Looking for Mary

by Beverly Donofrio

  I saw it all clearly. Nothing was simple. Nobody had it easy. His wife, who had always wanted to be a mother, but had thought her life would be one way, living near her mother and aunts and cousins, sharing in raising her family, speaking the language she grew up speaking, was in Africa with her husband. For all I knew she spoke only Spanish and Kip went off every day as he had with me and left her alone. Kip had a wife who was unhappy.

  A weight lifted. Even for Kip things weren’t perfect. Father Slavko’s words about focusing on what we don’t have came to mind. Perhaps I’d wanted to be alone. Perhaps I’d needed to be. I wouldn’t have gone looking for Mary any other way.

  When Jason was young and I hadn’t the choice all those years, I’d been envious of anyone who traveled. This year, I’d been all over the U.S., to Bosnia, Italy, and now Mexico, thanks to Mary.

  I forgave myself for failing with Kip, for pushing him away. I forgave Kip, too.

  Conversion is a lifelong process; I’d only just begun, really, and it is work. Back home in LA, the religious disciplines began to dwindle until I ate anything I wanted on Wednesdays and Fridays; I said one daily rosary, not three. I still meditated, and went to mass on Sundays, but only occasionally to daily mass. I did, however, make an effort to be open to Jesus, because I knew Mary would want this. I read a book of parallel sayings of the Christ and the Buddha, and a wonderful, smart book called Meeting Jesus for the First Time Again, and I was riveted by Mary’s son. Jesus was a radical thinker, an amazing storyteller, poet, holy man, and revolutionary. He was killed because he would not back down from what he knew was the truth. I loved him for getting on that donkey and riding into town. I’d come to believe that the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, and Mary, too, were all different faces of God, or love, or an impulse toward good in the world. It helped me to see the Spirit as people. I pictured them all at different times when I prayed, and some saints, too. But I responded most strongly to a woman. A mother was what I desired; a mother and all “mother” means—softness, gentle care, compassion—was what the world needed, too. And so Mary remained my focus.

  It seemed to me that God or the Spirit or Mary speaks to you in many different ways, usually indirectly, sometimes through other people, sometimes through signs. But you have to pay attention; mostly God speaks to you in a whisper, so you have to be silent to hear. It was so much richer to go through life listening in this way, and looking for signs.

  When I went to mass during the week some time near Easter, Father Michael mentioned at the beginning that after mass there would be a ceremony having to do with the cross. I was tired and was not going to stay. The cross, he said in his homily, is the truth, the truth that Christ preached. It is hard to face the truth, but you must not only face it, you must embrace it: the truth about oneself, about one’s own weaknesses and especially one’s fears, as well as the truth that Christ preached as the Good News and the Way.

  I tried to process this: Christ chose his own martyrdom to call attention to his truth. Christ died so that the truth would be remembered through his death. I wondered if saying that Christ died for our sins is the same as saying he died telling us what sin was, and so he died so we would know how not to sin.

  The symbolism was so rich. Just as when we are born we know we will die, Christ’s Resurrection was present in his death. Release is present in suffering. Pain is the raw material for joy.

  I was no theologian, but realized that as time went on, as I continued to meditate and to read, my understanding would deepen. I was not impatient. This study, I hoped, would hold a fascination for me till I died.

  But this evening I was tired and did not want to stay to venerate the cross. As soon as Father Michael served the last communicant, I stood to leave, but then something made me sit back down. I was no longer comfortable with my old self, who thought I knew best what I needed. I had already sat through an entire mass when I hadn’t really felt like it; I could certainly exert a little more effort and stay. I would do this for Mary, and for her son—a little sacrifice.

  And I was rewarded. Father Michael wheeled a ten-foot-high cross down the center aisle. Then, pew by pew, we all stood in line to touch it, and as I stood there with these strange but not strange people, I had what I was beginning to think of as that religious feeling—that somber joy, that glad sadness, that rush of rich, deep funny-bone gratefulness—and as I touched the cross, my blissful tears poured.

