They say actions speak louder than words. Maybe. But words do a hell of a lot more damage. Even well-meaning words spoken by well-meaning people.

   People like Sister Patricia Mary Theriault. She was my catechism teacher when I was seven years old. Until she ruined my life, I loved her more than anything, because--unlike the other nuns at Saint Isabel’s--she was pretty and nice and she always smiled. Her favorite subject was The Power of God’s love. We once spent an entire ninety-minute class answering the question, When Does God’s Love Seem Most Real To You? Other kids talked about playing with their pets or spending time with their parents or waking up on Christmas morning. Not me.

   “When I open up my big box of 72 Crayola Crayons.”

   The other kids laughed at that but Sister Patricia smiled and asked me why I felt that way. I said, “I don’t know,” even though I did know. She would understand, and I could tell her after class, but not in front of the laughing kids. The reason was actually very simple even if they were too stupid to get it. There wouldn’t be colors called Burnt Sienna and Hot Magenta and Aquamarine if God didn’t love us. There would just be brown and red and blue.

   My mother, raised to worship God with fear and trembling, did not approve of Sister Patricia. She called her the Hippie Nun which, of course, made me like her even more. The first time I dropped acid I had a vision of Sister Patricia holed up in her Nun Sanctuary Bedroom, or at least what I imagined it to be: dark and dreary with enormous posters of the Blessed Virgin taped to her wall, glowering down at her; scary and accusing and bitter. Her one small window faced North, towards the cold, letting in only cold light, cold air, cold love.

   In my vision she was wearing a beautiful tie-dyed habit, kneeling on her stone floor, head bowed, praying to God. There was a light rattling, tapping, rustling sound at the window that startled her out of her meditations. She floated to the window and opened it up and when she did it let in a rainbow; pure and just as vivid as my crayons had once been. The beauty of it enveloped the cold, dreary room, and filled it--filled her--with the Love of God. I was nineteen--long after catechism classes and church and even prayer had been a part of my life--holed up in my one room apartment with some guy I’d met two hours earlier. I still can’t remember his name, but his hair was Goldenrod and his eyes were Sky Blue.

   But when I was still seven, before I knew anything about the wonders of psychedelic drugs and Pink Floyd and casual sex, I only knew that Sister Patricia was the coolest person I’d ever known. I felt that way right up until she taught us our final lesson for the year. It began innocently enough like this:

   “Your heart is like soil. Love grows there.”

   The parable of the Sower planting seeds. The Sower is God, the seeds are His Word. They fall here and there, some on Bad Soil and some on Good. She told us first about the Good Soil, where the seeds can take root and grow. That’s what she--what God--wanted our hearts to be like. Lovely and soft and fertile. Ready for planting. Just like spring. Every one of us knew what she meant, because there were lots of big, smelly, fertile farms in Brookfield, Maine with acres and acres of soil.

   Then she told us about the Bad Soil. There was probably more than one type of bad soil in the parable that she explained to our class that day. In fact there must have been, because she talked about it forever. But the only bad soil I heard about was this:

   “As the Sower was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on and--”

   Path. Trampled. Bad soil.

   I thought of the path that my older brother Dave and I had worn down through the field beside our house that led over to where Dave’s best friend Jason lived. Years of travel, back and forth. Hard ground, packed tight. Grass and wild flowers grew all around it in the summer, tall and beautiful and untamed. But not on the path. Nothing grows on hard ground.

   I came back around when she was saying, “‘--those sown on the path are the ones out of whose hearts the devil takes the word so that they will not believe and will not be saved.’ Don’t let your hearts become trampled down, children. Keep them soft and fertile so you can feel God’s love inside of you.”

   Seven years old. And already I knew I was in some deep shit. The kind that even Sister Patricia couldn’t do anything about.

   Backseat. My mother driving home. Irritated. Her hour and a half of freedom was over. Dave sat up front because he was nine. And because he was Dave. His First Communion was only a week away and my parents were very, very proud of him, because it’s a very big step. All it meant to me was that next year he would get to stay home and watch Superfriends on Saturday mornings and I’d have to ride home from catechism all alone.

   He was telling us what he had learned that morning from Sister Margaret. They had talked about Jesus’ trial and execution. It seemed to have touched something inside him, like the parable of the soil had done to me. Only Dave didn’t seem scared like I was; just angry. Because Jesus had been taken from his friends in the middle of the night, accused of a crime he didn’t do, and there was no justice to be found for him anywhere.

   “Pontius Pilate was the magistrate and--”

   “What’s a magistrate?”

   “That’s sort of like a governor. But he’s like a judge, too.”

   “Oh.”

   “And he thought Jesus was innocent, but he let the crowd talk him into having him executed anyway.”

   “Why?”

   He shrugged. “Because he was weak, I guess.”

   “Can I see your book, Dave?” The magistrate’s name sounded familiar.

   He handed it to me. Pontius Pilate. Then I remembered.

   Not Ponch’s Pilot. Not like CHiPs.

   I liked it when things clicked.

   I gave him back his book and looked out the window at the scenery as he rambled on about Injustice. I didn’t want to hear about Injustice. I was thinking about soil. Thinking about it, not talking about it. Because I knew she wasn’t going to ask me what I had learned that morning, even after Dave stopped talking.

   Home. Play clothes. Walking to Jason’s house.

   “What are you doing? We’re supposed to be there by now.”

   “Planting.”

   “You can’t plant anything there. It won’t grow.”

   “Shut up.”

   “I’m going without you, Pest.”

   I didn’t care. Well, I cared a little. But I cared more about proving that I was right. That I was alright. Good things could grow on the path; I knew it. All I had to do was make the ground soft and fertile; just like spring.

   I scraped and scratched with my fingers, my fingernails, imitating the huge machines that grated our road every year. I uncovered a rock, just below the surface, the size of my hand. Couldn’t budge it. I took off my plastic Forest Green headband, my brown hair spilling everywhere, and used it as a shovel. It snapped in half, which was even better. I dug and dug and dug some more. Dirt wedged underneath my fingernails and crusted in between the teeth of the headband.

   The rock came out. It left behind a gaping hole, a crater, and that was perfect. I just had to fill it up, fill it in. The beginning of June was too early for wildflowers, so I settled on grass and dandelions. Used my headband shovel, dug underneath the soil beside the path; good soil, good roots and dirt. Filled in the hole. Packed it down. There was no water nearby, so I spit on it. And spit again. Kept spitting until my mouth was dry.

   That would do it.

   I ran to Jason’s house and took turns doing swing set races. I lost. My legs were too short. Oreos and milk. More races. I lost again. Then the rain came, a light drizzle that would turn into a downpour. I ran back towards our house, right behind Dave, but stopped halfway.

   My little garden was still there. I smiled at it. Because I was right. I was alright.

   But the next morning I went out bright and early before breakfast, before church, and my garden was gone. Just a hole and it was half filled with sticky mud. The grass and dandelions had been washed away. Within three days it was completely filled in, more dirt and pebbles, and by the end of the week it was trampled down again. Hard ground. And I couldn’t tell that there had ever been a garden there at all. Couldn’t even see the crater.

   Hard ground. Where nothing would grow.

Chapter 1

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