Saturday's Child (21 page)

Whenever I lecture or talk with students, I make certain they know that I never graduated from college. Whenever I guest-teach, I announce at the beginning that there will be no grading other than pass/fail, that I consider marks to be irrelevant and tests abhorrent so there will be neither, that the required reading list is three times longer than what they are usually assigned, and that we will be attempting to bypass the vapid bureaucracy
of the contemporary credit-grade-tuition education-industry mill so as to get to the
point
: the challenge and elation of
learning
something about the subject before us. Such pronouncements might make some professors and school administrators uncomfortable, but what I see in the students' widening eyes and incredulous grins, and what transformations they blossom through as the course proceeds, remind me of a young girl who wanted to be of use and, worse, change the world.

I like to think Jean might be pleased.

SEVEN

Sex, Lies, and Fatherly Love

Cruelty has a human heart
,

And Jealousy a human face;

Terror, the human form divine
,

And Secrecy, the human dress
.

—W
ILLIAM
B
LAKE

In the late 1960s, at the beginning of this wave of feminism in the United States, a standard question asked of movement spokeswomen was “What childhood trauma did you suffer that made you become a feminist?” Patiently, we would explain that no specific trauma had been necessary, reciting until we were hoarse statistics on rape, battery, butchered illegal abortions, and gross inequalities in education and employment as well as in virtually every other area. Such moronic psychological reductionism drove me nuts, so sometimes, when in a mischievous mood, I'd “confess” in a low voice that something
had
in fact happened to me around age three. With my interrogator salivating in anticipation, I'd spring the scandalous revelation: my trauma lay in having discovered I'd been born female in an androcentric society, the same trauma every girlchild endures.

It's taken thirty years for contemporary feminist politics to enter the socalled
mainstream, and now this sort of trivializing dismissal by psychobabble is attempted less often. We're all more aware of the intimate intricacies of oppression, those small but steady erosions of spirit that can exact as great a toll as do blatant outrages to human dignity. Society has begun to glimpse (though not yet grasp) that there exists an emotional equivalence of foot-binding; that self-regard is connected with having access to capacity, agency, power. Furthermore, thanks to three decades of feminist research and organizing, we've also become more aware of the tragically high proportion of
literal
trauma—verbal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse—that children, in particular girl children, suffer.

This changed consciousness now makes it possible to tell truths less “aslant.” One such, in my case, consists of a rather bizarre relationship with the Roman Catholic priest who functioned as my father surrogate from the time I was about four until early in my teens.

Father Joseph Melory Collier—Father Joe—came into our all-female household's life when, having attended one of those religious-charity benefits at which I too frequently had to perform, he came backstage to meet the “dear little girl with Franciscan brown eyes.”

Then, somehow, he was there. For years.

I was not privy to any discussions my mother and aunt may have had about him. But each of them had said more than once that neither would ever remarry because, since no man would put up with their focus on me, marriage for either of them “might interfere with Robin's career.” At the time, I didn't question such a rationale, though it got added to the pile of their sacrifices about which I felt guilty. Given this mindset of theirs, plus concern about my fatherless state (women-headed families in the 1940s were still considered “fishy” even by the women themselves), I can well imagine that a celibate priest might have seemed the perfect daddy-surrogate candidate. He never proselytized conversion, so the Catholicism was no problem, especially since my mother prided herself on her ecumenicism, which was probably more indicative of a flight from her own Ashkenazic origins than she was able to acknowledge. Faith was hilariously, almost promiscuously, ecumenical. She celebrated all secular, Jewish, and Christian holidays, plus Chinese, Russian, and Persian New Year's; when she discovered Ramadan, she celebrated
that
.

Whatever the justification for Father Joe's presence, I was glad of it. He
had a debonair Irish manner and liked to “take off the collar and go incognito.” He told terrific stories—mostly about the saints and the Irish, who apparently were synonymous. He called me “Kitten” or “Princess,” and about once a month took me to the Bronx Zoo or for rides on the Central Park carousel, always with ice cream afterwards. Of medium build with a ruddy face and balding scalp, he smelled good—of lime cologne, incense, and mellow pipe tobacco. He was gentle and sheltering, never patronized me, and displayed a nonpompous, self-deprecatory sense of humor that extended to singing “Jingle Bells” in Latin (“Tintanabulum, tintanabulum, tinta via cora …”). He always remembered my birthday, phoned in praise the day after a show, and sent me flowers on Father's Day.

