Catching Feelings

01 | HEAVEN

"Scriptures burn between our bodies; 

I've never read holiness like your skin."

  — K A D D Y  D E E,  Virgo 

Since the Adeyemi family moved back to Ontario, my world has been rendered in night and grey. My mouth is thirsty for kisses like a throat that hasn't seen water for days. I still remember the scent of last summer and the blue in Tobias Adeyemi's eyes, watered down like the edge of the sky when dawn is hanging by its claws to keep night at bay, but intense enough to make me look at the floor whenever he passed me in the corridors of St. Francis de Sales Church. I wasn't supposed to look his way, not because he was two years older than me, or because my father called his family "half-caste and hopeless", but because I was almost a man and boys in my village weren't supposed to "gaze". We were taught to glare at enemies, to glance at girls, to greet each other, but to gaze at each other? It was the biggest sin my father had warned me about.

When Father Peter told us during mass that young boys were the apple of Virgin Mary's eyes because she mothered us all, Tobias nudged me in the ribs and whispered, "Do you think Jesus was a virgin his entire life?"

My heart was still as a rabbit. I was moved by Father Peter's deep voice; he made the domed church feel like a football stadium held in silence by a referee's whistle. I felt awake in the eyes of God. Meanwhile, Tobias was hanging by a thread of sleep. I caught him snoring half an hour ago, but that was before I became his main source of entertainment. I didn't mind Tobias at all—we were friends outside of school, but he talked too much and at the same time he didn't talk at all. Most people chose one. They either rambled all the time, or stayed quiet all the time. I chose the latter, but Tobias managed to unnerve me with both.

He nudged me again. I focused on Father Peter's ash-white hair and balding crown. There was something glassy about his rheumy eyes, as if he was seeing beyond the beautiful renaissance church, straight into God's soul. It was unnerving. I followed his gaze to the back of the church but there was nothing to see beyond the latecomers who were ushering their pampered children down the pews, desperate to find a seat without disturbing the rustic sound of Father Peter's voice.

"My Canadian cousin swears that Jesus had a wife and children," Tobias continued in a loud whisper, tugging at his Sunday best. He looked ready to start his own jazz group, dressed in a skinny tie and skinnier jeans. Everyone knew that the Adeyemi family business was one foot away from bankruptcy but it didn't stop them from boring holes into Mrs Adeyemi's hat, a flat bowl of velvet and ostrich feathers, as if their eyes could make the moth holes grow larger than they already were.

Father Peter continued over the low hum of chatter, "Then Jesus said to him, 'Get up. Pick up your mat and walk.' At once, the man was cured."

"My aunt is a cripple. Do you think Father Peter can work some magic on her, too?"

The frozen river of my concentration broke as if an icepick was pricking the edge of my soul. My eyes darted to the left, dark and outraged. Tobias' wide-toothed grin was made to be gazed at, but I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. I could barely hold Alice Eze's eyes without finding my feet and the concrete floor staring right back at me. My eyes jumped back and forth from Tobias' thick lips like lightning, stuttering in between fits of muffled outrage.

"Lighten up," he said when I stared at him once more. "You've still got a lot to learn, kid."

"We're in the same grade," I hissed, hoping he would flinch at the fact that he was the only person at our private school to have failed the same year twice.