The Passion of Mary-Margaret (17 page)

“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.

That morning, a breeze, soft and filled with the scent of a waning summer, that blend of late flowers blooming and leaves just beginning to decay, caught my hair and fluttered our nightclothes. I thought of Jude who would have been furious over the happenings of the night and I wondered what fires he was quenching, or rather whose.

“Look! There's that negro boy with that papist!”

He didn't say negro, sisters. I simply can't bring myself to write the word he did say.

The words barely registered before a rope banded my arms to my sides and lifted me onto a horse.

A horse! In 1958! Yes, sisters. The whole thing felt a bit medieval. And not in the fairy princess, knight-in-shining-armor fashion either.

Those Klansmen sure went nuts that morning after the fire.

The rider threw me down from the horse and into a patch of muddied ground back in the woods, the earth itself reaching into the fibers of my nightgown. And it was so hot and humid, that summer thickness rendering difficult my breathing.

The kicking began, their hard shoes slamming against my ribs, my buttocks, my thighs. I tried to cover my head with my hands and arms; I curled myself into the smallest ball I could. I suppose it didn't last long, but time slowed and each kick took minutes.

Finally someone lifted me to my feet and in a red flash, something hard made contact with my face. I still don't know whether it was a fist or a bat or a pipe. I crumbled completely, the rage of agony filling my face in a crimson flash.

Two men, mocking me for all I held dear, dragged me to a tree and secured me to its trunk, the rope biting into my arms as mosquitoes bit into my legs. Each insult I endured because, you see, what they didn't know was that Jesus held me while they cursed me, and he wept and moaned with me, tenderly kissing my brow and whispering, “I'm sorry, T—. I'm so sorry. Would I could keep you from this.”

Why can't you?

“Their sin hasn't yet reached its fulfillment. But it will. My Father and your Father will not let this go on forever. Their days are dwindling.”

One is the pastor down the street.

“Yes. He does this in my name if you can believe that. He believes himself one of mine because he prayed a prayer when he was ten. He believes he can do whatever he wants because of that, and that whatever he wants is what I want.”

Many shall say unto me, Lord, Lord . . .

“Yes, my dear. That's exactly what I was talking about.” He talked with me, keeping my mind off what was happening.

Please don't let them . . . rape me. Please, Lord.

And I saw a man coming toward me, good-looking in that raw-boned way, the left side of his face glowing in the torchlight, the right side barely lit from the as-yet-unrisen sun. He reached for his belt, flipped the tail through the buckle, and went for the button at the top of his pants.

“Oh, please, Jesus, no.”

I felt the Lord's arms go around me, and I cried and cried as the chief of police approached. There would be no recourse. He would force himself upon me and would walk away with no punishment. Who would believe me?

He unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down past his hips as someone began loosening my ropes behind the tree, and he laughed and stroked my cheek. “The little sister finally gets what she's always wanted but thought she'd never have.”

Physically ready and exposed, he snapped at whoever was behind the tree. “Hurry up!”

I shut my eyes and turned my face into Jesus's shoulder.

“Watch now, T—.”

He breathed in, then blew out and that quickly the sky filled with clouds, thunder barreled down the heavy air, fire filled the heavens, and a driving hail pelted the scene, hail so large and thick the men ran, holding their arms over their heads, shrieking and hollering like children, leaving me tied to the tree, the great icy stones pelting me on my head, my shoulders, my feet.

The chief of police yanked up his trousers as he ran, and I couldn't help hoping his zipper did a number on him.

I feel nothing.
Each hailstone just bounced off me like a piece of fluff. Maybe I was numb from the beating, but I began to laugh with joy.

“You won't even have so much as a bruise in the morning, my dear. At least not by my hail. Your face, I'm sorry to say, will need a great deal of attention. Get to the hospital in Valdosta as quickly as you can. Ask for Doctor Flowers.”

By the time the sun rose over Bainbridge that same morning, by the time Morpheus found me tied to a tree downriver, by the time he cut me loose with his pocketknife and carried me through the woods to an old home overgrown with vines that he'd found on one of his treks to cut down saplings, I was almost unrecognizable, my right cheekbone was smashed in and my eyes were swollen shut. “Shh, shh,” he kept saying, his whisper tortured and melancholy. “Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord, have mercy. Let's get you away from here, Sister Mary-Margaret. You just hang on.”

