Act of contrition

It’s the Virgin Mary - she’s keeping an eye on you. That’s what Nana had said. Sophie doesn’t really know what a virgin is but she knows Mary was Jesus’s mother and that she was a very good person. And that Sophie isn’t very good.
She steels herself to look into Mary’s eyes, lifting her head slightly from the pillow. They are a bit slitty, like a Chinaman’s, but Sophie is pretty sure Mary came from a place called Bethlehem. Blue cloth covers the top of Mary’s head and sweeps down either side like curtains. The picture is hung on the wall with a rusty nail that pitches it forward so that Mary seems to hover above the room. It isn’t a very big room. Her father says she shouldn’t mind because small girls don’t need big rooms.
It is dark outside. The curtains move with the November wind as it finds its way through the cracks in the window. Sophie thinks they are like orange ghosts. She jumps at a hiss and a crack in the corner, then realises it is just the radiator. It is much bigger and fatter than the ones they have at home and yet the rooms are so cold, which does not make sense to Sophie. From the slit of yellow light coming under the door, Sophie can just make out glints of gold around Mary’s eyes. She could swear they follow her around the room.
There is a girl called Mary in Sophie’s class. When they made their first Holy Communion, Mary had the longest veil of all the girls and a tiara with jewels on it. Sophie gave lots of sidelong glances to the dress that Mary wore when she had seen it in the shop, had even tried to draw Nana’s attention to it by giving it little strokes as they passed. But Nana headed straight for the one with long sleeves and no jewels. When they got home her mother was lying on the sofa. She didn’t say much when Sophie showed her the dress. But she heard Nana telling Mummy later that no granddaughter of hers was going to be dressed up like a bride of Christ.
Sophie feels the breeze from the curtains creep under the covers and push up goose pimples on her legs. When her mother used to put her to bed she always made sure she tucked Sophie in. The secret was hospital corners she said. First a sheet that was soft like cotton wool, then a yellow blanket with holes in it and a shiny bit at the top that felt smooth under her chin. And on top the bedspread with splashy daisies on it. When it was especially cold Mummy used to rub her arms and legs through the covers to warm her up. She wants to tell Mummy she’s done something bad and say how sorry she is. But she can’t.
At Holy Communion Mary was next to Sophie on the altar. After Father Matthew put the host in her hands, Mary popped it in her mouth, said ‘Amen’ loudly and turned to grin in that toothy way of hers at her family, who were second from the front. Her parents, grandparents, brothers, sister and sister’s baby took up a whole row. Sophie only had her mother, father and Nana there. Her mother was put in a special seat at the back, with a red cushion and ribbons that tied it to the back of the chair. Sophie thought about how Mrs Joseph from school had gone over to her mother at the end of the service, got hold of Mummy’s hands and pulled them to her chest. She wondered if her mother was embarrassed at being pressed against Mrs Joseph’s boobies. They looked large and squishy, like your hands could get lost in them. The two of them talked very quietly and Mrs Joseph kept putting her head on one side but they stopped when Sophie joined them.
Daddy has a big shiny black taxi. Sometimes he picks her up from school in it. He lets her sit in the back and she passes invisible money to him through the hole in the glass. Her father pretends to give her change and says thank you very much madam. None of her school friends ever got picked up from school in a taxi.
Her mother used to pick her up from school in a bright orange mini, but not for ages. Daddy thinks she doesn’t know why but she does. A few nights ago she was woken by the bang of the front door. It felt very late to Sophie as she crept halfway down the stairs rubbing her eyes. Nana and Daddy’s voices sounded cross. Nana was telling her father he shouldn’t be making money giving all those drunks lifts home. But Daddy said he had to because drunks paid more and they only had one income now. Sophie was beginning to shiver in her thin cotton nightie with a rabbit on the front. She turned to go back upstairs when she heard her father say Elizabeth. She knew this was Mummy’s name, although it always sounded strange to hear her Daddy use it. And then Nana said she didn’t think the hospital was a fit place for a child, not until her mother had come round, and that her mother was in God’s hands now. That was when Sophie realised what she’d done.
The Virgin Mary still watches Sophie from the wall. She thinks about what they’d all had to learn to say before they made their Holy Communion – the act of contrition Mrs Joseph had called it. She turns the words over in her mouth: oh my God because you are so good I am very sorry I have sinned against you and I will not sin again. That’s what she had done – sinned. Nana said so.
