by Lisa Samson
Sad, but true.
But there were a lot of wonderful people in Bainbridge too: the man who helped us with repairs, Jack Dryden, and his wife, Sue-Ellen; Pastor Lundquist at the Presbyterian Church. Bitty Ann Shea, who ran the grocery store, always gave us a big smile and some conversation whenever we went in. Oh, and lots more.
If you walked down to the end of Shotwell Street, you arrived at the Flint River and the edge of town. Two hundred yards from the riverbank sat our school where, on that Labor Day in 1958, we tacked up the final maps and washed the chalkboards with warm, soapy water. Angie lifted new dictionaries from a cardboard box, raising each book to her nose and breathing in the fresh, pulpy scent of paper with more than its fair share of citrusy-smelling ink inside, before sliding it onto the bookshelf.
I sat at one of the student desks, drawing pictures of mathematicians and scientists for her to tape up over her doorway and windows. “We might not get away with this.”
“Somebody’s got to be the first. We’ll say we didn’t have the money to continue with two separate schools.”
The orphan school was a one-room school in a small trapper’s cabin right on the river. The four of us each took one day a week. The day school met on the bottom floor of the big house, the upper floors housed the orphans, and the attic housed the sisters. Hot as blazes in the summer, and thank fully, south Georgia didn’t get so horribly cold in the winter.
“Well, I guess that’s true enough.” I gave Blaise Pascal a jaunty feather in his hat. “But God always seems to provide.”
“You and I both know that, but why should he provide for something so obviously misguided? These poor children forced into that little building, so chilly in the winter, so hot all the other times. It’s shameful. It’s time something was done and I’m glad we’re the ones.”
The orphans helped as much as they were able. Helping us all summer as we sanded and painted, patched plaster and painted, washed and painted. “I’ll never live anywhere so fine as here,” a girl named Birdie said when we washed out the last round of paintbrushes. Father Cook came through and blessed the building, the children all dressed up in their church clothes, prouder than a new sofa. I soaked in their expressions hoping that maybe, for the first time, they really knew what it felt like to move forward because you worked so hard and believed it was possible. And all the praying we did didn’t hurt either.
That evening we sat out on the porch drinking iced tea, pressing the perspiring glasses on our cheeks, our foreheads, the sides of our necks above our collars (my, how hot those habits got), fanning ourselves with paper fans someone had taken from the funeral home years before, and judging by the looks of them, perhaps the original owners of the plantation. The cicadas buzzed in an almost deafening profusion and a great, green grasshopper landed on my knee.
“That’s good luck right there.” Angie pointed to it.
But it flew away. Almost as soon as it landed.
I drew quite a bit that night, I seem to remember. Several pictures of Jude, what I imagined he looked like more settled into his man-face and man-body.
I began drawing Jude when I was twelve and he was fourteen. Well, I should say I began drawing Jude from life at that time.I’d drawn him before from memory, but it was never quite right. Jude seemed amused at the whole thing.
“Well,” he said when I’d turned sixteen, “if I can’t get in your pants, at least I can get on your paper.”
“You’re so crude.”
“I know.”
And that tickle arrived again. To be honest, many a night the tickle erupted down there because of thoughts of Jude. Satan was doing a number. I told Sister Thaddeus, who said don’t be sure about that. “You need to wait until you absolutely know for sure whether you say something is of the devil, Mary-Margaret. Don’t rush to judgment, because if it’s from God and you give credit to his enemy—well, it’s just something you want to steer clear from.”
Steer clear from.
Sister Thaddeus used that term quite a bit.
So I asked Jesus about it and he remained mum. “T—, you know I’m not at your whim as your personal seer.”
I sighed that night in the kitchen where Jesus and I sat together, sorting canned goods for a drive St. Francis had the week before. “I don’t love him, Lord, but I like him, you know, in that way.”
“Yes. I know.”
“Is that wrong?”