  These symbolic gestures, the stained glass, the flickering candles, the chanting, the bells, the incense made me believe I might stay devout throughout my life. It was also the sweet tears that continued to flow, and the heat in my heart when I received the host, the delicious feelings of humility, gratefulness, love that came to me so easily here.

  Soon after that Easter, Father Santori was transferred out of the parish, and no one came even close to replacing him. I gave dinner parties, I met friends for movies, talked about casting the movie of Riding in Cars with Boys, went to the museum with my friend Namik. I was comfortable in my life, but there was a flatness to it, too. In Los Angeles, everything seemed like an act. I’d been to a movie premiere where there was a swing band, and the swing band seemed like it was “playing” a swing band. Nothing seemed authentic; nothing seemed to be simply itself. Everything seemed to be an imitation. I’d noticed this before, but now it had begun to alienate me—especially when the priest who replaced Father Michael showed up on NYPD Blue “playing” the priest who gave Jimmy Smits his last rites.

  Then, one day at the end of July, nine months after I came home from Medjugorje, I received an e-mail from a friend I’d met ten years ago in Mexico in San Miguel de Allende. He lives half the time there and half in LA. Tony wrote about the acres of gladiolus at the covered market, the Indian ladies selling tortillas and cactus and pomegranate. He reminded me of the sonorous church bells that ring from every direction, and said, “Why don’t you come down?”

  What I heard was: Mary’s here.

  Still, my immediate reaction was, it’s too much of a stretch. I was on a writing deadline. I might be distracted. And where would I stay? But a feeling in my gut shouted, “Go! Mary will help.” And five days later I was on a plane.

  Christ said in Luke: “For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, nor is anything secret that will not become known.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mary was everywhere. There are two covered markets in San Miguel, and Guadalupe is enshrined in each one; she is on the facades of private homes; she is in the public fountains; there are an average of four Marys in each of the fifty churches; and, incredibly, “Ave Maria” is played on the local radio station every noon. In my opinion, although Roman Catholicism purports to be monotheistic, it is really polytheistic, and Mexicans make no bones about it. Mary is more prominent than Jesus. And Mary is worshiped in each of her many manifestations, mainly as Guadalupe, the strong and loving protectress of the disenfranchised, the lowly, the people with dark skin. Mary is like the Statue of Liberty. Mary is the Mother of Mexico.

  Of the fifty churches to walk to every day, the one I visited most was La Salud, which was the small church next to the grand church that contained the duplicate of Mary’s house in Loreto (but because this was Mexico, the little humble house of Mary was lined in gold). English mass every Sunday is offered in Mary’s house.

  At La Salud, Mary behind the altar is Mary as Glinda the Good Witch. She wears sky blue trimmed in gold. Her hair is blond corkscrew curls and her face is, I swear, Glinda’s. In her left hand she holds out her baby, Jesus, in all his blond Son of Good Witch glory. As you walk in, you pass another Mary in a painting in a glass box. She has darker hair and is standing in the flames of hell, lifting people up. Left noticeably behind is a bishop wearing a grand red hat. But the real draw of La Salud is Niño Santo, a child Jesus, who stands inside a glass case in an alcove to the left of the altar. He holds some sort of medal in his hand, and inside of his glass case are hundreds of little toys and milagros—me
tal replicas of body parts. On the walls surrounding the glass case are hundreds of casts and pictures and letters of gratitude for healings that have occurred—thanks, people believe, to the prayers they sent to Niño Santo.

  Standing next to the Niño, in the corner, is Mary as Dolorosa. It is Glinda’s face exactly, only older. Her hair is darker and her cheeks are shiny with tears. She is wearing purple velvet and her hands are clasped at her heart; a few milagros are pinned to her skirt.

