“Give me a ticket for an airoplane
I ain't got time to take no fast train..."
"The world is ending.”
“No way!” I blurt.
Doodling on my scarred oak desk, counting minutes until the clang of the lunch bell, I look up. Sister Mary Malachy’s ice-blue eyes lock on me with the soulless glare of a circling shark Only Malachy would see the earth splintering into cosmic dust as a good thing.
And me still a virgin.
She reaches into her bulky brown habit and pulls out her rosary.
“Let us now pray to the Immaculate Heart of Mary for forgiveness.”
Forgiveness? I didn’t do anything!
I inch my head slowly to left. This primordial nightmare disguised as a nun will slap and beat and spell “OBEDIENCE” on both my hands” with her oak pointer even as South Brooklyn sinks into the abyss and the Gowanus Canal spews condoms and brimstone into the sky.
“Sally,” I hiss to the boy in the frayed white shirt sitting alongside me, “What did she just say?”
He leans closer to his desk, then rotates his forefinger against his temple.
“Lei e pazza! (She’s crazy!).” It comes out, “Ou Botts!”
She is crazy, but nobody cares or knows enough to care. Not my mother, Gloria, who treates the Irish nuns of Our Lady of Peace parish as the wives of Christ. (They wear gold wedding bands to reinforce their impregnable position.)
For two days, afloat in that simmering stew of science, history, religion, myth, Mariolatry and madness that is Catholic elementary school education in 1950s’ Brooklyn, Malachy had held me riveted She’d described the bloodcurdling fingernail-pulling torment of St Isaac Jogues at the hands of the Mohawks and other blood-soaked, but glorious New World martyrs. Now for a change of pace she's promised to reveal the miracle of the “Three Letters of Fatima.”
A miracle, it turns out, I definitely can do without.
“In the spring of 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared,” Malachy announced to our dead-quiet class, “to three young Portuguese shepherds. Not to the Cardinal or the Bishop in his worldly finery, but three humble peasants."
Instantly, my mind rockets into overdrive. What was The Virgin Mary wearing? Probably powder blue. All I had were statutes, dusty prints and stained glass to compare? What did she look like, sound like? Did she appear, disappear and descend from the clouds? All these Ascensions, Assumptions, Redemptions, made heaven sound like a cheap furniture store. I begin to ponder all the possibilities.
“....Our Blessed Mother then gave three envelopes to the shepherds...Each contained a prophecy.”
What does heavenly paper feel like? Does it have a watermark? What kind of ink? I bet purple. What did her fingers feel like?
What's in the freaking letters!
Malachy grew solemn. Even the dopes in our class—Fat Ernie Benevento, Pasquale Viscardi, Anthony “Fisheye” Paulino, Eugene Bashinelli—were riveted.
The first letter was a vision of Hell.
Malachy picks up a book from her desk: “A great sea of fire which seemed to be under the earth. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze floating about in the conflagration.”
Fuck that!.
“`Pray...Pray...Pray for forgiveness,’” Malachy warns.
“Forgiveness? Shit, I’m 15-years-old, Never kissed a girl or coveted my neighbor's (Tommy Caccasotte ("Shit the Pants'") wife.
“What else did Our Lady say?” This from Kathleen Victor, dark-skinned, smart, but impudent, a natural target for Malachy’s ire.
“The second letter foretells World War I and II.”
“We coulda stopped Hitler before he got started? Oh man! That ain't right." This from Fat Ernie whose father died in WWII.
“What about Letter Three?” I raise my hand, shouting before Malachy can start back on the rosary.
“The Third Prophecy, given by Our Lady of Fatima to the shepherd girl, Lucia dos Santos.... (Malachy pauses for effect) “...was carried from Portugal to the Pope in Rome two years ago.
Okay... Pope, Rome, What else?
“It will be opened in 1960.”
Next year! Way too soon! I haven’t even traveled outside Brooklyn...
“Do we know anything else Sister?”
Straining at the bolts that hold my desk to the oak floor I’m thinking `Hell?’ `World War I?’ `World War II?’ `Pray for Forgiveness?’ This is gonna be really bad news. I know the Russians have ICBMs with atomic warheads...The Chinese are happily plotting godless murder and mayhem. The Daily News reports legions of "bearded bums" are on the move in Cuba...
“Pope Pius XII took one look at the Third Letter,” Malachy announces.
“Ah ha! So what did he say?”
Very, very long pause. "His Holiness said nothing. He fell to his knees and began sobbing.”
Sobbing WTF!
“We don't know whether these were tears of joy or sorrow."
What! Let me guess. For the next two years I scour the news, TV, church newspapers for word of The Letter. Not a whisper. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Kennedy getting shot, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev banging his shoe at the U.N. didn't help one bit.
Five years pass, and ten and twenty. I wake up one day and I'm an adult.
By then so many bad things had happened to me, who cared about a letter?
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