“Not if you don’t dwell on it. We made bodies to react that way. It’s all right.”
“I’d hate to think . . .”
He reached out and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Nothing goes to waste, T—. I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“But what does the future hold for Jude and me?”
“Nothing at times. Everything at others. You’ll see.”
A tear slipped from my eye. “I just want to be with you,” I whispered.
He set down a can of creamed corn and drew me to himself, so tender and loving. “I told you a long time ago, I’ll always be near.”
Truth is, I yearned for my mother. She’d tell me more about being a woman and how it feels when we awaken to all our senses. I knew she was a chaste woman, and yet somehow I also knew she’d understand and guide me in a way that meant more than anyone else could have. She was pretty. I was sure she’d had her fair share of interested boys. During those teens years, I think I missed her the most, imagining her, and yes, making her a saint. At least that’s what Jude told me when I’d go dreamy-eyed in my maternal imaginings. I never mentioned my father, however, and neither did he. Even crass Jude knew where the boundaries lay buried like one of those electric dog fences.
And now I know my father’s name. Connelly. It could have been my last name. Mary-Margaret Connelly.
Mary-Margaret Fischer.
Mary-Margaret Connelly.
Well, at least the Fischer doesn’t seem so utter Irish-cliché.
Given possession of my father’s name from Jude’s letter has done something to me, as if tiny roots have sprung from the bottoms of my feet and fixed me to the earth, making me a real human being, not some halfling with no right to walk the face of an orderly creation where two lives begat one and most children at the very least knew the identity of both parties.
Suddenly, I am part of the world in a way I’ve never been before. Seventy years old and I finally feel, for the first time in my life, just a little like everyone else. I had a father and his name was Brendan Connelly.
The next morning after I read the letter from Jude, I threw my covers aside, dressed, ate a quick bowl of oatmeal, went to Mass at St. Francis for the Holy Day of All Saints, sent up a “Hello there!” to St. John Almond, my patron saint. I let Jude pick out my patron saint when I was confirmed at thirteen and he decided on the obscure Englishman who was hanged, drawn, and quartered in his homeland when being a Catholic priest was illegal. At least there’s a bit of dignity to the choice, which is more than I can say for Angie’s twin nephews Richard and George, who picked John and Paul as their confirmation names so they’d have the Beatles complete between the two of them. (I can’t help it. It is funny.)
I headed across the grass to St. Mary’s Village. On the way to the activities room, I stopped at the main office and made a phone call to Bainbridge, Georgia.
“Sloane residence.”
“Morpheus?”
“Sister Mary-Margaret?”
“Morpheus, you’re a fifty-seven-year-old man with five children and two grandchildren, please call me Mary.”
“Now, you know I can’t do that.”
“Oh, all right, you stubborn old man. I have a question for you.”
“All right. I’m fixing a cup of tea. Can you hold on for a minute while I put in some honey?”
Morpheus keeps bees now as well as a firm foothold in the art world. We were tried in the fire all those years ago and as I’d followed in his footsteps one night long ago, he’d followed in mine. He took what I did with young trees and went a step fur
ther, bending pieces of wood I wouldn’t have dreamed of. One of his pieces is on permanent display near the Calder room at the National Gallery East Wing in Washington DC, and he’s had shows all over the world. He’s a rich man now, but he stays on in Bainbridge and supports St. Teresa’s and is even a deacon at the parish in town. And let me tell you, becoming a deacon in the Catholic Church takes years of study. I’m as proud of him as I could be. He always gives me credit for the original idea behind his work, however, even though I’ve told him again and again I saw it in a book myself.
“Okay, I’m back. Sitting on the back porch and that elm tree in the neighbor’s yard is lit up with so much gold,” he said. “What’s on your mind, sister?”
“Fathers.”
“And how can I help you with that?”
“You grew up without a father too. Do you feel some great need to know him? Or at the very least to find out more about him?”
“No.”
