Grant Fuhst
The Second Saints
Rose
It burns. My thoughts are burning. My skin feels punctured and shredded. The Rocoto peppers crumble in my hands as I wash my face with their rusty skin. I can feel my flesh ignite. I shake my head so that the pain spreads evenly like seeds in a pan. The pain feels better on my face than the all the men’s eyes. There are so many that follow me. It doesn't matter the age of the eyes. I can feel them covering me like a potato sack. I wash my face in the fire of these chilis so that I’ll be too ugly to covet. There are no motors in our town, but I can hear them churning inside of the men. I hear their ignitions. Their lights find me again and again. They spot me from across the plaza to the bakery or the butcher's, even from the other side of the confessional screen. I want to destroy my face. I do not care to be beautiful. One man caught me and took me to a dark place. I felt like I was at the bottom of a well. The bucket hit me again and again. I could feel it beat my small body. I could not fight it. The well was wet with my blood. He stole my promise. Who could I tell? I could not tell my parents. I could not speak to the Padre. For all I knew it was him. I did not see the man who stole me. I did not see the man who beat me with the bucket. Only there was no bucket. There was no well. I was in a deep hole, but it was his body that beat me. He hurt me with his sin, and he gave me his sin. And now I have his sin inside of me. And so I am scraping off the beauty that I was cursed with by the devil himself. I was not meant to be his vessel. I was meant to pour not be filled. And I would spend days trying to empty him from me.
Even though he used me like a bowl found on a kitchen table, he gave me something else. I cut it from me just as many girls had done in the cold dirty waters of the river at night. And when I came back to my home with my disfigured face and the dead space in my stomach, I took the dull knife from the kitchen counter and I hacked the hair from my head. I filled the basin with water and looked at my reflection. I was a carrot. I was a bloody knee. I was not a girl. He would not recognize me now. And the pain I felt in my face and on my head became the voiceless prayers that I sent into the universe. Prayers that I would send everyday for the rest of my life. And years later I would fashion a crown made from scraps of metal from my father's blacksmith shop. I wasn’t showing off my nobility. I filled the crown with spikes. They would burrow into my skull like the worms that make holes in the earth. And one day when I was much older, the spikes would not relent. There was no way to remove the crown from my head. They will have to wait until my death and hack it from my skull. This is my penitence. This is the price I pay for the sin I did not commit… and for sins I did. My hands were always finding their way into the fire. I would burn them until they were useless. Until the sisters at the nunnery would have to pull them out and wrap them carefully in the leaves of the palm trees that grow everywhere around us. And when I was in the most pain, I would tell them the date of my death. It was foretold to me, and I would want the nuns to know so that they could clean my bed and give it to another believer. Bring another useless girl into this abbey so that should she be as infected with sin as I was she might find her own way out of the well we all get stuffed into as girls and women.
Faustina
I sat and I thought about where all the dirt comes from. How do the clean things become dirty? It's not that I didn't know it could happen, but I wanted to actually think about where each particle of dirt comes from? Is it on the shoe of the man who is visiting the town where his mother is dying? Does it blow through the open window when the woman leans out with her cigarette as she looks at the city, sobbing? Does it blow through the vents of this old hotel where I am working to earn enough money to pay for my nun’s habit? Does it come from me even though it is my job to clean the floors and fold the towels and make the beds? It all has to come from somewhere. All the dirt has always been here, right? It doesn't come from outer space. It doesn't magically appear. No. Everything that's new and clean eventually starts to come apart. It starts to decay. And what was once shiny becomes dull. And what was once fresh becomes ash. I understand this. Things are born. Things grow. But everything that's here was already here. It was all put here at one point. It multiplied. It grew. It died. And then it came back. Here it is in the corners of this little kitchenette. Under the bed. In the cobwebs under the radiator. Those cobwebs are made by the spiders, but the spiders came from somewhere. The spiders came from the other spiders. And you can trace that back forever. All the way back to the beginning.
