Jennifer Judge
Jennifer Judge is a poet, a professor at King’s College, and coordinator of the Luzerne County Poetry in Transit program. Her poem, “81 North,” was selected for permanent inclusion in the Jenny Holtzer installation For Philadelphia 2018. Her work has also appeared in Rhino, Literary Mama, Blueline, Under the Gum Tree, The Comstock Review, and Gyroscope Review, among others. She earned her MFA from Goddard College. She lives in Dallas, PA, with her husband and two daughters.
The Baptism
Jennifer Judge
Issue 59, Winter 2020
Winter,
sun streamed in bleach white,
a Catholic church,
Philadelphia suburb.
We ran the heat the whole way there,
a two-hour drive.
A wooden rail, front of the church,
half fence,
a kind of dividing line,
keeping the holy from the unholy,
the participants from the spectators.
I was just 27 then, my sister 34.
The church was small, unadorned,
white ceiling, white walls,
soft green carpet,
the pews empty save for our family.
I was told not to come
to the communion rail,
the other godmother would hold the baby.
I didn’t say anything, sat back down.
I tried not to cry,
couldn’t make it stop.
Months earlier,
on a trip to a restaurant bathroom,
my sister asked me to be the godmother,
a second godmother.
I was in the stall, which means
I wasn’t looking at her,
she wasn’t looking at me.
I lapped up the offer, said yes
of course, tried to conceal my
she-picked-me joy,
(my older sister picked me).
When my sister tells the story
of the baptism, she says that I
made a scene, that I ruined her day.
She will say that I always did that,
baby of the family, getting my way,
that my mother rushed
home to console me.
What she didn’t know: my mother
never rushed to me. I drove home
alone. I repeated I was sorry over and over
to no one in particular and everyone at once.
What she didn’t know,
what she never asked:
I couldn’t get pregnant.
I never would.
It was winter, the end of things.
My mother and father were there,
all my siblings and their husbands,
a last time, an unraveling.
I had to walk
to the back of the church,
my shoulders shook, I
didn’t want to make a scene.