one-sided conversation

Her parents had never been churchgoers; she had visited a church but once in her short life, when her grandparents dropped her off at a Vacation Bible School one summer afternoon. She knew almost nothing of religion. But that morning she stood on the corner of Cale and Huffnagle, holding the handlebars of her bicycle, the streamers limp in the still early air, listening. She stared at the great stone church across the street, its windows orange, everything else around her gray.

She felt ridiculous thinking so, but it was as if the building were speaking to her. She imagined its voice swelling up from the asphalt, humming in the powerlines that dangled above. A sigh of wind set her streamers fluttering so briefly, and she climbed off of the bicycle and leaned it against a newspaper box. She crossed the street without looking, but it didn’t matter; nothing moved but her.

She climbed the stone steps to a door twice as tall as her daddy. It was held open by a cast-iron figure that she thought was supposed to be Jesus. He held his iron sash over one arm, and with the other, pointed through the doorway. He wore an expression of such sadness that Eleanor touched the statue’s face, almost expecting it to blink at her.

The church was more vast inside than she had anticipated, and again she felt so small. A smooth, marbled foyer gave way to a sanctuary that unfolded a hundred feet into the sky, terminating in lovely arched ceilings criss-crossed with heavy wooden beams. Stenciled along the walls so high above were faded depictions of Bible stories, hundreds of scenes, not one repeated. Eleanor thought about the children who must have grown up on their backs in this church, whiling away the hours of sermons on the polished wooden pews, squinting at the characters above, inventing stories until they fell asleep.

The church was empty, and though she wore sneakers, her every step clattered and echoed off of the walls. She stopped and removed her shoes and then padded on in her pink socks. At a birdbath she paused again, and bent over to examine the water in its bowl. She understood the concept of holy water. She smelled it, then hesitantly touched a fingertip to its surface, almost expecting to be struck by lightning or turned to salt. Nothing happened. Eleanor quickly scanned the sanctuary, saw that it was still empty, and touched her finger to her tongue. She tasted only skin.

So she walked the length of the center aisle, arms outstretched, lightly touching the arm of each pew as she passed it. Again she felt invited to be here. When she reached the end of the rows of pews she stopped. She knelt slowly and stared at her knees. She did not know how to make the sign of the cross, but she tried, touching each shoulder, her breastbone, her forehead. She had seen movies, but couldn’t remember the order. She wondered if you damned yourself if you did it backwards.

There was a flickering shelf of candles to her right, and she approached it slowly. This also was a thing of the movies, wailing women lighting candles and muttering prayers in Spanish, always for a lost child or in grief. She lit a candle and whispered, “Are you here?” She spoke gently, but the flame flickered gently all the same. She took this for a sign that God was listening to her, and said, just as quietly, “I can feel you here. Are you here?”

She waited for another sign, but the walls did not crack, the candles did not go out, the sun did not stop shining through the stained glass windows above her. It crossed her mind that God did not need to answer, but was simply waiting for her to get to the point. She wondered what her point was. Now that she had his attention, what did she want? Maybe she was wasting his time.

She knelt on the cushioned step in front of the candles and clasped her hands with all the earnestness of a child, which she of course still was. The world was still quite full of wonder for her, and she misinterpreted all of it; a walk in the woods was a holy experience for her, and she imagined that if she spoke to God aloud, the cacophony of the forest -- the birds, the wind, the sounds she couldn’t identify -- would come to a sudden halt, so powerful would her prayer be. So when she walked in the woods she did not pray.

“I know that you’re here,” she whispered bravely. She wondered briefly: did she really? How could she? But she pushed on. “I know,” she insisted, “that you’re here. You know me, I know you know me. Why won’t you talk to me? I look for you every day. You said my name! But now you don’t say anything at all. What am I supposed to think? You can’t make me forget that easily.”

She thought long and hard before speaking the next part, and then she challenged God: “If you’re real, blow out these candles in front of me.” She concentrated on the flames, and then thought that maybe God wouldn’t acknowledge her request if she was looking. You were supposed to keep your eyes closed when you prayed. She closed her eyes. “I have to know if you’re real,” she repeated. “Please.” And when she opened her eyes again later she saw that the candles were all lit except for two. She couldn’t remember if every wick had been lit or not. It worried her. Maybe God had proven something, and she hadn’t considered all of the data beforehand. Maybe this proved nothing at all.

She closed her eyes one more time. One more test, just for confirmation. “If you’re real,” she whispered, “please say my name again.” The church stood still and large behind her. Outside the town began to wake, the morning fog sizzled away by the rising sun, the thready buzz of slow-moving cars carried into the church. She heard the sound of footsteps somewhere behind her, but all the same she waited. Eleanor waited until her knees ached, and then she stopped.