IS GOD IN YOUR CHEST?

Pratt Institute

The statue looked so much like my dad I had to blink a few times to make sure it was real. And it didn’t look the way I’d last seen him, eyes closed and hands crossed in his casket, but tall and proud in yellowing marble armor, pointing out to a crowd no longer listening with a little cherub tugging at his leg. It was the nose more than anything: strong and straight, standing out against the face like it was leading the charge. It was my nose and it was my sister Rosa’s nose and it had been our grandfather’s nose. I gave mine a tap. “A relative of yours?” asked an accented voice behind me. Turning around, I found a slim Italian woman with long, dark hair draped over her shoulders. She wore a bright floral blouse, frayed jeans, and Gucci boots I had bought a knockoff version of at Target with my last paycheck. I’d wandered off to some far corner of the Vatican, not following my audio guide and not really worrying about where I’d end up. The Spirit should be my guide, after all, and in God’s capital city its guidance should be stronger than ever. “I think he is,” I said, pointing to our matching noses.

“The resemblance is incredible,” the woman said. “That is Emperor Augustus. You come from Roman nobility.” “I’m Maria,” I said, holding out my hand. She smirked with her soft-looking glossed lips and shook it. Her hand looked like a child’s inside mine, so soft that she must have moisturized every hour on the hour. “Would you believe,” she said, still smirking, “that I am Maria also?” I laughed a little louder than I should have, then looked around to see if anyone had noticed. The only other person was a tourist in khakis who had decided to take a nap on the floor, which felt sacrilegious, but it wasn’t really my place to say. It was only a matter of time until I met another Maria in Italy, after all. “I must confess, when I saw you from behind, I thought you were a friend from university,” she said. “But we are both Maria and I think that is a sign. You have been to the Basilica?” The truth was that Saint Peter’s Basilica was the reason I was there, but instead of going I had spent three hours wandering around some building looking at paintings by artists I didn’t know. Maria was so pretty it made me forget what I was procrastinating, so I said, “No,” and she clapped her dainty hands together. “Say ‘Ciao, Augustus,’” Maria instructed, and I did, and then she took me by

the arm and out through a garden lined with orange trees. “You work here?” I asked. We walked past a stone fountain with a saint in the middle—I didn’t know which—and headed toward an open patch of grass with gigantic hedges and huge, white heads, at least three times my size, lined in a row. “I volunteer,” Maria said. “I am an art historian. These heads are other emperors.” Maria pointed around the garden like I could possibly miss them. We kept walking and the heads passed us like highway lights. “Where are you from in America?” “Las Vegas,” I said. “Ooh,” Maria said. “Casinos and showgirls.” “My sister is a showgirl,” I said, thinking of Rosa dancing onstage in her big purple headdress. “Not you?” “I play piano,” I said. I’d always complained to my dad about how he gave me his big hands, and he would hold mine up to his and shake his head and say, “No, these are piano hands.” We turned around a shrub and began weaving through a different garden, this one lined with beautiful flowers of every color. Carnations or chrysanthemums, I couldn’t be sure. “Piano bar,” Maria said, nodding like she’d seen one on TV or something, and I just nodded too because she was right; I did work at a piano bar. We turned around another hedge and there was the Basilica. A great peaked dome I somehow hadn’t seen through the trees, tanned by centuries of weather and worship. Inside was…what? Absolution? Closure? “That’s just the back,” Maria said, and we followed the sides of the Basilica until we stood in Saint Peter’s Square.

After Dad’s chemo every week, we would sit in his bed and watch the travel channel. Duvet pulled snug under his arms, he’d sit with his thin hands crossed on his stomach, knuckles protruding, and his head resting against the wooden headboard. Where there used to be luscious black curls was a beanie covering a patchy, shaved scalp. I can’t ever keep still, so I was crocheting him a new hat when he leaned over and said, “We should go to Rome,” in his tired, croaking voice. “Okay,” I said, because I didn’t have a reason not to, and because the show about luxury European hotels that was on made me really want to visit a haunted castle.

“Before your grandfather left Italy to come to America,” my dad said, starting his infamous we used to have nothing speech, “he lit a candle at la Basilica di San Pietro for his father who he’d never see again. We should do the same.” “You shouldn’t talk like that,” I said, because I didn’t want to hear it. “Talk like what?” he said, un-crossing and re-crossing his ankles under the white duvet. I was sitting on top of the blankets, legs crossed, and I scooted over so

he wouldn’t have to fight against my weight. “We’re going together,” he said. “Get your computer.” So he watched over my shoulder while I failed to spell Travelocity twice in the search bar and we booked a flight three months from then from Vegas to New York to Rome. “Tell me more about Rome,” I asked when we were done, resting my head on his bony shoulder, careful not to put too much weight on him. My hair was long then, the color his used to be and covering his chest like a second sweater. “There is a cafe your grandfather used to hang out at with his friends called La Casa de Caffè. He took me there once when I was young and I met the most beautiful girl…” With a strand of my hair between his forefinger and thumb, he talked about Rome until he fell asleep.

