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perpendicular to his body. I was on the chair beside him.
    He turned to me and said, “Now, you pretend you are a Roman soldier and nail spikes into my hands.”
    I looked down around the room “What nails?” I asked.
    â€œJust pretend,” he said. “Pretend like you’re hammering nails into my hands.”
    â€œOh, I can’t do that,” I said.
    â€œJust pretend!” I could tell by the volume of his voice that he was getting annoyed with my ignorance, with my lack of imagination. “You’re a Roman soldier, okay? I’m Jesus, okay? When they crucified him, they nailed his hands and feet to a wooden cross and let him hang there to die.” By age ten, my brother was well versed in the New Testament. In religion classes, he paid close attention to parables and stories. At six, all I knew was that today was Holy Saturday and I was too sick to play outside. We were in our pajamas. My nose was running, and my head was hot, but he promised the crucifix game would be fun. The day before, he and my mother had watched the movie Jesus of Nazareth , staying up late while I fell asleep. He seemed to know what he was doing, so I followed him as he rescued me from boredom.
    From my chair, I pretended to hammer a big spiky nail into his hand. He grimaced, and grunted painfully. “Oh,” I said, easing up with my pretend hammer and pulling out a pretend nail.
    â€œI’m just pretending,” he whispered. “Keep going.” He winked and nodded. “Now, you say, ”Jesus, King of the Jews, you shall die!” ” He continued to feed me the lines. “Pretend to laugh as you do it. You know, ”Ha! Ha! Ha!” ” He threw his head back with hearty laughter.
    â€œHa! Ha! Ha!” I repeated, throwing my head back, too.
    He looked up at the ceiling and looked as if he could cry. “Forgive them, Father,” he pled, “they know not what they do.”
    I was confused, not quite sure why I was laughing, or why I was nailing spikes into his hands. I looked up to see whom he was talking to, but all I could see was the bright yellow ceiling light. It shone over him, casting the shadow of his entire crucified body on the white wall.
    A week later, back in religion class at school, Sister Mary Victor’s long navy blue habit was swinging low and heavy behind her. “Now, does anyone know who died last week?” She had one palm in the other as she paced back and forth. “I’ll give you a clue,” she said. “He is the King of the Jews. He suffered for our sins, and they nailed him to a cross. He died, came back to us, and then went up to Heaven. Does anyone know who this is?”
    â€œJesus!” someone behind me shouted out.
    â€œThat’s right!” Sister Mary Victor cried.
    It came to me like a puzzle. All the pieces started to make sense. “My brother!” I said aloud.
    â€œExcuse me?” Sister Mary Victor snapped, her big eyes bulging and coming closer to me.
    â€œJesus Christ—is my brother! When I crucified him, he asked our father to forgive me!”
    Sister Mary Victor gave me a long, cold stare through the thick lenses of her glasses, one that pierced straight through me and shrank me back into my seat.
    â€œWell, I think he is . . .” I mumbled before I dropped my eyes toward the floor.
    When I got my first pimple at thirteen, my mother told me that when a girl gets a pimple, it means that she is secretly in love. Of course, I was—with some boyish face I can no longer recall. But her prophecy made me embarrassed, and I blushed. The stress of everyone finding out my secret made me worry even more until I broke out in full acne.
    â€œDon’t tell them that!” my father would say to my mother when she told my brother and me these things, but she never listened. While my father was a quiet Catholic who prayed privately, my mother was the one who believed that you got