Nails - 1. Nails

When Ceci arrived for her first Good Friday service at Oak Ridge Baptist Church, where she directed the choir, the first thing she saw was the huge wooden cross that stood next to the altar. It hadn’t been there the Sunday before, or any other time in all the times Ceci had been in the sanctuary. She had to stop at the back of the church and stare at it.

It looked medieval, somehow. It stood taller than most people, with thinner limbs than any person that size should have, and loomed over the pews like some sort of scarecrow. Or, Ceci thought, a Protestant idea of the Angel of Death. She felt as if she had been lifted out of the last year of the twentieth century, out of busy Raleigh, out of North Carolina and probably America altogether. She had left behind this sanctuary, with its carpeted floor and cushioned pews, and gone back to some ancient Catholic chapel in Rome or somewhere, full of echoing marble, staring frescoes, and the smell of incense.

Ceci knew plenty about Catholic churches. She had grown up Catholic, and God knew – yes, if God existed, He or She or It probably did know – that she knew all about Masses and especially about crucifixes. Although, to tell the truth, Ceci had plenty of arguments with God. Especially since Nat, who used to toss puns in the air like balloons, and who picked out the strangest-shaped fruits and veggies she could find at the grocery store, because nobody else would want them and they would get lonely; especially since Nat’s laughter had disappeared, and permanent lines of sadness etched the bright face Ceci loved. And doubly since Nat couldn’t work, and Ceci, who had finally gotten to retire from teaching middle-schoolers, had to take this job, working at a church of all things, to help pay for the meds that didn’t bring her Nat back anyway.

But yes, Ceci was used to crucifixes. She had stared at them Sunday after Sunday while she was growing up, both when she went happily to church as a little girl and later, when she had to be forced. Behold the Lamb of God, hanging on the wall behind the altar, his bloody hands pinned to the cross with nails, the crown of thorns digging into his dead-white skin. Ceci, though, had never seen anything like the enormous plain cross she looked at now. Somehow, its very facelessness made it more disturbing. Looking at it now, she drew her choir robe closer around her, as if the skimpy red polyester could act as any shield at all.

Little white-haired Sarah Trilby, one of the ushers for the evening, hurried up to Ceci and held out an order of service. “Here you go, honey.”

Ceci automatically reached out to take the paper. Then she saw the other thing in Sarah’s hand: a long, slender, pointed piece of metal.

A roofing nail. Ceci and Nat had pounded any number of them into the roof tiles on their fixer-upper house, back when Nat still had the energy and drive for those kinds of projects. Back before the tiredness of waiting for a different kind of world, one where she and Ceci didn’t have to pretend to be “roommates,” had worn Nat down. Ceci dragged her eyes away from the cross. Were they going to do a little light carpentry at church tonight?

“What’s that for?” she asked.

Sarah looked surprised. “Oh, didn’t anybody tell you? You need it for the service.” With a surprisingly strong grip, she took hold of Ceci’s free hand and dropped the nail onto her palm. “The choir all gets them too,” she said. “Don’t worry, you’ll see how it works.”

Her encouraging smile, the perfect granny-face to match her white curls and neat frilly blouse, didn’t sit well with the cold metal against Ceci’s skin. Ceci backed away. “Thanks. I’d better go warm up the choir.”

Most of the singers were already waiting in the choir’s basement rehearsal room. When Ceci came in, Marie Whitaker, the oldest member of the soprano section, called out, “How’s your husband feeling?”

Husband. It had started with an innocent mistake. Ceci had once, without thinking, mentioned “Nat” out loud to the choir, when she realized at the beginning of a rehearsal that she’d forgotten to stop by the pharmacy and get the latest prescription refill. She had been so annoyed with herself, for forgetting something so important, that she hadn’t caught the words “Nat’s pills” before they dropped out of her mouth. And of course the name didn’t tell gender. And of course these sweet, elderly churchgoers, with their pearl necklaces and gold tie-pins, with their fur coats and lacquered shoes, had made an assumption.

If people at this church knew who Ceci really was, she wouldn’t be allowed to keep her job. Baptists, even on the doorstep of the twenty-first century, and especially here in the South, were no better than Catholics when it came to that. In the moment when the mistake happened, when time slowed down in the grip of Ceci’s sudden fear, she could hear the thoughts swirling in the air around her. The choir didn’t know who she was. She heard them thinking how she might be a little rough around the edges, with her boyish short hair and her faded jeans and flannel shirts – really, she’s much too old to be a tomboy, you know – but she was a decent soul. It would be hard for her, taking care of a sick husband. So they were all sympathy, and Ceci, God forgive her – if there was a God at all – couldn’t bring herself to tell them the truth.

