It's Hard To Be Holy

EP. 19: Chapter V (Cont'd)

Coarse and Offensive Language. Reader Discretion advised.

'Nana?' asked little Vera over yet another family dinner, though this one had as yet to be derailed by stories of war and toilet paper. 'Do you miss Ireland?'

'Why'dya ask?'

'You and Pa talk about it a lot.'

'Ah love,' said the grandmother, 'what ya have to understand is...it's very hard to leave a home. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.'

'Well, I,' said Niamh, taking great insult that her children never asked for her opinion, 'hated the place. When I was yer age, we lived on this awful farm—'

'That was yer grandfather's farm!' scolded a cross Mary.

'Doesn't mean it wasn't awful. Mud and animals—but then we came to America! Jesus wept—'

'Don't take the Lord's name in vain!' snipped her mother.

'What's He gonna do?' grumbled Colin. 'Come back? It's only been about 2,000 years.'

'COLIN!' Catholicism had been with Mary all her life, whether wanted or not. In her youth, she'd been willing to go along with Colin's schemes of a socialist utopia, getting quite a thrill at snubbing the religion that gladly reduced her to a second-class citizen. She might have gone on thumbing her nose, had it not been for her boys. The deaths of James and Pádraig drove her back to the Church, and the intervening years, she'd found some solace in promises of afterlives. More than solace. With all its rigorous conventions, Catholicism became her sword and shield. She used it with abandon to try and reign in her daughter, much in the way Niamh would come to use it on her own son. It is striking how, in our darkest moments, we take on the very parts of parents we swear to reject.

'It was incredible here,' said Niamh, forever in denial of her mother's wants and cares. 'Everyone had a car, and all the women were in makeup, and their hair was—'

'Tarts!'

'They weren't tarts, Ma, they were modern! And then...the men!' Niamh took this chance to wink at at Alanna, but the eldest daughter ignored her. A growing worry surrounded Alanna Kathleen where Niamh was concerned. She never showed the slightest interest in men. Never wore makeup . Never tried to 'look good'. Alanna had always been a bookish and chubby child, but as she crested into adulthood, the girl had positively ballooned. Her social circle, already limited, vanished. She had buried herself in study, and refused show an interest in anything else. 'God,' Bud often overheard his mother pray, 'don't let my girl be one of those women!'

'What about the men?' asked Alfonso.

'Nothin',' sighed a disappointed Niamh.  'Nothin'...just that...ya know...there were many varieties.'

'Ya'd know all about variety, wouldn't ya?'

'Ma!'

'You're mother's gotta point there.'

'No, she doesn't! How many times...I just liked goin' out, and there were a lot of people to go out with here. More than on a farm in the middle a'nowhere anyways.'

'There was nothin' wrong with yer grandfather's farm!'

'I'm just sayin' it was a farm—in Cork—and this was a city, ya know? I mean, I wasn't bad about it or nothin'. Not like some of the girls I see around today. Some of these hippies. I mean, really! I didn't need to be all hairy and wavin' my tits around to get—'

'Have some class!' cried Mary.

'Jesus-fuckin'-wept—'

'COLIN!'