Sleep evaded him. He screamed and shook and rocked in his narrow bed. His eyes swelled and the collar of his vestment grew tight as he inhaled. Father Romero cried with misplaced feeling suddenly found. In vacant green eyes. With an old wound, a collision memoir, made fresh again with a flick of his own wrist. His own words.
The broken ceiling fan shone a tear-blurred yellow. Mary's holiness. A halo. Father Romero stumbled towards it. His hands patted frantically over a desk, in drawers, looking for something, anything with which he could get closer to Him. His breath cracked when he found it. An old indigo and white tie. Mould-spotted with age.
He tied the tie around himself in an unusual knot. It pressed firmly to his fleshy neck. He heard his mother as he stood on the desk chair, underneath the shining ceiling fan. He saw the dim yellow lightbulb as the summer morning light through Milan's stained glass windows.
'Pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu.
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona eis requiem, dona eis requiem.'
He tied the opposite end around the ceiling fan's base. Trembling. He reached for his wooden rosary and prayed silently. The crickets stopped singing. His niece's soft brown hands, and her eyes, so like his mother, played across his wire-rimmed glasses. He tucked the photograph back inside his vestment.
'Non ti preoccupare, zio. Gesù ti ama.'
The chair spine clattered to the floor. He struggled and convulsed, gargled and fought against the floorlessness he'd met. His rosary dropped from his hand.
With his mother's eyes in his mind, he slipped back to her.
A child once again.