Thomas O’Malley
Maundy Thursday
Once her illness was in full sway my mother stopped going to
church of a Sunday. Instead, she walked the fields or the glen
or made her way down to the river at dusk, or, if she’d made the
tea, she’d wait until after twilight when mist fell upon the low
pasture, and wander the chary-lit fields in her nightgown. But
she made us go, especially during the Lenten holiday, although
it was the last thing we wanted to do. Only on the Thursday
before Easter, the feast day on which Christ bathed his
disciples’ feet, was my mother eager, excited even, to attend
church, and we knew it was for the Maundy footwashing. She
wanted to see Father O’Brien bent over someone’s foot, and
washing it with water from a white porcelain basin. The big face
on him turning red with the effort, the spittle caked at the
edges of his mouth, as he stroked the wrinkled and callused,
corn-encrusted foot of some poor country woman or knacker with
the gout.
*
That morning I’d seen her lugging the lavatory bucket from
the outhouse down to the bottom of the field where she burnt the
waste. She was wearing her wellies and the yellow rubber gloves
she wore when she went mad cleaning the house. Her small body
swayed from side to side with the weight of the toilet. Cows
came closer to the fence thinking she might have something for
them. I could hear her voice from the top of the field, filled
with good humour. Go on, out of that, Pat. I smiled, she
sometimes called the cows the names of old friends, she would
say, now, will you look at the gob on that one, it’s pure Willie
Ryan, and that one there, sure it might as well be Brid Long
standing there herself. I never saw people in her cows no matter
how hard I looked but I was glad that such a fancy might take
her away. She was in a good mood to be playing with the cows so
relaxed, and I went to get the mop so that the shed would be
clean when she returned with the lavatory bucket.
From the shed she was a small bending figure in wellies and a
housecoat; I saw the yellow gloves in movement and then a spark,
paper and tinder igniting, an orange flame, and smoke began to
rise from the pit pale and ashen into the low grey sky.
On the day she made her way into church she removed her shoes
and walked the whole way through briar and gorse, through muck
and dung, through cow pasture and sheep meadow, staying at the
edges of the road when she got closer to town, waving at the
people who passed in their cars, so that her feet picked up all
the strew and sluice of the ditches. The sedge and the bloom and
the hedgerows were thick and bursting with colour.
Molly and I walked in the road, at the edge of the macadam in
our clean Sunday clothes.
She’d made me polish and wear my good shoes. She shooed us
away pleasantly when we came too close and smiled and told us to
stay out of the muck and to watch our clean clothes. It was the
happiest I’d seen her in some time.
By the time we got to church her feet were black as coal. She
walked into church barefoot, laughing like a young girl. Her
eyes shone. The slap of her bare feet echoed on the tiles. A few
of the men standing by the font blessed themselves and turned
away.
Molly and I shifted restlessly in the nave, watching our
mother in the queue before the altar. The line moved forward
slowly and then it was her turn. Father O’Brien looked up and
paused when he saw her, his hand poised over the wash basin. I
won’t wash your feet, Moira Mcdonagh, he said, and his voice was
firm.
My mother smiled. You’re showing yourself for the hypocrite
you are, then, Father. Her voice carried across the tiles,
echoed off the cement. The line behind my mother staggered and
shifted, bent and twisted as parishioners sought for a better
view. I took my sister’s hand and led her into the pew; together
we sank down on our knees and bent low and small. I lowered my
head on my hands and pretended to pray.
Father O’Brien poured the water quickly and I knew he would
have liked nothing better than to heft the bucket and dump its
contents over my mother’s head but even as she genuflected and
bowed she continued to stare at him and smile—and such a smile!
Father O’Brien lifted the ladle and quickly doused her feet,
once, twice, three times while rapidly reciting the prayer as
Jesus had done for his disciples near the end, and then he was
done. He took her foot roughly in his hands and she leaned back
and raised it to his face so that she could watch all of him as
he towelled dry one and then the other. Behind them, people
shifted and murmured.
Father O’Brien’s face was brightly flushed; sweat streaked
his forehead and poll. His stole seemed to be choking the life
from him. When he was done my mother held her foot raised for a
moment and then slapped it hard down upon the tile with a damp
smack. She looked down at her bare feet approvingly. Now that
they were clean and shone white, she took her shoes from her
bag, placed them upon the floor, and stepped into them.
