Lani O'Hanlon

The owner smiles as if she knows me and pulls out a chair. Beside the doorway a copper basin lies on its side. Nana Ross had one just like it, in the kitchen, behind the grocery shop. As a child I imagined my soul was that color and sanctifying grace was red, dripping rosary-like, a kind of divine sweat that smelt of frankincense, myrrh, milk and straw. By age nine I had committed a mortal sin, let Nicki Walshe touch me there and didn’t tell, made a bad confession, took communion paper thin and white on my black-spotted tongue. Nana sprinkled us with holy water, gave me a blessed rosary from Lourdes, all blue and purple it was, but I lost it like I lost the library book, sins mounting up; the row over contraception with a priest in the confessional box in Stillorgan. Sister Anne, white musty face, those thin lips “How dare you, a girl, question holy men.” Lying bare-breasted in the long grass with Ciarán, drinking Guinness followed by Harvey Wallbangers, vomiting it all up on Pearse Street, a guy from Tuam holding my forehead. Walking away from my father’s house, my marriage, my job, to dance barefoot in a circle of women who prayed with wrists, hips, feet and drums, bellies painted gold, Magdalene red. In the Duomo di Firenze the air stinks of old blood, paintings heavy with pigment and suffering. I rinse my mouth with the Signora’s wine and that copper basin is only a basin, a thing.

That was the year we drove into the commune in Cornwall. “Jesus Jim,” mam said, “back up quick they’re hippies.” Through the car window, tents, row after row, flaps open, long-haired men and women curled around each other like babies and the babies themselves wandered naked across the grass. I reached for the handle, ready, almost, to open the door, drop out and away from my sister’s aggressive thighs, Daddy’s slapping hands. Back home in the Dandelion Market I unlearnt the steps my mother taught, bought a headband, an afghan coat, a fringed skirt — leather skin. Barefoot on common grass I lay down with kin.