  I sat many days in that corner. I meditated, I prayed the rosary. Because I often prayed as I walked the streets, I was now adept at counting off the Hail Marys on my fingers—and I asked Niño Santo and Mary to help me with my son. I slipped a milagro of a heart I’d bought at Guadalupe’s basilica under the glass and into Niño Santo’s box, then knelt and prayed: “Help my son heal. Help me forgive myself,” I asked for possibly the one thousandth time.

  I’d tried to strike up an e-mail correspondence from Mexico with Jason, but he didn’t respond. When I persisted in writing him anyway, he finally wrote back, attacking me. He didn’t trust me, he said. Writing was too easy. Words meant nothing, especially from me. I remembered that he’d been angry at me when I moved to Mexico with Kip. He’d been a junior in college. Back then, I’d told him I’d call from the border, but then forgot. I thought he was probably reacting to that time. But whom was I kidding? There were so many of those times to react to. So much anger there. He asked me not to write him.

  Finally, my worst fear had come true. My son wanted nothing to do with me.

  Back in the States it was fall and things began to happen: I went to visit a TV writer friend who had not been “arrested” that season—the Hollywood term for hired to write on a TV show. I’d brought her a rosary souvenir from Medjugorje, and as I handed it to her she said, “Oh, my God, I can’t believe this.” Just the day before, she’d looked up how to say the rosary on the Internet, and had told Mary that if Mary wanted her to pray, then Mary would have to make a rosary appear. I gave another friend her rosary and she too said “I can’t believe it”: “I just said a Hail Mary this morning for the first time in twenty years.” Another friend, whose father had had a heart attack, told me that she’d just been to mass, and that as she sat there, she’d wished for a rosary.

  So many of my friends, it seemed, had reason to pray. And so did I. I prayed constantly: as I walked on the beach, as I drove in my car, first thing when I opened my eyes in the morning and last thing before I fell asleep at night. I prayed for my son: that he would heal.

  I planned my trip back east for Christmas. I called Jason and told him I’d be in New York for three weeks and asked if he’d consider going to therapy with me, twice a week, six times. He agreed. We found a family therapist through Jason’s therapist. The plan was that we would each meet with her alone once and then go to her together the remaining four times.

  At our first appointment together we had a fight. A repeat fight. Jason had been to visit me one time, last year, in LA, soon after he’d broken up with his girlfriend and months before I’d gone to Medjugorje. We went to see Austin Powers and were the first to arrive at the theater at noontime. We stood in the lobby, off to the side so I could lean on the closed concession stand. A small crowd of people began to arrive and to form a line at the center of the lobby in front of the theater door, behavior I deemed predictable and regimented.

  When the doors opened, I headed to the front of the line, and Jason had a hissy fit: “You are so rude.” He hung back so I was forced to rejoin him. “You can’t just go to the front of the line.”

  “We were here first.”

  “But they made a line. You can’t just barge in front.”

  “That’s their problem if they think they have to form a line. I don’t form lines. I was here first.”

  “You are unbelievable—unbelievable! So self-centered. I can’t even believe you.”

  I was enraged at his judging me. My son was a stickler for rules, and I hated rules. How did the two of us get stuck with each other? Somewhere at the edge of my mind I’d known I should put a lid on my fury, but couldn’t. I knew my anger came from the resentment I felt for having been held back by Jason from doing what I’d wanted when I was young. At the center of his feelings was resentment for having a mother who didn’t consider his wants or his feelings nearly enough.

  And then in therapy, after all my praying, all my regret, a river of tears, I could not control my anger when Jason used the Austin Powers incident to illustrate how inconsiderate I was.

  “They formed the line. It was their problem.” I could feel my face clench.

  “Beverly?” the therapist said. “I think Jason just wants you to act like a mother.”

  “Act like a mother.” That caught me up short. What did she mean? Not defend myself? Acquiesce even though I know he is wrong? What was the matter with me? Here I was, praying to beat the band, drenched in religion, crying my heart out morning, noon, and night. I’m in conversation with my son, who I’d thought had deserted me for good, and I’m still unable to contain my rage. Would I never grow up?

