Eden Burning

by Deirdre Quiery

  No-one heard her cries for maybe fifteen minutes. It was late afternoon, the sun streaming through the ward window when Maria, alone, gave birth to Rose. When the nurses arrived, in a panic, they forgot to scrub up. The umbilical cord was cut by Nurse Rita who wrapped Rose in a cotton blanket and passed her to Maria.

  Maria held Rose, pushing her dark black hair to one side. Her face was slightly jaundiced and her mouth settled into deep smile as she slept, moving a little as though to snuggle even more deeply into Maria’s arms. Nurse Rita and Maria laughed together as Rita sat on the bed and held Maria’s hand. The setting sun sent golden showers of light into the ward.

  Next morning Maria wakened and walked with Rose along the corridor to see an orange sun rising over the mists of Belfast. The sun changed into a steely sphere as it gained height in the January sky. Maria held Rose close to her chest feeling her own heart beating against the soft cotton rug. She looked at the empty branches of the rose trees growing outside the window, and as the mists cleared, the wintery sun warmed them both. For the first time Maria felt a part of the earth, connected, rooted. The sun warming her was also wakening the snowdrops on the dewy grass. It nudged the sheep outside the window to scramble to their feet. She had the sense of everything unfolding, coming into a perfect sense of being ‘now’, in this moment. Her feet touching the marble corridor were also touching the earth. She took a deep breath and kissed Rose. She had never felt happier in her life – so much at ease. She had never felt so much a sense of coming home. Her body filled with a tingling rapturous bliss. Everything had meaning. Everything was fine exactly the way it was.

  On the third day after Rose’s birth, Maria wakened with her forehead burning, her mouth dry and when she coughed a stabbing pain shot from her stomach towards her lungs making it hard to breathe. She shivered, pulling the sheets around her. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. She slowly pulled herself into a sitting position, looking for Rose sleeping in the cot beside her. Rose’s eyes were closed. Maria lay back again on the pillow feeling a second even sharper pain in her abdomen. Something was wrong.

  Sister Rita pressed her abdomen with the flat of her hand. When she took her hand away, Maria squirmed in agony.

  “Peritonitis,” Doctor McClelland confirmed in a low voice. By late afternoon, Maria slipped into what seemed to Nurse Rita and Dr McClelland to be a coma. However, Maria was conscious. She was aware of everything that was happening but her awareness was outside her body. She was somewhere up near the ceiling looking down at the bed where Nurse Rita adjusted a drip. She heard Doctor McClelland shout in distress, “We’re losing her.”

  Maria watched as they struggled to resuscitate her. Her attention was then drawn to a white steady expanding light in the top right hand corner of the room. She watched fascinated as its scintillating edges continued to expand. She didn’t know whether the light was drowning her as it enveloped her in deeper and deeper waves of whiteness or whether she was somehow floating into the light.

  Doctor McClelland shouted in panic. “Get Father Anthony, now.” Maria saw a blurred black shape of Father Anthony arrive in the room. He didn’t remove his cloak. Flustered, opening his oils and the casket with the Eucharist, he fumbled to lift the Eucharist from the ciborium. He broke the Host in two and lifted both pieces. He blessed Maria with his right hand on the forehead, the lips and chest. He opened her mouth with his fingers, placing half of the Eucharist on her tongue. He took the second half and placed it on his own tongue. Maria receiving the last Sacrament of the Church felt the dry small half host sticking and then dissolving against the roof of her mouth. With her eyes open Maria gazed past Father Anthony feeling her whole being drawn once more towards the white light. Father Anthony searched Maria’s eyes and recognised a look of surrender. He had seen it many times before.

  She listened to Father Anthony’s gasping, feeling his tears splash heavily onto her face. From the ceiling, not from inside her body, she watched him bless Rose in the cot beside the bed. For a moment when Maria glimpsed Rose, she struggled to detach herself from the light and return to her body. She made an enormous effort to push back into the body as though swimming against a deadly powerful riptide current.