His presence made Christmastime magical. It became a tradition that my family joined his parents to see him celebrate Christmas Eve midnight mass (usually in Paterson, New Jersey, where for a time he had a parish), and I must say that watching him up there trailing the full regalia was pretty sexy. The Church has always been canny enough to mount superb theater: colors and candlelight, costumes and music, smells and bells galore—all the while torturing witches, burning heretics, forcing conversion on indigenous peoples, denying women reproductive freedom, sacralizing homophobia, and inflicting other such fun dogmatic infallibilities. After the midnight spectacle, I was permitted to stay up into the wee hours of Christmas morning, since we would all adjourn to his parents' apartment in Washington Heights for late supper. There, the entire living room had been given over to a mounted extravaganza of miniature towns, forests, mirror lakes, and hills, transected by a system of eight Lionel train sets, all of it aglow with tiny lights and achurn with moving parts—the whole surrounded by six towering, fully decorated, twinkling Christmas trees. One year, well into this tradition, by which time I was perhaps ten, Father Joe's elderly mother was too ill to leave the apartment, so he got special dispensation to say mass there, at home—and I was his attendant. This was before the Church changed its ruling that only males could approach the sacrament, so I suppose I was the first de facto altar girl in Church history; certainly the first non-Catholic one.

Mom and Pop Collier, Father Joe's parents, fussed over me greatly. Nell Melory Collier was a tiny, wrenlike matriarch in her seventies, a poor woman's Rose Kennedy—puckered face beneath hair dyed coal-black,
fiercely Irish, fanatically devout, and obsessively reverent of her Only Begotten Son the Priest, whose responding solicitude she welcomed as her due, reminding anyone who would listen that she'd been dying for all forty-five years since his birth. It seemed she would go on dying forever. In the meanwhile, she made world-class oatmeal cookies nubbled with chocolate chips, and her laugh invited—demanded—the company of others' laughter.

Pop Collier was another matter.

He was never without a beer in his hand, despite his wife's glares and his son's cajolings. Retired, after having worked all his life as a locker-room attendant handing towels to the New York Giants baseball team, he hung out nostalgically at the (now long-gone) Polo Grounds. It was there I attended my first baseball game, trying to learn the rules while chomping my way at Father Joe's expense through a delirium of foods normally forbidden me: hot dogs, popcorn, peanuts, crackerjacks, sodas, pretzels, and cotton candy. Father Joe was what Catholics call “a worldly priest,” with a tad of entrepreneurial ambition. He'd found a way to, as he put it, “wield the collar” to develop his father's lowly connection with the Giants into his own relationship with the ball club and capitalize on that. Consequently, he was often able to pair a well-known baseball player, including even a few stars from other teams, with me, for appearances at—what else?—Catholic charity benefits (the
Our Lady of Fatima
film premiere, St. Joseph's Orphanage in Totowa, New Jersey, the Kennedy School for Retarded Children, among others). Had I known enough to get Willie Mays's or Hank Aaron's autographs on a baseball during one of these duets, I would've made my son one ecstatic child some decades later. But I didn't. Nor did I like listening to Pop Collier's long-winded baseball lore, related in the context of how “All the guys know and love me, their ol' locker-room buddy.” But there was another reason I didn't like being plonked down on Pop Collier's lap while he went through his repertoire. The instant other people left the room, his hand insinuated itself under my skirt and underpants to wedge itself between my legs. When I fought to get away, he grasped me tighter, claiming it was a lesson: “See, honey, this is to teach you
never
to let boys touch you
there
. And don't you never tell nobody it was me that taught you.
Understand?
”

I understood. He frightened and revolted me. By age eight, after two or
three years of this, I began trying to avoid visits to Mom and Pop Collier, because I also understood, with that amorphous knowledge children have, that it would hurt Father Joe and might kill Mom Collier (always at death's door anyway) if I were to tell them; it never occurred to me that they might already half know, because then what would that say about
them?
So I kept my silence and tried to keep my distance—understanding, too, that if I told Mommie or Aunt Sally, they might even stop me from seeing Father Joe himself.

