Blood and Blasphemy

by Gerri R. Gray

  I was on fire. Such vivid colors surrounded me now. I was covered in a cool, butane blue.

  I have returned to my sisters. All my sisters. We are shimmering. Glistening in God’s light under the waters of Lake Patzcuaro. We are evolving. Becoming in Her likeness.

  We are the Sisterhood of the Salamander.

  THE END

  THE GOD SEEKER

  By Ken Goldman

  “If triangles had a God, He would have three sides.”

  –Old Yiddish proverb

  “God is exaggeration run amuck.”

  –George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God

  December 10, 11:23 p.m. - midnight

  “...and remember, folks, buyer be aware!”

  Ron Trainer finished his consumer report, signing off with his tag line while straightening his trademark bow tie. Leaving the studio he imparted the obligatory on-the-fly “goodnight/see ya” to the Channel 6 news team and camera crew. Managing to switch gears from investigative gadfly to dutiful son, he reached for his cell to talk to Mom before calling it a day. Since his widowed mother had quit popping the Xanax, Father D’Angiolini no longer lived inside her head, and that was very good. But Ophelia refused to go to sleep until she heard her son’s voice.

  “Hello, old lady. How’s everything in Senior Town?”

  “It’s a good day when I don’t pee on the floor. Going after the puppy mills tonight, eh? So terrible to treat God’s innocent creatures like that. You made me want to cry.”

  Trainer savored this woman’s adulation more than anyone’s, and Ophelia provided more than a son’s fair share. From his first day on the job, she never missed his two-minute spots.

  “That’s why God created consumer advocates, Mom. Someone has to crusade for the common man. And for the common man’s best friend. So, have you been sleeping okay all alone in that big house you no longer need and ought to sell immediately, huh?”

  “You mean have those little voices been keeping me awake?”

  He hadn’t meant that, but since she opened that door he ventured in. Looking at the traffic on I-76 he knew it was going to be a long drive home anyway.

  “Well, have they?”

  “Jesus wants to know if you’re eating your vegetables and Princess Diana complained of cramps. Just the usual stuff.”

  She was being feisty, but that meant she was okay. For a long time those voices that had kept Ophelia awake at night had the same effect on him, and the memory replayed inside Trainer’s brain like a breaking news bulletin.

  “Father D’Angiolini tells me the Virgin Mother has a chipped nose.” She had mentioned this over coffee as if offering her opinion about who might win American Idol. “And he says God isn’t in heaven, you know. He’s where the donkeys are.”

  “The donkeys? Well, say hello for me,” he replied into his coffee cup with a studied composure, but during this particularly bad senior moment he had to keep himself from screaming.

  “The priest is very old and he speaks only Spanish. I’ll say ‘Hola’ for you.”

  Ophelia had smiled her crooked half smile, unconcerned that her imaginary priest, some figment dwelling inside her frontal lobe, shared the mysteries of the universe with her. Maybe one day the elderly Father D’Angiolini might tell her to spike her son’s coffee with rat poison so that mother and son could spend eternity together, not in heaven but where the donkeys are.

  He felt certain that dementia had finally made a house call, but then the priest’s homilies stopped. Mom had somehow made it back from a very dark place.

  He realized then that had he been a religious man, he might have thanked God for that.

  Traffic hadn’t improved, and Mom was now babbling something about Donald Trump’s comb-over. Trainer was going through his “Yeah/Uh-huh” routine with her. He heard the familiar snap of the match that Ophelia lit nightly for Dad’s memorial candle.

  “You know, with your arthritis I’d rather you didn’t play with fire.”

  “Remembering your father is important to me, and I’m too old to take a lover. Will you call in the morning so I know I’m not dead and can enjoy my breakfast?”

  “If you lived with me, you could ask me yourself. What do you say?”

  “I say you should take another stab at offering to share your home with a wife instead of your mother.”