Tonight, when Marie asked after Ceci’s “husband,” Ceci answered the way she always did. “Nat’s about the same.” At least she never said “he.” She did say “Thanks for asking,” and then took out the choir’s anthem for the evening and started the warmup.

As she listened to the choir harmonizing Were you there when they crucified my Lord?, Ceci gave cues and cutoffs mechanically and thought, not for the first time, about how Nat would feel if she ever heard about the “husband” mistake. The old Nat, as Ceci couldn’t help thinking of her, would have laughed. Sure, I’ll be your husband any time. Just say when.

Ceci couldn’t have named the exact moment when Nat’s nemesis had settled on her. It had happened so slowly, like grains of sand or drops of water that, one at a time, filled a bucket until the bottom dropped out. It was what happened when you waited, day after everlasting day, for the world to change.

Ceci couldn’t afford to hold her breath for change that didn’t seem to come. She couldn’t afford to lose this job either. So she directed the choir automatically, trying, as she did, not to think about Nat alone at home, under the weight of her shadow. The nail Sarah had given Ceci sat in the pocket of her choir robe. As she moved her arms, it shifted against the fabric and nudged her side. Ceci wondered what it was for.

**

The service went the way Ceci had expected. All of the readings, about the garden of Gethsemane, and the betrayal, and the soldiers, washed over her in a blur of familiar words. She had listened to them time and again, all those Good Fridays when her parents took her to Mass. If Ceci hadn’t been a good girl and paid attention through the Stations of the Cross, there would have been no Easter bunny and no chocolate eggs. So, as a little girl, she had knelt on the hard wooden prayer bench, which had no cushions and had hurt her knees in spite of her tights and the long skirt of her black dress, which she had to wear because Good Friday meant mourning colors. She had diligently watched the altar boys as they walked from one station to the next, and studied the pictures of Jesus falling, of the nails being driven into His hands, of his mother and Mary Magdalene standing at the foot of the cross. More than once, she had thought about how it would feel to have nails driven into her own hands. The thought of those points digging through her skin and muscle, scraping along her bones, made her shudder. She had never looked away, though, because good girls had to pay attention. They had to understand what human sin had done to the Son of Man.

That was then. As Ceci sat through this Baptist service with her choir, she remembered how free she had felt when, as a teenager, the threats of no Easter treats had meant nothing anymore. How, by then, she had already known she was doomed because of who she was. So what did it matter if she skipped Mass? Nobody, not her parents, not the priests, not the tortured man on the crucifix: none of them had any power over her.

Now she was just a mercenary, doing her job. Ceci let her mind wander. On Sunday, if the weather was nice, she would try to talk Nat into going for a hike. Too bad Ceci had to work in the morning. They would still have the rest of the day, though, and some woods and sunshine would be good for Nat.

Ceci was so caught up in her own thoughts that she had almost forgotten the nail in her pocket. Then the surprise came.

Around the point where a regular Sunday service would have ended, Reverend Marbury, their gray-haired, stern-faced pastor, stood up and faced the congregation. Instead of giving the final benediction, he held his hand out to the people sitting in the church’s west transept. “I invite you all to come forward.”

Curious, Ceci sat up straighter to watch. The congregants in the west transept filed up to the altar and formed a line in front of the huge wooden cross. One of the ushers – not Sarah Trilby; tall Bob Rutherford, looking stiff and uneasy in a formal suit with his lumberjack build – stepped up to the front of the line. He was carrying a hammer.

As Ceci watched, the first woman in line accepted the hammer from him, carefully positioned her nail against the vertical bar of the cross, and drove it in. There was no sound in the church except for the steady tap, tap, tap of the hammer, unnaturally loud as it reverberated off the stone walls.

Ceci realized her mouth had dropped open. She shut it quickly. Glancing around at the rest of the choir, she saw people calmly pulling nails out of their pockets. Marie Whitaker caught Ceci’s eye and smiled encouragingly, just like Sarah had done earlier. Yes, this is what we do, of course. This is how it’s done.

Glancing again at the cross, Ceci saw it was full of nail holes. So yes, this ceremony happened every Good Friday. For the rest of the year, Ceci guessed, the cross probably lived in some dark closet. She had certainly never seen it anywhere out in the open before.

More of the congregation had stood up to join the people already in line. Ceci saw a little girl, four or five years old, wearing a navy dress with white lace around the collar. Her long brown curls fell down her back. She was holding onto her father’s hand, but in her other hand, Ceci saw the glint of a nail.

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us…

An old priest’s words echoed in Ceci’s head. Sin. Abomination in the eyes of God.

Ceci’s stomach turned over. The hammer rapped steadily, passing from one person to another, driving nails into the cross. Still nothing else broke the silence: no murmur of talk, no whispers. Ceci tried to swallow, but her throat had closed over.