“See? That’s what I thought! I can’t wait to tell Angie.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! What are you talking about?”
I settled in the secretary’s desk chair and fiddled with a paperweight that said:
Confession Is Good for the Soul but Bad for Your Career.
Indeed.
“I have the opportunity to find out more about my father.”
“The raping seminarian?”
“Lord have mercy, that’s just what Angie said.”
“You called him that for years. That’s how I think of him.”
“I did? To you?”
He chuckled. “Not until I was much older. Don’t worry.”
“I did. Yes, I did call him that, didn’t I?”
“So then maybe you better find him, Sister Mary. Sounds like you’ve never made peace with the idea.”
I rolled the chair back a little and rested my calves across the corner of her desk as Mrs. Cunard hurried by on her way to the shuttle to Salisbury and her weekly trip to the beauty parlor and a nice lunch afterward. We both lifted hands of greeting.
“What good would it do to find him anyway? He’s most likely dead.”
“Well, it’s like this”—he slurped his tea—“hmm. Okay, tell me where you heard the story about your father in the first place.”
“My grandmother told me.”
“Could she have been wrong?”
Did his great brown hands come out of the phone and give me a little smack on the side of the head? Indeed they did!
“I never thought maybe there was a different story to it all.”
“I’m not saying there is. And most of us don’t question the family lore without good reason. We just trust the stories, take them as gospel truth. It could be just as your grandmother said. But then again, parents tell themselves things about their children all the time if it takes away blame, because if something goes wrong with the child, well, they’re partly responsible. And nobody wants to admit to that.”
I sucked in my breath. “You’re right! What if I’m . . . a love child?!”
And Morpheus laughed his great laugh, smoother than gesso and warmer than the leaves on the elm tree in his neighbor’s yard and I wished I sat there with him, drinking tea with the best honey in the entire state of Georgia, maybe even the world.
We hung up and for the rest of the day I tried to think of different scenarios, but all I could come up with were the words, “Maybe they really and truly loved each other?”
But then, why did she leave him?
Part of me longed to let it all be, but part of me knew Angie was right, darn her. The woman usually is. Maybe I did need to know my father.
I looked up at the ceiling. “I’m too old for this.”
That next Friday, two days into November, our stash of full-sized Hershey Bars taken by little hands and gobbled by chocolate-coated mouths, I slid into the driver’s seat of Mercy House’s compact car and headed for Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, where Jude located Brendan Connelly. No sense in wasting time.
I settled into the car on that fall morning, the kind where every inhale feels like you’re biting into a cold, crisp apple and you delight in the heater vent down at the floorboard. “Well, let’s hope they’ve kept good records,” I said to Angie.
Angie leaned her forearms on the ledge of the car window. “It’s the Catholic Church, Mary. That’s one of the things we’re extra good at.”
I clicked the gearshift into drive.
“Why you couldn’t just call them, I don’t know.”
“I need to get away. And this way, they won’t be able to turn me away so easily. Thanks for taking my sessions.”
“Sure thing. I’ll have them make hand turkeys.” She hugged me through the open window.
“Who doesn’t love a good hand turkey?” I hugged her neck. “At any age?”
“And then I’ve planned a little nature hike around the island.”
“Good girl.”
She huffed. “Oh yeah. That’s me. I never get in any trouble.”
Oh, there I go again, telling you about what just happened while you’ve been left hanging about that awful night in Bainbridge. I can’t keep things going in a straight line anymore. Let me finish this part of the tale now, then. Back to that night after the Labor Day celebration.
Glass shattering in bright notes as torches were thrown through three of the windows on the lower floor awakened me. Earlier, we’d all fallen into our beds there in the plantation house, Labor Day hot dogs and snow cones in our bellies. The smell of fabric eaten by flame propelled me from my bedroom just off the girls’ dorm room.
“Wake up!” I screamed, wrapping my robe around me. “Fire!”
