When the Lord’s Work Is Over, I Will Race You to Rainbow Road
Lalini Shanela Ranaraja
If the Angel Gabriel himself had told me, there on the convent steps after my first and last confession —
Rejoice! For one day, those who are trusted with the keys of cathedrals and those who preach women’s stories on Good Friday will also beat you black and blue at Mario Kart 8!
— friends, I would have laughed until I was exorcised.
But it’s twenty years later, and one Wednesday after six PM the woman who keeps the cathedral keys carries her Wii U in from her car, whose name is Wanda. The woman whose Good Friday sermon was the first I’d heard in years says I always play Black Shy Guy, in a sunny voice whose gleaming undertow proclaims and Heaven help whosoever tries to pick him instead.
And then we’re off to the races, and it’s been a long tour in America, year after year of learning to read between the lines of her well-sold dreams — shopping malls! Highways! Cop shows! Liberty and justice for all! — and yet, here suddenly in the eleventh hour some things are revealed anew — PIRANHA PLANT! MUSHROOM! BANANA PEEL! BOO! And perhaps best of all, the great vehemence that pours forth from the mouths of workers of the Lord when you’re hard on their heels in a 3D go-kart.
We forsake water, bathroom breaks, going home early; we pause to pass the Salonpas. In the beginning there is light, there is color, speed and sound; I play Mario by default, mix up all the buttons, swear I’ll never get behind the wheel for real. Then I pick the Red Shy Guy (because he looks like a wee ghost; because he reminds me of last Halloween when I entered this room wearing a red bedsheet and singing the theme from Phantom of the Opera; because my emergency contact picked someone like him and that means he’s safe). Then I put him on a motorcycle. Then I let the leaders duke it out and sneak up the inside lane month after month, fighting dirty, lobbing squids in my wake, never confessing. The planet spins from November to March and inside this room where we hold vigils and team lunches and prayers in a dozen languages and Halloween movie nights and our collective breaths on the morning they announce the two hundred and sixty-seventh Pope —
Inside this room the cathedral-keeper and the story-preacher who encompass infinities are the first to cheer, the very first time I beat them to the finish line. And six months later, I’ll get behind the wheel for real, for the first time, on an island where everyone drives as though every minute could be their last and by all the gods, they’re determined to make it count —
And I think — piranha plant, mushroom, banana peel, boo. I think of two women who have heard ten thousand prayers between them, who taught me no matter what to keep moving, who shared their Salonpas and the fire in their eyes, who make their own blessed history.
And I count down from three.