Free The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski Page B

looked up Saint Bonaventure in The Lives of the Saints and read about the son of Giovanni di Fidanza and Maria Ritella, a child who’d been born at Bagnorea in the environs of Viterbo in 1221, and who had originally been called Giovanni. She learned that when this certain Giovanni had fallen grievously ill in childhood, his mother had sought the intercession of Saint Francis of Assisi, and the dying child was healed. The boy grew up and devoted his life to God. He joined the Franciscan order and changed his name to Bonaventure.
    Letice Arrow’s heart beat fast as she read those things and nearly pounded out of her chest when she found that in 1257, the pope conferred the title of Seraphic Doctor upon Bonaventure di Fidanza. This was exactly what she had hoped to find, for Letice was a believer in angels—she looked for them; she listened for them; she turned to them for help. She knew that in the realms of heaven, the seraphim angels stand nearest to God.
    Letice read on about Saint Bonaventure’s love of learning. She read of his belief that reason and intellect can find many answers, but they can never know God as can the humblest hearts and souls. No one would ever be able to convince her that her grandson had been carelessly named from the telephone directory for Greater New Orleans. No one. Not ever. She believed he’d been born to great purpose, though she did not know what that purpose would be.
    Letice brought up baptism, but received no response from Dancy. Days came and went with no further talk of it, and Letice grew deeply concerned. She was anxious about the original sin that stained Bonaventure’s new soul and would do so until the waters of baptism washed it away. She nearly worried herself sick about this matter until one day as she was watering a trailing philodendron, she experienced a revelation. At the very same moment the water pooled atop the sphagnum, inspiration came to her like a wave at high tide, and an idea pooled inside her head. As the water seeped deeper into the soil, just so did that idea leak deeper into Letice. There was a duty, a moral imperative to carry out, and she was the only one who could do it. In the days that followed, she designed a strategy and counted the days until Holy Week.
     
    Bonaventure took in his Grand-mère’s excitement, and it made him feel big and strong. He was lying on his tummy the first time he heard her plans, facedown on one little fist, which wasn’t all that comfortable. When he heard her anxious anticipation— tzing, tzing, tzing —Bonaventure was able to move his arm from beneath his head, inspired by the sound, even though he was no more than a few weeks old.
    He stared at his hand and wiggled his fingers until he was plumb tuckered out.

Mardi Gras Sentimental
    L ETICE Arrow’s life revolved around Catholicism. She loved its ritual, its music, and its belief in a loving God. She also loved the mystery of it: the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. She loved the idea that suffering brought one closer to God, and that forgiveness could be found through confession, even though she felt she’d never attained absolution for her sins because she’d never received proper penance.
    Mardi Gras is French for Fat Tuesday and is the last day of revelry before the fasting ritual that begins on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Fat Tuesday fell on the twenty-first of February in 1950, arriving on the arm of a steady light rain. The grayness of the day made an undetectable turn toward dusk as the dark of blue became a bruise on the sky.
    Letice Arrow drew the drawing room drapes against the cries of “ Laissez les bons temps rouler! ” ringing though the streets of Bayou Cymbaline.
    “Go ahead and let the good times roll,” she whispered. “The hours for your sinning are numbered. Your bodies will take your souls straight to hell. Your flesh will rot and you will stink for eternity. What good will your lust do