Called for action

Frontiers, 1999 by Currans-Sheehan, Tricia

Sioux City (AP). Bishop Aloysius Francis Wyatt, has declared in a pastoral letter that any Catholic belonging to organizations such as Rainbow Girls, Eastern Star, or Call for Action, a group advocating for women priests, will be excommunicated effective May 1, 1996, unless they sever ties with those groups. The bishop said that priests should not give communion to anyone wearing Call for Action buttons or Eastern

star pins.

Nadine drove up to Mom's house and parked in the driveway. When she got out, she looked across the street at Our Lady of Good Council Catholic Church, a low blonde-brick structure built ten years ago. Nadine turned around and saw Mom standing, leaning against her cushioned stool in front of the living room picture window, looking through her binoculars. When Nadine opened the side door, she smelled bread and saw three loaves lined up on the counter under a white cotton towel. Mom knew how she loved to slather butter and raspberry jam on those thick slices and devour three or four pieces in one sitting. Mom still had the heavy binoculars to her eyes. She was watching the people going into the church. On hearing Nadine come in, she put them on the windowsill and reached for her eyeglasses on the console TV. Then she turned to Nadine, who set down her suitcase in the doorway to the living room.

"Had to see who was in the wedding party. It's going to be a big one," Mom said.

Mom extended her hand for Nadine to shake, but Nadine moved in closer to hug her. Mom blushed and patted her lightly on the shoulders, keeping an arm's-length away.

"If you want to go over and watch the rehearsal, go ahead. I can take care of myself," Nadine said. Mom used to decorate the altar, but she'd given that up ten years ago. Still she checked up on what the women were doing and she used that as an excuse to go into the sacristy and watch whatever was happening.

"Nope, I'm feeling under the weather. I had the flu a couple days ago."

"Well, maybe you should go to bed, rest a little."

"I will, but don't rush me. Let me see how you're doing." Mom stepped back and studied her. "What's with the button?"

"You know, it's that group I belong to that wants women priests."

Mom shook her head. "Now Nadine, don't you be causing any trouble."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You know what I mean. The bishop said you can't belong to that."

"Hah," Nadine laughed and shrugged.

"Nadine, the bishop is the law. You have to obey him."

"I do?"

"Did you come home just to stir things up?"

"I always come to see you when schools out, and if things get stirred up while I'm here then so be it."

"Oh, good heavens. You've been here two minutes and already I'm mad."

"Ma, go make us some tea and cut some of that bread."

Nadine picked up her suitcase and carried it to the guest bedroom. Nadine had grown up on the farm that Mom had sold after Dad died of cancer. This twenty-year-old house, new when Mom moved in, was still strange to Nadine. She lifted her suitcase onto the bed and opened it. She looked up above the bed and saw the newspaper photo taken when she'd won an award for her work with the women's shelter. Mom had put it in an old frame. Thank God, Mom had taken down the photo of her in her black habit on the day she'd made her solemn vows. For two years after she'd left the convent, the photo had been covered with a black drape, just like the statues of the saints were covered in church for Good Friday. Nadine put her clothes into the top drawer of the bureau, feeling stiff in her neck and shoulders from the drive. That morning she'd turned in her grades to the registrar's office and had packed up and driven two hundred miles through corn and soybean country to get here.

The next morning, when Nadine opened her bedroom door, she heard the sound of the drapes being pulled open. She entered the living room, tucking her white blouse into her denim skirt. "I'm going to mass."

"You can't wear that thing." Mom pointed to her button.

"Yes, I can."

"You can't embarrass us."

"I'm not embarrassing anybody but me."

"Well, he won't give you communion."

Nadine looked at her mother-so afraid to break any rule. She'd be damned if she'd kowtow like her mother did to those priests. She remembered how her mother had gone to the priest to get permission to have a hysterectomy. Nadine was nine years old and had been confused as to why a priest should know more about surgery than a doctor.

Then her aunt had told her that that wasn't the reason at all. "She's still bleeding, so she has to ask the priest if she can have the operation."

Still Nadine was baffled. "But why?" she wailed.

"Because it's preventing the birth of a baby," her aunt said. That had stuck with her for years. What if the priest had said no-then Mom might have died of uterine cancer.

"I'm leaving now."

Her mother was dressed in navy knit pants with her pink pajama top still on. Her mother had been wearing pants ever since she had been given her first baby-blue knit pants by her daughter-in-law twenty years ago. Nadine always told her older sister Doris that if they had given those pants to Mom she would have made them take them back to J.C. Penney's and buy her something decent, like a housedress, but because it had been a daughter-in-law, the wife of her eldest son, she had felt obligated to wear the pants. She had looked mighty uncomfortable that first time. And you could see the imprint from the garters of her girdle through the knit fabric. That was when Doris had said, "You have to get panty hose, Ma." The next day Mom had gone to the Montegomery Ward's in Emmetsburg, a bigger town twelve miles away, to buy her first pair of support panty hose. That had been a shock to the family who thought Mom would always clean chickens and hoe the garden in her girdle. But now she loved those pants, and sometimes her daughters had to force her to wear dresses for special occasions.