9
The end of January marked another all-school Mass, and our class was responsible for the presentation. This was not an insignificant affair. Not just the entire school attended the Mass but parents and members of the general congregation as well. My mother never missed one. As the responsible grade, we were to choose and present the readings, prayers of the faithful, serve as the altar boys, sing in the choir, and bring up the gifts. To be chosen as the lector, however, was universally considered the highest honor. The position offered the greatest exposure, and therefore the greatest risk. This wasn’t to discount the off chance an altar boy could catch his robe on fire on a candle, or that a student carrying the gifts up the aisle might stumble and toss the wafers into the crowd, but I’d never seen that happen. I had seen a lector screw up a reading at an all-school Mass. We all had.
The prior year, Anna Louise Gretsky had walked up the steps to the lectern, looked out over the crowd, and failed to utter a single word. We all thought Gretsky was employing a dramatic pause, until Father Killian, our new pastor, looked up from his throne, anxious to get going. We quickly realized that Anna Louise Gretsky had frozen as solid as a block of ice. After another tense minute, one of the nuns climbed the steps and escorted a dazed and still-silent Gretsky back to her seat. That had not been the end of her humiliation, however. She endured taunts and gibes for the better part of the remainder of the year.
Monday, as our class began the task of dividing up the assignments, the frozen image of Anna Louise Gretsky remained a vivid reminder that being lector was not for the faint of heart. Students could volunteer for any position, but you had to be nominated to be lector. Since the vote was by a show of hands, the winner was usually the most popular student in the class, like Ernie, or maybe Valerie Johnson, the head cheerleader.
“Let’s start with the gift bearers,” Sister Mary Williams said. The students had nicknamed the elderly nun Sister Muffin because her face looked squished and wrinkled beneath her coif. She also wore Coke bottle–thick, black-framed glasses that magnified her eyes to look like two blue marbles under water. Sister Mary Williams wrote the names of the first four volunteers on the chalkboard in her flowing cursive style. The slots for the ushers and greeters also quickly filled.
“Who would like to be an altar boy?” Sister asked.
I was about to raise my hand when Ernie said, “I’ll do it,” taking himself out of contention for lector. I knew Ernie’s decision had to do with his uneasiness about reading in public, and as I sat contemplating his decisions, two of my other classmates quickly raised their hands to join him. I had been shut out. The only thing left for those of us not chosen for any other tasks was the choir, which was like being a stagehand at a play—all the work without any of the glory.
Sister Mary Williams moved to the final position on the board and, without fanfare, said, “All right, I’ll take nominations for lector.”
The clock above the cloakroom buzzed as the big hand struck ten. With Ernie out of the running, Valerie Johnson, the girl who’d given me an envelope with a dead fly in it on Valentine’s Day in the first grade, was a shoo-in. Taking nominations was a waste of time.
“I nominate Sam Hill.”
I think every head in the class turned as if they’d heard a foreign language being spoken. The nomination had come from Mary Beth Potts, a cheerleader and Valerie Johnson’s best friend. Potts had never said more than a few sentences to me. I had no idea why she’d nominated me. Even Sister Mary Williams hesitated before turning to scrawl my name on the blackboard. A loud murmur ensued, along with a lot of whispers and giggles. I heard Ernie urgently whispering my name.
“Sam. Sam!”
Ernie sat in the row to my right and two seats behind me. When I turned his face was grave, and he was shaking his head. “Say no,” he said. “No!”
No? Was he crazy? Nothing short of my announcing that I intended to become a Catholic priest would make my mother prouder than to see me standing at the lectern in front of the entire school. As for me, this was my chance to show not only my classmates but all their parents that I was just a normal kid. As I contemplated this, with Ernie continuing to try to get my attention, I saw another hand go up.