Counting Our Way to Heaven

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The little boy held the rosary carefully because there were rules to it. The crucifix came first, then the larger bead, then the three small ones, and after that the mysteries began. He knew most of the prayers by heart, or nearly so, but the beads worried him. Somewhere between the Hail Marys and the Glory Be, his fingers sometimes wandered ahead or stayed behind. Then he would look sideways at the boy kneeling beside him, trying to see which bead he was holding without moving his head too much. Losing your place during the rosary seemed to him a serious thing, almost a sin, though no one had ever told him that it was.


The children knelt in two long rows beneath the colored windows of the church, their voices rising together and falling together. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners... The words moved through the pews like water over stones. Behind them stood the nuns in their black habits and white veils, listening. Every now and then one walked slowly along the aisle, her rosary hanging from her hand, her shoes making small sounds against the floor. The boy was certain they could tell when someone had lost his place. He imagined they could hear one missing prayer among thirty children the way his mother could hear a dripping faucet from the other side of the house. So he squeezed each bead before moving to the next and whispered the prayers with great seriousness, counting his way toward heaven.


Years later he would remember very little about those mornings. He would forget which mysteries were said on which days and the names of some of the nuns who had seemed permanent as the statues then. But he would remember the cool wooden pew beneath his hands, the smell of candle wax and incense, the morning sun turning the stained glass into pools of red and blue upon the floor. Most of all, he would remember those small beads passing through his fingers, one after another, and the enormous importance he had given to never losing his place. He had thought God was somewhere at the end of the rosary, waiting to see whether he arrived with the proper number of prayers. It would take him many years to understand that God had probably been there all along in the frightened little fingers, in the children's imperfect voices, 



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