Brush with Haiti by Kathleen A. Tobin Read Free Book Online Page B

simple. I just told them the basics of the project, emphasizing the one of orphanage support and reminding them that the bishop was behind this. I figured if they were sticklers about my church membership status, they were likely followers of the bishop's authority.
    Not long after that meeting I returned to the parish office to inquire about becoming a member. Maybe it was the eight years of Catholic school that urged me to play by the rules or a sense that if I had some official backing of the church office, no one could make me feel excluded. I had felt an allegiance to St. Thomas More parish and still had fond memories of school and my class marching down to Mass on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I did not want the fact that I had married a man I loved who happened to be Jewish to rob me of any possibility to preserve those memories with fondness.
    The woman sitting behind the counter looked up when I came into the office.
    "May I help you?" she asked.
    "I would like to become a member of the parish," I told her. I was sure to say it as if I had just moved into town and had a perfectly normal and consistently Catholic history.
    "Have you been attending Mass here?"
    "Yes," I replied. "In fact, I went to school here and even remember the old church. Before they built this one, where we're standing, the area was all covered with grass and there were monkey bars over there and once I fell off and my mother had to pick me up from school and take me to the emergency room. My nose wasn't broken but there was blood all over the front of my white blouse..." I could not lie. And I could not seem to stop. The memories of being part of the parish all came flooding back. And I wanted so much to convince her that I deserved to be an official member.
    "You'll have to fill this out." She handed me a two-sided form.
    "You can take it home and bring it back later, ifyou like."
    "Thank you," I replied. I walked out the door and stood on the step next to the stone statue ofJesus, looking out toward the area where we used to jump rope.
    "Florida oranges tap me on the back, on the back, on the back..." I could almost make out young ghosts of my friends, their navy blue skirts flying and knee socks sliding down their calves. This time I felt as if I were almost there, just needing to fill out one sheet of paper, front and back. The sun glowed brightly over the parking lot once a playground.
    I looked down at the form. "Name. Address.
    Phone Number... etc., etc. Marital Status." Ouch. "Number of children... Date(s) of baptism." My heart sank. They had not been baptized. They were 9, 13 and 17 by then and trying to introduce the idea of baptism at that point would have created havoc in their lives.
    I took the paper home and did not return it. I did return to Mass, however, but did not take Communion. I dutifully sat, letting people climb over me as they went up to the altar, and politely stood in the aisle as they returned to their pew, wondering what it was like and whether I would recognize the taste. I wished to be invisible, sitting in a pew toward the back, working on the Haiti project in my head, planning lessons about the history of poverty in Latin America, pretending to be Catholic, and wondering whether God cared one way or the other.

9
Getting There
    Gathering at O'Hare provided an opportunity for all of us to be together for the first time. Only Tom had been to Haiti, and perhaps the bishop. I had been to El Salvador a few years before and it was the only other time I had observed extraordinarily deep and rampant poverty that reached mile after mile after mile after mile. I anticipated something similar in Haiti. Because of Tom's experience, we followed his lead.
    The first leg to Miami was similar to any such flight, with a mixture young and old traveling for business or pleasure. The trip from Miami to Port-au-Prince was very different. There were some Haitians, but the majority of passengers were clearly not. They mostly