I am a speck of dirt. I am ash. I am hiding in the corner of a hotel room waiting for the future maid to clean me. I know rejection. I am dirty, and I am poor. I wear shabby clothes. I cannot afford better clothes. The people brush me aside. They put me in a dustbin and tell me to get better clothes. But when do the things that are new become the things that are old? And when do we stop coveting things? When do they get so dirty that we drop them into the dark corners of the world?
I knocked on so many doors. So many heavy doors. Each time the stern face would come and let me go no further than the squint of her eye. They would kick me off the porch or sweep me down the walkway. It wasn't until I found the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy that I was given a bed and a place to wash. Even those women had very little hope that I would ever be clean. How could I tell them that I had been told to come? How could I show them that my orders were not something I could ignore? I had to knock on every door. One of them would have to take me because I had nowhere else to go. The voice that spoke to me was the voice that was there when the first speck of dirt was created. And he didn't care how dirty I was because he knew it was all dirt. It was all dust. Every last one of them with their tall black columns and their tightly tied knots was nothing but ash. We weren't even ash, to be honest. We came from someone who came from ash. We weren't original. And so as I clean these dirty rooms over and over again just to make the small amount of money I need to buy my own black column and my own tightly tied knot, I know that everything I put in the trash bin will be clogging up the corners of this room the very next day. Because we're all dirty and poor. That's what he tells me. And let me tell you something, he talks to me a lot. Daily. And I've been listening to him since the beginning. I'm not missing a single word.
Bernadette
When I was a girl, I would sit on the ground near my mother who would clean our clothes and bedding and towels. She would scrub the clothes on the old washboard that she had inherited from her mother, and then she would ring them out by twisting them into tight knots till almost every drop came out and landed in the bucket. I loved to watch her do this because this was how my lungs felt most of the time. It was always difficult for me to breathe, and I imagined my mother's hands at either end of my lungs, squeezing and twisting them until all the air was drained. It was easier for me to imagine my mother doing it. Otherwise, who would do this to me? I had been sick my whole childhood. I was ill when the other children were outside running and screaming and playing. I did not have the air to run or to scream. Sometimes I felt like I could barely whisper. I knew I was too young to feel so close to death, and yet still I felt it.
One day when I was out doing the chores that I was capable of doing, I found myself breathless by a cave. There was a cold gust and then there was a very hot breath and I dropped the sticks that I was carrying. She stood there, unexpectedly beautiful. She was wrapped in an ocean. Her skin was brown. She glowed when she spoke to me, and I felt my lungs fill fully for the first time in my life. Over the next several months, I returned to the cave and saw the vision of her. It was the Immaculate One, And she bid me to do so many things. I did them all. The people half believed me and half thought I was a loon. But when the waters ran clear and healed the ills of the bathers who came, I didn't have to whisper. Everyone listened.
What is my pain now? What does it matter? She gave her son to the cross. What can I give? I am a human being, and once again my body breaks. All the minutes I'm awake I feel the pain, but I know I am blessed. Whether the voice was in my head or standing right in front of me, I heard it. It spoke. And now there is a chapel where the cave used to be. They've built what I told them to build. Even though I was never very good at breathing, the breath inside me is proof that I'm a sinner. I lay here in this bed of death, every inch of me suffering. All this is good for heaven. Blessed Mary, pray for me.
