Free Kicking the Sky by Anthony de Sa

the church and stood, waiting.
    I was boxed in, squished against a man whose suit smelled of old books and Aqua Velva. He wasn’t very tall. I could feel my mother’s grip loosening. The crowd was pressing in and I could see the white of the inside of her arm between two people as she held on. It would have been easy to let go of her hand.
    The organ music began and the shrill voice of the church’s singer crackled over the speaker system they had placed outside the church. The lights and bunting, the same kind that bordered Senhor Agostinho’s used-car lot on Bathurst Street, sagged against the front of the church; the Festa do Senhor da Pedra had been rescheduled out of respect for the Jaques family. My father chuckled when he heard my mother explain this to us. “It’s because the priests don’t want to lose money!” he said. “Always priests and money!”
    I got stuck between two adults who now separated me from my mother. I had to push hard for them to move. My mother looked down at me and tried to smile. Terri kept shifting from one foot to the other—balancing herself on her platform shoes, and then crossing her legs, her face scrunched up in pain as if holding in her pee. The fingertips of one hand were covered in bandages; I still didn’t know how she’d explained that to mymother. She whispered in my mother’s ear. My mother sighed, then nodded. Terri pushed her way back through the horde. One man refused to give way. She nudged her shoulder into his chest. I heard the faint trace of “Perv!” and saw Senhor Batista’s grin. He breathed in his cigarette and blew a steady stream through the black hole in his throat.
    Senhora Gloria stood beside him. In her brown flowing robe she looked like St. Teresa, or Obi-Wan Kenobi. She was the holiest person I knew, but that hadn’t stopped her from guiding my finger onto her flesh and holding it there.
    I caught a glimpse of Agnes standing behind her mother before the crowd closed in again and blocked my view. Last year she’d been as flat as an ironing board. Then one day it seemed they just appeared, glorious breasts about the size of pomegranates, and it was wonderful. I loved pomegranates.
    Ten minutes passed—I counted 163 honks into handkerchiefs—before Edite appeared, squeezing herself between Senhora Gloria and Senhor Batista. She dragged my sister beside her. Terri looked pissed. Senhora Gloria’s face tightened as if she had sucked a lemon. Aunt Edite always dressed hippyish. My father said it was a sure sign she was a communist.
    “I think I have an extra veil in my—”
    Edite touched my mother’s hand to stop her from looking for it. She shook her hair in the morning sun and stretched her red lips wide. “I spent half an hour,” Edite told her, “flattening my hair with an iron. My hair
is
my veil.” My mother tried to get Edite to go with her to church, but Edite always refused. She passed the Catholic test in other ways. She could repeat Bible sayings:
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God
, or
Hethat is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone
. These phrases usually ended the conversation, forcing the topic into other areas: the price of mackerel, or urging my mother, who didn’t wear makeup, to make extra money selling Avon.
    My mother looked at my sister. “Back so fast?”
    “We ducked into Senhor João’s fish market,” Edite said. “He let us use the washroom—no need to go all the way home. It’s like a circus here,” she added. My mother pretended not to hear her.
    A spell washed over the crowd. I saw the casket and understood why. It was small and glossy white. It seemed to float in the air, as light as Styrofoam over a sea of black. The brass handles flopped to the side, unused. Arms shot up to touch the coffin. People spread their palms and wiggled their fingers in the air like hungry children wanting something. The sniffles grew louder,