  “Go to bed, old woman.” He clicked off his cell, smiling as he maneuvered the Cherokee through the expressway’s logjam. All right, Mom probably had a point about taking another shot at matrimony although Jocelyn had pretty much soured him on the idea. His wife never grasped the mid-life frustrations felt by a loving son whose role regarding his mother had overnight reversed from child to parent. To Jocelyn this had become a her-or-me issue. Now she had the Main Line home, the late model Beemer, even Trainer’s dog.

  What God has joined let no man put asunder.

  Go tell that to the firm of Lansky & Meyers.

  God had not scored points regarding his marriage; that was damned certain. But regarding his mother the Holy Father had managed to hit one out of the park. Father D’Angiolini had vacated, but God and Jesus had moved in and they were every little old lady’s dynamic duo. Maybe the nearness of death brought Ophelia closer to her deity, her belief in the afterlife providing comfort as if she were preparing for a final exam.

  At the City Avenue exit, Trainer drove past the wreck of an SUV that had rolled over and belched smoke. It didn’t look like anyone could have walked out alive from that crush of twisted metal. Police vehicles swarmed the scene, red and blue lights flashing like extraterrestrials had landed on the Interstate. He heard a siren, probably an ambulance trying to get past the chain of vehicles in its path. At least the traffic was moving again. He snapped on the FM. Through the Cherokee’s speakers, The Byrds warbled, “Jesus is just all right with me...”

  Yes, he certainly was watching over those folks in that SUV.

  Trainer smiled at the irony. Okay, maybe God wasn’t some beneficent old guy behind a white beard or even Morgan Freeman. So what? He was the simplest way for people to understand the incomprehensible, a concept no more real than Santa Claus or Father D’Angiolini. The luck of the draw decided whose SUV got selected to go balls up on the Interstate, not some cosmic Nobodaddy. But if faith in getting her slice of pie-in-the-sky made life tolerable for a lonely old woman, that earned the big guy a grudging pass from her son.

  At least while that old woman lived, Jesus was just all right with him.

  * * *

  The nightstand photo of Walter Trainer revealed a man still in his twenties proudly wearing the uniform of ‘The Greatest Generation.’ Early in 1945 he returned home a decorated hero who had seen combat with the 94th Air Squadron over the Sea of Japan, and this was how Ophelia preferred to remember her husband, young and handsome, an entire lifetime still ahead with memories yet to be made and shared.

  Kissing the photo, Ophelia watched the single candle flicker alongside her bed. She reached to turn off the lamp, wincing as a lightning bolt of rheumatoid arthritis flared inside her fingers. Walter lay in his grave six years and she missed him terribly. But God would bring them together soon, and clasping gnarled hands in prayer, she spoke softly in the candlelight.

  “Heavenly Father, please bless and protect my son...”

  She did not fully close the bedroom window. Despite the chill of a December wind, the effort would have proven too painful for her inflamed joints, and she rationalized the fresh air would do her good. Placing the candle near the table’s edge, she didn’t give it another thought. The mixture of Acebutol and Prednisone capsules sent the old woman into a slumber from which nothing short of atomic war could awaken her. In flickering light the shadows of barren tree limbs traced the sallow flesh of her face like bony fingers.

  The candle glowed for several hours, its remaining wax nub displaying barely a spark. A chilly wind gusted the window curtain into the flame, and a small segment of material ignited. Burning pieces of th
e curtain separated, kindling the bed sheet. Fire feebly glowed for a few moments before its temperament changed completely. Along Ophelia’s forearm a blackening patch smoldered. She awakened to painful snaps of her own crisping skin and the odor of roasting flesh.

  “Oh my!”

  She pounded her burning limb against the sheets. The maneuver birthed a much greater flare-up and the bedspread kindled—Poof!—like a spectacular magic trick. Searing heat chewed her hair to the roots, blistering her scalp. Ophelia tried pulling herself from the burning bed.

  “Huugh... Hugggh...”

  Smoke filled lungs permitted only weak attempts to scream, and breathing became throaty rasps for air. Flames surrounding her, the flesh of her cheeks curled like toasted rose petals. Somehow fire had not touched her husband’s photograph. Ophelia forced herself to reach for it, holding its frame close.