Perpetua & Felicity
Perpetua
My father's fingers tremble. It is rare that he gets angry, but I could see that bit of wetness in his eyes that always comes with his frustration. He is watching lightning strike his house. He simply has to watch it burn. He is burning now. I look across the table at the pitcher made of clay that was half full of wine, and I say to him, "do you see that pitcher, father?" He does not want to break his stare, but he glances over and nods his head. "Yes." I square my jaw and speak quietly and clearly. "Can you call that pitcher by any other name?" He swallows air through his nostrils, and I watch his beard tremble as he answers my question. "No." “Would you call me a stalk of corn? A hammer from your shop? Would you call me a fish or a lion or a bird in the sky?" "I would call you daughter." "I am a Christian. A believer. Like that pitcher of wine, I can be nothing else but what I am." He looks at the clay vessel on the table and he picks it up. He pours the wine onto the dusty floor. "This is a pitcher," his face twists, and I can see that the lightning has hit him as well. He sends the object hurtling towards the wall where it shatters. "And now I call it dust. You cannot put wine in it anymore. The wine is spilled like your blood will be spilled. And you will no longer be my daughter or a Christian. You will be dead." My hand by my side wishes to clutch the icon of my faith, but it is not there. The governor of our town had followed the laws of the emperor. To slow the spread of my faith they made it illegal for anyone new to convert. We had to hide our beliefs, but I was not afraid to be turned to dust. "It does not matter if I am broken down into pieces like this vessel. Even in tiny pieces I am still a believer. I still serve my lord." My father would never strike me, but I could see that he wishes that he could. It is a moment where he thinks that he might do it but then something passes over him and his mood wilts. His voice softens, and I can hear a childish desperation. "Why would this carpenter of yours sacrifice you the way he sacrificed himself? Would he leave your own infant daughter without a mother? As it is you travel from room to room in our home, quietly thinking and staring into nothing. The servants bring you your baby, and you refuse to hold him or feed him. Will you have your daughter be raised without a mother?" I step towards him to remind him of my youth and of my love for him. My devotion as his daughter. "But I have a father too besides you. And I must follow him. I would not have my daughter grow up with a mother who is afraid to be who she is. And if I am not here to raise her, she will have an example and a light to lead her down the path. And one day she will be with me and with all of us who have seen the light. All of us who travel the pathway." My father pushes his hand up under his beard, a sign that he is making a decision. "I have three sons before you and none of them have the courage of my only daughter. I cannot support you in this suicide, but I agree that your daughter should have the memory of a brave mother." I wrap my arms around his waist and hug him like I am a child again. He puts his arms around me and in the embrace of my father on earth I feel the love of my father in heaven. I will be baptized. I will convert. Even if it means my death.
Felicity
I cannot say who the father is, but I know that my child grows inside of me. He is ready to see the world. I can feel his feet trying to kick his way out. He is looking for the doorway. There isn't enough room inside of me for him. I do not like to think about the night that he was forced to be my child. I am a servant. I am loyal to my lady. She has helped me through so many dark times. There were nights when my baby's father would revisit me in my sleep. A nightmare. I would wake like a bolt, quite sure that he was once again on top of me, but my mistress would come to my side and gently sway me. I felt as if I was her child even though she had a baby in a crib not that far away us. The night was stretched out across the sky, and it felt like he could tear a hole in it. Not even the darkness could protect me. This man. He was not a stranger to me. He lives in this house still. I can never reveal who he is but I stand there close to him everyday. I cannot understand how my mistress can be so warm and so kind and so clear in her head and her brother is such a monster.
Perpetua
I look down at my hands, and I wonder what it would be like to have nails driven through my palms. What is it to hang from a cross for days and days? They say death was slow for him. I'm told my death will be quick, but it will be painful. I will be mauled and eaten alive. All of us will. And the crowds will roar and cheer and have something to do that day. I sit here in this cell with the stench of the dead everywhere around me and the shadow of sin. I am not afraid of death. I know when I'm gone, my babe will have lost his mother. The judge and the guards have taken pity on me and they have allowed my son to stay with me. I look down at his hands and wonder what size nails would it take to crucify him?
Felicity
All my life I never knew there was a way for my mind to be this occupied, and now I am certain that I am using every last chamber of my brain. All I can do is think about this baby inside of me and how I want her out. I'd like to pretend that I'm driven by a deep-rooted desire to protect her, but I don't want to see my sisters and brothers murdered without me. Especially my lady. If I am pregnant on the day of the execution, they will not send me to the monsters. I will have to wait. Sometimes I feel that my baby is a seed inside, growing so that I can die and no one will notice. But most of the time I know that the seed inside of me is my love for my lady. She is the one who inspired me to commit my soul to heaven. We were together as the water poured over our foreheads and we became immortal. The birth of a thousand babies can't match the love of two believers. And I love her very much.