Saint Peter’s Square was littered with pamphlets and there were workers with garbage bags going around to pick them up. A big platform was in the middle of the square with seats lined up around it. “The Pope spoke this morning,” Maria told me.

“Littering isn’t a sin?” I asked. The front of the Basilica was even grander than the rear, with huge columns beside a stone staircase leading to the entrance. The line was long, maybe longer than it had been when I first got there, so Maria and I got in line together and I tapped my toes while I eyeballed the Swiss Guards in their red and yellow-striped uniforms. Maybe I should come back tomorrow, I thought. Try again when the line isn’t so long. I kept tapping my toe and the line moved forward an inch or so. I’d say we were easily fifteenth from the door. Maria lifted her Gucci boot and stepped on my foot to keep it still. “Pazienza.The wait is not as long as it looks.” I wondered what Rosa was doing. She would be waking up soon and getting ready for work. Always working. She loved dancing and her boyfriend loved it even more, staying up every night to watch her performance from the back of the casino auditorium. When I suggested she use Dad’s ticket and come to Rome with me, she’d looked at me like I killed him. “I have to work,” she’d said, and that was that. Religion wasn’t her bag, anyway. Kids who grow up Catholic either resent God or can’t function without Him, and Rosa and I were the full spectrum. “What is in your head?” Maria asked, squinting her dark eyes at me. I looked around and realized we’d moved to sixth place. “It’s hot,” I said, wishing the dress code had allowed me to show some ankle instead of being stuck inside my black t-shirt and slacks. I had packed a few nicer blouses, more like what Maria was wearing, but colorful didn’t feel right for the occasion. “The sun is how God smiles,” Maria said. I looked at her serious face and couldn’t stop myself from laughing. “A nun told that to me,” she said, trying to fight her own laughter.

“And the rain is how He cries?” I asked. “We are made in His image,” Maria said. As we got closer to the door, the line looked longer and longer. Still I wanted to leave and come back later, but Maria took my arm and guided me through the doorway. I’d never been one for old buildings, but I forgot how to breathe when I stepped inside the cathedral. Light poured through the high dome windows, showing off arches lined in gold and Latin, which sloped down to meet white and gold tiles on the floor. The air was cool, and for how many people were inside, it was quiet. The walls were enormous and I felt myself shrinking. “The original Saint Peter’s Basilica was built in the year 324,” Maria said. “This was rebuilt in 1506. Old but not the oldest.” Not far from where we stood in the vestibule, tucked in a glass case by the wall, was a coffin. “Is there a dead guy in there?” I asked. “There are over a hundred tombs here,” she told me. “Ninety-one popes, a few saints and Catholic kings and queens.” There was so much to look at, but my eyes kept wandering back to the light coming down from the dome in thick, uninterrupted streams, landing on the altar. “If you kneel and pray,” Maria said, now whispering in my ear like anyone would be listening to us, “you can feel God in your chest.” I stared at her, blinking a few times so she knew I thought she was being ridiculous, but she held her ground and pointed at the pew. “Pray.” Weaving around a few distracted tourists, I picked a pew with nobody sitting in it and genuflected before sitting down, because it seemed like the kind of place I should be vigilant about showing respect. Pulling out the kneeler, I lowered myself, folded my hands, and closed my eyes. Should I recite the Lord’s prayer, I wondered, or is God so tuned in to this place that I don’t need to? I whispered it to myself anyway and let my head rest against my hands. Listening to the shuffling of feet, the whispering of others’ prayers, tour guides talking about the old crucifixes hanging on the wall, I thought about how the kneelers here weren’t any more comfortable than the ones in Nevada. My mind wandered to my dad, there in his casket with his best suit and his bald head and the nose he gave to Rosa and me. I thought about Rosa and her wandering spirit and her big smile that she shared with an audience every night. I thought about my mom, whom I barely remember, and the empty space she and Dad left behind them. And then I felt it, like a tightness in my throat. God was in my chest.

When I opened my eyes again, I didn’t know how long it had been, but the sunlight was dimmer and the people were far fewer. Maria was gone, probably back doing her job. My knees were numb and I had to sit in the pew and stretch my legs before I could stand. Not far from me was the votive candle stand, red lights flickering, and when my legs were ready I walked over and lit a match. There was only one candle unlit.