The Passion of Mary-Margaret

by Lisa Samson

  I guess I’ll just have to trust it’ll fall into your hands when it’s supposed to.

  His signature made me cry.

  I’M WRITING AGAIN OUT AT THE POINT. IT’S CHILLY, BUT I just needed to get out of the cottage. Angie tried to make crème brûlée and burnt it but good. The whole house stinks. We’ve banned her from the kitchen yet again. Blanca ate it like it was the best thing she’d ever tasted, but that’s Blanca for you.

  I believe the last time I wrote I was talking about my time in Georgia. My fellow sisters welcomed me that evening, prepared a simple meal, and we prayed the evening office. School wouldn’t begin for a month, so in between prayers and planning for my classes, I walked through the wooded areas alongside the river. It inspired me. My art had primarily been achieved with paint, ink, charcoal, or graphite up to that point. My mattress and box spring anchored a secret collection of portraits of the only two men I ever loved: Jesus and Jude. But what about wood? Sculpture? It was there I discovered the joys of bending wood.

  I often wondered whether I captured what Jesus really looked like, or simply what he looked like to me. We all see Jesus in such different ways. Some as conquering king, others as Jewish carpenter. The gentle shepherd; the defender of children. The friend that sticks closer than a brother; the rebuker of the Pharisees. The cleanser of the temple; the defender of the adulteress. The eater of grain and healer on the Sabbath;the speaker in the synagogue who came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it.

  The face of Jude often flowed from my pencils and brushes, his many expressions: surliness, delight, mischief, anger, and love. That Jude loved me I never doubted; that Jude felt he deserved to, he never believed. What a subject, however. I wondered if his face would one day become famous, certainly more than the artist that drew it, again and again and again, her fascination of its even planes, its sensual curves and hard places never waning. I’m most likely the most unfamous artist there is!

  However, that November, having escaped the humidity and the mosquitoes for several months, I began sculpting, chopping down small saplings in the woods behind the school and setting up pulleys and ropes in my art studio to bend them into shapes unnatural yet somehow organic. The branches seemed to bow down their heads, imploring their Creator on behalf of those in the walls of the school. And so began the series called To Pray.

  My favorite student quickly showed himself to be a fourteen-year-old black orphan named Morpheus Sloan. (Actually all of our orphans were black.) Morpheus was the son of a woman from Detroit. Beatrice married his father and they moved back to his family homeplace near Bainbridge only to find he simply wanted her to take care of his sick mama. Which she did, despite the fact that her husband left only two months into their marriage and was neither seen nor heard from again. Six months after Mr. Sloan deserted his new bride, she gave birth to Morpheus. Her mother-in-law, Dorothea, lived for three more years and was a sweet old lady, grateful for everything. When she died, Beatrice did her best to try and raise Morpheus, but it was difficult. Finally, sick and not able to feed and care for her son like she wished, alone and without family, she dropped four-year-old Morpheus off one summer night with a note pinned to his blouse. She went home and put a gun in her mouth.

  Morpheus didn’t know that. He thought both of his parents were killed in a train wreck. He still doesn’t know the truth, and I doubt he’ll ever get his hands on this notebook to find out.

  Morpheus was a powerful boy, the oldest boy, and my obvious choice to help cut down saplings. The first time I asked, he rubbed his hands together. “Why, sure, sister. What kind do you want? Because I know where everything grows around here.”

  He took me into the woods and together we cut down young softwoods: larch and cedar, pine and oak, willow if we could find it. Beside the school, he helped me strip them of their small branches and anchor them to the ground with stakes. We tied ropes around their middles, hoisted the hemp up over the branches of the oak trees in the yard, and pulled down on the ends of those saplings, bending them into graceful arcs and securing them to stakes Morpheus drove deep into the red clay of the Georgia earth.

  We didn’t talk much. We didn’t have to. He took to the work so naturally I invited him into the studio to experiment with other bits of wood and metal parts we’d collected. Amazing what people throw away, isn’t it? What fun we had with a couple of blowtorches and some hardware.

