to Jesus. She has helped people in the most awful circumstances.”
He pauses and the silence this time feels earned.
Nell reaches over and takes my hand, her grip is light and I glance down and notice the gloves, teal linen, with a white dove and tiny pink flowers.
I made them for her last Christmas to help cover the burns she hides from the world.
The burns she earned because of me. Her touch grounds me, it reminds me that being seen doesn’t always mean being judged, sometimes it means being loved.
“Though she grew up in wealth, Katharine always saw her stepmother opening up their home to the poor and distributing food, clothing, and rent assistance to those in need.” Father Cyrus continues, pulling me back to the present.
“They would also seek out and visit women who were too afraid to visit their home, to give them charity. After becoming a sister, a suggestion which came directly from the Pope, Katharine gave everything to God, including her entire inheritance, and is spending her life educating and caring for Native and African Americans.” Father Cyrus takes a long pause, letting this sink in, before finishing it out.
“Loving like this is finding God hidden in the other person. Loving like this is not judging, but being merciful and trying to understand the other person. Jesus said the Spirit is mightier than the flesh and so with Jesus there is no room for fear, but we can witness the truth with enthusiasm, with love, and humility. So, I encourage you to pray. For to love one another, we must pray much. For prayer gives a clean heart, and a clean heart can see God in our neighbor.”
After Father Cyrus finishes his sermon, we take part in the Holy Communion as a way to share in the sacrifice of Christ but also to symbolize and foster unity within our church community.
Row by row, the people of Butte file past us.
Some mutter, others just stare, their glances razored thin.
But Elona, God bless her, meets them with a flick of her tongue and a few scandalous kisses blown into the air.
I nearly choke on the wafer trying not to laugh.
Once the church clears out, we gather near the back pews.
“Emil, Nell,” I say, taking their hands. “You didn’t have to join me today. That must’ve felt like walking into a furnace.”
Nell smiles. “We’d never let you sit through that hell alone.”
“Yeah,” Violet chimes in. “We’re family.”
“Supper at my home this evenin’,” Maeve announces in her lilting voice. “You won’t be spending this day alone.” She’s talking to me, and I hope she sees how much that means.
Elona wraps me in a hug. “Sorry for antagonizing the hens,” she says, referring to her playful blasphemy. “I just won’t let them think they’re better than you.”
I take her face in my hands and press my lips to her forehead. “I love you for it.”
Emil quietly places a hand on my shoulder. His eyes stay low, but I feel his grief before I see it. His shoulders tremble.
“Don’t you dare, Emil,” I whisper, lifting his chin. “Not here. We hold our heads high, just like my boys would’ve wanted.”
He nods. “Yes, ma’am.”
Nell wipes the tears from his cheeks, then her own. We stand together a moment longer before they head off, one by one, down the church steps toward home.
I watch them go, letting the hush settle again. “Now to do what I came here to do,” I say under my breath. Then I square my shoulders, turn on my heel, and head toward the altar.
Toward Father Cyrus. Toward the place where confession doesn’t always mean penance, sometimes it means redemption.