A teeny church stood on a patch of earth next to the shore of the American River in Sacramento where the iron gables of the Fair Oaks Bridge arched its back from the north shore across to the south sandy bluff. One room with a polished, wooden floor and six stained glass windows; three high windows lined each side wall, inviting the glory of the sunrise in the morning and the grandeur of the sunset at night. In the sun’s ascent and descent, the stained glass filtered a rainbow of light into the single tall room, creating the impression that heaven hovered right outside.
Father McAlister, fresh out of a seminary in Ireland and already balding, said mass every weekday morning at 8 a.m. to a cluster of parishioners. McAlister named his parish St. Mel’s, after the nephew of Ireland’s patron, Saint Patrick. He told his parishioners that St. Mel came to Ireland in the fifth century with his uncle to convert pagans to Catholicism. Mel was the patron saint of the dioceses of Ardagh and Clonmacnois in Ireland, McAlister’s birthplace. As he preached, Father McAlister’s emotions drew deep, angry lines into his forehead, but when he clasped the hands of his parishioners, he smiled warmly, shook firmly.
In August, 1956, McAlister’s little church was only half-full on Sundays. But, by May, 1957, the seats were filled—fathers in suits, mothers in maternity dresses and lace veils, babies that squalled, and toddles that escaped from their parent’s clutches and teetered down the short center aisle. Little boys wore blue trousers and tiny buttoned shirts. Little girls twirled in skirts that gathered from their waists and bounced above their knees.
On summer Friday nights, parishioners gathered for potlucks on the nearby sandy shore of the steely blue river. Fathers carted their barbeques to the beach, on which they grilled steaks for the parents and hotdogs for the kids. Bowls of potato salad and coleslaw crowded the tops of folding tables along with steaming pots of baked beans, plastic bags of hot dog buns, and jars of yellow mustard. Parents set their woven folding chairs in circles to build fences around the toddlers that were attracted to the rolling current of the river.
Later, after the sun had inched its way down through the iron spokes of Fair Oaks Bridge and settled splendidly on the tips of the trees across the river, fathers took the older kids down to the water’s edge to teach them how to find flat stones on the bank and skitter them across the smoother parts of the water. The kids took off their shoes and waded in the shallow puddles of the shore. They fell and smeared their shorts with gritty mud that would eventually end up on the seats of the family cars. When the sun set and it was well past bedtime, reluctant parents packed their picnic supplies into the backs of their trucks and station wagons and took their broods home.
This church, this beach, this community was the perfect setting for a happy childhood.
Back at home, a girl child swam in the dark, warm ocean of her mother’s womb. She listened to the soft voice of her mother who used short sentences. Single words. Gentle instructions. Submissive answers. The girl child was excited to be in her womb and anxious to see her mother’s face. She swam and swam around the dark ocean for a long time, writing big dreams on the pages of her heart. She dreamed of dancing for hours in the sunlight and catching as many golden rays as she could carry in the crooks of her arms. She would speak and draw and teach and learn and listen to as many people as she could meet. Her dreams were long and joyous, endless, full of laughter, unlimited in imagination. In early May, after a thousand stories had filled this sweet heart about the future of her life, this baby girl was born and her parent named her Audrey.
By the end of Audrey’s third month, her parents stood in front of the altar at church with her and her two sisters. Her father held her. Her mother, her left arm in a sling, alternately patted the blonde heads of her sisters with her right hand.
Usually parishioners baptized their babies the Sunday after the mother and baby left the hospital. But, after Audrey’s mother had delivered, Audrey came home from the hospital while her mother stayed for another two weeks, healing from bursitis. Her father couldn’t take time off work to care for a new baby and two little toddlers so he asked the neighbors, Ed and Crème Hardy to take care of the new baby girl. Yvonne and Owen O’Neil, parishioners from church, took Audrey’s sisters.
Crème swaddled Audrey in blankets and placed her in a drawer in the living room so she could see her while she worked. She fed Audrey fresh goat’s milk from the ninny in her back yard. In between finishing the laundry, sweeping the floor, and baking bread, Crème rubbed Audrey’s belly and pulled her toes. She sang lullabies to her with a voice that chimed like a church bell.
When Audrey fell asleep in the mornings, Crème snuck out to the farm yard to feed the chickens and collect eggs. During the baby’s afternoon naps, she ironed her husband’s button down shirts and worked on a quilt for her own soon-to-be-born baby. But, after she cleaned up the dinner dishes, she took Audry into her arms and rocked her by the fire in an oak rocking chair, softened with deep red cushions. Audrey looked into Crème’s jade-green eyes and saw smiles. She cooed and gurgled while Crème told her stories about a beautiful, young girl who was admired for her intelligence and grace.
At the end of two weeks, when her father arrived to take her home, he roughly scooped Audrey out of Crème’s arms with his big, pancake hands. Audrey couldn’t breathe. All she could see were the walls whirling, the rocking chair getting smaller, the fire shivering like a frightened animal, her father’s face spinning around and around, making her dizzy, confused, and scared. He took her far away from Crème.
“I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” Father McAlister chanted as he poured the glass picture of holy water over Audrey’s head as her father held her over the baptismal font. The water was cold. It splashed on the little head and drizzled down the front of the baby girl’s face, over her eyes, down the sides of her nose. She squeezed her bluish-green eyes shut and pursed her mouth into crescent dimples. The baby girl didn’t cry, whimper, just held in her little puffs of breath until it was over.
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