Agatha refused to fuck a magistrate, so he imprisoned her in a brothel. Still she refused his advances, so he ordered her tortured and her breasts cut off. She was fifteen when she first made a vow of celibacy to God, twenty-two when she died.
She endured being whipped, burned, and stretched with iron hooks. In some accounts, her breasts were torn off with tongs. During her final imprisonment, St. Peter the Apostle appeared and healed her of all wounds. Today she is depicted serving her breasts on a silver platter.
I know all this because I wrote a report about her in CCD. I anticipated all the other girls choosing Saint Mary or Teresa or Valentine, so I searched for a name that didn’t make the list of Popular Catholic Saints and Angels.
I didn’t know that in choosing Agatha, I was choosing my own confirmation name. The assignment had come in Vietnamese and, at thirteen, the language was already a stranger. I was the only one to recite prayers in English.
Agatha is the patron saint of breast cancer, rape victims, bellfounders, and bakers. In Italy and during the Festival of Saint Agatha in Catania, desserts are created in her honor: Minne di Sant’Agatha. A domed sponge cake robed in white marzipan, a red maraschino shining on top like a beacon.
When she was sent to burn at stake, an earthquake hit. Her dissent shook the city and people said it was God.
I once spoke so fast my words turned into a slurry, a watered-down paste. I was trotted to ESL with a few other students of color because of my slurred face. They found out my English was fine, actually, but I was told to slow down and enunciate. To stop talking so much and exhibit better self-control, one of my lowest grades.
Confirmation is the third of seven holy sacraments. To choose a name, find a saint you feel connected to based on virtues like patience, charity, meekness, obedience. If anything, I chose Agatha to be obscure and contrarian. I voiced her name and felt rebellion.
In Viet church, the only thing I could read in the bible were the numbers, but I didn’t know where to place them. From the balcony above and behind us, unseen but heard, a choir sang a gospel I couldn’t understand. O language, estrange me.
My reflection distorted in the gold chalice filled with wine or grape juice. Strange me. I was the first Agatha I’d ever met. We all laughed because it was an old-fashioned, old person’s name.
Why do we worship saints? A good Catholic would say we don’t, we only pray to them, asking for guidance – for them to put in a good word. There are over 10,000, which feels like too many.
The stereotype about guilt is that Catholics are obsessed with it. After nagging my father about the broken dishwasher, the uninstalled software, or the unwritten will, he once told me he likes to suffer. About his wine sitting out so long after being uncorked, I said It’s not supposed to taste like vinegar. He snapped, saying, you need to keep some parts Vietnamese.
Agatha, I used to pray to be pronounce-able. To render myself neat and legible. But my last name did funny things in peoples’ mouths. It doesn’t help that the more common approximation of Nguyễn is win but my family says new-win. In first grade I misspelled myself and the teacher corrected me.
I used to forge my father’s signature in third grade, his name proof that I’d completed my assignments. So often he came home and slept through dinner. I felt too guilty to wake him up.
Agatha, I am used to being one of a few in a room. But at the faraway church where my father slept in the car, there were many of us, our faces occasionally punctuated by a white husband. I confess it felt worse being surrounded by people who looked like me, were me, I them, except I wasn’t – I didn’t know the words. At least in school, I was good at English. I could learn the lines. I was Gifted and Talented even though I always tried to skip those meetings.
Agatha, I took three years of Vietnamese in grad school. It was all diaspora kids and one white PhD student who was married to a Viet woman. In the end, he would read and write better than we could. We never bothered with pronunciation, we just knew Chúa was God or tốt was good and at first we excelled. Eventually our small vocabulary ran out.
Points were deducted every time we uttered anything other than Vietnamese. Agatha, I was scared or scarred. Barred from English, I lost my bearings.
The first time I saw the Father hold up the Eucharist, I didn’t know to follow the procession single file down the pews. That crossing my arms over my chest announced I wasn’t ready to receive communion. The priest marked my forehead with the sign of the cross. I wasn’t ready for the body and blood of Christ.
How do you become a saint? First, be devout in your faith. Second, perform miracles. Third, die.
We named the man Sơn for mountain. He approached diphthongs and triphthongs without guilt, his steady confidence resounding. He sounded out the words we wanted to say.
O Agatha, I’ve come to know language as prayer: a study in vulnerability, performance. Growing up, my best friend named me the patron saint of mix CDs and friendship bracelets. The miracle was in not having to talk.
O Agatha, please give me the strength to be a quick study. Please give me the world in my mouth. And when it shakes, grant me the grace to know it was me.