  Later, alone at my friend Kirsten’s apartment, I calmed down enough to understand what our therapist meant by saying, “Jason wants you to act like a mother.” Jason needed me to acknowledge his point of view, his needs, and not be defensive, not argue, and not insist that he respect my needs too, at least not in that moment. I felt ashamed of myself. Would Mary be ashamed of me, too? No. No, Mary would know how hard I am trying. Mary would be patient with me. And so would I.

  Before Jason’s and my next appointment together, I went to mass on Sunday at a church that had been recommended on the Upper East Side. The first thing I noticed was a Pietà, and I wondered if I’d been led to this of all churches because there was something to learn from the visage of Mary with her adult son draped over her lap. I knelt in front of Mary and was reminded of how my son’s pain makes me so uncomfortable I want to run from it, because I can’t fix it. I feel powerless to help, and it’s all made more intense by the fact that I, his mother, am the cause of so much of his hurting. Mary had stood and watched her son die in agony, and looking at Mary now, holding her grown son as he’s slipped down to her from the cross, I understood something so simple yet profound. I didn’t have to try to fix anything. All I had to do was listen—feel his pain—acknowledge his truth, tell him I’m sorry, and comfort him.

  Jason needed to be reminded of how young I was, how unformed, how disappointed in life, at the time he was born. He’d never heal until he could forgive me.

  But most importantly of all, Jason needed my compassion. I’d learned from Mary that compassion is feeling the other person’s hurt. I’d been running from the truth, too ashamed to hear from Jason’s mouth what I’d done to him. I hadn’t asked the question “How did you feel when . . . ?” because I was terrified of feeling the pain I’d inflicted on my son.

  During our next therapy session, Jason told me that it had been a blow when I’d moved to LA. I’d given him a home to bring his friends to in Orient and then I’d pulled up and moved. “Did you ever think of how I would feel?” he asked me.

  I had, but not really.

  “I thought the distance would be good,” I told him. “That we were too close, that we needed to separate.” I think, too, I was afraid of my attachment to him, of my need, of my deep love feelings. I’d been afraid to be intimate with my child.

  “Too close?” He was incredulous.

  “Would you like to be closer now?”

  He nodded.

  “You would like it if I called you up, like once a week?”

  “Well . . . I . . .”

  “If you want to be close . . .”

  “Yeah. I’d like you to call once a week.”

  “It’s a two-way street. You can call, too.”

  “I know.”

  It is a two-way street. But I’m his mother. I can give more.

  Afterwards, Jason and I went to lunch to an Italian resta
urant around the block from our old apartment. The sunlight lit the white tablecloth, and the fabric felt warm under my hand. “Nice,” I said to Jase, fanning my hand across the table in the light.

  “Huh?”

  “The sun.” There was something on his mind. I should ask him what it was; he was going to tell me something that would hurt. My ribs clutched my heart, a wall—no, a cell—of protection. I used to think my heart was safe there, but it was just walled in.

  The waiter took our order. I ordered a risotto, Jason a pasta; we’d share.

  After the waiter poured our water and walked away, I felt dizzy. I was about to ask, and Jason was about to answer me true. The truth would hurt, but it would also heal.

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “I never trusted you after that night.”

  I knew exactly what night.

  It was two weeks before I had finally left Nigel.

  Before that night it had been different. I’d been Jason’s protector. I’d even been his hero sometimes. I knew because I’d seen it in Jason’s eyes. One Christmas on our way to Connecticut, we were waiting for the number 6 train at the Spring Street station. Jason was ten and staring down the track, hoping to spot the lights of the approaching train. I was sitting on a bench. Out of nowhere, a drunken man in a sport jacket and tie lunged for Jason, his hands on my son’s shoulders. I leaped for the man, grabbed his coat collar and pulled him, then pushed him in the chest, sending him flying back as I roared from deep in my belly, “Get your fucking hands off of my son!”