The Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine

Catechism

I don’t remember them taking you away,
but I remember your absence.
as when a stone is lifted off a toe, or a tooth falls
out and you tongue the bloody
hole, curious that you never noticed how
salty and tender that particular
geography could be.

Stop following me!” you had screamed,
your eyes black and wide, alien,
your face a mask or enraged doll, something
out of the Twilight Zone. But I could not stop:
mine was a holy vigil, the whole of my seven year old’s
passion funneled into
keeping you.

We watched the Sinking of the Titanic.
I remember panic rising off your skin
decks tilting, tiny figures screaming,
trapped, how your breathing grew
quick and shallow.

Then you were gone. Really gone.
I must have been at school when they took you away.
The wool skirt stuck to
my legs on the long trudge home:
I was careful not to step on a crack,
not to break your back,
that day as always, sending my anxious incantations on,
only to push open the door and find
an old lady with a canary.

My catechism betrayed me. Yet I climbed the knobby apple tree,
made ant cities in the sandbox,
watched American Bandstand on the new TV. I learned
the Twist. But at night
shadows grew, the voices:
when would you be back?
why did you go?
who was at fault—for there was always fault,
sins, cardinal and venal,
and I was at the age of reason.

Mother,
will you absolve me now,
will you lift this stone from
my heart, will you
let me quit this vigil?
For I am tired of carrying you
through the night. Mother,
come home whole, teach me
a new
catechism.

Published: April 19, 2007