September 24, 2018 | Occasus | Issue 8 | Creative Nonfiction
Os Meus Deus
I never went in.
There was a church near my high school, a big old Cathedral. It was a faded light-yellow colour, like it had been worn out by the salt in the air. Maybe it was a different colour 300 years ago. I remember someone once said to me it used to be pink. Or maybe it was pink in my memories. I couldn’t tell. The day I left, it was yellow. The Cathedral is one of the main symbols of my town, but I’m not sure why. Maybe because it’s old and everything seems to originate from that point; the streets are like roots coming out from a little seed. But I don’t know if anyone goes in. I’m not sure they even realize it’s there. I know I didn’t. People used to sell hot dogs in front of it, which kind took the whole spirituality thing away for me. It didn’t feel like a church. They would also sell knitted clothes and crafts for the tourists, but the tourists never went in either. When I was fifteen, I used to pass by it every day – some days in a rush, others laughing and holding hands with someone, others in a bus. I could hear it too, near noon, its bells sang. Twelve times. I never stopped to listen, and I never went in. When I was fifteen, God was absent, and he didn’t make a sound. I wonder if he was mad. My grandmother would have thought so. I was nine when I visited my maternal grandmother in a little farm town where the streets were made of stones. My grandfather had just died. I remember very little of him; he was always a closed book. The few memories I have of him come from old photographs, or from the smell of the tea he was always drinking. I remember my grandmother lighting candles around the small house, making the entire living room smell like burnt matches and bread. I remember her kneeling in front of one of the dying fires and praying twenty-three times. She counted them on her rosary, and her knuckles were white from holding it so tight. I am not sure I went to the funeral. I was too young, and I needed to stay behind with my even younger brother; but I remember my grandmother’s whispers and how the candle flickered against the wall when night fell. I couldn’t understand why she had prayed tirelessly, as if God didn’t want to hear her the first time. I wouldn’t like to believe in that God. I wouldn’t like to believe in a God that didn’t believe in me. In that house, religion was for old people and their rosaries. My knuckles have never turned white. When I was ten, God was death and I didn’t like the way he smelled. I didn’t like the way the Cathedral smelled either. It was so close to downtown that on the hottest days, the stairs would smell of hot pee and cigarettes. I couldn’t imagine myself falling to my knees there and praying. I now wonder if the inside of the Cathedral would be better, if candles would be flickering and if my footsteps would echo through the high ceilings. That’s probably the only one I like about churches. Their silence. Only my footsteps. I was eleven when I started to go to church every week. There was one in my neighbourhood, isolated in a street near a gas station. Most of my friends started to go to catechesis, and I asked my mom to sign me up for classes. I thought she would be happy, that I was starting to see God better. She signed me up, but it was not until years later that she told me she only encouraged me because she wanted me to choose my own religion, not because she wanted me to believe in her mother’s God. It didn’t work anyway. Catechesis became an excuse to see my friends after class and eat strawberry-flavoured biscuits while colouring pictures of Adam and Eve. “Jesus is your friend!” My old, petite teacher used to say when we started laughing during classes, our mouths filled with cookies, spitting them everywhere. “Don’t disrespect him that way!” If Jesus was really my friend, I am sure he would have thought I was funny. He would have laughed too, especially when my mom packed me lemon-flavoured biscuits. I used to lick the frosting off. I was pretty hilarious chewing with my mouth open and with lemon frosting on my nose. My teacher used to be so mad. She used to say God was watching, and I am not sure why, but that bothered me intensely. I felt like my life was not my own. “God is going to be mad at you!” Maybe he wouldn’t, if I just ignored him. I used to shrug my shoulders and continue laughing. When I was eleven, God was flavoured biscuits and I didn’t think much of it. I would always remember that every time I ate those biscuits. When I was stressed from school and passed in front of the Cathedral, snacking a few of them, I would remember their biased God. Near the Cathedral, there was always a dozen old men playing dominoes in one of the shades of the trees nearby. They were always there, and I noticed them regularly because they used to whistle at me and my friends. One time a guy hissed at the other, saying to not say those things with a church nearby. “It’s bad luck.” I looked at the old church and felt bad for their wives and their bitter prayers. When I was thirteen, I started praying. My mom always prayed. I think it was a habit from her childhood. Back then, I remember my mother as such a religious woman, but growing up I realized she really wasn’t. I think it’s because she was so similar to my grandmother that sometimes they just blended. They