All Things New
by Kevin Hershey
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My father and I made our weekly deliveries. The youngest of the neighborhood children, I was left home when the others disappeared behind school doors. While they had class, as mysterious to me as our incense-laden Sunday sacraments, I had mornings with my dad. Our standard order at the neighborhood café: molasses cookie for me, cappuccino for him; our standard operations at the dry cleaners: I rang the customer service bell, he lugged the plastic-covered shirts over his shoulders. I knew, even at the time, that my father included me in these tasks to make me feel special when the other children were at school. My biggest task was to help him deliver the Eucharist to homebound elders.
Inside the vacant church, the light was dim and yellowing, like forgotten paperwork. I marveled at the rainbows on my hands, shining down though the stained glass windows. A flickering red candle near the altar signified that the blessed wafers were present. We walked up the aisle together, hand in hand, like father and bride. My father made sure I performed the repertoire I still know by heart: bow, kneel, stand. It was a delight to be with him on the altar, a grand stage usually reserved for grown men. I watched him pull back the curtain of the small tabernacle and unlock the magnificent golden cabinet. He transferred the gold case of wafers from his large ruddy hands to my tiny pale ones. The old people’s homes we visited felt no different than the chapel—ancient, stale, often lined with images of blood-stained martyrs. The houses seemed as delicate as the aging bodies of their inhabitants. Anything above a whisper and stacks of crumbling National Geographics might collapse. Most of people were bent over so that I could see only a cloud of white hair where I might have seen a face. Some lifted their heads to smile, or to offer me a grainy lollipop. Others virtually ignored us, kept their eyes closed and swished saliva to swallow the divine made flesh. The silence was too loud for my racing mind, but a reverent fear of the sacred left me petrified. I had learned how to be a quiet boy. In kindergarten, a shoe saleswoman snatched sparkly red shoes from my hands and snapped, “You can’t try on girl’s shoes.” In third grade, a boy in my class hissed that I had “girly hands.” I emulated the frozen porcelain face of the Christ child statue. No matter how quiet and still I was, there was one house that my father forbade me to enter. “Trudi’s had a hard life,” he said of the woman who lived there. I waited on Trudi’s lawn, running my fingers over her fence. My father left Trudi’s house in a deferential silence, one that told me not to ask questions. I imagined the truly grotesque: her body disfigured as crucifixion. As I grew older, I no longer needed to be the deliverer of Christ’s body to make me feel special. School and friends pushed the walls of my universe beyond the deteriorating stone church. I had stages better than the altar, snacks more sumptuous than the wafer, and people more interesting than my father. While I rushed off to drama rehearsals and SAT tutoring, my dad continued his delivery service alone in his usual silence. In college, I discovered the divinity of the body on the scratchy sheets of a twin bed in an all-boys Catholic dormitory. Christie Hall was like many of the buildings that had enveloped my life: crumbling brick, musty scent, low lighting. Not even the sensory sensibilities of eighteen-year-old boys—Axe body wash, flashing video games, hipster jams—could conceal the centuries of tradition that permeated those halls. It seemed natural that my first experience of sex would be observed like prayer: whispered exchanges, ecstasy, and pain intermingled. My father’s quiet words lived in those sweaty dorm rooms: This is my body, given up for you. On visits home from college, I noticed my father had stopped his delivery service without a word to me. On Sunday mornings, once full of the rituals of mass, my father disappeared behind The New York Times. When I inquired about mass, he replied, “I cannot be part of a church that doesn’t love my son.” Then silence—his Trudi silence, his church silence, his father-son silence. I remembered our weddinglike walks down the aisle together. Did my father know then that the sacrament of marriage would be withheld from me? Did my father know then that the Eucharist wafers would be withheld from politicians who supported my rights? His flannel-clad arms protruded from the open newspaper, which hid his face like a confessional screen. His mug was emblazoned with the words: Behold, I make all things new. I make all things new. This commitment to transformation is alive in Catholic ritual. For the old folks, the transformation of bread and wine into blood and flesh; for my father, the church from sanctuary to enemy; for me, my body from vessel of shame to site of pleasure. In a world where all things are made new, the smell of the church and the stained glass remain the same. Far from when a sacramental duty made meaning for me, my life has the trappings of gay modernity: a Brooklyn apartment, a boyfriend, Provincetown. Recently, I met my father at Grand Central Terminal, as imposing as the church we once shared. We strolled up Lexington Avenue without the silence of our walks down the aisle, and walked in the shadows of Fifth Avenue cathedrals. Sometimes, I make solitary visits to churches as solace from this bustling life. I like to sit in a place where I can feel small again; unimportant. The same bricks, the same staring saints—they have not noticed me leave. |
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Kevin Hershey’s work has appeared in The New York Times and Open Global Rights. His essay was a finalist for the Anne C. Barnhill Prize for Creative Nonfiction. He has written and performed short one-person shows through the New Masculinities Festival at the LGBT Center in New York City. Kevin is an early childhood educator and Masters candidate at Silberman School of Social Work.
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