Acts of Faith Read online

  The class grinned in anticipation as she called on Timothy.

  “Now, Tim Hogan—say the Apostles’ Creed.”

  “By heart?”

  “By heart—and from the heart,” Sister Mary Bernard answered, tapping her ruler in readiness.

  To Sister’s utter astonishment, Tim recited every syllable without the slightest hesitation. Letter perfect.

  “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord; Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary …”

  “That’s good—very good,” she felt obliged to concede.

  Tim looked around the room and thought he saw disappointment in the eyes of his classmates.

  Glowering, Ed McGee muttered, “Bookworm.”

  3

  Deborah

  Deborah loved the Sabbath. It was the holiest of all holidays, the only one mentioned in the original Ten Commandments.

  Moreover, it was God’s special gift to the Israelites. For countless millennia, ancient civilizations had reckoned time in years and months, but the notion of a seven-day week that culminated in a Sabbath was a Jewish invention.

  It is a day of unadulterated joy. Even mourning for a parent or husband must cease during this twenty-four-hour dispensation from grief.

  The Bible states that on the Sabbath the Almighty not only stopped work, but “renewed his soul.”

  And this was precisely what Deborah Luria experienced when she closed the door behind her on a Friday afternoon. She was not shutting herself in, but rather keeping the world out. The world of cars, stores, factories, worry, and toil. On Friday evening, something miraculous—a mixture of faith and joy—was reborn within her.

  Perhaps, Deborah thought, that was why her mother was so transported when she stood motionless before the glowing silver candlesticks, as the Sabbath like a soft silk shawl fell gently upon her shoulders.

  As the family watched in silence, Rachel would place her hands over her eyes and say the blessing in a voice so hushed that only God Himself could hear.

  Every Friday afternoon, Deborah and her half sister Rena would join their mother cleaning, polishing, and cooking to ready the house for the invisible angels who would be their honored guests till three small stars could be seen in the Saturday evening sky.

  Some time after darkness fell, Papa and Danny would come home from prayers, the smell of winter emanating from their coal black overcoats. The family would exchange greetings as if they were reuniting after months apart.

  Rav Luria would place his large hands on Danny’s head to bless him—and afterward do likewise for his daughters.

  And then at last in his deep, husky voice he would sing to Mama the famous lines from Proverbs 31:

  A woman of valor, who can find?

  For her price is far above rubies.

  As they stood around the white-clothed table lit by the glittering candles, Papa would raise his large silver cup and sing the blessings over the wine, and then over the bread—two loaves to commemorate God’s sending a double portion of manna to the Israelites in the desert, so they would not have to gather food on the Sabbath.

  The meal that followed was a banquet. Even in the poorest homes the family would sacrifice during the week so that Friday evening’s dinner would be sumptuous—with, if possible, a fish and a meat course.

  All through the evening Papa led everyone in a treasury of Sabbath songs and wordless Hasidic melodies—some from other lands and other centuries; some he had composed himself.

  Deborah could survive all the other ordinary hours of the week merely by reminding herself that at the end were the precious moments when she could be free. When she could let her voice soar above all others. Her voice was exquisite—so clear and vibrant that Rachel often had to caution her to sing softly in the synagogue lest it distract the men.

  Her mother’s cheeks shone on the Sabbath, her eyes danced with the music. She seemed to radiate love. One day Deborah learned the special reason.

  She was walking home from school with Molly Blumberg, a sixteen-year-old neighbor who was engaged to be married that summer. Molly was in a state of agitation, for she had just learned one of the most fundamental and least discussed rules of Jewish marriage.

  It was a man’s duty to make love to his wife on Friday night—a commandment based directly on Exodus 21:10. Moreover, this obligation could not be fulfilled in a perfunctory manner, for the Law demands that he “pleasure” her. A woman may even sue her husband if he does not.