Thank you father, she said, and when she bowed she gracefully
lifted the hem of her skirt, a curtsy more than a genuflection.
All eyes followed her as she made her way to our pew, all except
Father O’Brien’s. He rose to his feet, pulled the stole from his
neck and handed it to Father Keene, his assistant. His hands
were shaking and I noticed for the first time that he had palsy,
that he was actually an old man. He stared at the ceremonial
bowl, at the foamy, muddied water there, then at the wet
footprints upon the floor. Absently, he wiped his hands upon his
chasuble. He turned and walked towards the sacristy, and the
door closed slowly behind him.
One of the altar boys returned with a bowl of clean water and
white towels draped over his arm. The sound of Father Keene’s
rich Kerry accent travelled on the stone, his voice soft yet
sonorous with the words of prayer. He worked patiently and
tenderly, it seemed then, and his face had the look of all the
apostles I’d ever heard of in scripture. Late sunlight spilled
through the stained glass, bathing both priest and penitent, so
that they seemed transformed somehow: the swollen veins, the
blisters and calluses, the deep dirt entrenched beneath the
nails, the wrinkled flesh, and Father Keene’s smooth white hands
moving the soapy water gently over them.
I turned to my mother. She stood at the end of the pew
watching, a smile upon her lips. And it was not cruel as I’d
seen before. This was content—tender even—as her eyes traced the
way Father Keene’s hands graced the people’s feet. She turned
back to us, raised her eyebrows so that her eyes were large and
caught all the roseate light in the vestibule. Shadow submerged
to the edges of her, into the reaches of the church, so that her
face seemed to occupy all.
Are we right then? She asked. Shall we go? And she strode up
the side aisle to the back of the church and her feet passed
across the tile with barely a sound. I rushed my prayers asking
God to bless our mother: Go mbeannaí Dia ár mháthair,
then crossed myself, and my sister and I stumbled as we climbed
from the pew, and raced up the aisle after her. At the top of
the church she turned, genuflected, took water from the holy
water font and blessed herself before she opened the wide wooden
doors and stepped out into the fading light.
We walked home slowly; there seemed to be no hurry now. Cars
slowed for us but she waved them on, calling out pleasantly.
Vesperal birds were calling from thickets and the fields hummed
with the peaceful reverberations of a Sunday. My mother began to
hum some tune or other, and I watched her calf muscles tensing
and tightening as she strode.
I wanted to ask her about the foot washing and why the need
to shame Father O’Brien in such a way, and how could we ever
face going into the church again? I wanted to ask her what it
felt like to have her feet washed by him, the man she hated and
despised. I wanted to know if she felt closer to God now or if
she believed the washing had taken away all her sins. I wanted
to know if she thought she might truly be better.
And then she looked back at me, and her gaze was that of
watching Father Keene bathing the parishioner’s manky feet. Her
eyes were tender and caught all the fading light. I smiled and
almost expected her to reach out her hand and gather both of us
into her arms. But suddenly she turned and walked quickly on.
Mammy? I said and I looked at my sister but our mother didn’t
slow or look back. Her pace quickened, urgent suddenly, so that
we rushed to keep up. Mammy? I said again but she was no longer
listening. She began running through the ditch, through gorse
and thicket, her calves splashed with muck. Brambles tore at her
skirt, scratched her pale legs until they were flecked with
blood.
We rounded the bend and the fields curved towards us. Cows
leaned against fence posts and, at the sound of us on the road,
turned from rubbing their crusted shanks. My mother called to
them: Pat! Deirdre! Willie! Shay! The cows, pushing their hard
straining faces between the barbs of wire stared at her, no
spark of recognition, or even affection in their eyes—and my
mother, oblivious to that emptiness, still calling: Matt! Oh
Sheila! Deirdre! Pat! Oh Shay! I’m home, I’m home, I’m home! And
my sister and I holding tightly to each other’s hands watched
from the far side of the road as our mother rushed forward to
embrace them.
Thomas O'Malley was raised in Ireland and England. He
is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been a
Returning Writing Fellow and recipient of the Grace Paley
endowed Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown,
Massachusetts. His fiction has appeared in such magazines as
Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Shenandoah, Blue Mesa
Review, Crab Orchard Review, and New Millennium Writings.
"Maundy Thursday" is from his forthcoming novel In the
Province of Saints (Little, Brown & Co.) |