I ran into the dorm room. “Hurry! Angie, Joan!” I yelled up the steps to the attic rooms. “Fire!”
“We hear you!” Joan yelled.
I could smell the growing burning and now I heard it too, the roar of boiling flame raising the volume of our shouts to one another.
Thank goodness some wise soul thought to put a fire escape at the end of the hallway. We didn’t have to go downstairs to the main floor. At the other end of the house, our houseparents, an elderly couple named Mr. and Mrs. De Cecco, who took care of the boys, did likewise. I heard their soft Italian accents, calm yet urgent, prodding the boys forward.
Angie and the other sisters joined me to corral the girls.
“Take them down to the carriage house!” I ordered. “If it’s not already burned down,” I said to Angie.
They filed down the hall, then the fire escape, their white night gowns and nightshirts all that was visible as the children made their way into the darkness near the carriage house. Poor babies. As if they hadn’t been through enough in their little lives.
We were the last people out of the building, our freshly repaired and painted school building (all those hours we spent for nothing!), our tidy little bastion of hopeful, though obviously shortsighted, defiance. Morpheus stood next to me and I reached out and held his hand in mine.
“It’s the only home I’ve ever known, Sister Mary-Margaret.”
“I’m sorry, Morpheus.”
“It’s the Klan.” He wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirttail. “I can tell you that right now.”
“I don’t know who else it could be.”
Angie hurried up beside us, the youngest orphan, a little tot named Babe, on her hip calmly sucking her thumb. “Sister Magdalene has headed into town to get the fire department.”
Before us now, the old plantation home was engulfed in a hungry flame that defied our progress and sought to destroy the vestiges of human love and sacrifice the old building might have come to represent. I hadn’t been there long, so I didn’t cry; I just let anger land on me like the sparks shooting up into the midnight sky, and I let it burn through my skin and down to the bone. Unable to understand the evil in the hearts of men, I whispered, “Jesus, oh, Jesus.”
I see, he said back as if he stood right next to me. I see and I kno
w. Someday, Mary-Margaret, all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.
“I can’t imagine it,” I whispered back.
“What?” Morpheus said.
“All will be well. Someday.”
He squeezed my hand. “If I didn’t believe that, Sister MaryMargaret, I think I’d just jump on in that blaze right now and put myself out of my misery.”
“How could they do such a thing?”
“Simple, Sister Mary-Margaret. They hate us is all. You should know. You’re a Catholic.”
“But there’s got to be a good reason for this kind of hate.”
“No disrespect, Sister Mary-Margaret, but there’s where you’re dead wrong. Take heart, though. You could be Catholic and black!”
I threaded my arm through his and we watched our dreams crumble in the blazing glory of stupidity, some of it, considering the times, most likely our own.
The next morning we picked our way among the ashes, just Morpheus and myself. The rest of the staff and students slept in the old carriage house, mouths and noses still blackened with soot. But I’d been rising at five a.m. for years and years, and that morning was no exception.
Morpheus, sleeping on hay, heard me and joined me on the short walk to the smoking ruins.
We stood in silence, watching the final embers die. The fire department never did show up, so the blaze raged through everything.
“Good thing you moved your studio to the loft over there.” Morpheus jerked his head toward the carriage house.
I nodded. “So much gone. What are we going to do?”
“Call the bishop?” He raised an eyebrow.
I laughed. “Yes. I guess that would be a good place to start. Do they do this sort of thing much around here?”
“Depends. You sure struck a nerve. I’m sorry, Sister MaryMargaret.”
“Me too. And I’m sorry for you, Morpheus.”
“It wasn’t like we weren’t warned.”
We’d received threats, yes. But we sisters were too naïve to believe they’d carry them out. And that, my sisters to whom I write, is a good thing to remember. Evil doesn’t have many boundaries, and if you live long enough and try hard enough, someday it will do what it promises if you ignore its ultimatums. So use the brain God gave you.
