Now available in paperback, a collection of interconnected stories by an award-winning writer with a distinctive voice and an unerring sense of place. The stories in this affecting debut collection are populated by the sober, self-effacing members of Detroit's Polish-Catholic working class. Linked by place and characters, the stories create a world both familiar and strange, where religion is a way of life and traditions are carried down through the generations. But even this isolated community cannot remain immutable. In these wonderfully poignant and witty stories based on people and places she knows well, Ellen Slezak documents the colorful clash of young and old, of religious and secular, of traditional values and the temptations of the flesh. Like Winesburg, Ohio, Last Year's Jesus creates a fully realized world teetering on the brink of change. Writing with tremendous empathy, warmth, and humor, Slezak brings to life the sights and sounds of a place she calls home--a place readers won't soon forget.
Now available in paperback, a collection of interconnected stories by an award-winning writer with a distinctive voice and an unerring sense of place. The stories in this affecting debut collection are populated by the sober, self-effacing members of Detroit's Polish-Catholic working class. Linked by place and characters, the stories create a world both familiar and strange, where religion is a way of life and traditions are carried down through the generations. But even this isolated community cannot remain immutable. In these wonderfully poignant and witty stories based on people and places she knows well, Ellen Slezak documents the colorful clash of young and old, of religious and secular, of traditional values and the temptations of the flesh. Like Winesburg, Ohio, Last Year's Jesus creates a fully realized world teetering on the brink of change. Writing with tremendous empathy, warmth, and humor, Slezak brings to life the sights and sounds of a place she calls home--a place readers won't soon forget.
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Overview
Now available in paperback, a collection of interconnected stories by an award-winning writer with a distinctive voice and an unerring sense of place. The stories in this affecting debut collection are populated by the sober, self-effacing members of Detroit's Polish-Catholic working class. Linked by place and characters, the stories create a world both familiar and strange, where religion is a way of life and traditions are carried down through the generations. But even this isolated community cannot remain immutable. In these wonderfully poignant and witty stories based on people and places she knows well, Ellen Slezak documents the colorful clash of young and old, of religious and secular, of traditional values and the temptations of the flesh. Like Winesburg, Ohio, Last Year's Jesus creates a fully realized world teetering on the brink of change. Writing with tremendous empathy, warmth, and humor, Slezak brings to life the sights and sounds of a place she calls home--a place readers won't soon forget.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780786886388 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hachette Books |
| Publication date: | 04/16/2003 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.19(w) x 8.00(h) x (d) |
| Age Range: | 13 - 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
LAST YEAR'S JESUS (OR PASSION PLAY)
I caught up with the Passion Play just as two horses draped in purple bathroom rugs left the corner of Pulaski and Campau. The Romans and almost everybody else in the play and in the audience were Mexicans. They'd come from their home parish, Holy Trinity, about five miles south, near Tiger Stadium. The Romans brandished broomstick spears and wore helmets that might have been mistaken for wash buckets spray-painted gold. Jesus followed, his white bedsheet tunic flapping in a breeze too cruel for April. He wore a weave of broken twigs atop his head. He really needed earmuffs. Though the pageant had just begun, his bare, sandaled feet already dragged under the weight of an eight-foot-tall wood cross he'd carry on his back for the next two miles as we followed him south down Campau and then back along the Grand Trunk Western tracks to Veterans Memorial Park, where he would be crucified, die, and be buried.
Mary should have been weeping at the fate of her son, but instead she scowled, preoccupied with keeping her blue pillowcase veil from blowing off her head. Simon wore thick wool socks inside his sandals. How loyal was that? A dozen other Israelite mourners, men and women hugging their arms in the cold, followed a troop of Roman foot soldiers who cracked whips of frayed rope at Jesus's feet and back, urging him to get a move on.
The cold morning had started out sunny, but then a dense pack of clouds rolled into Hamtramck from the west and covered the Passion Play like a lid. We trudged under it, sad and silent and sorry forJesus.