both have always prayed. But when my grandmother came to visit, and her figure looked so small in a house that was too big for her, she always prayed that God would fix everything. I used to hear her late at night and early in the morning. She always asked for the crops to be good or that my uncle would be able to finally sell the house. My mom thanked. When she sat in my bed at night, took my hands in hers and closed her eyes, she thanked God. She started her prayer by saying thank you for all the goods things in her life. Instead of asking God to solve her problems, she asked for wisdom or clarification. It was not until years later that I truly understood: my mom wasn’t really thanking God, but life. She thanked fate and coincidence and every good little thing that had ever happened to her. God was just easier and more believable to vocalize. I prayed to God with her. Every night. I would talk to him like my mother would be doing, sitting right next to me. But I wasn’t really thanking God either. I was thanking her. When I was thirteen, God was gratitude and his presence didn’t bother me like it usually did. I stopped praying a couple of years later, but I have never stopped being grateful for my family. We used to have lunch near the Cathedral, my mother and I, every Tuesday before my French lesson. We walked by it together, and some days my father would join us. A lot of homeless people asked for money around the Cathedral’s steps, appealing to the good heavenly Christians. My father sometimes ordered extra breads from the restaurants we ate at, and he would give them to the homeless on our way back. “Bless you, sir”, they would say, putting their hands together. My father is not a religious person, but he would always reply, “Bless you too, sir.” My father rarely talked about religion with me, and he never prayed with me. He never really believed in anything, but he did have incredible respect for faith. His mom, my favourite grandmother, was very religious, and he only prayed when she asked. I adore her. She’s eighty, and she makes the most amazing Christmas cookies, with white frosting and green sprinkles on top. When I was leaving Brazil, she gave me a stone-carved rosary and told me it had been blessed by her and her priest. I am not a religious person, but I keep it near my bed, looking at it every night. My father taught me to respect different faiths, as long as they come from the heart. We all feel different gods in different ways. When I truly felt god for the first time, I was seventeen. My god didn’t have a capital “g”. And my god was no him. Growing up in Brazil meant I grew up with some African religions. They had so many gods, symbols of different forces of nature. The one that always spoke to me was Yemanjá, the goddess of family and the ocean. I know it might sound silly to believe in different entities, like we know nothing of science and logic, but we believed anyway. Not fervently. Not with prayer, not with fear. On New Years, everyone wears white to honour her. It’s my favourite time of the year. When I was seventeen I wore a stupidly long white dress, that got incredibly dirty from the sand, the sea, and my barefoot adventures with a champagne bottle. It’s a tradition to jump seven waves in the ocean, asking Yemanjá for blessings, and throw a white rose for her, thanking her for the good year. Everyone does it, even Christians. I love that they do it too. I am not sure if they know completely the roots of the tradition, but I love it anyway. It is as if she’s so loving that they can’t help but embrace her. I am sure their God adores it. I feel her. I feel her because when the clocks turn midnight and the sky lights up, it’s hard to not look up and feel big. Huge. Enormous. Gigantic, when the fireworks embrace you and you can feel the sand between your toes. It’s hard to not feel thankful on the day after, when you go to the ocean and it's like the water is alive, and it embraces you, adores you, and cleanses you. It’s hard to not feel the living energy around you, and how everything moves. Maybe this is what they call God. The energy of things, their colours, and their smells. We all feel it, we just name it differently. The wonders of being alive. That was what my dad used to say. “Listen to the birds chirping in the morning, kid. That’s my God.” When I was seventeen, God was the breeze by the sea. I will always remember the ocean at that moment. If I looked closely to the north of the church, I could see the beginning of the sea. Living on an island meant never escaping the salty breeze and the waves at the corner of your eyes. Even so close to downtown, the sea is always with you. There was something reassuring about that. I have never felt that about the old Cathedral. That’s why I never went in. The sea never made me feel small. Yeamanjá never made me feel small, like my life was not my own. I think that’s why I always rejected my grandmother’s Christian God as a little girl. I am big. Huge. Enormous. Gigantic, and religion tried to say I am small. Tried to say I couldn’t be capable of miracles. Tried to say only God is truly powerful enough to change my life. People don’t realize how big they are. We are all Gods. Now, God in my life is everything. And nothing at all. |
CAROLINA JUNG was born in Brazil, but came to Canada looking for a better education.