  When the priest from the nearby parish would come on Thursdays to say Mass, Morpheus would serve at the altar in our chapel, his black skin gleaming like onyx against the marble white of the vestments.

  Jesus told me he had special plans for Morpheus and it proved to be the case.

  Teaching at St. Teresa’s was a happy experience that first year. The day students would arrive each morning. Some Protestants’ children tried to peek under my habit.

  “What do you think you’re going to find there?” I asked.

  “A tail,” one little boy named Homer said. “My sister says you all are devils in disguise.”

  Louise piped up. “My cousin says you all have horns under your veils.”

  I laughed. “Really?”

  We were in the art room making hand turkeys for Thanksgiving cards. I handed out brown paper bags to each student. “Now, do you really think there are horns under here?”

  Several of them nodded and I realized the conversation was so metaphorical, especially in these parts, as to the misconceptions of the faith I’d come to love so much. Catholicism was of the devil to so many of these dear people, people who thought we loved Mary more than Jesus, and the Church more than God himself.

  “Would you like to see under my veil?” I asked.

  Another little girl with tiny, clear-blue cat glasses gasped. “No! I’d be scared.”

  I knelt down beside her and took her hand. “Elaine, we’ve been in this class for almost three months now. Do you really think I’d hurt you?”

  She shrugged. “Granddaddy says he wouldn’t trust you all more than he would a ni—negro.”

  I got so tired of hearing what they call the N-word these days. So tired!

  We had two different schools going on. One for the paying students and another for the orphans, primarily black children.

  I did, however, show the children my head.

  “What beautiful red hair you have!” Louise crooned, reaching out, then snatching back her hand.

  “See? No horns.”

  I let each of them pat me on the head.

  Morpheus laughed so hard when I told him, I thought he’d cease to breathe. “Oh, Sister Mary-Margaret. Horns? Why, that’s the funniest thing I heard in a long, long time.”

  We tromped through the woods looking for a dying tree to strip bark from for a wood mosaic Morpheus dreamed up the week before. The saplings we’d bent were ready to be taken into the studio to finish drying and curing. What I didn’t know at the time was that somebody didn’t like me poking through the woods with Morpheus, who, quite honestly didn’t look a day under eighteen.

  We set down our sacks and rested our feet before returning to the school. I pulled an apple out of my pocket and set it between us on the log. “Do you have your pocketknife?”

  “Yes I do.”

  “Let’s split it then.”

  Morpheus, last time I saw him, still has the same type of hands he did then. Much like Mr. Bray’s, they are meek and move with an economical grace, yet powerful, their strength under humble control. That day he placed forefinger and thumb on one side of the scarlet skin stretched over the apple. He sliced it with the pocketknife he’d already cleaned on the outside hem of his shirt. When the free side of the fruit toppled back, wobbling on the crusty bark of the log, he stabbed it with the point of the knife and held it out to me, completely untouched by his hands.

  Without a word, I took the other side and bit exactly where his artistic, dexterous, creative, made-by-God fingertips had been, their prints invisible nonetheless.

  He lifted one side of
his mouth in a smile and shook his head. “Horns. On you.” And then he tsked.

  Listen to me, sisters. If you don’t know it already, you will be hated at times for who you are, at the very least misunderstood, by those who claim to love the same Jesus you do. You will be named with the Whore of Babylon, and you will be called “unsaved,” “not born again,” even an “idolater.” Love them anyway. Without Love, as the apostle Paul says, all we say, all we do, even our faith, is nothing.

  We can shed our faith no more than Morpheus could shed his skin. And if we love completely, it should be just as obvious as the color of our skin. Don’t be hated just because you took a stand; be hated because you laid down your life.

  Now. What I did about that letter from Jude.

  I was just finishing up my string art class the day after the lighthouse trip when Angie caught me in my supply closet scribbling plant bulbs on the palm of my hand.