“I need to get to Valdosta. My face.” To this day I don't know how he understood me.

“Don't you worry, Sister Mary-Margaret. I'll run for help.”

Did I tell you I loved Morpheus? Really and truly? My heart filled with the love of Christ and the love of a human. And my sisters, you will find, if you seek to own such a heart, God will be more than happy to give you one. Of course, don't expect it won't get you into trouble.

After the plastic surgery and the general recuperation time in the hospital, I was sent by train back to the motherhouse in Baltimore to heal completely. I couldn't draw; I couldn't sculpt. All I could do was look at art books, go to Mass, and work in the garden. Every once in a while a musician would come and give a concert, and I'd attend, sitting in the back row, letting the sound that bounced off the plastered walls of the stone chapel seep its way into my soul, cleanse me a little more of the fear that had soaked into my psyche during the attack. I kept seeing those men, knowing they were still down there with my sisters, with Angie, and with Morpheus and all the children.

My sisters gathered around me. Young and old and all those blessed in-betweens. They blessed me with care and loved me just as I was, so broken and frightened, and they told me that I would be fine one day, and what was more, I believed them. Not because I simply wanted to or needed to, but because Jesus told me exactly the same thing, and his word was true, at one with his utter faithfulness. How can his faithfulness include that attack? A question for the ages if there ever was one. All I know is, he is found amid suffering in a way like no place else. Why that is, I can't say. Perhaps we'll know one day. In the meantime, accepting it will give you one less thing to worry about because as Jesus said, “The day has enough troubles of its own.”

WELL, IT'S A NEW DAY OF WRITING, AND I NEED TO TELL YOU more about the saga of my father while it's fresh in my mind. As you can imagine, the times of the past are a bit more cemented than these days. And I feel more at ease filling in the missing bits, what people actually said and whatnot, when writing about the past, than I do when writing about the present. So I headed up to Mount St. Mary's Seminary on that beautiful fall morning. I stopped and purchased a cup of coffee to sip and a pack of chocolate Donettes to nibble as I made my way east.

Mount St. Mary's Seminary's main building, McSweeney, spreads its stony arms like a giant lady dressed in gray with white lace trim. She must be German because she's as boxy as my grandmother was. I ascended the steps and located the Office of Records on the directory board
near the door. Second floor.

Okay, Jesus, if you say so
.

Not that he's spoken a peep on this, but I figured since he wanted me out at the lighthouse, this must be tucked in his pocket of plans somewhere.

I approached the desk and the sound of a real keyboard pounder. “Excuse me?”

A young woman in a burgundy blouse and gray pants, brunette hair pulled back in a ponytail, looked up from her computer and ceased her clacking. “Yes?”

A charm bracelet dangled from her slender wrist.

Time to pull out the Catholic credentials. “I'm Sister MaryMargaret Fischer. I'm looking to find the whereabouts of a family member I lost track of years and years ago. He was a seminarian here back around 1930.”

“Oh. That's so long ago.” She tapped her pen on the desk, the charms jingling. A cup of cold coffee rested forgotten on her blotter, the cream coagulated into an island on the beige surface. “Anything past twenty years is down in the basement.” So be a nice lady and leave me alone. Got it?

I'm really not what anybody would call a “sweet old lady,” but I decided that's the direction I needed to go. “I've driven all the way from the Eastern Shore.”

“Oh.” She tapped her pen again, then glanced at her wristwatch. “Hmm. Well, let's see. It's almost noon.”

“I could come back around three, perhaps?”

Leaving time for lunch and a look-see down in that basement, dearie.

“Oh. Well . . .”

Work with me, young lady. Hop to!

“I'd so hate to have to go back empty-handed, Miss . . .”

“Porter.”

“Miss Porter. Poor Sister Angie, you know.” Indeed, she was probably nursing a gigantic headache after a nature walk with three people with canes, two walkers, and a wheelchair. Not that it had anything to do with my father.

“Well, I guess I could go down there myself.”

“Oh, would you?” I sucked in a little breath like I'd just been told I won the lottery. I even allowed my voice to crackle, like people do when they're imitating someone older. I must say, my voice has held up better than I'd hoped.

“You said you could come back at three?” She actually took a sip of that coffee.

“Yes.”