The Catholic with Hair the Colour of Satan

The summer before last, I visited a small Italian commune nestled in the Northern region of

Lombardy. There I was publicly shunned. It happened late in the afternoon when I decided

after only one Aperol spritz to traverse the cobbled streets and set out on a pilgrimage of my

own. I was going to journey to the church that sat atop a very steep hill and see if God felt

any closer than he did in the sombre English town I had come from.

Inside, the church was cool and silent. I closed my eyes and imagined the Holy Ghost gliding

by. When I opened them, they fell upon an oil painting of the Madonna and Child, their heads

encircled by two delicate gold leaf halos. Next to a display of candles, I dropped a euro into a

black box and listened to the metallic clink reverberate in the stillness. I tried to light a

candle, but the wick was stubborn and refused to catch the flame.

When I turned towards the stone altar, I noticed that everyone in the church had gathered

together, their eyes fixed in my general direction – a unified congregation of gawkers. Even

Jesus hanging limply on the cross, seemed to muster enough strength to raise his head and

cast a disapproving glance my way.

A little man, whose hair was beginning to recede past his temples, was parting his way

through the bodies like a miniature Moses, hurling a string of what had to be clean

obscenities in his wake. He was soon standing right below my nose. I gathered from the way

he was frantically gesticulating at my chest that it was my top that caused the great offence. It

only covered half of my shoulders. I tried to reason with him but the only Italian words I

knew were “ciao” and “grazie”, neither of which proved particularly helpful. I decided to

feign the ignorant tourist and only just stopped myself from putting on a deep Southern

American accent.

Nothing worked though, he seemed to see right through me, as though the former catholic in

me oozed out. He sensed that I was one of them, or rather had been, that I should’ve known

better than to come here in my indecent state and disrupt the sacred tranquillity. He told me I

had better leave.

“Where are your horns?” he shouted as I turned to go.

“Probably lying around with my pitchfork.” I cried back before storming out of the place.

I wondered if Eve felt as bad as I did then when she was expelled from Eden. I wasn’t

bearing the weight of original sin or anything close to it on my shoulders, but I felt humiliated

and ashamed, acutely aware of my naked shoulders.

Once I had strolled back to the loft I was renting for the summer, I picked up the telephone

and dialled my godmother. She was a godless woman which was one reason we got along so

well. I told her what had happened, that theirs was a God who shivered at the sight of

shoulders. She told me Catholicism was like a red lipstick that it suited some but not others

and that it would never suit me because of my red hair.

I was a lapsed Catholic. I had no business being in a church, searching for something I had so

vehemently rejected. Hadn’t I spent my school years writing angry essays, arguing that

Catholicism was corrupt and in desperate need of castration? Back then, I had immersed

myself in the works of Richard Dawkins and Mary Daly, so deeply that, in my mind, they

became close friends I could call upon at any time. I had spent months trying to speak of God

in the feminine but had ultimately been defeated by centuries worth of scholarship referring

to God in the masculine. It always seemed to lead to confusion anyhow. I remember once,

during an argument, I had said that God was ‘malevolent in her ways’ only for everyone to

assume I was talking about myself.

When I hung up the phone, I noticed a crucifix above the door. It reminded me of the one that

hung in the room where I’d taken Bible classes around the age of eleven. There had been a

girl in the group I had gravitated towards because she had a thick head of hair, just like mine.

I mentioned it to her once, how both of us had such thick hair, but she told me that thickness

didn’t matter. It was the colour of your hair that was important.

"No one in the Bible," she said, "had red hair like yours."

I told her she was wrong. Esau did. She retorted that Esau was a fool, a man with murderous

tendencies—someone who gave up his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew. I shot back that

she probably hadn’t tasted a good lentil stew, then convinced my mother I was too sick to go

back the following week.

I thought about the man with the receding hairline and wondered if he ever cursed God for

not giving him a thicker head of hair. Then I wondered if he might still be cursing me. I had

spent the whole evening on the phone with my godmother, cursing him, and I had never felt

so close to God.

Words and Images by Beatrice Ahern, she/her