  “Walter...” She looked heavenward, mouthing words containing no sound. “Dear Lord, please--” The large crucifix fell from the wall, narrowly missing her skull. Jesus glowed red hot then melted among the burning embers on the floor. Standing in the midst of the blaze a tall figure appeared, his face hidden in smoke. He wore the robes of a priest and they were in flames.

  Ophelia saw him, reached for him.

  “Father D’Angiolini...”

  Ceiling beams creaked and moaned. Crashing in a flaming avalanche upon her, they silenced the last words Mrs. Ophelia Trainer would ever utter.

  3:17 a.m.

  The phone rang. A man’s voice—a stranger—spoke.

  “Are you Ronald Trainer?”

  No one called him Ronald. The idiotic awakening thought occurred that if this man watched the evening news he should know that. A red flare ignited inside his brain. Something was very wrong.

  “I’m Sergeant Joseph McGuinty, Philadelphia’s third precinct...”

  Amid the random sound bytes that sank in, the word “fire” registered with the force of a dropped anvil. In a fast-forward blur, Trainer found himself alongside a morgue slab at 4:00 a.m. A blonde kid—some orderly on night shift—pulled a sheet to reveal the char broiled nightmare beneath it. Trainer checked the blackened and gnarled ring finger for the familiar wedding band he knew he would find. A coroner whose name had not registered in his mind, asked, “These are your mother’s remains, then?” The man handed him a clipboard and a pen, and Trainer’s hand shook as he signed.

  Then he vomited.

  “Remains” did not begin to describe what he saw.

  December 19

  Ophelia’s wall safe belongings were undamaged. The fire had spared much on the first floor also, and assorted possessions remained salvageable, although mostly this was junk. Studying the diverse boxes and papers upon Trainer’s coffee table and scattered all over the floor, a part of him wanted to scream his throat raw. Instead, he muttered to no one, “This is what it comes to...”

  His mother’s entire life could be summarized by what lay here, although only she had understood the memories associated with many of her possessions. There were faded black and white photographs of people Trainer did not know and ribbon-tied letters from friends probably long dead, all the various mementos of a life lived well. Family photograph albums were worth keeping, certainly jewelry and items of monetary or sentimental value. But most of Ophelia’s belongings—a favorite coat or pairs of shoes, timeworn furniture and chipped dinnerware, beloved books and religious tokens—these things he would give to family, charity, or the junk man. This wasn’t cruelty or insensitivity; it was simple necessity. His personal memories remained attached to certain objects, and these he would keep and treasure.

  Trainer rifled through what property remained untouched by the fire. Years earlier he had insisted Ophelia’s valuables and bank records be placed in the safe hidden downstairs behind his parents’ wedding portrait, and a paper mountain of these documents now occupied his coffee table. Tucked among all of this, Trainer discovered one canceled check made out three months earlier for the amount of three thousand dollars to Father Enríque D’Angiolini. It took a moment to register before his jaw dropped.

  Father D’Angiolini was real?

  Executor of his father’s estate, the son had handled his mother’s financial affairs hoping to unburden the old woman of monetary headaches. But here was a recently cashed check drawn from an account about which he knew nothing, hidden away in the wall safe for some reason only she understood. Ophelia’s sense of charity, while genuine, was never extravagant, and it was not Ophelia’s style to keep secrets from her only son.

  He uncovered no listing for the priest in the phone directory. An online search revealed a cleric by that name had taken residence at a Seminario Evangelico de Puerto Rico in the town of Arecibo, but he had died in a fire at the seminary in the summer of 1998. Donations helped rebuild it, and the seminary had received accreditation by the U.S. Association of Theological Schools. Its staff learned English; it ran a church camp, a day-care center for children and the elderly, even a home for battered women. Certainly a place like that could use three thousand American dollars. The operation seemed run by saints, not sinners, but something didn’t feel right.

  Why had his mother written such a hefty check to a dead Puerto Rican priest?

  Someone had cashed that check!

  Trainer put aside his role as his mother’s bereaved son. He was again Philadelphia’s balls-out consumer advocate, a fucking pit bull when he smelled a rat.