  This, Deborah noted, partially explains the reason for giving husbands a hearty meal. And the smile on a Jewish woman’s face when she prepares it.

  After the rest of the family had gone to bed, Deborah would remain alone in the only illuminated room in the entire household. And even that light wouldn’t burn all night. Since the biblical injunction against work on the Sabbath had been construed by later sages to preclude even the turning on or off of electric lights, the Lurias, like most of their religious neighbors, had engaged a gentile to come and extinguish all lamps at eleven.

  Deborah’s text was always the Bible. And most often the Song of Songs. Completely absorbed, she would sometimes read aloud unwittingly:

  By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth; I sought him, but I found him not.…

  Then she would softly close the Holy Book, kiss it, and go upstairs.

  This was the happiest time in Deborah’s childhood. For to her, Shabbat was synonymous with love.

  4

  Timothy

  One Saturday morning in late May, Tim Hogan and his equally nervous classmates knelt in pews near the confessional, awaiting their turn to perform an all-important rite for the first time.

  Since they all were seven, Sister had drilled them endlessly on how to confess, for only by purging himself of his sins could a Catholic be in a State of Grace—pure enough to receive Communion.

  In direct defiance of Sister’s long-standing order (based on the principle of divide and conquer), Ed McGee climbed across several of his classmates in the pew, shouldered his way into a space next to Timothy, and with a hard poke to his friend’s ribs, tried to provoke him to break the silence. In truth, despite his outward behavior, Ed’s bravado had abandoned him at the church door and he was almost prepared to admit that he was frightened.

  Sensing the commotion, Sister Mary Bernard whirled around and fixed Ed with a glare powerful enough to send him straight to purgatory. As she took his sleeve and pulled him away, she admonished, “And another thing, Edward McGee. You can tell Father that you disobeyed me even in church.”

  Tim craned his neck to look at Ed as he left the confessional a few minutes later, but his friend’s glance was fixed on the ground, as he walked toward the outside gate.

  Well, it can’t be so bad, he thought. McGee’s all in one piece.

  At this moment, a gentle tapping on his shoulder made him start. He stood up nervously, as Sister gestured which confessional box was to be his.

  Head bowed, Tim walked slowly toward the cubicle thinking, This is gonna be a piece of cake. I know it all backwards and forwards … I hope.

  Yet, as he entered the left compartment, drew the curtain behind him, and knelt, his heart began to pound.

  Before him was a wooden panel. It slid open, and through the mesh screen he glimpsed the purple stole around the neck of his confessor, whose features he could not discern.

  Suddenly, in one split second, the gravity—the great significance of all this—electrified him. He knew that for the first time he would have to open his heart completely.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.”

  He took a deep breath and then recited, “I was late for school three times last week. I tore the cover off Davy Murphy’s notebook and threw it at him.”

  He paused. No lightning flashed. Nor did the earth open and swallow him. Perhaps the Lord was waiting for the graver sins.
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  “Last Thursday I flushed Kevin Callahan’s hat down the toilet, and made him cry.”

  He waited, his heart fluttering.

  A voice from the other side of the screen said gently, “This surely was a disrespect of property, my son. And you must remember that Our Lord said, ‘Blessed are the meek.’ Now for your penance.…”

  That was Timothy’s first confession.

  But his first real confession did not come until five years later.

  “I peeked through the keyhole when my older sister Bridget was taking a bath.”

  After a moment, there was a monosyllabic reply from the other side. “Yes?”

  “Well,” Tim protested, “that’s it. I just looked.” Then he forced himself to add, “And had impure thoughts.”

  There was another silence as if the confessor sensed that more remained unsaid. He was right, for Tim suddenly blurted out, “I have these awful feelings.”

  For a moment, there was no reaction from the other side of the screen. Then he heard, “You mean of sexual matters, my son?”

  “I’ve already told you about those.”

  “Then what are these other ‘feelings’?”

  Tim hesitated, took a deep breath, and confessed, “I hate my father.”