  “You’re acting strange.” She ran her hand along the stacks of plastic tubs holding paints, brushes, markers, pencils, scissors, glue, foam shapes, pompons, pipe cleaners, tape, wire, and, well, check the inventory sheet if you want the complete list. “Gerald told me about the letter, so you might as well spill the beans.”

  I led her out of the closet and grasped the long-handled hook used to open and shut the clerestory windows that flooded the activity room (used to be my art classroom) with light. “It was a beautiful fall day today, wasn’t it? I thought I’d let the breeze come in.”

  “I did the same thing in my room. The trick-or-treaters should be coming by tonight. I bought Hershey Bars this year.”

  I pulled shut the final window. “You buy Hershey Bars every year, Angie.”

  “I’d hate to disappoint them. So, the letter.” She sat down at one of the tables with a sigh, then pulled up her knee-high pantyhose and kicked off her shoes, those black, cloth MaryJanes people wear in China. “Remember when Jude tried to get you an exhibit in Salisbury?”

  I nodded and sat down on the corner of the desk. “He was always trying.”

  “I hated Jude until then. And then I knew. I saw it all.”

  “I didn’t realize how much that mattered to you then.”

  “Oh but it did.”

  Filling a bucket with soap and water at the sink . . .

  “So. About the hidden papers.”

  “Gerald was asking whether or not you planned to do anything about it.”

  I turned off the spigot. “I haven’t quite decided.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me what the letter said even though I asked.”

  I grabbed the large sponge. Time to wipe down the work surfaces.

  “So anyway, Mary?”

  “Well, it’s about my father.”

  “The raping seminarian?”

  “Angie . . .” I wrung out the sponge and began circling it atop the tables, the pristine aroma of the lemon detergent released into the air, the sponge leaving a shining wake.

  “I know. Why would you want to know anything about him?”

  “Apparently Jude thought I might someday. Although he didn’t put down a whole lot of information about him, just his name and when he was a seminary student. He said something about my mother, not wanting me to get upset.”

  “What else could have happened to Saint Mary Margaret the First we already don’t know? Sister Thaddeus sings her praises to this day. So what’s your next step? That is, if you’ve decided to explore the matter more.” She leaned back in the chair, the two front feet off the floor. I swear every time she does that my heart jumps in my throat. And she’s been doing it for years. And has never once fallen. Perhaps I should trust her more. Her table came next.

  “Angie? What good can possibly come of this?” I rubbed the sponge back and forth over an ornery spot of dried paste.

  She steadied the chair, leaned forward, and clasped my wrist. “We all have a need to know about our father.”

  “Really? I don’t think I do.” Yes, I was lying. I mean I did want to know. Maybe. But I didn’t need to. Indeed. I’m old. Wouldn’t it be fine to just die someday and figure it all out quickly on the other side? I think so.

  “You need to, Mary. Trust me.” She let go.

  “You really think so?”

  “I know so.”

  “But how can you be so sure?”

  “We’ve been together a long time. I’d like to think I know you pretty well.”

  I continued scrubbing. “How about an ice-cream cone? They’ve still got pumpkin flavored across the street.”

  “Let’s go.”

  She grabbed a sponge and we made short order of the work.

  When we’d situated ourselves at the back table in Clare’s A Sweet Thing, I pulled out the letter from my pocket and handed it to Angie. “Take a look.”

  Clare sidled up, hands in the pocket of her apron. Her bright red hair sprang from either side of her thin face in two long ponytails. Her lips matched. “Hey, little sissies. Pumpkin? The last of it too, so you just made it.”

  Sissies. You just have to love that.

  “Sign us up!” Angie rapped the table.

  “You two doing okay? I heard you kidnapped Gerald and took him to the lighthouse yesterday, Sister Mary.”

  I whistled. “Word sure gets around, doesn’t it?”

  “Yep. Good for you. I’d have done the same thing. Heard he had a miraculous turnaround too.” She crossed herself even though, as far as I know, Clare is one of those new emergent Christian young people who worship down at the old bowling alley. It seems like it’s about the furthest thing you can get from Catholicism, I think, in their lack of hierarchy; I don’t quite understand it, but they love Jesus and who am I to tell the Holy Spirit when and where to show up? “We started lighting candles for people down at The Alley. Want me to light one for him?” she asked.