Perpetua
It is terrifying to stand in this dark tunnel and listen to the flesh of the “criminals” being torn from their bones. There are monsters doing what monsters do, but my fellow believers are their hunger’s end. And as each group of the baptized is pushed into the arena, a new beast awaits. My darling reaches her hand for me. We became mothers together just a few days ago when her daughter was delivered by God’s grace. Felicity refused to name her, but she held her hard enough to leave a mark. I know I hugged my son just as hard. It was almost as if we each would have sent them to heaven, but without a baptism, they would wind up lodged between heaven and hell for eternity. We will only be reunited once they have been baptized. With the new suffocating laws, that might not happen soon. So our babies are stuck in this earth for a life. That’s what’s best. Hopefully we will mother from heaven. I am certain that as we are torn to bits, we will feel our babies in our arms. I trust the immaculate one’s grace. I am certain the pain of dismemberment will feel like a wisp of air compared to the loss of the warm tender kiss of our only children. We are both new mothers. We are together in that. But we are both broken in two even before we enter into the arena to the choir of the screaming crowds.
Felicity
It is not a time to follow laws. Our devotion made us criminals. I am holding her hand no matter what society dictates. I can feel the blood dripping from her shredded elbow. The creature tore into us, but he could not kill us. The governor has ordered that the centurions slay us with their swords. Our lives could never be saved here on earth. I pulled her closer to me. One soldier trembled and weakly plunged his sword into me, but it missed my heart and only sliced my soldier. I stumbled but I would not let go of my lady. His eyes went wide and then sharpened. He was not going to make the same mistake twice but before he could strike again, I embraced my sister, my mistress, the woman I had served since I was a child and I kissed her the way Magdalene must have kissed the cold body of Christ when he was dragged into the cave. We had been born together and now we would die together. As we kissed I could feel how we each passed our lives into each other. Her love made me hungry for death. Her kiss made my soul invulnerable.
Thérèse
I felt them open and shut the door maybe a hundred times a day. I remember each time the door slammed and bounced off the frame. I have counted the number of bounces. It's hard and then less hard until eventually it's almost not a sound. I hear that quiet sound louder than the banging of the door as it crashes. My bed wrapped me in sheets like thick rope. The pain in my head was either my imagination or my disintegration. I am not sure. I spent all day there coming apart. I listened to the sounds of my sisters and my father because everyone else in our family was dead. I think of my dead siblings in their tiny coffins, and I think of my mother under the earth and under the tombstone with the carving of the mother Mary and the cross of Jesus. Can they hear the doors slam in the underworld? Is it quiet when you're dead? I certainly know that my life is a gift and to take it is a sin, but it's so hard. I felt the invisible ropes that cuffed my arms and legs and slipped around my throat. I knew that death could grab me this way whenever it wanted. I don't think it's quiet anywhere. There are people who go into nature or a library or an empty house and they feel the pressure of silence, but whenever I'm in a place like that I find the noise. Or I bring the noise because I'm always coughing. Like my sister, I became a nun. I had hoped that the nunneries were quiet, but I knew the truth was that every one of those women had to breathe at night. And the older nuns breathed heavier than the young ones, but everyone still breathed, and I would be able to hear it. I knew the tragedy of noise, and I prayed to be cured of my affliction.