Just as I congratulated myself for snagging a spot up front a few feet from Jesus, a troop of pageant volunteers marched over and began organizing us, the observers. The volunteers wore white gloves and purple sashes. Most appeared to be apathetic high school kids, but a few wore the tranquilized look of the saved. The young guy and the middle-aged woman who led them held walkie-talkies. The woman quick-stepped toward me. Her bristly gray hair didn't budge in the breeze. She wore a navy blue polyester coat and brown platter-shaped shoes. She had to be a nun. I turned away instinctively, but she came at me, pushing me back. The volunteers spaced themselves evenly around the passion players, forming a human barrier that kept us, the mere people, back twenty feet. I was farther from Jesus than before, but I still had an unobstructed view.
Then, on a mission, the nun-woman descended again and pushed me farther back. She spoke as she did this, her voice low and quiet, carrying the arrogant assumption that we'd all shut up and listen. And, of course, we did, leaning in to hear. "People, let's have some consideration here—quit pushing and give the players room. The next station starts in a minute." She looked pleased with herself, like she was a saint because she hadn't raised her voice.
Her rebuke was uncalled for. As a crowd we were quiet, polite, respectful, even a little depressed, in keeping with the theme and the weather.
I almost left at that point. I wasn't even supposed to be there. Not that I was skipping class or anything—Mercy College shut down for the Easter holidays. But I was on Campau running errands for my grandmother, while she knelt at home, making her way around the rosary in preparation for more praying at church that afternoon. She always prayed in the living room, kneeling next to her spindled rocker, leaning on it to get up or down. The light was murky there as she kept the thick, rose-colored drapes closed against the sun, so worried was she that it would leech the green from her slipcovered sofa. "Our people pray," she often said. According to my grandmother, our people also give cash at weddings and work harder than anybody else.
I didn't begrudge my grandmother her prayers. She had raised me since my mother died when I was five. I never met my father. But I did wonder at the scope of her prayers, which seemed only large enough to include those just like her: Healthy Poles who knew better than to move away from home and who ate meat there three times a day.
The Free Press that morning said the Latino community needed a place to hold its procession because Mayor Archer was redoing all the streets around Holy Trinity, a neighborhood so close to downtown Detroit that people with money and jobs were beginning to claim it. "Bah," my grandmother said, "they'll make a loft out of a tenement and shoo all the rats and deadbeats here." My grandmother must have suspected I was curious about the Passion Play because as I left to run her errands, she said, "Get the rye from New Palace and the fresh kielbasa from Srodek's." She said, "Now don't you go to that parade Theresa Jagielski." She said, "It's bad enough the czarnes live here, now we'll get the wetbacks too." She said, "Don't look at me like that Miss-I-go-to-college. What do you know of anything? You didn't cross the ocean." My grandmother did not approve of the Mexicans from Holy Trinity because they did not belong to her one holy Catholic and apostolic church.
Or maybe it was because she believed they took the GM factory jobs that paid twenty dollars an hour. Stole them away from guys like our neighbor Pauley Nowicki, who got laid off from Cadillac Assembly a year ago and now sits home drinking all day and yelling at the TV. But it seemed to me that the Mexicans in Detroit struggled to find good-paying work just like everybody else. They lived in their barrio near the Ambassador Bridge that spanned the river to Canada, as if they knew they might need an escape route—a way to flee farther north, where life might be colder, but surely couldn't be harder.
The old ladies gossiping outside St. Florian's last Sunday after Mass said the mayor of Hamtramck only said yes to the Passion Play because his son got a Mexican girl pregnant at prom the year before and he felt guilty. "That's what the Mayor gets for sending his son to Cass Tech instead of a good Catholic school like St. Cyril's or St. Ladislaw's or St. Florian's right here in Hamtramck," they said. Never mind that each of those high schools had closed. The old ladies put their arms around my waist and rested their old lady heads on my chest after they said this. All of them widowed or alone in other ways, they hugged me so tight the smell of them—of the food they cooked, of needing more than two baths a week, of their dead husband's cigarettes from his old sweater they wore—stuck to my skin.
They liked me. Or, at least, what I let them know of me. "Our Theresa went to good Catholic schools," the old ladies said. "Our Theresa got a scholarship to Mercy College," they said. "It doesn't matter that she's not pretty," they said. "Our Theresa is a good girl," they said.
