The mysteries of Christianity

Souvenir de première communion (source)


ONE SUNDAY IN MIDDLE SCHOOL when Charlie was riding his bike back from the synagogue, he happened to pass the church at the bottom of the hill his house was on. The bell had just rung, sailing little boats of sound out over the green world, with families pouring out onto the lawn and an almost military double line there of kids Charlie’s age, boys in slacks on the right, girls in kneeskirts on the left. Perhaps it was how still they were that drew his gaze, for when had Charlie ever known a mixed-sex group to stand so still? A person in penguiny robes crouched before them. At her signal, they turned and headed back into the now-exhausted church. Mickey Sullivan’s red head, taller than the others, turned right past the spot where Charlie was standing, foot propped on a pedal, but if he saw, he made no sign.
Charlie was nervous asking about it the next day—nervous Mickey might give him an Indian burn or a titty-twister, as he tended to do when some awkwardness arose between them. To his surprise, the question seemed to make Mickey five years older instead.
[…]
“What’s a communion?”
“What you saw us practicing for, dummy. You go and kneel on this little like pillow and they give you this wafer that’s the body of Jesus and then you drink his blood.”
“You guys drink blood?” Grandpa had warned him about this stuff, but then, Grandpa was full of weird superstitions.
“Not real blood, you homo.”
“Oh,” Charlie said, pretending to understand.
“And there’s a party, and you get presents”—the goys got presents for everything—“and then you’re basically a grown-up.”
“So like a bar mitzvah.”
“I guess.” Mickey showed Charlie the right way to put one hand over the other, waiting for the wafer, but punched Charlie in the shoulder when he did it to the lunch lady, asking for creamed corn. This was sacrilicious, he said. It was like Mickey had lost all sense of humor—like he’d become a grown-up already.
[…]
The new communicants sat on the church’s frontmost bench. Even from way back, he could see Mickey’s big red head. You weren’t supposed to clap or anything. The music from the organ was thinner and more plastic-y than he would have expected. It sounded like the organ at an Islanders game. The weirdest thing, though, was the way the people in front of him kept talking to Jesus, as if he were not dead but floating right over their heads. As indeed he was, a glazed, roughly life-sized plaster figure, glossy as a waxed apple, bolted to the baby-blue wall. Hear us, Lord Jesus. It was as if the church was a house Jesus was haunting. He tried to imagine Moses or Abraham haunting the temple, but couldn’t. The patriarchs who haunted Jews were those, like Grandpa, who were still alive.
Afterward, at the Sullivans’, there was a big white store-bought cake decorated with a cross. He wondered if this, too, stood for something—if he was plunging his fork into the spongy brain of Christ, and if so, if he should eat it, or if the Jewish or the Christian God would consign Charlie Weisbarger, who at this particular moment was faithful to neither, to the flames of hell. Yet he couldn’t help himself. The cake was drier than it looked, but the spun-sugar flowers, hardened to a crust, gave him a pleasantly headachey feeling.

Garth Risk Hallberg - City on fire (Book II Chapter 19)

Commentaires