I know why I was so ill. I was selfish. My sisters had worked hard to keep me as a baby since I was the one who lost our mother at such a young age. By doing this, they squeezed the throat of my compassion. I could be so lazy and so vicious until my father would turn his head and look at a wall rather than see me in a tantrum. After so many years trapped inside a tiny body and a tiny mind, my heart finally grew. I was cured. The malady that kept me awake at night was gone. I saw my heavenly mother smile from a statue that was still, and I knew that my life would change. And for the first time ever I didn't make my father suffer when he said something to me that sounded like "no." I swallowed the air and remembered my earthly mother who got sick when I was so young, and I listened to his heartbeat once again. And though I had to strain, the pelting of his love inside of his chest was loud enough for me to know It was endless. It was enough for two parents.
This is what I'm thinking of as I stare at the objects in my room as if for the first time. Because I believe that Jesus was here with me for as long as I could remember, but now I know he's gone. As I grew stronger, he abandoned me. It's insufferable. I would gladly sit in my own sweat back in my childhood sick bed rather than search for him when I know he's left me. I'm talking and talking and he's not here. He's not holding up his end of the conversation. There is a theme of love leaving. His mother who once smiled at me must have felt this way the day after his death. He was not there to talk to her or to them. He was not there to share his voice and his message. I began as a chopped up little girl whose mother had left her and whose health went away just as fast. And when I recovered from that illness I also recovered from my selfishness which had been foisted on me by people who I now know were made of love. And now I have lost him, but he teaches me a lesson. He's telling me that if I can lose him, I can lose everything. I should sacrifice all that I can. Sacrifice my pride. Sacrifice my honor. Sacrifice the only hope I ever had as a girl. My heart aches at the loss of him. He has hollowed out my soul, and I will hollow out my body. There will be nothing left. I will listen for his footsteps or for the rubbing of his hands. I will try to remember the days when my ears were my enemies because now they are my only friends.
Maria
My brother's arm sparkles in the sunshine because he is drenched in sweat. He pulls his arm back and quickly slices through the wheat with his sickle. I can hear it cut through each stalk. He uses short chops like a man stabbing someone to death. He is skilled. Since the death of my father, he has worked the fields this way day and night. He is the oldest. My whole family works the fields except for me and my baby sister. My mother told me that because I was small it would be better if I stayed home and took care of the house so she could go to the fields and sweat like my brother. We were barely moved into our new home when my father got sick and died. We could not afford to bury him but we found a way.
Sometimes when it's very hot and the baby is asleep, I sit on the steps and I sew. The needle slides in and out as I darn the socks. We are poor, but we will not have holes in our clothes. Our floor is swept. There is always dinner when they come home after the sun has bled away from the sky.
I can see them working when a shadow interrupts me and my work. I look up and I see the red sun setting and a black silhouette of a man. It is Alessandro. If I have nightmares, they always are of him. He looks at me from his church seat or across the Palazzo. Even when he's not here, I feel his eyes on me. He is always somewhere, watching me.
He touched my shoulder and smiled and indicated with his head that he wanted to go inside. He wanted a drink. While my family worked tirelessly, Alessandro was likely in his home drinking the last bits of wine that his grandfather had left for him. His family had abandoned him. He lived alone. His home was the opposite of ours. I told him that I had to finish my sewing, but he could go inside and get himself a drink. He told me no. He wanted me to get it. “That’s your job, girl. I am a guest.”.
I stared at him like he was a thunderstorm. I only wished it was raining because it might mean my family would come home early. But I was alone. I could see the splash of color that was my oldest sister who always trailed behind in the fields. I could not see her face, and I'm sure she could not see mine. I stood up. It was the last time I would ever stand.
With the door open only a crack, he hit my body like it was a battering ram. I was on the floor and he was on me and then I saw the flash of his smile that matched the silver of a knife that he held to my throat. His knee was forcing my legs open. He was not a big man, but I was only 11 and so small. I told him it was a sin, and he said he knew. I felt him undress himself and try to enter me. I spit at him and told him I would rather die. He pulled himself inside of me and put his face close to mine and said, “don't worry you will.”
