Excerpt from One Night Two Souls Went Walking by Ellen Cooney, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"He's gone to light," I was told.

Entering the cathedral, I kept my excitement hidden. At last, at last, at last.

It was as splendid and breathtaking and lavish and solemnly gorgeous as I had hoped: four priests, eight altar servers, a pageant of a procession, the rising and falling of the organ, the incense mingled with all the flowers. In my family's pew, my parents were mad at my brothers for slouching and kicking each other. They didn't want to be here.

The altar was shining, all dressed up: embroidered white cloths, gold and silver, multitudes of candles, the biggest white lilies and tulips I'd ever seen.

I was going to find something out about souls! I was going to feel my own, waking up, moving about, in a new, non-baby way! And once I did, I knew I would never be the same, like losing my baby teeth, and then came that first real one, poking up from my gum to fill the emptiness.

But after a little while in the service, I noticed something. Of everyone on the altar wearing vestments or cassocks, no one was a woman or a girl. I hadn't noticed that in the procession.

On the walls behind the altar were paintings, old, oils. My father didn't mind when I whispered to ask who they were. Before I was born, everyone in my family went regularly to church—to this one. Sometimes I could not believe how unfair it was to belong to a family of people who quit church.

The paintings were of Apostles, and they were saints named Joseph, Francis, Patrick. They were rich with a vibrancy, an aliveness. They were actual men being shown at their best. The light around them seemed to come from the sun.

Then I saw that the one female presence was off to the side in an alcove: a white stone statue I knew was Mary, life-size, standing above a secondary altar, her gaze looking downward at vigil candles, flickering in frosted-glass cups. Trails of wispy smoke rose toward her. Her face was finely chiseled, and completely without expression. Her hands were at her sides, palms upward. Her head was covered with a stone veil, her body draped in stone folds of a gown, and also a cloak.

Even with the garments and the heat of the candles, she looked cold. She looked as if someone would be angry at her if she didn't stay still all the time, or tried to speak.

Meanwhile in our pew, my sister pretended to read from the mass book. Secretly inside was a laminated card that listed the rules of lacrosse. I was mortified by that, as I was mortified by my brothers' behavior.

But now everything was different. I understood that my soul had chosen this time to take a nap, after looking around and deciding there would not be the other thing, because of the feel of what was left out.

All the voices rising and falling on the altar were the voices of men. Clearly, something here was very wrong. It reminded me of when my brothers altered the radio in our mother's car, so all that came out was the bass. She would tell them she'd kill them if they kept messing with the treble. She would un-control her temper. She'd shout, "Stop turning off the treble! The treble has to be on!"

"I am going to be a priest," I said to myself.

I felt logical about it. I did not have a sense I was a little girl planning my future. I felt my future was already going on. I felt practical.

I had figured out that the reason there were only men and boys on the altar was that all the women and girls were at some other church. Or they were simply not available for a funeral on a weekday morning. I knew that my grandfather had wanted the bishop to officiate; they were friends. I knew the bishop was somewhere away, and had sent his regrets.

Women and girls were unavailable like the bishop. I felt that the altar was saving a place for me, for when I grew up.

"I will be available," I was telling the cathedral. It was as simple and real to me as my sister announcing, the day before, "I need a new sport, so I'm going to learn lacrosse."

Excerpted from One Night Two Souls Went Walking by Ellen Cooney. Copyright © 2020 by Ellen Cooney. Excerpted by permission of Coffee House Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.