…to make matters worse, my grandmother was a real old country woman and quite unsuited to life in town. She had a fat, wrinkled old face, and to Mother’s great indignation, went round the house in bare feet—the boots had her crippled, she said.
Nora, my sister, just sucked up to the old woman for the penny she got every Friday out of the old-age pension, a thing I could not do. I was too honest, that was my trouble; and when I was playing with Bill Connell…I made excuses not to let him come into the house…
Then, to crown my misfortunes, I had to make my first confession and Communion. It was an old woman called Ryan who prepared us for these… She may have mentioned the other place as well, but that could only have been by accident, for Hell had the first place in her heart.
She didn’t know the half of what I had to tell—if I told it. I knew I couldn’t tell it, and understood perfectly why the fellow in Mrs. Ryan’s story made a bad confession; it seemed a great shame that people wouldn’t stop criticizing him.
God, the hypocrisy of women! Her eyes were lowered, her head was bowed…You never saw such an exhibition of devotion; and I remembered the devilish malice with which she had tormented me all the way from our door…
It was pitch dark and I couldn’t see the priest or anything else. Then I began to be really frightened. In the darkness it was between God and me, and He had all the odds. He knew what my intentions were before I even started; I had no chance.
“What are you doing up there?” he shouted in an angry voice,
“What’s all this about,” the priest hissed, getting angrier than ever and pushing Nora off me. “How dare you hit the child like that you little vixen?”
“Oh,” he said respectfully, “a big hefty fellow like you must have terrible sins…”
It only stood to reason that a fellow confessing after seven years would have more to tell than people that went every week…It was only what he expected, and the rest was the cackle of old women and girls with their talk of Hell, the Bishop and penitential psalms.
“Is that the little girl that was beating you just now?” he asked.
“’Tis, father,” I said.
“Someone will go for her with a bread-knife one day, and he won’t miss her,” he said, rather cryptically.
“Oh a horrible death!” he said with great satisfaction. “Lots of the fellows I saw killed their grandmothers too, but they all said ‘twas never worth it.”
“’Tis no advantage to anybody trying to be good. I might just as well be a sinner like you.”