She hadn’t thought about that confession in years. She thought – hoped – she had forgotten it. That had been the last time she went to church willingly, to tell the priest she had known all her life about her new certainty, the truth of who she was. Yes, she had been scared. The church had told her she ought to be, but underneath that, Ceci remembered something else. Clarity. Gratitude, because life finally made sense.

The priest had broken all protocol and taken her out of the confessional booth. He had led her up to the altar and pointed at the face of Jesus on the crucifix.

Abomination. See what your sin has done.

Now the little girl and her father had gotten to the front of the line. Ceci watched as the father, a fresh-faced young man with blond hair, knelt next to his daughter to help her hold up her nail against the cross.

The little girl took the hammer. Ceci saw the delight in her face. She was so young that she didn’t understand what this meant; it was just a game, like playing with building blocks. But Ceci knew better.

Your sins crucified Him.

For a crazy instant, Ceci wanted to jump to her feet and run to the little girl, snatch the nail out of her hand, fling the hammer away. But she was already too late. The girl’s father was holding the nail, helping her swing the hammer against it. Tap. Tap. Tap. Then the nail was in place, and the father drove his own in beside it, and the two of them – holding hands again, Ceci saw – quietly went back to their pew.

Bob Rutherford came over to the choir’s chairs behind the altar. He motioned for them to stand up and join the line.

Ceci didn’t know how she managed to stand up. Automatically, her mind full of gray fog, she followed the rest of the choir up to the cross. She was at the end of the line, the last person who would drive a nail into the sacrifice.

Your sins crucified Him…

Ceci closed her eyes, fingering the nail in her pocket. Behind her eyelids she saw Nat’s tired face. Nat was always tired now. Sometimes, though, Ceci did see her smile, and caught the smallest flash of the girl she had been all those years ago. In the afternoons, for instance, when Nat sat reading on the living room couch with the cats curled up beside her. Big lazy Virgil and troublemaking Alexa, one on each side of their mom, purring like a pair of idling tractors. And Ceci saw Nat smile in the evenings, when all four of them sat on the couch to watch TV, and Ceci put her arm around Nat’s shoulders or the two of them held hands, lightly, their linked fingers resting on the place where their knees touched.

The line moved forward, one choir member at a time. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Nat was waiting at home for Ceci right now. She would ask how the service had gone. She always made sure to ask about Ceci’s day, as if she genuinely had the energy to care about anything but the shadow that drained her.

How’s your husband feeling?

Ceci shuffled forward with everyone else, but she didn’t look up at the cross. Her fingers tightened around the nail.

After the service, somebody would have to pull all the nails out of the wood. Ceci wondered about that, vaguely, through the fog in her head. Who would do it? Maybe Bob. Maybe he would take the hammer back from the last person – from Ceci herself – and haul the cross downstairs, and sit down on the basement floor and pull out the nails one at a time. Then he would push the cross back, for another year, into whatever closet it lived in.

The wood was long dead. Even so, Ceci found herself imagining how it would feel to have a nail yanked out. The shaft rasping along already-outraged nerves. The pain of all those extractions, one at a time, and then the loneliness of a dark empty room.

Behold the Lamb of God.

Someone touched her arm. Ceci opened her eyes. She was standing in front of the cross, alone now that everyone else had gone back to their seats. Alone, that was, except for Bob, who held the hammer out to her.

See what your sin has done.

But Ceci couldn’t see anything clearly. The cross blurred in front of her, the stone floor of the church blurred under her feet. In her mind she held a blurred image of Nat’s face, Nat who needed meds, who needed Ceci to do her job and bring home the money.

How’s your husband feeling?

Abomination…

Before she realized it, Ceci was backing away. Away from the hammer, from Bob’s face, from the sacrifice in front of her.

No.

The little girl happily driving her nail into the wood. Her father kneeling down to help her.

No.

At home, Nat waiting on the couch, looking up when Ceci came in, trying to smile. Nat, who needed something other than meds, something far different, if she was ever going to be herself again.

Your husband…

Ceci’s hand came out of her pocket. She gripped the nail’s shaft so hard it hurt her fingers.

No.

Bob looked confused. The world cleared and coalesced around Ceci and she saw how baffled he was, how he held the hammer up as if it was some mysterious growth that had sprouted out of his hand. He didn’t know what to do now that the routine had broken.

Ceci almost laughed. There wasn’t time, though. She knew what needed to happen next.

Aloud she said, “No.”

The single syllable rang through the church, reverberating off the walls. And then the clink, plink, plink, as Ceci dropped her nail onto the stone floor, and it bounced and rolled away.

The church came alive with whispers and mutters. Ceci barely heard them. She felt Reverend Marbury’s eyes on her back, but they didn’t matter either. Her feet carried her down the aisle, past all the staring faces, her steps firm and clear on the stone floor.

They would take her away from this place. Home to the woman she loved.