I've always assumed there was one for each year of my life, but there are so many reasons why he might have stabbed me 11 times. Maybe he got tired. Maybe that was as far as his rage would take him. Maybe the spirit got to him and guilt took over. I do not know but I know that the next moments of my life were the beginning of the last. When my family discovered me, they rushed me to the hospital. My mother brought me a statue of the virgin and I clutched it to my chest as if it were a salve that might heal the wounds he had made. The holes he made in my body did not pierce my soul which was still a swollen balloon inside of me. I could feel it lifting me. And I knew when my life on this earth was over, I would simply float up into heaven. All around me my family wept. There were tears from others, too. Even the doctors and nurses looked sullen. There were so many tears for my wretched life. I tried to tell my mother that I wasn't worth it. They should cry for themselves. They should cry for Alessandro. And when I said his name the room got more than silent. It was as if everything had been turned inside out and the faces looked at me the way the moon looks at the Earth. I told them to forgive him. I told him that I had forgiven him. And I remember that now they wept at their own weeping because they felt the guilt of their selfishness. I left behind all the wounds he had made, and I took with me nothing but my virgin heart. Because he never raped my heart. He never touched me there.
Philomena
I am bones. I am old and damaged, but I am still intact. I can remember what it was like to be inside of her. To help her stand and move. To help her pray by bending to her knees. I remember the violence. I have been stolen from the place where I was buried and taken to a new home. I have been placed inside of silver cases, and now they worship me. They say that I have cured cancer. I have performed miracles. They say it is evidence that I am a saint. Where was this evidence when I was alive? It was the ruler Diocletian whose love turned to violence. When I denied him, he ordered my execution several times. They tried to kill me. They whipped me. They tried to drown me. They executed me with arrows. Every time I survived. It infuriated the emperor, so he had me beheaded. The body I once lived in hasn't been whole for centuries. That’s why they can take me in pieces. I only exist as a dream and from the dream came a story. The story became the truth. When they questioned the truth, they tried to kill me again. But they can't kill me. I am not Philomena. I am the bones of a saint. It doesn't matter when I lived. It is my death that matters most. And they have built statues to me and made offerings and attributed symbols. There is not a pain hard enough to scratch me from the records. I live on. In fragments, I live on.
Edith
"Who is God?" I never could understand the suffering of Christ. It was beyond my comprehension. I knew that he suffered terribly and that he suffered for me, but it was only an idea. Like any idea, it demanded thought. It demanded meditation. But I never understood what it meant to be crucified. Not until now.
They are not beds. They are empty spaces where they can pack our bodies. And in these spaces we do something different than awaken. But we do not sleep. I know I don't sleep. In fact it’s as if everything has been whitewashed and covered over in a milky film. It fills our mouths and our lungs and coats our eyes. It is everything we see or taste or touch or hear. I am not wearing clothes at all. These rags that hang from me are like pieces of paper blown up against a fence. My bones are like the links of the fence. We are wires.
But it's in this wretched place that I found he had not left me. The meditation came to life for me. We had to move quickly around the camp, but I found that even as I forced my feet to shuffle forward I could slip into a kind of reverie. A trance. And I could see him there as tattered as I am, hanging from his cross.
Every thought I have in this abyss, I devote to him. I know he is here. He would have been tossed into this wretched hole along with the rest of us. He would have splintered under the weight of their hate. But he would be the cleanest of the clean. He would clean us all. Because no matter how many creatures eat away at our skin or how many diseases creep up inside of us at night, we will not be dirty. We know we are right. Even though like him I have my doubts as machine guns take away the souls of the slowest workers and the very old, I can find him in me. I can see myself on the cross with him. They can nail every part of my body into the rotten wood of our lodgings, and still I will not lose faith. Forgive these monsters. They know not what they do.
