Dress code for church

It was a hot and lazy Sunday afternoon in September and several housewives in the shantytown under the smoke of the ISLA refinery were doing their weekend chores.
“Maggie, have you read that the new bishop is planning to introduce rules for what you are required to wear in church?” Mabel shouted across the fence, because Maggie was watering the plants in her yard at some distance from the fence.
“Ah well, let me tell you something, my dear; no bishop is gonna tell Mabel here what and what not to wear in church. When I set my mind to it, I’ll wear something that will make the bishop’s eyes pop out of their sockets! You know Dada, that gal from Martinique; well, she went to church the other day in her best dress. That thing clung to her body like snake’s skin, I’m telling you. It had no back to speak of, just two thin straps holding it up, and at the front a wide elastic band that barely covered her big breasts. My, oh my, you should have seen the priest’s eyes when she came waltzing up the aisle for her communion as the very last one. Everyone was looking and the priest almost dropped the chalice with the Hosts. Well, let me tell you, Maggie, when Mabel here goes to church one of these days, the priest had better hold on to his chalice and other things as well, because I’m going to knock him out flat!”
As Mabel was getting herself all worked up for nothing, Maggie was thinking what made people like Mabel and Dada behave like that. 
“Just look at her,” she thought, “how in heaven’s name can such a mountain of flesh even think of going to church dressed in anything else but a wide dress to decently cover the wide expanse of her body.” Maggie herself was a nice young woman with a body that would attract many a man’s eyes, but she would not think of going to church in a dress showing too much flesh. She wondered why people like Mabel went to church anyway. “How can she concentrate on praying and preparing herself to receive the Host, when she flaunts her body like that?” she asked herself. 

Joseph ‘Jopi’ Hart