Mrs. Rooney Returns to Church

I Shit You Negative, this Story is True

Mrs. Rooney was the organ player at St. Joseph's Catholic Church, the place I attended for a weekly childhood brainwashing. She played the organ and sung, representing the entire musical contingent of the small parish.

One Sunday, she was gone. There was no organist, no music, no singing. The priest was baffled and the mass was weird.

Weirder yet were the rumors that began to circulate. My grandmother had her finger on the pulse of neighborhood news and conjured up a hundred different stories about Mrs. Rooney. I was a kid, I didn't care. I was trying to figure out why my sister's Barbie was smooth down there. This was the 1970's, years before "Full Brazilian" was acceptable vernacular.

*****

A month later we sat in church on Easter, a new organist played happy hymns and everything was normal. Then, the doors swung open and a backlit Mrs. Rooney walked slowly down the aisle and sat next to my family. Everybody gazed, everybody wondered, a buzz of whispers hung in the pre-service air.

The priest emerged in his Easter frock, and performed the high mass. As part of Easter service, he would spritz the congregation with holy water, drawn from a portable bucket and cast onto the group with a small baton. Short flicks of the wrist sent the blessed rain through the air and onto the faithful. When anointed with the shower the faithful would emulate the cross symbol on four body points of the church's choosing.

This is where I shit you negative. When moving along the aisle he flicked water in the direction of Mrs. Rooney. As Father Lupo cast the water, the metal baton flew from his hand and hit Mrs. Rooney hard right between the eyes. The congregation erupted and he ran to comfort her as she dropped to the ground like a sack of communion wafers. The new organist kept on playing and the scene was surreal. Seconds later, Mrs. Rooney burst from the group of priests and parishioners helping her, as she covered her face and bolted from the church, never to be seen again.

Maybe there was some bad blood between Mrs. Rooney and the church, but to this kid it was proof that someone was watching and keeping us on the straight and narrow.