  The light held her back. It swept around her now like a whirlpool. The light was everywhere. Instead of rising now towards the ceiling she was falling, sinking into a white, boundless peace. Waves of light like an octopus’s tentacles dragged her under the surface. She held her breath. Her arms stretched out by her side. She turned onto her back, sinking deeper. Father Anthony’s body was like a surf board drifting above her – a dark pencil silhouette, hanging in the golden glow of the surface. Her mouth pressed closed. She breathed in rhythm to her heartbeat. There was enough air in her lungs. She didn’t need to get to the surface. She tumbled deeper almost losing sight of the surf board. She kicked with her feet, pulled her arms strongly down by her side. She felt the pull of the water around her. She kicked again with her legs, pushing her head forward and down, opening her fingers to allow the water to move through them. Maybe for the first time she felt a sense of freedom, although she didn’t know from what. She turned onto her back once more to see the board slipping even further from sight, now only an insignificant dark stain in the water. She rolled onto her front and dived deeper into the depths of the ocean, now willingly, pushing down until she couldn’t see the surface at all. The light had disappeared. In the velvety darkness she did not feel alone. Where was she? Where were Rose and Father Anthony? Where was she going? For a moment she briefly quivered with fear, a final twitching movement of uncertainty in her body before she surrendered.

  “No, please God. No.” whispered Father Anthony.

  Maria’s hair scattered like ribbons of sand on the pillow. She curled up in the bed on her side like a baby in a white cotton nightdress – her face translucent. Her body seemed to have shrunk as he watched her. It was as though something working within her was undoing time, making her a baby again, taking her back, step-by-step to the womb, then back, back, back to the nothingness from which everything is born. He couldn’t take his eyes away from her and from that mysterious activity which he found frightening to watch and yet entrancing. Frightening wasn’t the right word. It was an awesome, terrifying, sublime activity working within her. He knew for sure that what he was seeing was the activity of God within Maria, working on her, making her perfect, making her ready for her final journey home. He knew without doubt that it was an activity of love – a love beyond any human love. Human love a pale puttering candle compared to the love of God which was like the light from a million suns. He realised that was what he had always seen in Maria – the light from a million suns.

  It was not her physical body that had attracted him, not at all. He mistook that because he didn’t look closely enough at this movement within her which was so beautiful. Of course she was beautiful. Why hadn’t he realised that with Maria he had fallen in love with God – with the mystery of God incarnate within her? If only he had understood. It was so clear now. It made perfect sense.

  He looked at Maria. Her eyes were open. He felt himself pour into their blueness. Her eyes were whirlpools drawing him in. He took a long breath, allowing himself to drop deeper into her gaze. He knew what she was telling him. How could you dare to touch a beauty of such magnitude and mystery? You don’t touch God with your hands. You don’t kiss God with your lips. You can’t look at God and live.

  “She’s gone.” Doctor McClelland whispered, placing his hand on Father Anthony’s shoulder.

  “Nooooo!” Father Anthony collapsed gently on top of Maria. “No!” His shout ricocheted into the air and was heard at the reception desk half a mile away. “No.” repeated Father Anthony a third time. This time gently, almost like a “Yes.”

  He held her hand and pressed his thumb into Catherine’s ring and then touched Maria’s forehead for the last time with his thumb.

  By the time Tom and Lily arrived at the Mater, Father Anthony sat at Maria�
�s bedside, rosary in hand, gaze fixed on Maria’s now solid face. He moved awkwardly to his feet. “She is at peace.” Tom shook Father Anthony’s hand. As Father Anthony embraced Lily, Rose coughed from her cot at the bottom of the bed. Father Anthony clutching in his hand a lock of Maria’s sandy hair, walked to the cot and whispered, “She is a gift from God, like her Mother.” He tickled her face, saying, “You’re in good hands, Rose.”

  Father Anthony lifted Rose from the cot and held her in his arms before handing her over to Lily. “Let me know your plans for the Requiem Mass.” He patted Tom on the shoulder, collected his ministry bag from the chair. He looked at Maria one last time, squeezing her hand, saying to Tom and Lily, “I’ll leave you to have some time alone. You know where I am if you need me. I will call in with you tomorrow. God bless. Here is Catherine’s ring. I thought you might like it anointed. Keep it for Rose.” Father Anthony slipped the ring to Tom. He looked into Tom’s eyes, “Maria blessed it with her love. Good can come with this ring. Where there is deep sorrow, there is also the possibility of deep joy. They carve each other out.”

