The Oracle’s Tale Part 7

(Beep. Music fades in)

I’m sure you hear me say “religion” and think you know how the story went up to that point. But you don’t.

My mother was born into the faith, but she never thought more about it beyond the performance element. The requirements, I guess you could also call them if you didn’t want to think about the figurative neighbors so much. 

In behavior, my father wasn’t very different, but he wasn’t born into it. He converted long before he even met my mother. He had his beliefs, I guess, but there was only one I knew. That if this faith of his was the truth, he believed, then I--his clever and intelligent daughter--would come around.

Fair enough, I suppose, but he was also close friends with a priest at the parish we joined after moving early in my childhood, so even the best meant plans had gone awry. 

He and the associate pastor went to high school together at a place a country away. In the interim, life had sent each all over the globe only to land them close to each other in the American Southwest. They weren’t even that close when they were in high school. It was just nice to see someone familiar at those new junctures in their lives.

The associate pastor had only just started being an associate pastor. And my dying father had only just started dying. 

If you think you know how this story will go, you will likely being mistaken. Maybe not. Maybe that wasn’t fair of me to assume, but I’ve found that people make assumptions that only satiated their cravings for the dramatic, regardless of what it means to anyone else or me: the bearer of this particular tale. 

It was never like that. If that is what you were thinking. One father of a different type took on a brotherly role to my father and by virtue of that, he became my uncle, a good one at that. And then uncle became father-like figure when my father passed away.

Regardless, I still called him Uncle. I’m sure there are problems with that, but my father’s brother never bothered to even learn my name. Per the cosmic setup I was born into, I was entitled to an uncle through my father, so does it matter who specifically it was?

My mother didn’t care so much. She didn’t think too much about it, I guess. She came from a culture where those men of God were revered and venerated, but she was also eager to cover up any reminders of her recently deceased husband. Do ask what that meant for his child. I dare you. Because that answer is one I never got. I like to think the problem was that she didn’t think that far ahead, but I don’t know.

But the short of it, I guess, is that these two things cancelled each other out, and Uncle became a sort of nothing relative hanging out on the periphery. But Uncle wasn’t deterred by my mother’s coldness. He did his best. He bought me gifts and once presented me to the bishop as his most beloved goddaughter despite him not even knowing my father was alive around when I was born, never mind that I had been born.

Whenever someone new came into his life, that’s what he would call me: his beloved goddaughter. And I was just glad to know that someone could call me beloved.

(Gradual music fades out and new music fades in)

I knew about his elevation to pastor before anyone else did. It fact, it was hard for most others to realize that the old pastor was old in many ways. We all ignored that and thought he would be around forever. Time seemed irrelevant even after the cancer scares and the time blood gushed from his nose for more than an hour and no doctor was able to explain why.

It was inevitable in many ways. 

By then, Mom had remarried, and with the now oldest daughter in the household constantly in more high stakes trouble than anything I could devise, I was left on my own. My version of wild was picking the flowers in the church yard, treating it like my uncle’s home even if it technically wasn’t. 

I guess you could say I was neglected in many regards. I hate that, but I can’t deny that it felt good sometimes to be free.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

One day, I was pulling dead leaves off of my favorite bush when my uncle called me to come over. And at the sound of my name, I came running over to him, through what was a few months away from being a prayer garden.

“Do you remember the bishop?” Uncle called out while I was running.

“Yes Uncle.”

“He called me today. And told me I will be the pastor of this parish.”

I was relieved at that. The last conversation we had on the subject had sounded more like a preemptive goodbye than anything else. Associate pastors do not always become pastors. Sometimes new men come, and the associate pastor is sent away to make the transition easier. I did not want my uncle sent away. But my desires are just so seldom relevant. And yet, to my surprise, mercy had heard me.

I went to hug him, but before I could, I was stopped by his outstretched hand. “Come now, Child. There’s someone you need to meet.”

I took his hand and followed him to the rectory. 

You may think you know how this story will go, but you have no way of knowing that my mother had called him just moments before, begging him to delay my return home. Once again my step-sister’s illness had created chaos and spectacle not fit for anyone to see, as she would have said. But especially not me. I had a tendency of telling.

And she had a tendency of getting angry.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

When Uncle opened the door, there was an old man sitting in a chair, facing us. A priest, he was. Like Uncle. He wore all black with the telltale small white collar that matched the tuffs of hair on his head, a connection quite literally drawn by the lines on his face.

“This is Father Thomas,” Uncle said. “I only agreed to be a pastor if he came here to help me.”

That was not the whole truth. I don’t know what the whole truth was, but now that Uncle was the pastor, he could open the sacristy and rectory to an old priest sent away by other pastors just because of his old age. He was seen as a burden, one only slightly lifted by the nurse the diocese hired to care for him. And she was sweet, very quiet, though. I could hear her in the kitchen as she prepared dinner, and it was the loudest that she would ever be.

“We will need your help,” Uncle said. “More so than ever. So come. Have dinner with us and Ms. Pat. She will bring you home after.”

And she did. Later that night, she brought me back to an empty home. And I imagine that part of her charge was to spirit me away if the home wasn’t so empty. If anyone else was still there. Especially my sister.

(Music fades out. Beep.)