62
PARTISAN REVIEW
I sang "The Palms" the next morning in our own church, all
right, but I didn't do it very well. I hated that song. All I wanted
to do was go far away by myself somewhere, outdoors, but I sat
there in the choir-pew up in the chancel, with the wonderful yel·
lowish-green light coming in through the stained-glass windows
and making everything look as if it were under water; and I kept
trying hard to think how much nicer the Episcopal Church was,
which it was, and then Mr. Verne nodded to me from behind the
music-rack and I got up. It was during the Offertory and every–
body was sitting back, looking up at the chancel, waiting for the
solo. I didn't dare look at anybody but I knew I was trembling,
because my brother had whispered to me just before I got up:
"Don't be scared-you know you'll be all right." And afterwards,
everybody said I was all right, and the minister gave me two palm·
crosses to wear instead of one because he said I deserved it, and
Mr. Verne asked mother if she wasn't proud of me.
J1tis morning, standing in that sunless cellar with my brother
and our friend and Ted and his father, and hearing "The Palms"
being played in the house above us, I knew that at last this music
was powerless .to disturb me, and I knew why, and why it never
~ould
again. There was something to be said for going over these
things, dragging them up, as it were, and looking at them. Too long,
, without reason, I had hated that song, bitterly, actively, even after
I had forgotten its association with Mr. Verne, church, the room in
the Methodist steeple, and my brother. Now I could look upon the
music for what it was: a simple anthem-like melody in stately
measures, easy to sing, pleasant to listen to, not unpleasant, now,
to remember. But my aversion to "The Palms" was so strong when
I was fourteen that I left the church and choir the following win–
ter, a good two or three months before Palm Sunday was to roll
·around again, and I never took part in our choir activities further.
I won this victory only after a long quarrel with my mother, in
which I argued that I was too old to sing in the choir anymore;
that I was old enough to have my own ideas on religion and go to
church when and where I pleased; and chiefly that I hated the wine
that I was forced to drink at Communion whether I liked it or not–
and how could it possibly mean the body and blood of Christ any–
way, this wine that was made by some wops somewhere like any
other wine and this little sliver of a wafer that was no different
