Short Walk with Charlene Richard
“Charlene Richard died of acute lymphocytic leukemia at age 12 in 1959.
Each year as many as 10,000 people visit Charlene’s grave. They know her as the Little Cajun Saint,
though the Catholic Church has not yet recognized her as one.”
— The New York Times, December 20, 2022
Sometimes I wish the God of the Old Testament were,
you know. Nicer. You can start with the flood
and the annihilation of pretty much everybody, though
it’s hard to believe they were all bad. Later He said
He wouldn’t do it again—is God saying He made
a mistake? And then He had Saul kill the Amalekites
for something their ancestors had done generations earlier,
struck Uzzah dead when he reached out to steady the Ark
of the Covenant when it tipped, let Jephtha kill his daughter
when he vows to sacrifice the first thing that comes out
of his house if God grants him victory, and it’s her, and he does,
let Elisha curse in His name the children who call him “baldy”
and sends two bears to maul them, killing forty-two.
Uzzah was just trying to keep the Ark from falling over!
And God stopped Abraham from killing his child—why not
do the same with Jephtha? This is a God you want to keep
at a distance. This is a God you don’t want to spend a minute
with. Of course, when His son shows up a few years later,
God’s a lot different. Fatherhood can do that to you.
The cognitive demands of parenting—planning,
emotional regulation, problem solving, multitasking—
act like mental workouts that lead to higher self-esteem,
more life satisfaction, and greater feelings of affiliation
and purpose, which is why, as my children are grown
and have children of their own now, I think I’d like
to take a walk with Charlene Richard, who began
to bruise easily when she was little and suffer nosebleeds
so severe she’d pass out, so her doctor
gives her parents a sealed envelope and tells them to take her
to a specialist at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Lafayette,
and when the specialist opens the envelope, he sends
for Father Joseph Brennan, who’d been ordained just a few months
before he was appointed chaplain and now has to tell
Charlene Richard that she only has two weeks to live.
No training for this in the seminary, thinks the young priest
as he takes the elevator to her room on the fourth floor,
but Charlene knows something is up, because as soon as
he sits and puts his hand on hers and says a beautiful lady
is coming to take you home, she replies and when she does,
I’ll say blessed mother, Father Brennan says hello.
There’s no cure for grief, but tenderness can walk beside it,
ease its sting. Charlene Richard is the kind of person
who’d ask you if you’d like to go down to the lake and see
the geese and the wood ducks and the turtles on their logs,
and when you say she can’t, she’s sick, she says I can!
I can now. I have to, and you have to come with me,
and you do, and the two of you sit on a bench for a while
and watch the leaves fall, and Charlene asks you if
you’re Catholic, and you say no, and then she wants
to know if you believe in God, and you say no, but I think
He’s awfully useful, and she says what’s the problem,
and you say you find it hard to get excited about a God
you’re always afraid of, and when she says how’s that,
and you say well, overlooking for the moment the Flood
that killed everybody, He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah
and was about to do the same to the Israelites for worshipping
the Golden Calf until Moses stepped in, but before
you can say more Charlene says whoa, whoa, whoa—
wrong God, buddy! Yours sounds like an angry dad,
but mine is like your favorite uncle, the one who gives
you a sip of his Dixie beer and lets you know
there are rules, sure, but nobody knows what they are
or how you learn them, though you will—“For this
commandment which I command you this day is
not concealed from you, nor is it far away,” He says
in Deuteronomy. “It is not in heaven, that you should say,
‘Who will go up to heaven for us and fetch it for us,
to tell it to us, so that we can fulfill it?” “Nor is it
beyond the sea.” No, no, no! says Charlene Richard.
“Rather, this thing is very close to you; it is in your mouth
and in your heart, so that you can fulfill it” as just then
a car pulls into the little lot by the lake and a boy
and a woman who looks to be his grandma get out
with a bag of stale bread, and the little fellow throws
the slices at his feet and goes gah! as the ducks keep
their distance, and he starts to cry because they won’t eat
until the grandma shows him how to sail the slices out
ten feet or so, and now the ducks dig in because
they aren’t afraid of the little boy anymore, and you say he shouldn’t
be doing that, and Charlene Richard says doing what?
and you say feeding that crappy bread to the ducks,
and she says oh come on, look how happy he is,
a month from now he won’t even want to come
to the lake, and you say okay, okay, but what about
God’s followers, and she says like who and you say
well, like those ancient Christian librarians who’d
put these little threats inside every book saying
if you stole it you’d be an outcast like Cain,
you’d get leprosy, and you’d also sink into such despair
that you’d hang yourself like Judas, and if that’s
not enough, there’d be a second curse in
the same book saying if you tore out the first curse
all that would be doubled! and she says, oh,
come on—library patrons are animals. Nastiest people
in the world, some of them. My cousin, she worked
at the library in Breaux Bridge? Half of her clientele
came in drunk, and some smelled so bad that one time
this one guy made Mr. Bordelon throw up all over
the Reference Desk, but you tell Charlene about some
of the other curses inside those old books anyway, and she says
Oh I love curses, love how the Japanese say “Hit your head
on a corner of tofu and die” and the Romanians say
“I would dry my dirty underwear on your mother’s
crucifix” and even the Irish say “May the devil
make a ladder of your back bones while picking apples
in the garden of hell!” though you doubt if anyone ever said that,
and by this time you’re laughing so hard
that you don’t even notice that a deer and her fawn
have come to drink on the other side of the lake
and are looking at you and Charlene Richard and wondering
if you mean to harm them, so you dial it down a little
and say okay, but I just can’t do it, can’t buy in,
can’t tell myself that a church and a parish and a clergy
and all the rites and rituals amount to anything
that’ll make any difference in my days on this earth,
and she says look, it’s easy. It’s easier than you think.
Religion says two things. The first is “Here is the world.
You live in it.” The second is “Here is the world.
You live in it” and “You are not alone” and you say
that’s pretty damn astute, missy, and she says
hey, walk a mile in my moccasins and see what you
come up with, and you say for a twelve-year-old girl,
you sure know a lot, and she says who says I’m twelve,
and you say look, sorry to break it to you, but the doctors
were right when they said you only had two weeks.
You didn’t even make it that far: on the twelfth day,
you kissed Father Brennan and told him you’d be praying
for him in heaven, and on the thirteenth day, your story stopped.
Ask Mr. Bordelon if you don’t believe me. It says in the newspaper
that you died on August 11, 1959, and Charlene picks
a burr off her skirt and tosses it in the lake and says well,
the newspapers don’t always get it right, do they, and then
no, no, uh-uh, she says—that’s when my story begins.
*
(Image of Charlene Richard used under Fair Use rights from Diocese of Lafayette)