The Immaculate
The way that the rainstorm can turn sideways and knock me off my feet is the way that he came into my room that night. The shutters flew open and I saw his face before I saw his body. I knew that the room was my body. And that my mind was the shutters. His face was a thought that I could not keep out of my imagination. It was a perpetual thought. It took up space inside of me the way he took up space inside of my bedroom. He was forceful and took me like a husband even though my husband slept in the room with us. The moment he was inside of me, I could see my own birth. It was painful and frightening, and the whole time the angel was with me I was living as a newborn. My head was dented as I came out of my mother. I felt the blood and the waste cover my body as it hit the fresh air for the first time. I took a breath and screamed. I was terrified but I was alive. “Do not be afraid, Mary. Your womb is blessed by God.” My eyes slowly opened, and I saw his wings fill the open window. I felt alone. It was a new feeling, and I was afraid. I would never feel any other way for the rest of my life.
The Magdalene
First
The water won't sleep. It bullies the boats. It slaps the sides of each of them and everything that I find I can't understand. It sounds like the beating of a heart. My heart beats fast. I look at all of the boats in the darkness. They are empty. Asleep. I should be, but I came here. I want something to make it quiet in my head. It's so noisy inside of me. It must be like this at the temple. All those voices. Everyone I know is dreaming, but I can't. I cannot dream because I can't stop the wilderness inside of me.
I do not know if these are demons. I still feel like myself so it makes me wonder if I'm a demon. Could I fool myself into believing that I was something that I'm not? Maybe I've been a demon this whole time, hidden in the skin of a woman. Maybe I look out of eyes that are evil. I cannot believe this, but I do not know what this feeling is. All I know is that there's a fire. Everything burns from the inside out.
And so they will take me this way with what they believe to be seven evil spirits inside of me. They need me to be purged. I might be sacrificed for all I know. And in a black rage I am dragged screaming and fighting. I feel the same dangerous pressure in my head that leaves my eyes like stones staring at nothing with the howling and the trembling of my body. I am cast down in front of a man whose filthy robes and gnarled hands seem terrifying. There are others all around us with afflictions, but my handlers swear to him that I am possessed with all seven sins. They beg him to exorcize them from me. He is a rabbi. A healer.
His face is darker than mine. He is not from Magdala. I can see this. His eyes are iridescent in the setting sunlight. He crouches in front of me and puts both hands on my shuddering shoulders. “You are not possessed, child. You are simply ill. If you believe that healing is possible, I will show you how to heal. Can you believe me?” Through the unraveling seizure, I shake my head. He takes my hand. HIs grip is a swaddling, wrapping me in an overwhelming feeling of love. “Good. We are a small group, but you are welcome to join. Follow me”
And so I do. And even though the spells might continue, I know I am no devil. He tells me I am a child of God, and I believe him.
Last
I am the only one of the four of us to wake. The sun is just pushing his eye over the edge of the earth, and when I look up from the blackness of the tomb I can see light streaming in through the mouth of the cave. The stone is moved, and Jesus’ body is gone. I search the small cavity and then stumble out of the tomb into the morning. I can see my sisters are asleep, undisturbed by this revelation. I feel my head start to split and shake. My body is rigid and drops to the dusty path. From the ground, I see the shoes of the gardener approaching. I reach up to grab him and get his attention, but he pulls back before I can. “Don’t, Magdalene. Don’t touch me.” I stare dumbfounded. It is Jesus. His dark skin is clean and glowing, and the thousand cuts and slits are gone. He is more perfect than I have ever seen him, but his voice is the same tepid river. I sit up as far as I can. “Your ‘demons’ are gone.” He smiles and makes an unusual criss-cross shape in the air. He stares at me. “Everyone is asleep, Mary. Wake them. Wake them all.”
I squint to see his face once more, but he ascends to heaven. My bones feel light, and I stand up like a bird. I cover my eyes to see him flying, but his spirit is gone. I move my arms and legs and prance in a circle. I am his witness. I am his friend. I will start the story that we will tell for as long as we can. There are no devils now. Only the light of the morning. Only the sun sitting over us, so warm and steady and strong. I want to work and sweat today. I want to be of use. I will be a tool. I will be a tool for the world. I will wake them all.