Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
(Art by spoon+fork.) Saint Maximilian Kolbe, the Roman Catholic Church I went to before my father freaked out, was also the place where I went to get my flu shot. It was especially terrifying because Maximilian was killed by a lethal injection in the arm by the Nazis. Who designated this church to give shots? My Sunday school teacher told me that despite how crass and crude the Italian race was, they hadn’t lost the True Religion, and that was to their credit. The English had broken from God because Henry VIII was horny, she told me. I was six. If you didn’t do the rosary everyday, you could lose your faith. The devil was real and was always working to get between you and God. “Even I could lose my faith,” she admitted. “How could the devil get you? You’re a nun,” I said. “When I dress like a nun as a matter of routine and not ritual, then I am lost.” My father was a heavy drinker but unlike most alcoholics he was home a lot. He usually lay face down or up on the couch but he would get up to make coffee in the afternoons and to get the mail. I looked forward to when I was old enough to drink and grow stubble. One day he got a letter from his brother in Ireland that told him that his mother had died. He folded it up and put it in his back pocket. My mother begged for him to pray for his mother’s soul in purgatory, that we all should say the rosary together. He refused. She begged again. I got scared when he laughed. “Her spirit’s in another baby right now,” he said. “She’s being born again. She doesn’t need prayers.” He woke me up that night, his breath stinging my eyes. “The entire Irish race is being punished. We let the Christians pervert our Gods and smash our altars. They built churches over our sacred sites. This is where the troubles come from. ” I didn’t know what the troubles were back then, but I kept quiet. I would have been stupid to ask him. My father hated listening to anything–people, news or music. He had something under his coat. He took out a set of cheap dinner knives, still in the cardboard holder. The metal looked like tinsel in the light coming in from the streetlamps. They must have come from the 99-cent store. “Boy, come with me. We’ll throw knives in the water to celebrate grandma’s life!” I suddenly had a premonition as bright as operating-room lights. My father was going to bring me down to the beach, stab me and cut my throat. Then he was going to throw my body into a marsh. I would be found centuries after my death, perfectly preserved like those bog bodies I saw in National Geographic. I rolled over and wedged my legs between the bed frame and the wall. “No!” I...
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