It was early February, which somehow seems to be the dead of winter in the south. Lily, who was of the flower itself, tall, slender, fresh faced had on a thick fur coat and the nice brown leather boots The Priest let her buy after he’d had one of his episodes. She floated her way into her pew, left side, dead middle, not far enough back that the congregation would go a mass without noticing her, but not far enough up that they’d think she was trying to be loud about being The Priest’s wife. It was getting hot in the nave as the thurifer processed forward, warm smoke rising from the ground and catching the Sunday morning light. As The Priest went by her pew, Lily watched his hands, folded into a pyramid in front of his chest, pointed slightly upward toward the great stain glass window above the altar. Her eyes traced the line from his fingertips to God, His arms outstretched, open palms. The Priest never swung with an open palm.
Two pews in front of her and one to the left was a little girl. She had a bow in her hair that was made of the same faded gingham as her dress. She couldn’t have been older than eight and yet she kneeled devoutly and Lily could see her lips moving in unison with the congregation, all much so her senior. She could see her temples pulse and her brow furrow as she prayed with intention. Lily could no longer pray that way. The Priests’ booming voice ricocheted off the walls and shook her bones. So she let her eyes glaze over when she knelt and she lost herself in the flickering gold light of the altar and in the muffled coughs of the choir girls and in the burning incense and the worn red carpet pressing against her knees.
Lily recalled the girls’ name, Anita. She took her first communion a few months ago and now she was an armslength away from Lily at the railing, holding her small hands out for the eucharist. The Priest laid the wafer gently in her palm and smiled down at her. She took it like fruit from a branch. From his hands her soul, no larger than the size of a clementine at that point, was fed. This made Lily lightheaded. When he got to her she looked into his eyes. She avoided doing this six days of the week. But every Sunday she searched his eyes, trying to find the part of him that had gone dark. But she only saw the same vast blue she’d been seeing for the last ten years. He brought the wine to her lips and she felt the burn of his liquored kisses when he woke her from dead sleeps, she felt the warm blood that ran from her nose, The Priest told everyone she had the flu that Sunday and lots of Get Well Soon cards showed up at her door as she laid across the couch in her robe with frozen peas across her nose. The Priest had taken God out of His own veins.
Anita, however, kissed the chalice with her thin flushed lips and took her wine with thanks. She signed the cross before and after and even waited for her little sister to receive her blessing before she rose from the altar railing. Lily slowly walked away, feeling the eyes of The Priest on her coat. The collar covered the back of Lily’s neck, fell gracefully over her shoulders and covered her arms all the way to the wrist. The only people who knew Lily wore her coat to cover the stain glass The Priest had made of her skin were Lily, The Priest, and God. The parishioners felt, surely, that it was endearing the way The Priest followed his wife from the altar with his eyes, unaware of the way he stalked her into their kitchen like some animal, the way he pinned her to the wall in aggression, the way he grabbed the back of her neck like she was some meek kitten.
Lily debated letting the coat fall from her shoulders, letting everyone see the violets that bloomed from her neck, the half eaten plums bleeding from her arms. And then suddenly, she lost herself in the soft murmur of Anita’s post communion prayer and the way she intertwined her fingers, squeezed her eyes tight, the way she believed.