  After Maria died in 1957, Rose, Lily and Tom moved into their new home at 32 Glenbryn Park. Upstairs there were two small bedrooms and a bathroom. Downstairs a small sitting room, a galley kitchen with a trolley to dry clothes which dropped from the ceiling. At the back there was an outhouse with a twin tub washing machine, a place for the cats and a door leading out into a small enclosed yard with a bunker for coal. There were fireplaces in the sitting room and both bedrooms. Lily loved to light the fire in the sitting room even in the summer. She lit the fires in the bedrooms in the winter especially if Tom or Rose had a cold or flu. Outside the backyard there was a small path lined with marigolds leading to the wild overgrown back garden where a small reeded stream bubbled over pebbles, separating Glenbryn Park from Glenbryn Drive.

  Rose played in the back garden. Tom made a tree house which sat on top of a dyke separating the back gardens of Glenbryn Drive from Glenbryn Park. He wove the branches of the tree together to make a small cave. Rose would sit inside for hours watching the blackbirds sweep across the garden or the thrushes singing songs. Once when Rose was six, she ran along the marigold path, along the side of the house, without Lily or Tom seeing. She skipped down Glenbryn Park turned left at the bottom of the street and ran into the playing fields. There, Rose lay on the grass, smelling its warm earthiness, watching clouds rapidly rabbiting and dogging – watching the blue sky expanding and contracting.

  “Is there enough blue sky to make a sailor a pair of trousers?” Lily asked her that morning pulling up the blind on the bedroom window.

  “Yes. There is.”

  “Then play outside.”

  Lying on the grass, Rose looked at the blue sky, and then rolled onto her side feeling the tickle of golden buttercups against her face. She picked daisies and buttercups growing around her, feeling the gentle touch of the breeze on her face as she made a daisy chain, keeping one of the daisies and pulling its petals.

  “He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me.” She sank back into the earth feeling safe in the freckling of the sun, her blue eyes merging with the blue sky. Her eyes blinked snap, snap, snap. “This is where I end and you begin.” Rose whispered to the sky.

  Snap. Snap.

  She didn’t move, lying on the ground ebbing and flowing from the tips of her toes to the top of her head as a shiny black beetle scurried along her leg, moving north. She picked it up as it hesitated on her knee. Touching its hard shell with her right finger, she held it in her hand, looking to see how its legs attached to its body. Balancing it on her left index finger, squinting to see how its thread of a leg worked. The beetle opened its back and two semicircular wings paused for a moment before whirring into life. Rose lay back again onto the grass, listening to the whirring wings fade into the distance. She felt the hard edge of a metal crucifix inside her sock, clinking against a penny. Rummaging in Lily’s bedroom she had opened a jewelry box and found a crucifix detached from its rosary. The cross was solid silver with a golden figure of Christ. On the back of the cross there was a bubble of holy water. She blessed herself with the crucifix and slipped it into her sock.

  “Are you a Roman Catholic or a Protestant?” A boy asked on her way back home from the playing fields. It was 1963. His friends stood behind him hands in pockets, smirking. “Well, what are you a Papist or a Protestant?”

  Rose looked at the boy through dark hair which had fallen across her eyes. She saw his red face, a rash of freckles and a cold sore on his lip. Their eyes met. He looked quickly away, staring at the ground.

  “Are you fucking deaf? What are you?”

  Rose felt the edge of the crucifix against her heel. She pressed it against the ground, into her worn brown boot.

  “I don’t know.” She answered. “Nobody told me.”

  “Put your hand out,” the boy ordered. As she opened the palm of her hand, he broke the buttercup and daisy chain on her wrist. He tossed it on the grass. Rose opened the palm of her left hand. Her fingers long and pointed, slightly curled inwards. Her right hand dangled against her blue gingham dress.

  The boy took a razor from his pocket. He swiped at her left hand three times. Rose didn’t move.

  “Now you fucking know. That’s for being a Papist.” He sneered, looked at his friends saying, “Let’s go.” He put the razor into the pocket of his shorts, turning away as Rose stared at the blood trickling from her hand onto the ground. As the boys scattered, Rose turned right and ran across the ploughed field home with her drops of blood seeding in the playing fields.

  “What’s a Papist?” Rose asked Lily as she bandaged her hand.

  “Father Anthony will explain when you make your First Holy Communion.”