He
never did anything like that. He praised my homework, my acting, my attempts to write poems. He taught me to play chess and gave me books. He told me over and over how “special” I was, and I felt more special with him than surrounded by a horde of autograph seekers. When I was eleven or twelve, he introduced me to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Respectful of what he called “God's gift of Robin's precocity,” he talked to me about philosophy and theology, Aquinas and Augustine and even Duns Scotus. He told me about Hildegard von Bingen, Saint Catherine of Siena, and Saint Theresa of Avila, presenting them as intellectuals and leaders, not just devout nuns or martyrs. He introduced me to the ideas of Carl Jung. He told derisive jokes about Dominicans and Jesuits. Together with smells, bells,
and
carousels, this made for a heady combination. Besides, I was a pushover for anyone who appealed to the erogenous zone called my brain, so I loved him dearly.

Father Joe had a master's degree in psychology, and for a while, when I was around age twelve, he was sent by his provincial office to work as a chaplain at St. Elizabeth's Hospital (for “the Insane” as it was then termed) in Washington, D.C. My mother and I visited him while we were in Washington on a publicity appearance, and he took us on a personal tour of St. Elizabeth's, showing off his young friend the TV star to the minimum-security patients and vice versa. (I was by this time an unflappable hospital visitor, smilingly unfazed by people in bandages, casts, traction, iron lungs, manic states, or catatonia.) As we were leaving St. E's, Father Joe spied one patient sitting alone, apart from the others strolling or sprawling on the expansive but enclosed lawn. Saying he thought I should meet this man because he wrote poetry, he walked us over to the patient. I remember a pale, wrinkled face with rheumy eyes peering out from under bushy brows. Father Joe introduced me this time not just as a TV
star but also as someone who wrote poems. I grasped the man's hand and shook it.

“
I
write
poems
,” the man snapped, yanking his hand back.

“I know,” I answered politely. “I'm sorry, I haven't read your poetry yet.”

“You wouldn't understand it. Most people don't,” he barked.

I knew enough to feel embarrassed, knew that if he was a real poet he must be disgusted by this TV kid being pushed at him. I said I might understand his poetry if I worked hard, and that I liked working hard if it was to understand poems. He snorted. Glancing at Father Joe, he asked me if I was Catholic. When I answered no, he asked what religion I was. I replied as I'd been taught to for interviews:

“I'm a believer in all religions.”

“A kike,” he laughed, “as well as a cunt. Forget about poetry.”

Faith tugged sharply at my arm and Father Joe moved us away, soothing my mother's feelings with comments about the man's instability and his bitterness at having been forcibly committed to St. E's. Apparently some important writers had brokered this arrangement: that he be committed in lieu of serving a prison term on the charge of treason, for having broadcast a series of virulently pro-Fascist radio programs from Mussolini's Italy during the war. That day, I was busy asking what “kike” and “cunt” meant, though neither Faith nor Father Joe would enlighten me, both of them hissing I must never say either word again. It didn't fully register with me until years afterward that I'd met Ezra Pound.

Birthdays, holidays, and special events like recitals and graduations inevitably included Father Joe, and I took comfort in his reliable presence. Yet he always made me feel time's winged chariot was not just drawing near but bearing down hard.

“Ah, Kitten, soon you'll outgrow me,” he'd sigh, “You'll get bored with your old Franciscan pal”—and I'd ferociously insist, “Never!” Still, I half believed his warning and began to develop anxieties about puberty. As I entered my teens, however,
he
started to withdraw. I remember wondering if his priestly vows forbade any friendships, however pure, with teenage girls or grown women. I made quite a pest of myself, but the thought of losing him was so painful that I clung all the harder. If I was that special, I was positive I ought to be able to figure out why he was distancing himself. Detection and decoding are among children's survival skills: what
they can't learn directly, they overhear; what they can't overhear, they intuit.