The Tree of Forgetfulness by Pam Durban

Author:Pam Durban
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2012-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

Q: Are all bound to belong to the church?

A: All are bound to belong to the church, and he who knows the church to be the true church and remains out of it cannot be saved.

“That page is marked with one of the cards the nuns hand out to the children at St. Angela’s as rewards for good conduct and memorization. On the front of this card is a picture of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, with The Holy Family in gold script underneath, and on the back are the words ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, pray for us. 100 days indulgence.’ I asked him once what that business of the hundred days meant, and he explained that every time a Catholic said that phrase, one hundred days were subtracted from the time certain people had to spend in purgatory. ‘What kind of people?’ I asked. Unbaptized babies and the misguided or ignorant others who’d died outside the Roman Catholic Church, he said. ‘The Poor Souls,’ he called them.

“And I knew it would do no good to explain to my son that because I neither knew nor accepted that the Catholic Church was the one true church, I could not be lost or condemned. That reasoning would be beyond him. But I ask myself: What kind of people torment a child with visions of his own mother shivering outside the gates of paradise, waiting for enough Catholics to whisper ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph’ so she can go in?

“But rather than make an issue of it, I said, ‘Thank you for the sweet invitation, Lewis Hastings. But I have my own church. Now go outside, please, and wait for your father, and don’t you get down on the ground in those good clothes.’ Poor soul or no, I am still his mother, and when he examines his conscience every week before making his little confession, he has to ask himself if he’s disobeyed me. His little catechism says so.

“But that all happened yesterday, Mother, and today is today, another one of your lessons, expressed so aptly in lines by our favorite South Carolina poetess, Elizabeth Reese, where grief departs and joy comes in: ‘And every lad his love can win / For here is April weather.’ Granted, it is November now, not April, but the sentiment holds true no matter the season. I woke up early this morning, full of energy. It was barely light outside when Minnie arrived to help me with the household inventory. You are the one who taught me the pleasures of our twin yearly chores: the fall inventory and the spring cleaning. Two poles of the axis on which our domestic globe spins. It was you who taught me so long and so well that there are certain things that no home should lack, others that cannot be tolerated. Without surrounding ourselves with quality and beauty that heals and rests the soul, you said, how shall we live? You are the one who instructed me in the vigilance

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