  There was a slight but audible “Oh” from the other side of the screen. Then the priest said, “Our Savior taught that God is love. Why do you … feel otherwise about your father?”

  “Because I don’t know who he is.”

  There was a solemn silence. Tim whispered, “That’s all.”

  “The thoughts you had were most unchristian,” his confessor said. “We must always fight the temptation to disobey any commandment in thought, word, or deed. Now for your penance. Say three Hail Marys and make a good Act of Contrition.”

  The priest then murmured the words of absolution, in nomine patris et filii et spiritus sancti, adding, “Go in peace.”

  Timothy left. But not in peace.

  Reluctantly, Tim tried to accept that he would never meet his earthly father. But he could not quell the longing for his mother—nor come to terms with the painful knowledge that he was separated from her by a mere two hours’ bus ride.

  He had tried for his own sake to believe Tuck’s lurid descriptions of a raving lunatic too mad to recognize him. To acknowledge that the terrible sight of her would cause him even more pain. But his visions were too strong to alter.

  At night his imagination would conjure up a pure, golden-haired woman in flowing white robes, a kind of madonna who, though physically too weak to care for him, nonetheless reciprocated his longings and prayed for his visit.

  Sometimes he would daydream that when he grew up and had a home of his own he would be able to take her in and care for her. He wanted her to know this. To reassure her.

  Which is why he had to see her.

  For his twelfth birthday, he pleaded for a special present: would they take him to the asylum to see her. Just look at her from afar even. But Tuck and Cassie refused.

  Six months later he made the same request and was put off even more brusquely.

  “Go for all I care,” Cassie had screamed with exasperation. “Take a look at my demented sister and see what you have for a mother. You’ll rue the day.”

  Tuck summed it up with his characteristically sardonic humor: “The present we’re givin’ you is not takin’ you.” He added, “Now let that be an end to it.”

  And it was an end. At least to discussing it. Now Tim had no choice but to take matters into his own hands.

  Early one Saturday morning, he casually told his aunt that he and some of the guys were going to watch the Knicks play at Madison Square Garden. She merely nodded, glad to be rid of him for the day. She did not even notice he was wearing his confirmation suit.

  Tim raced to the subway and took the express into Manhattan, to the Port Authority bus terminal on Eighth Avenue and Forty-first Street. He approached the ticket window apprehensively and asked for a round-trip ticket to Westbrook, New York. The gum-chewing clerk took the five-dollar bill, moist and crumpled, from the boy’s nervous palm and pressed two buttons with her crimson-nailed finger. Her machine spewed out a card.

  Tim looked at it. “No, no,” he said, his voice breaking. “This is a child’s fare. I’m over twelve.”

  The woman stared at him. “Hey, kid, do me a favor,” she complained. “Make like it’s Christmas so I don’t hafta rebalance my till sheet. Besides, you must be a little nuts to be so honest.”

  A little nuts. The words were chilling for a boy on his way to his mother in an insane asylum.

  The next bus left at 10:50 A.M. Tim bought two Baby Ruth bars, which were intended to serve as lunch. But his anxiety had made him inordinately hungry, and he consumed them both more than a half hour before the bus took on its passengers.

  Feverish with anticipation and desperate to distract himself from thoughts of where he was going, he went downstairs again and bought a Captain Marvel comic.

  At last, the platform clock reached 10:45 and the driver, balding and bespectacled in a creased Greyhound uniform, announced that boarding would commence.

  There were not many people heading for upstate New York in the inclement January weather, so it was only a few seconds later that Tim was climbing aboard. Just as he was handing his ticket to the driver, a large paw grabbed him firmly by the shoulder.

  “Okay, buster, the game’s over.”

  He whirled around. It was a huge, barrel-chested black man, wearing a revolver and the intimidating blue of the New York police force.

  “Your name Hogan?” the officer growled.

