Amen's Boy. William Maltese
and she did indeed work all the time, behind a counter that ran around the entire perimeter of the store. People came in and she got things down off the shelf for them. She added the bill up on a big, old, hand-cranked cash register. It registered the amount put into it with metal tabs that popped up. Eventually, I got to learn how to do the cash register, and how to make snow cones and “ring up” the sale. It seemed like a dream. Everything in Father Terry’s home seemed dreamlike. I wondered if we weren’t hypnotized, or in the “Twilight Zone” or the “Outer Limits.”
That first night at bedtime, I began to understand a little more. I knew, from the Blueberry Hill Bayou Camp, that sleeping with Father Terry meant sleeping in the same bed. I didn’t know that men didn’t usually sleep with boys, and it didn’t seem odd to me. What did seem odd was how we always hurried to bed. We had to be real still and quiet, and then cuddle up towards one another. He would put his arm around me, and pull me into his chest and stomach, holding me there in his arms. I felt the curly hair of his chest against my face, and I could feel his pulse, his heart. He breathed on me, and somehow I liked it, but also I wanted him to stop. He smelled like wine and cigarettes sometimes, but at his mother’s house there was no whiskey, only table wine for the evening meal; smoking was allowed only in his room, and out on the back porch. He didn’t smoke much at home. This made me look at him more like a regular person, because now he didn’t have the high status of priest, but was clearly his mommy’s little boy. Oh, she was proud he was a priest, but she treated him like a special little son, almost like he were still a child.
I was not uncooperative when Father Terry wanted us to be cozy and close together in bed. I learned it was okay that we did this secret thing. On those Algiers’s nights, our pressing hard against one another happened every night that we were there. Sometimes he got up and locked the door, which made me think we were not supposed to be seen doing this. I was very young, and knew little about how life outside my parent’s home was, unaware of the rest of the world. However, I didn’t care if it was unusual because it was so kind and tender compared to the beatings from Bubba, and daddy’s constant berating me for all my shortcomings. I learned that it was okay to be aroused, also, during these times we pressed against one another.
Sometimes I felt like he was touching my private parts, but I was in and out of sleep. There were long, serene, dreamlike times of just being with him, close to one another. I felt safe, like the dangers of my own home were far away. I trusted this security, and sought it. He was meticulously gentle with me. As the hours of the night would move slowly by, he touched me secretly. Gradually in the silence activity increased. I lay still and liked pressing his erection into my pubic area and on my legs. He never hurt me. At first he pressed through his white underwear, but deep in the night I’d awaken to him pressing directly against me. He put his hand on mine, and I felt him guide my fingers until I was holding his in my hand, and this lasted for hours. Eventually, a blissful feeling would arise in me and I’d have an orgasm as he held me, and then he would and then get up and get a towel and dry us off. Not a word was spoken. Then we’d sleep until daybreak. Sometimes I’d awaken and he would have his erection beneath my privates pressed in between my hairless thighs, and wet warm ejaculations would follow a period of time during which he’d push in and out between my legs. When he got close to his peak he’d grab me and pull me into his arms forcibly, but not cruelly, just intensely. He’d dry me off in the silence, and I understood that no words ever would be spoken about this.
The week in Algiers seemed to go by quickly, and the next thing I knew I was riding back home in the black Chevy. I was returning to the unhappy world of my parents’ home, and we were leaving a special precious world behind. I knew that the “night sharing” world was disappearing. Father Terry spoke, as he drove, about how I would not be seeing him regularly when I went to Mettray. I was silent for a long time, and then we drove up to the rectory at Assisi. I went in to use the bathroom, and then ran home in the dark under the street lamps. Mother was glad to see me, and my father, he smiled a little, but criticized the way I had my shirt half in and half out, and the scuff marks on the tips of my shoes.
He was critical of me all the time! I tried ignoring him, like mother said, but it didn’t work.
CHAPTER NINE
SUPERNATURAL GRACE AND LIGHT
I tried to be perfect for God. It was easy for me to believe in God, creation, and spiritual things because of my special visions. I remember the day when I learned the meaning of “supernatural” and “sanctifying grace,” because, although I never thought to tell anyone, I literally saw grace from God flowing to earth. I saw all creation praising God, too.
I don’t mean I imagined that I saw it, but I saw the light of grace in reality. Visually I saw the light that was intimate between every molecule of nature, and in turn between every being, and all this illuminated creation was connected to the Spirit with strands of silver light. I loved seeing a field of uncut grass with wild flowers in a soft breeze. I could see the mists were really little angels. I saw moving lights. “Scintillae,” I learned to call them as I got older, but I saw these little, tiny, sparkling stars that slipped in and out all the time between people, between trees and bugs, between birds and fishes, and I saw all the little lights running back and forth like atoms.
Some days I would not see many sparks of light at all, and at other times I would see millions of scintillae forming webs and patterns, like nets of light, and at times I saw everything wrapped in this light—like everything was wearing fine Irish lace and catching golden light. I frequently saw these lights in nature, but the only place I was sure to see them every single time was in church, at the altar, moving about the candles and altar cloths, and the tabernacle had a platinum glow.
Light sometimes formed into patterns and mandala-like emblems that bounced off of one another. I didn’t think to speak of these to anyone because I thought everyone saw them. This is how I began to know about “holiness.” God’s grace was visible to me.
There was a story that made me love to drop into the church every time I passed by; a quick visit, genuflection, making the sign of the cross with Holy Water, and seeing the lights on the altar. It was a simple story my Aunt Nita first told to me.
In the story, there is a boy named Timmy. Timmy was a good boy, and everyday crossed the street from his house and passed by the church on the way to school. He’d been taught to stop in, pray a moment, and say hello to Jesus in his house. So each morning, on the way to school, Timmy went into the church, made the sign of the cross with his hand after dipping it in Holy Water, and would say a soft prayer—just a whisper, “Hello Jesus, this is Timmy.” Timmy visited the church sometimes three times a day. He went back and forth from his house, across the street from the school and church, and one day, Timmy got hit by a fast moving truck as he crossed the street. He was in the hospital dying, and he lay in the bed as all the family stood silently around him so sad, and he looked up. There, at the end of his bed, was an apparition of a man dressed in brilliant golden light, and with long hair and a beard. He said, “Hello Timmy, this is Jesus!”
I know it is a Tadpole-stupid thing to hang onto all my life, but I never forgot that kid Timmy’s apparition; I mean, “The sighting of Jesus,” as he went up to Heaven. As a boy, I thought it was a true story, and I thought everyone could see the “divine lights” like I did.
I was sure of one thing. I had a vocation to be a priest. I was sure and certain beyond any shadow of a doubt that I was “called” by Jesus to be a representative of his on earth, and, as a boy and even later as a man, I thought I was here to help the poor and the people who were suffering, alone in fear, or modern slaves. I wanted to bring this light to everyone. I wanted to help the people who had never seen the light to see it. I wanted to share in the ministry to bring “seeing the light” to the suffering people who didn’t see the light.
Sermon after sermon, Bible reading after reading, stories about Jesus all talked of the light. It was everyday reality to me.
I had a harsh surprise when the day came to tell my father that I wanted to go to Mettray to study for the priesthood, with the priest teachers, not the regular high school at Assisi. It was a harsh surprise the way my father was so mean and angry about it. He began fussing at me, and telling my mother to shut up because