When she thinks about that Sunday her tummy feels like it is full of rocks. The priest wasn’t like Father Matthew. He kept lifting his arms up to the heavens. He reminded Sophie of a big black crow opening its wings. Nana had already had her turn at Communion and was making her way back when Sophie got to the front of the queue. The priest towered over her. She could see up his beaky purple nose as he leaned further and further towards her, saying this is the body of Christ in a voice that crunched like Daddy’s taxi on the drive. She made her hands into a cup and put them up like she’d been taught but he ignored them and kept on coming. She watched the white arc of the host shaking in his hairy fingers as it got closer and closer, until she realised in horror that he intended to put it straight into her mouth. She lifted her hands higher in case he hadn’t seen them. Instead her hands knocked into his. She jumped at the waxy feel of his flesh on hers and, before either of them could react, the host went spinning up into the air then spiralled down to the floor like the moon falling from the sky.
Sophie swallowed as Father locked her in his beady gaze. He said nothing. It seemed to Sophie he must be looking into her very soul. The first twitch of tears pricked behind her eyes so she bit down hard on her lip. She could not peel her eyes away from his. After what seemed like a decade, she felt a tugging at her hand. She realised the altar boy had picked up the sacred disc and was handing it to her. She pushed it on her tongue and fled back down the aisle. It stuck to the roof of her mouth like wet cardboard, and she had to hold tight to the wooden back of the pew in front as she swayed into her seat. For the rest of Mass she sat rigid, gripping her hymn book in her lap. Her Nana’s words before her first Holy Communion were galloping through her head: the host is very precious Sophie because it is Christ’s body. You must touch it only lightly, you must not suck on it like a sweet and you must never, ever drop it.
Daddy isn’t out in his taxi tonight. Sophie can hear noises down in the kitchen, like he is making himself a cup of tea. She can picture the big green mug he always uses at home. Nana only has cups and saucers. Daddy had sent Sophie to bed extra early. She’d tried to protest. She wanted to crawl onto his lap in Nana’s rocking chair, her feet resting on the chair arm while he massaged her toes. But when she searched his face, his mouth was set and his eyes pink so she fell silent. She undresses in the bathroom. It has the tank where the hot water comes from. When she opens the cupboard door - she likes to lean back on the tank’s squashy warm mounds – she finds her nightie folded on there, warming through. Marvelling at this unexpected act, she glances sideways into Nana’s bedroom as she scampers past. Nana’s back is to the door and she is kneeling on the floor by her bed. Praying again.
Sophie gets under the covers as quickly as possible so as to hold on to some of the nightie’s warmth. Father Matthew had told her she had to say three Hail Marys at confession when she’d told him how she’d lied to Mrs Joseph the week before about knowing who had written the word shit on the blackboard. She did know – it was Michael Gladman – but he was really hard and she’d seen him taking stuff off other kids in the playground. But this was much worse. How many Hail Marys did she need to do for this? She looks up at the Virgin Mary again. She’d made God so angry by dropping his son’s body that he’d taken her mother away. Sophie tries not to think about what it would be like if her mother didn’t come back.
The carpet feels rough on her knees. Sophie has only got as far as ‘blessed is the fruit of thy womb’ when the shrill sound of the phone rings into the quiet house. A chair scrapes back in the kitchen and Nana’s door opens. Sophie hears the rustle of her slippers swishing down the carpet on the stairs. She pushes herself up off the bedroom floor and tiptoes out onto the landing. For a while she stands there balanced on one leg and listens to the low murmur. The sound of bees. Suddenly the kitchen door opens to the burst of a sentence. It is her Daddy. “I’m taking Sophie to the hospital tomorrow mum. She wants to see her.” His voice sounds hard, like metal.
Sophie chews on the inside of her lip then she quietly pads back to the bedroom. At first she makes for the warmth of the bed but then she hesitates and turns instead towards the desk and chair in the corner. It is difficult to drag the chair over to the far wall because it keeps snagging on the carpet. She steadies it in place then clambers up and reaches for the picture. She pulls it off the wall. The Virgin Mary is still watching Sophie from between her hands. She steps down, turns the picture over so Mary is face down on the desk, and gets back into bed.