  “What’s it to you? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” the policeman replied. “You sure fit the description I’ve got of a runaway named Hogan.”

  “I’m not running anywhere,” Tim persisted bravely.

  The bus driver interrupted. “Hey, officer. I’ve got a schedule, y’know.”

  “Yeah, okay, okay.” The big man nodded and, keeping a firm grip on Tim’s arm, said, “We won’t be making any joyrides today.”

  The moment captor and captive descended, the bus door hissed closed and the vehicle pulled away from the curb, heading for a destination Tim now knew he would never reach.

  The cruelty of this encounter—the fleeting, tantalizing seconds that had robbed him of a lifelong goal—now evoked in him a feeling of sadness so profound that he began to sob.

  “Hey, take it easy, kid,” the police officer murmured in a more kindly voice. “What’d you try the escape act for, anyway? Did you misbehave or something?”

  Tim shook his head. Now he really did want to run away and never see the Delaneys again.

  Unfortunately, he saw his uncle all too soon. He had waited less than a half hour in the terminal’s police headquarters when Tuck appeared.

  “So, you little twerp,” he saluted Tim. “Thought you could pull a fast one on me, didja? Boy, are you dumb—you didn’t even look in the papers to see if the Knicks were playing in town.”

  He looked at the arresting officer. “Thanks for nabbing him, pal. Have you got a room where I can talk to the kid alone?”

  The black man nodded, indicating a small door in the rear. Tuck grabbed Tim by the elbow and started to pull him, but this time the boy protested.

  “No! No! I didn’t do anything—I didn’t.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that. Now you gotta take what’s coming to ya.”

  As they disappeared into the room, the policeman lit a cigarette and began to flick through the Daily News. Moments later he winced at sounds he recognized: the repeated slaps of a belt against bare buttocks, followed by a muffled groan as the truant child attempted manfully to deny the pain.

  On the subway home, Tim stood and gritted his teeth. He glared at his uncle and swore inwardly, I’ll kill you some day.

  5

  Daniel

  As I walked along the snowy sidewalk, Bi
ble in hand, I could distinguish shadows of the faithful coming home from morning Mass.

  It was Christmas morning. And I was doing what my ancestors had always done on this day—deliberately ignoring it. Which is why I was going to school. And the rest of my father’s followers had all gone to work. This unfestive action was meant as a lesson in itself: Remember, this is not your holiday.

  During the twilight of the year, our yeshivas and high schools also gave their students two weeks’ holiday—which they pointedly designated as merely “winter vacation.” To accentuate even further the difference between us and our gentile neighbors, school reopened for one day on December twenty-fifth. It was a gesture of defiance.

  Our teacher, Rabbi Schumann, dressed in his customary black suit and homburg hat, watched solemnly as we filed in and took our seats. He was an austere and demanding tyrant who often berated us when we made even the tiniest error.

  Like many of our other teachers, he had spent several years in a concentration camp, and pallor seemed ingrained in his features. In retrospect, I think his severity with us was a personal way of disguising the grief, and perhaps the guilt, he felt at having survived the Holocaust when so many had not.

  The Bible passages he had chosen that day all emphasized the otherness of our religion, and as the morning progressed, Rabbi Schumann grew increasingly upset. Finally, he closed his book and with a deep sigh, rose and transfixed us with his hollow, dark-ringed eyes.

  “This day, this awful, awful day is when they found the fuel for the torches that would burn us everywhere. In the centuries since our expulsion from the Holy Land, has there ever been a country that has not persecuted us in his name? And our own age has witnessed the ultimate horror—the Nazis with their ruthless efficiency—Six million of us.”

  He pulled out his handkerchief and tried to staunch the tears. “Women, little children,” he went on with anguish. “They all turned into wisps of smoking from the ovens.” His voice grew hoarse. “I saw this, boys. I saw them kill my wife and children. They wouldn’t even do me the kindness of exterminating me. They left me living on the rack of memory.”