  Rose searched with her toes for the crucifix down her sock. It had gone. She didn’t tell Lily. She felt a terrible shame for having taken something which did not belong to her and having lost it. She retraced the steps she had taken earlier that day into Tom and Lily’s bedroom. She walked over to the dresser where Lily had her jewelry box. She opened the box. The crucifix was there lying on red velvet. Rose lifted it and turned it over to see the bubble of holy water settle. She squeezed the crucifix within her small fist. The edges pressed against her flesh.

  Tom encouraged Rose to play in the garden rather than to go again to the playing fields. He helped her build a set of jumps for a make believe gymkhana where Rose pretended to be a horse, calling herself ‘Jellylegs’, and running around the garden, jumping over each obstacle, clocking up four faults here and there and three for a refusal.

  There was a small garden at the front of the house. Lily filled it with roses, lupins and lobelia. Tom built a small redbrick wall for the garden with a wooden railing and wooden gate made from pinewood. It swept up into an arch with a heavy iron lock which clicked shut. Lily made curtains for the upstairs and downstairs windows from heavy taffeta. Tom found matching white roller blinds with tassels for the upstairs and downstairs windows.

  1966, nine years after moving in, Lily and Tom still had boxes of unopened wedding presents from 1941 with china tea sets and dinner plates never used. There was a tea set with six china teacups, matching saucers and piece plate, a sugar bowl and milk jug and a dinner service with six dinner plates with a jade green flower pattern, a soup tureen, two casserole dishes, a gravy boat and a ladle for serving soup. Everything packed carefully, still with cards from the people who had given the presents.

  Tom bought the best quality 1950s furniture. Downstairs there was an oval dining room table which was folded away and opened up only on Sundays, Easter and Christmas. It was then covered with a white linen tablecloth and a cream Belleek dinner set was placed on the table with silver knives and forks and Waterford crystal glasses and a jug of water. Everything was wrapped up in tissue paper after lunch and stored away in the outhouse where the kittens slept until the next week. Upstairs the two bedrooms had heavy oak wardrobes with long mirrors inside
and a metal spring for gentlemen’s ties. The beds were heaped with woolen blankets and an embroidered quilt. On a cold evening Lily threw a large brown fur beaver coat on top of Rose’s bed.

  Lily bought a heavy white Holy Bible with gold leaf trimmings on the pages which was filled with famous paintings. She kept it wrapped in white tissue in a cardboard box and opened it every day to read and to look at the paintings. She liked the ‘Expulsion from the Garden of Eden’ by Fra Angelico with Adam and Eve’s hands to their faces full of regret, the ‘Tower of Babel’ by Bruegel with its crumbling walls, turquoise seas and steely white skies and the ‘Sacrifice of Isaac’ by Caravaggio with the terrible anguish of Isaac as his face is pressed into the earth, his father’s thumb holding his head in a vice like grip as the knife glints in its movement towards Isaac’s throat. Isaac can see the knife, but maybe not the angel. There was a penetrating stare from Abraham trying to understand the Angel’s message and the soft peaceful look of the lamb, with its head raised looking at both the Angel and Abraham and waiting fearlessly for what will happen next. She returned again and again to the ‘Kiss of Judas’ by Giotto where Judas and Christ seemed to be one in their embrace, their eyes searching each other’s souls, their lips moving towards one another, and something being said in the silence and in the space before their lips touched.

  Lily attempted to sketch her favourite paintings at first with charcoal and pastels, then acrylics and finally oils. As she looked at them deeply, trying to follow the contour, she felt that she was sinking into the mind not only of the painter but of the object being painted. She painted the ‘Tower of Babel’ as a cloud floating in the sky and the ‘Kiss of Judas’ in oils where it was hard to tell where Jesus ended and Judas began. They were like Siamese twins.

  In the conservatory at the back of the house kittens slept. When Lily opened the door in the morning, the kittens scampered across the kitchen into the sitting room, climbing and plucking the curtains. Lily sat on a chair, with two or three kittens sleeping on her shoulder or nestling into her neck. She found homes for the kittens when they were eight weeks old – when their eyes turn from blue to green. She loved the silence of cats, being in a room with them, watching them walk across the red tiled kitchen floor. There was silence in the way they sniffed each other’s lips. Silence in the way they looked at her directly and kept looking without meowing.