In second grade everyone stopped talking to Deirdre Malley because her grandfather was a liar. Mr. Malley had been going around telling everyone that he had been visited by God, that the stigmata was appearing on his hands, and that soon enough the Cardinal would be coming in to verify his story.
“Probably the Pope too,” Deirdre told us during the break, “the Pope gets involved if it’s a serious case.” We were all hanging onto her every word because it hadn’t occurred to any of us that she could be lying. We were very impressed by Deirdre. If her grandfather had been touched by God that meant she was special, and we all wanted to be friends with someone special. Louise gave Deirdre her biscuits at lunch and I was jealous because that meant Deirdre would pick Louise to be her friend and Louise would get to meet the Pope, which wasn’t fair. I would have given Deirdre my biscuits if the idea had occurred to me.
On the way home from school, I told my sister Ellen about Deirdre’s grandfather and Ellen laughed at me.
“Mr. Malley is a prevaricator,” she said. Ellen knew I didn’t know what ‘prevaricator’ meant. She was always trying to show off by using big words. I decided to pretend I knew what she was saying. When I didn’t rise to her bait, Ellen tried another tactic, “You don’t even know what the stigmata is.”
“I do too,” I retorted. “It’s when God chooses you to have the marks of Jesus.” I had learned what the stigmata was that morning. Deirdre had traced the spot on our palms where the nails would have gone through and we had all shivered imagining how it would feel to have our skin ripped open, splinters of wood trapped in the cut as our hands were nailed to the cross.
I’d had a splinter earlier that month and I only cried a little when my mother pulled it out with her tweezers. It had hurt very badly, and afterward she said I was a brave girl for not screaming like my baby brother would have. I couldn’t even imagine how much Jesus’s splinters must have hurt. I felt bad for him. His mother wasn’t allowed to pull his splinters out of his hands or tell him how brave he was being. But then I remembered that Jesus was an adult, and also our Savior, and he didn’t need his mammy to tell him how brave he was.
My mother always said that the Malleys were trouble, that I was to be nice to Deirdre but also keep my guard up and remember that Owen Malley liked to gamble, and if he ever asked me for a lucky number I should tell him I didn’t want to tempt the devil. When I told her about Mr. Malley, Deirdre, and the stigmata, she crossed herself and sighed.
“The poor child,” she said, “lying to everyone, which is a sin you know, and she doesn’t even know it. You keep your head on straight, Janie, there’s no need to get caught up in those lies. I ought to tell the Father, so I should. He’d like to know what the child’s been saying.”
And so it went, I imagine, at every one of our houses. All of us girls went home excited to share the miracle, and our mothers, crossing themselves and tsking, asked us if we were really so silly to believe anything Deirdre Malley had said. My mother called Louise’s mother, and I could hear them chatting on the phone in the kitchen.
“Louise gave Deirdre all of her biscuits,” I told her when she hung up the line. “Even the chocolate ones.”
“That foolish girl,” she said, shaking her head, and I was pleased that I hadn’t fallen for Deirdre’s lies. I had already forgotten how silly I’d felt, not giving her my biscuits first.
That would have been the end of it except that the mothers kept talking and by the next morning everyone knew that Mr. Malley was a liar and that he was using his granddaughter to spread his lies. My father found the whole situation hilarious.
“Why would Our Father, bless him, choose Malley?” he kept asking. “He’s not even the most holy man on the street. He hasn’t been to mass in months. And why doesn’t anyone just go and check? That’s the only way to sort this out.” My father was a mechanic, which was basically a scientist, and he found the lack of investigation appalling.
“I’ll go over and have a look for myself,” he said. But then the baby spit up all over his clothes and there wasn’t any time.
Louise told me Father Harris went over to the Malley’s and stayed for much longer than just a friendly cup of tea. And on Sunday he preached on the importance of faith no matter what. Mammy said that didn’t count as evidence though, as that was what Father Harris always preached on. Since Mr. Malley never left the house, no one could confirm it for themselves. Our mothers had said that it was all talk but they started whispering Mr. Malley’s name the way they did when someone brought up John Paul I, and when Catherine Mara got sick her mother took her to see Mr. Malley “just in case.”
And so it went. Everyone said Deirdre and her family were a bunch of liars but then Gina Walsh started crossing herself in front of the Malley house and people took notice. Gina had been to the Vatican and seen the Pope, even Father Harris hadn’t done that.
We forgave Deirdre, eventually, and let her sit with us at lunch again. My mother’s warning about the Malley family now included “and don’t trust a word out of them, all the Malley girls are liars.” I remembered that whenever Deirdre tried to impress us with stories about her brothers or her new toys. But if she began a sentence with “well, my grandfather says…” we all strained to listen, even Sister Martin.
It became a thing, like how all us Catholics lived on the West side of town, and Mrs. Flynn dyed her hair. An old and potentially blessed man lived in our neighborhood and everyone just went with it. When our cousins came to visit, Ellen and I told them that a saint lived down our street and Mammy told us to hush up with the gossip, but she didn’t accuse us of lying. Then she took our Aunty over to have a look at the Malley house and brought scones with her, cinnamon ones because Mr. Malley liked those.
It seeped into our lives. If you wanted a wish to come true everyone knew to walk back and forth in front of the Malley house three times, and when Owen Malley finally got a lucky lottery ticket everyone smiled to themselves and said it was a sure sign, wasn’t it? For years afterward we’d see people, out-of-towners, gathered in front of the Malley house. Someone put a picture of the Virgin over some of the peeling paint, and I always made sure to cross myself when I walked by. Deirdre and her sisters charged people a few pennies to light candles, and you could see them flickering outside all night long. Father Harris wrote the Cardinal a letter but he never came. We were all relieved because that meant we wouldn’t have to put on our nice dresses, and as long as the Cardinal didn’t come everyone could be right. So we kept on living with a saint or maybe a liar in our midst. We weren’t sure, and after some time we didn’t really care. Louise and I prayed at the Malley house for extra Christmas presents but I only got a new jumper and a doll which I was meant to share with Ellen. It wasn’t that helpful, having a maybe saint around.