"My dears, we are gathered here to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. For us, and for our salvation, He came down from heaven, to take flesh from the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit...
And so on.
" "Mom, Mom! I want candy! Mom, Mom! Look at that funny woman! Mom, Mom! I want that little Jesus from the altar!
" "Shut up!" Aneta hissed. She always gets irritated when the little one, in his thin voice, echoes the priest from the pulpit, urging people to believe in unquestionable Catholic dogmas. When she was little, she was told to sit, listen, and not fidget, or she would go to hell and be eaten by burning devils. Now she passes on her faith to the little one, leading him to the altar, making him kneel on the cold stone floor of the church, dismissing his naive questions with her characteristic hiss, because she believes that faith must endure, passed down from mouth to mouth, from generation to generation. Aneta hisses whenever something doesn't sit right with her. She hissed at her grandmother's birthday party when the little one sang "Happy Birthday" too loudly, she hissed when she ate cheesecake with raisins, which she hates, she hissed when she had to study math, she hissed when a fat woman cut in line for sweet rolls, and even when that filthy, sweaty man raped her in the park. Aneta hisses every day; some think it's in her blood, like a biblical serpent (or perhaps a viper), her hissing encourages the world to sin. And she only wants to save people and herself, as her benefactor once told her in the confessional, when she told him for the hundredth time that she'd sold herself around the corner of the church. He thought she wanted to be like Mary Magdalene, wearing ornate clothes and woven sandals. In truth, her dream, for as long as she could remember, was to give birth to the Divine Child, so in an act of the most sincere asceticism, she surrendered her body and mind to torture, though sometimes she was ashamed of how well she felt. Only the elderly church women whispered feverishly among themselves, "How can you whore in corners and even lead saints astray?" like sheep to the edge of a cliff. After all, men in black robes had often used her services, others had inquired after her and her son's health.
"And apart from that, everyone else is healthy?" a bald man called from a red, coughing toddler.
"A patriot," she thought.
But that was one of the few times she did: she was thinking, of course.
Sometimes Aneta felt she was a step away from sainthood. Especially when a kid in the yard spat at her feet, and she claimed it was a sign that not everyone spits at their own feet in their own backyard. For her, the gesture was an act of adoration, a modern-day paraphrase of anointing holy feet with fragrant oil.
One day, as the sun lazily poured its large, fat belly from behind the clouds, God called Aneta to Himself. Someone shouted that it was the end of the world. The little one cried. Some fell silent for a moment. That day, people were in a hurry, because the bells were already ringing in the church for Mass. The little one won't go today, he'll go tomorrow and the day after. And so on.
And the priest will start smiling at him.
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