The Passion of Mary-Margaret (22 page)

After that, I looked at myself in the mirror for at least thirty minutes so I could examine my own head. Then I packed my suitcase once again, took the ferry to the mainland, hopped the bus to Salisbury, got on the Greyhound, and made the pilgrimage of my life. I was finding God's lamb, and hopefully he was still on The Block and not in Europe. Talk about going from one world into another! Our Mother Superior thought I was as crazy as Angie did because why would God call someone out from a religious vocation to a marriage with the scum of the earth?

Only she said it much nicer than that. And I knew she just wanted the best from me.

Marriage to the scum of the earth.

Isn't that what God called Jesus to do? I wanted to ask her. But I held my tongue. Still, she hugged me to her and I sniffled and teared up and she rested her olive-skinned hand atop my head in blessing. She told me she'd pray for me, and she held true to that promise.

Once in Baltimore, I hopped onto a streetcar outside the bus station, wishing I could be doing anything else at that moment other than heading into red lights and sordid lives. But there was no use in putting off the inevitable. Perhaps somebody there could give me some information about Jude's whereabouts in Europe. I remembered a woman he mentioned, a friend who billed herself as LaBella. So, arm in arm with the Spirit of God, I stepped onto Baltimore Street in plain street clothes I bought at Epstein's. A calf-length black skirt and a yellow blouse. I kept the sensible shoes for good measure. I guess I didn't realize then I was ahead of the times in general “nun-wear” as Jude would have called it. The thought makes me smile as I write.

I liked the old habits, if you want to know the truth. Angie, on the other hand, wanted to have a habit-burning bonfire after Vatican II. I told you she was an upstart.

Hoping against hope I wouldn't have to walk by too many clubs and peep show parlors with the notorious leering doormen, I strode up to the first doorman/bouncer I saw, hugging my purse against my breasts. I suppose now's a good time to tell you that they're ample. Not overly ample, but enough to be classified as “full.” I never really thought too much about them until that moment in front of the Gayety. The doorman handed me a flyer. I still have it. It reads:

GAYETY
Coolest Place in Baltimore
PEPPY BURLESK
MATINEE DAILY

FRENCH FROLICS
With
FRITZI WHITE
TOMMY MILLER, Your Favorite Funster

EXTRA! EXTRA!
PARISIAN ART MODELS

My first thought? French! LaBella! Glory be to God, my prayers were answered!

“I'm looking for a . . . dancer. She goes by LaBella?”

“Do she or don't she?” the doorman, obviously a hunk of muscle overlaid with the fat of too much drink, too much sitting around, and too much all-you-can-eat prime rib, said, his voice low but strung with a nasal twang.

“Let me take that back and make it a statement then. I'm looking for a dancer named LaBella. Have you heard of her?”

He nodded appreciatively and tipped his cap back a little. “Yeah, sure. She works down at the Two O'Clock Club. Blaze's place.”

Blaze Starr. I hadn't heard of her then. She'd yet to have her famous affair with the governor of Louisiana, or was just beginning it. I don't know the exact dates of that. As if that's a big surprise.

“Thank you.”

“Uh, if you don't mind my askin', what's a gal like you doin' down here? You need to be careful.”

I stepped back into the middle of the sidewalk and began strolling toward the club. “I'm not alone!” I called over my shoulder.

“Suit yourself!”

There's not too many sadder locales than places that are supposed to be all lit up and fancy-looking just sitting there like every other building during the day. All the cracks are exposed, the dirt, the smears, the graffiti. Nobody cares enough to make them presentable by sunlight like the lawyers' offices do, the banks, the clothing stores, the grocers. Those establishments operate with God and everybody looking on and not thinking a thing. But right now, these places aren't allowed to be hidden by the dark night, or obscured by the neon lights and flashing bulbs. You see it truly naked. I do believe that's why so much sin happens in the dark. You can't really get a good view on it for what it is.

Blaze Starr was out getting her hair done when I walked into her club, thank goodness, and wouldn't be back for at least another hour. I'm sure religious sisters and strippers have some things in common. Chiefly, doing something that is and always will be a mystery to most other women. I asked the doorman, a skinny guy with zinging black eyes and bark brown hair that skimmed the edge of his collar, if LaBella was in. He said she didn't get there usually until around nine p.m.

“Could you give her a call?” I asked. “I'd like to see if I could come around and ask her a few questions about a mutual friend of ours.”

He got a “knowing” look on his face. But he couldn't have known.

“I'll be right back.”

“His name is Jude.”

“Jude!” He snapped his fingers. “I remember him. Nice enough kid when he first got here. But—man, he toughened up but quick.”

“I'll wait outside.”

Honestly, I just didn't want to know what it was like in there.

“What's your name, kid?”

“Mary-Margaret.”

“Figures.”

While I stood outside, I was actually propositioned by two men. “In these shoes?” I hollered at them where they sat in their car. “You've got to be joking!”

“What's your angle then?” the passenger, a man in a yellow sport coat, said.

“I'm a nun! God loves you!”

They sped off. I laughed.

Did I lie? Nope. In my heart, I was a religious sister. And somehow I always would be. It didn't make any logical sense. It was just the way it was. Jesus, he would always be the one I was really married to. I couldn't have even considered doing as he asked with Jude if that hadn't been the case.

The doorman returned with a slip of paper. He held it out.

“Highland Avenue?” I asked. “What kind of stripper lives on Highland Avenue? In Highlandtown, for heaven's sake?”

“She's not like you'd imagine. You're going to be surprised.”

And why not? It wasn't like I wasn't already overwhelmed by the unexpected.

“Her real name is Rosalie.”

“Thanks.”

He scootched back up on his stool. “Be careful out there. This isn't the place for a gal like you.”

“I know. Why are you being so nice?”

“My sister has red hair. What can I say?”

I asked him if he knew which bus would get me there and he said the number eight. He pointed me to the closest corner. “It'll come by near the top of the hour. I'll keep an eye on you.”

So I waited there, glued to the pavement, and I looked up at the heavens and I thought,
Jesus, what have you done?

I felt silly entering Jude's world like that and my heart was shrouded in a cloud of doubt. Of course Jesus knew what he was asking. But I didn't know what I was doing. Because I had no doubt I would find Jude. The problem was in picturing myself asking him to marry me. How in the world was that going to go?

But I wouldn't need him. I would be married to him. I would love him as a Christian loves the lost lamb. I might even be excited by him if I could get past the fact that he'd slept with multiple men and women (and I doubted I'd ever really get past that), but I would never need him. I would only be there because I wanted to save him, and I only wanted to save him because Jesus told me to.

That, to be perfectly honest, stank to high heaven.

Maybe I was really crazy, a stark-raving lunatic, Jesus just a figment of my imagination, and I was listening to my deep-down craziness, or worse—there it was again—the devil. In fact, maybe the whole religion business was just a worldwide delusion, that the moving of the Holy Spirit wasn't anything but events and coincidences and happenings we knit together on our own as having some kind of cohesion to make it seem like Divine intervention.

And yet, I got on the number eight bus.