Baptismal Year

 I get adult-baptized in a bathing suit and choir robe. I feel nothing. I have a chip on my shoulder. I can’t see it, but everyone else does. I’m fourteen years old and afraid of men. 

I volunteer in the toddler room at Vacation Bible School. I have never talked to a baby before. One of the toddlers asks me how to spell her name. I ask her what her name is. I tell her I can’t spell that either. The babies never listen to me, never stop running when I ask them to. I lose one of them and find her in the sculpture garden. She is eating grass in front of Jesus carrying the cross. 

Vacation Bible School ends. The week was jungle adventure-themed. It’s easier to find Christ in the rainforest, I guess. He might as well be there. I kind of wish sometimes that I could go to a class that’s  difficult, that someone would tell me this is supposed to be challenging. I go back to school.

I spend a lot of time at potlucks. I attend many meetings. My mother buys me boxes of crackers and slices of cheese to contribute. I sit in folding chairs. The chairs read across the back THOU SHALT NOT STEAL. My back hurts. I fail to achieve the spiritual results I desire. 

I volunteer at a pancake breakfast for the Knights of Columbus. We are always eating. I serve pancakes out of an aluminum tray in a parochial gym. I feel like I’m in someone else’s life, not my own. Jesus serves, they joke. Jesus saves, I spend. I do save my money, though. My parents give me five dollars a week and I never spend any of it. 

I’m starting to feel depressed. The girl I carpool to school with spends her Christmas money on a red button from the office supply store which chirps That was easy! when pressed. She presses it repeatedly until our homeroom teacher takes it away. Nothing will ever be easy, Lindsey, I want to yell at her. The next weekend she buys a harmonica. At lunch I find her on the floor of the locker room playing Ode to Joy. 

I go to a potluck at the priest’s house. I will never remember what all these potlucks were for. I eat cheese and crackers and meet his pet chihuahua, who he says climbs trees to chase after squirrels. I believe him without question. I will believe anything anyone tells me about the physical world. 

I refuse to discuss my spiritual life with anyone. I feel offended when my catechism teacher asks me to share with the group about my relationship with Christ. I am intensely protective of something in my heart which is not yet there. I am guarding the void with both of my hands.

One of my catechism classmates messages me on Facebook. He is eighteen years old. First, he says he sent the message to the wrong person. Then he says he would wait for me forever.

During the Lenten season we rehearse for a mime performance of The Passion of the Christ. I tell my mother it feels offensive. I am cast as part of the silent jeering crowd. The face paint makes me break out.

I run track and field. I ride the bus. I trip over the hurdles at a meet and skin my knee. I will have the scar forever. I sit on astroturf and pick out the chipped rubber dirt and scream for the relay runners. I don’t think it helps, but it’s what we do. We watch The Passion of the Christ over two consecutive evenings. I go home in the middle of the scourging and return the next day.

I spend a lot of time at K-Mart. I make a lamb cake for Easter and it falls apart. I know that I can feel something about all this if I beg for it, but something keeps me from forgiveness. I get lost in the confessional. My classmate says I have broken his heart. We perform the Crucifixion on a cross with handholds. We drive foam nails through pre-drilled holes in the wood. Everyone knows what is happening. 

I imagine what it would feel like to have a foam nail driven through my hand. I put my fingernails into my palm. I lose a friend. She gave me a glass cross necklace to celebrate my baptism last year. It has a blue rose in the middle. I don’t wear it. This hurt her feelings. The truth is, I’m so afraid to break it that I keep it in a drawer, where I look at it before I go to bed, and sometimes I hold it carefully in my hand.  

E.N. Walztoni's writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Dodge, West Trestle Review, The Meadowlark Review, The Schuylkill Valley Journal and elsewhere. She was a Nature in Words Fellow at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute in 2020. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.