Member-only story
The Sea of Empty Bottles
A study of my memory
The Lord has done great things for us.
I was never a real Catholic. To say so would be an insult to the truly dedicated: the ones who fast on Sunday mornings before taking the Eucharist and know the responses to every psalm by heart.
The only Catholic church I ever belonged to had been excommunicated before I moved to upstate New York—shut out because of its embrace of new ideas. It was a church known above all for its openness.
And because of this, its doors were open to me.
At this Catholic church, no one was barred from receiving the Eucharist, and so all of us — the unbaptized, the divorced, the lawbreakers, and the fornicators — took communion because we could. And we were glad for it.
When it came to the decision between juice and wine, I faithfully chose the grape juice. A friend once told me that the wine was not actually alcohol, it was blood, but I was hardly convinced. It was grape juice for me, always.
In a church thoughtful enough to offer gluten-free communion wafers, I blossomed. I became a lector and breathed life into the verses on the pages before me. It didn’t matter that I’d never been baptized.
And what a joy it was to serve in a church where a woman could be ordained and preach.
In parallel universe, I am still a faithful member of this shunned Catholic church. I am still in Rochester. I am still carefully choosing the grape juice over the wine every Sunday morning.
But after my marriage crumbled, I fled from everything that reminded me of the torture I’d endured. I left the apartment, the cat, the turtle, and my clothes. I left the pots and pans. I left the cupboards full. I left Dewey Avenue.
I left the church.
In the months that followed my escape from my ex-husband, I floated between days in a fever dream. My little sister, the Moses who had traveled to upstate New York to engineer my departure from nearly a decade of abuse, was spiraling back into the only coping mechanisms she knew.
My sister was respectful of my rules — only juice, never wine in the fridge — but she was simultaneously nursing me back to health and…