  “Please do. I’ll do the same up here at our end of the spectrum.”

  She pulled on one of her ponytails and gave me a smirk. “We could learn a lot from you guys. You should come down sometime.”

  “Maybe we will. And we’ll learn from you too.”

  “Lord knows us old gals could use a shot in the arm,” Angie said.

  “I’ll get your ice cream.”

  She whisked back behind the counter, her mid-thigh-length plaid skirt brushing jauntily against her striped tights.

  I settled my chin in my hand. “Do you ever miss the fact that we didn’t get to be funky, crazy girls in wild tights and bright red hairdos?”

  “All the time,” said Angie. “Oh, I guess I could have been crazy when I was a young married, but I was swooning so much over the whole deal, I just wanted to make sure Mack came home to a clean place and a good supper and some crazy lovemaking.”

  “Angie! Spare me, please.”

  “Oh, come on. Don’t look so shocked. It’s not like you never—”

  “Hey!” But I held up my hand to my mouth and stifled the laugh.

  “You know it’s true.” She whispered, “You slept with the best-looking guy I’d ever seen. And built too.”

  “Angie!”

  “Jude looked like an angel, Mary. A rough-and-tumble, hard-edged angel.”

  I couldn’t help but picture his ice blue eyes and the way he’d lift his hand to cup my jaw. “He was the prettiest boy I’d ever seen.”

  “Okay.” She set her hands flat on the table. “Tell me about the papers.”

  Let’s see, I need to tell you about what happened in Georgia because that’s really part of my religious sister journey and many of you might relate to the teaching aspect.

  For half a year, I taught art as well as literature to the orphans. In fact, it was in the spring of my first school year that we decided, after seeing how competitive their testing was, to blend the two schools. Only Angie and myself and two other sisters, Magdalene and Joan, taught at the school anyhow, and we were all on board. Separation of church and state was on our side.

  We worked hard that summer, expan
ding the curriculum, whipping the classrooms into the best shape they’d been in years. Yes, the facilities, an old plantation house and stables, seemed to be in need of constant repair, but by the beginning of our second year at St. Teresa’s, everything gleamed with a fresh coat of white paint.

  “It’s a little slice of heaven,” Morpheus said about two weeks before Labor Day as we bent some more saplings out in the backyard.

  “Sister Angie says it looks like an asylum.”

  “Oh no. They’s love in there, Sister Mary-Margaret.”

  We lost a lot of the day students when we announced our plans, but a few of the more forward-looking families stuck with us, and a large Catholic family moved in that year with eight school-aged children (of fourteen!). One Baptist woman named Minnie (for Minerva) sent her son and became one of our most ardent supporters. You simply can’t tell where the Spirit of God will work, can you? Minnie even sewed uniforms for us and taught deportment, throwing a high tea that next year. Some of the social mavens tried to shun her by refusing to attend her Thursday afternoon card club; she immediately filled the spots with younger women on the waiting list. She ended up adding four more tables for the deserters after they came back with their tails between their legs.

  The fact that we even had a school year was a miracle.

  What happened the night before school began, the day we were set to throw open our doors to the brave and the bold, turned out to be, quite possibly, the worst night of my life. And it had been such a nice Labor Day. But let me tell you a little bit about Bainbridge, Georgia, first.

  When General Sherman marched to the sea leaving a wake of sorrow and destruction, he missed Bainbridge, Georgia. Along Shotwell Street, mansions sit shoulder to shoulder, their intricate woodwork harboring some inhabitants who’d thank Jesus for his cross one minute and burn it the next. If I could have understood it, I’d have foregone the opportunity. Blanca, from Lexington, Kentucky, told me not to be so judgmental. “Why, Mary, in my own home city the Church began St. Peter Claver so the black folk wouldn’t go to St. Paul’s. And the Episcopalians did the same thing with St. Andrews.”