You are mean and ignorant is what I said right back. But only to myself. On the outside, on the steps of St. Florian's, I just smiled at Mrs. Pachota, Mrs. Oczadlo, Mrs. Makowski, and at my grandmother, and then I said, "Come on, Grandma. Let's go home. I have to study for a chem test." I took my grandmother's arm. I helped her down the steps.
You can see that when the nun pushed me around at the Passion Play, it was nothing I wasn't used to, but I saw no reason to stick around and endure it. I turned to leave, but as I did, the other organizer, a young guy, Mexican, twenty-five or so, came by. He motioned us all to move in closer, "Come on," he said, "it's okay. There's plenty of room." His gentle voice could have soothed a colicky baby. He smiled, especially at me, and then he even spoke to me. "You're not from Holy Trinity, are you?"
"No. I just came out for kielbasa." I winced at my clumsy response, but I guess he heard poetry.
"Well, we hope you like our play. You're very welcome here." He reached out and put his bare hand over my mittened one and squeezed it, a gesture so friendly I warned myself not to imagine it as being anything more. I did not typically take such precaution. Instead, I charged, then blundered almost everywhere, making mistakes in conversation, in judgment, in bed.
The teenage girls behind me giggled as he walked away. I heard one of them ask the other who he was. "His name is Felipe or Miguel," she stopped and thought, "or maybe it's Bob. I don't know. He was last year's Jesus."
Hearing that and having just met a man so easily, I decided precaution was not called for that morning. Call it what you will—divine intervention, fate, kismet—I had been delivered to the Passion Play. This warm-hearted man was a sign that I need not blunder anymore. I did not expect my way to be free and clear, but if last year's Jesus, beautiful and kind and sin-free, too, was an instrument to my peace, I would hike on, obstacles be damned.
I pushed a few people aside and moved in closer. And when the passion players stopped to enact the third station on the way of the cross—Jesus Falls the First Time—and with the crowd singing Donde, donde, donde encontrare al Señor, I got to work. I only had eleven more stations to make that savior fall for me.
Did I mention he was gorgeous? If Paris or Milan ever needed a runway Jesus, he'd get the call. He had neat dark hair, beard, and mustache. Tall, lean, and muscular, he looked like the result of a coupling between a pole-vaulter and a wrestler. Despite the cold, he wore a cotton jacket and thin white pants, as if he knew it wouldn't be fair to bundle up while a fellow member in the club of being Jesus trudged down Campau in a loin cloth and bedsheet. That's just plain thoughtful.
The Free Press described the Jesus role as a great honor and termed the competition for it fierce. The judges looked for somebody who emanated goodness, rather than somebody who tried to impress. And though the current Jesus fit that bill, to my taste he was too white and passive, more like bread dough than savior.
Man to man, last year's Jesus would blow him away. He radiated active goodness. He coaxed love from the pushy abuela, short as a shrub, in front of me who shoved and bumped everybody else away. But when last year's Jesus urged this Mexican grandma to let others in too, she became positively Mother Teresa—like, stepping aside so a bunch of little kids could stand in front of her. When he leaned down to thank her, she touched his cheek as if he were a talisman.
By his very actions, he told us we were worth the trouble. And specifically, that I was worth the trouble. Because he talked to me every time he came near. Right after the fourth station, Jesus Meets his Mother, he walked alongside me for half a block, and not only because some boys behind me had flashed gang signals.
"So, what's your name?" He looked over my shoulder at the boys as he spoke.
"Theresa Jagielski." Oh, that I could have offered a more mellifluous moniker.
"I knew you didn't live by Holy Trinity. I would have noticed you." He forgot the boys for a second and gazed all over me. "You should come to our Mariachi Mass some Sunday. I bet you'd like it."
I imagined the two of us on a Saturday night date and then sitting together in a pew the next morning at Mass, while a quartet of musicians strolled by, their harmonies softening the priest's decree, the sun warming the church. I saw colors and serapes and my own dull-colored hair wrapped exotically around my head.
Before I could accept his invitation, he excused himself and left to rein in the nun, who had just grabbed two little boys as they ducked under the barrier. He looked back over his shoulder almost the whole way, and though you might argue he was only keeping an eye on those gangbangers, I'm telling you he looked at me, taking in my body and blood. This former savior was clearly all man.