  ... or maybe a seminary full of rats in priests’ robes.

  He made a call.

  * * *

  “Seminario Evangelico. Quiene?”

  A student who spoke only Spanish answered. Trainer’s own Spanish was abysmal, but he got through to a priest.

  “El Padre Artur Bernabo del Semanario Evan--”

  “Father Bernabo, in English, please. You are your seminary’s senior priest?”

  “One of several, yes. How may I--?”

  “My name is Ron Trainer. Mrs. Ophelia Trainer was my mother. She passed away several days ago.”

  Silence, then some mumbling in Spanish to someone else. These people seemed to know his mother’s name. He heard it muttered several times.

  “Does the name Father Enríque D’Angiolini ring any church bells?” Trainer’s voice now had an unambiguous edge. He instinctively reached for the bow tie that wasn’t there. This role he had played often. “I have in my hand a check the late Father D’Angiolini endorsed recently, although the signature is more of a scribble and is unreadable. Would you have any information about that?”

  Silence. Then, “Yes, I recall seeing Mrs. Trainer’s check.”

  “You want to tell me how this check happened to be signed by a priest who has been dead for over ten years, Father Bernabo? I’m thinking it was signed by someone very much alive!”

  The clergyman cleared his throat as if about to deliver a sermon. Ron detected the reaction of someone becoming nervous, maybe a man with something to hide.

  “Mr. Trainer, shortly before he died, Father D’Angiolini, he set up a fund. Contributions in his name now go into that account, donations that are given freely and are unsolicited.”

  “And those contributions... where do they go?”

  “We have shelters here for women and children. We provide food and clothing. I regret we cannot discuss this matter further over the phone. We often deal with private family matters of abuse and abandonment. I’m sure you understand our need for--”

  “Would you know why my mother selected your seminary to donate her money, Father?”

  “I am sorry, Mr. Trainer. I have no idea.”

  “Do you maybe house donkeys near your seminary, Father?”

  The priest again fell silent.

  Then he hung up.

  December 21

  No one from the Channel 6 camera crew came along. Trainer didn’t want anyone else with him, and video cameras probably would have spooked anyone inside a religious facility anyway. The more personal details regar
ding his motivation for his trip to the village of Arecibo, Ron Trainer kept from his station’s management. He was, as always, the consumer watchdog, just sniffing around. If fraudulent men of the cloth resided in El Semanario, he would find them. If God himself resided there, Trainer would find him too.

  Turbulence and stormy weather over the Atlantic made for a difficult flight. Seat belt warnings blinked in red, and drinks spilled. A woman across the aisle prayed. Wishing he believed as strongly in God during an unnerving moment like this, disjointed thoughts morphed together inside Trainer’s brain in a continuous stream of diverse images.

  An overturned SUV on the Interstate.

  A spark from a candle.

  A jumbo jet tossed in a storm.

  Did it really matter who prayed, who did not?

  ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ Jesus asked the Lord.

  And the Lord said nothing.

  God was a defective product sold to unsuspecting consumers by hypocritical priests.

  [And remember folks, buyer, be aware...]

  He wished his mother had taken that advice.

  Trainer noticed the seat belt sign had been turned off. Moments later, drinks were served. And the woman who had prayed had returned to her magazine.

  * * *

  In San Juan, the cab ride through narrow streets felt like Trainer had entered the nucleus of Hell. Hot and tired he unpacked, wasting no time to hop another cab to Arecibo’s Seminario Evangelico, hoping to make it before dark. He did not call ahead. The element of surprise always worked best, and if the clergymen of the old seminary were into something dishonest, Trainer wanted to catch them with their frocks down.

  He felt like the truth-seeker in the old joke in which an ancient wanderer had spent his entire life searching for the meaning of life, and finally on a mountaintop he discovers an old wise man. The elderly guy tells him, “The meaning of life is that a wet bird never flies at night.” And the man screams back, “I spent my entire fucking life looking for you, and you’re telling me the meaning of life is that a wet bird never flies at night?” To which the old wise man replies, “Do you mean a wet bird does fly at night?”