I felt so fine. I was making an authentic connection with someone good. Once I completed the stations, I was sure I could shout, "Hey everybody, I've got a date with last year's Jesus."
And I was ready for it. I'd been practicing. You see, for me dates and sex were not easy. Guys, for the most part, have always insulted, ignored, or patronized me. My height—I'm almost six feet tall—and engine block of a body probably have something to do with it. I'm also plain. Everything about me—forehead, eyes, cheeks, shoulders, calves—is broad and uninterrupted by a mark of beauty or even an interesting defect. Nor do I do well at parties. I start out expectant, sure I'll be noticed, holding out my hand to everyone I see and making uninteresting observations that are not even truthful: "I like your shoes," or "I think people watch too much TV." After I circle the room for an hour, always on the perimeter of conversation, I am noticed but for the wrong reasons: I've spilled my beer; the girlfriend I came with just threw up.
Nothing changed when I went to Mercy College. Most of the women I met there had steady boyfriends. Only a few were like me—unencumbered by men and encumbered by the heavier burdens that come of such lightness. All the brochures and magazines leading toward college talked about safe sex and how alcohol and sex don't mix and how no means no. The warnings and advice were delivered in bulleted lists of do's and don'ts with brightly colored headings. But they didn't have bullets for girls like me.
So after my first year at Mercy, I began to drink. Just a little. And to have sex. Just a little of that, too. To my surprise it wasn't so hard to arrange. I discovered that while I may be no great bargain, guys liked sex. I practiced with a few of them, preparing for the man who would transition to boyfriend. A classmate's cousin's friend here. A friend's neighbor there. These guys, besides being drunk, were curious about me. I never slept with a girl who had such big thighs, the classmate's cousin's friend said, squeezing mine. I worried a little about being too easy, yet two sexual experiences hardly made me a candidate for sluthood.
I thought I was playing up when I shared a meal, saw a movie, took a walk, and had sex on four separate occasions with a guy named Jack, who worked in the kitchen at Mercy washing luggage-sized pots and pans. Not exactly a fairy tale, but it seemed like progress. But then the fifth time, as we squeezed together in his twin bed on a Sunday afternoon, having just done it while his parents were at a fiftieth anniversary wedding party, he told me he didn't know why he'd had sex with me because he really felt it was important that he love a woman before he slept with her, and then he added, "and your breasts smell." At first, I thought, oh my god, didn't I brush my teeth this morning? Then I realized he distinctly said breasts, and I felt even more ashamed.
I didn't say anything, but I left right after that. I cried a little as I drove home because it seemed that even though I was only on sex partner number three, too many assholes had already stuck their dicks in me. No more sex without something else I promised myself—not necessarily love, but more than beer and curiosity.
Objectively speaking, as mortal beings, is there a road higher than sex with a man who'd been Jesus? I'm not saying I was going to give in right away—I hadn't forgotten my promise. But when we did do it, it would be a religious experience, almost a sacrament, and certainly not the usual self-flagellation.
Had my previous approaches to sex been too glib? Too stupid? Too desperate? Maybe, but all that mattered was that I did not want to become what I thought my mother must have been—lonely and compliant, inside and out. She'd had sex with my father, I'd bet, just once. She was forty when I was born, after all, and my grandmother always said she wasn't exactly anybody's first choice for a date. "Not pretty or smart" is how she described her own daughter, evidence our people are not such good mothers either. When my mother got pregnant with me, my father refused to marry her, and then he died the next week—a heart attack. Like my grandmother said, he deserved it. But, she also added, if only he'd died before everybody knew he'd refused your mother, we could hold our heads higher. She said this to me often as I grew up. I'm sure she said it to my mother often too.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Last Year's Jesus by Ellen Slezak. Copyright © 2002 by Ellen Slezak. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Last Year's Jesus (or Passion Play) | 1 | |
| Tomato Watch | 15 | |
| The Geese at Mayville | 35 | |
| Patch | 59 | |
| Here in Car City | 79 | |
| Lucky | 103 | |
| By Heart | 121 | |
| Settled | 147 | |
| If You Treat Things Right | 167 | |
| Head, Heart, Legs or Arms | 185 |