I am.”
“Oh, I already did,” she said airily.
For a moment I could hardly breathe; she might as well have sucker-punched me.
“But why?” I whispered. “Why?” My hands shook, but she held onto them tight.
“Because they asked me. So naturally I told them you had a sick headache—the kind with lots of vomiting and diarrhea; I made it sound very nasty—and so you had gone upstairs to lie down. Then I excused myself to go check on you. To keep light and noise away from your poor head, I closed the shutters in the dormitory. I also stuffed pillows under your covers. It helps that you are rather lumpy looking at the moment. No one will notice the difference tonight.”
Perhaps the cult of the Virgin Mary began there and then as I gazed at my mother-in-law with awe and reverence. Not only a thief but a liar! I threw my arms around her.
“Thank you, Ma.”
She held me in a bemused sort of way, and began to hum absently as if I were a baby to be lulled. And I felt like one; my stomach was full, and my eyes were heavy. But I couldn’t afford to let go. Not yet. I sat up and disengaged myself
“Ma, listen, you’d better be getting back before anyone notices you’re missing. I’ll call one of Paulina’s servants to escort you.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I think it would be a good idea to have someone with you,” I reasoned with her. “The streets are bound to be full of drunks tonight, because of Sukkoth.”
“No doubt, but I am not going anywhere.”
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t answer right away but she began to hum again as she rose and went to lie down on one of the couches.
“You’d better get some sleep, too, if we’re to start before dawn.”
“We?” I said. “We? As in you and me?”
“As in Miriam and Mary, Ruth and Naomi,” she crooned. “Naomi and Ruth. Mary and Miriam.”
So it had come to pass. Deep (way deep) down hadn’t I always known it would, since the moment I saw her standing outside the root cellar, the onions she had fetched slowly dropping down the folds of her dress and arranging themselves in rays at her feet. I had dreaded it, too. Really, I thought, husbands ought not to let their mothers outlive them—wasn’t there a pertinent law somewhere in Leviticus?
“Ma, I appreciate your concern,” I finally spoke, “but if this is my cue to say, whither thou goest, I will go, thy people shall be my people, thy gods—or rather god—my god, whither thou diest, there I shall be buried, forget it, it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to convert. And there is no way I am lying down at James’s feet on the threshing floor or whatever it was Naomi told Ruth to do to cozen Boaz into marrying her. Carpenters and apostles don’t have threshing floors, anyway. But the point is, I don’t want another husband—”
“Hush, Mary of Magdala. Hush. Listen.” And she sang, as atonally as she hummed, “Whither thou goest, I will go, whither thou livest I shall live, thy people shall be my people, thy goddess, my goddess, whither thou diest…” Her voice trailed away and she had a rare moment of uncertainty. “Well, don’t worry about the dying and burying part. I’m afraid it may be a bit complicated. As for husbands, I don’t want one, either, so don’t fret, child.”
She lay down and pulled a blanket up to her chin.
“Ma,” I said. “I’m going home to Temple Magdalen, a heathen whorehouse.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” she said crossly. “The trouble is, other people will figure it out, too. But we might as well stay there for a time. I do recall that the Temple spring water is curative for bunions.”
“It is,” I said, pensively. “Ma?”
“What now, Mary of Magdala?”
“If you’re coming with me, you have to call me Maeve. The angels got my name wrong, you know.”
“Harumph,” she said. Or that’s as near as I can translate the sound she made.
“What would you like me to call you?” I asked politely.
Miriam sat bolt upright on the couch and gazed into the middle distance.
“The Ever Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea, Mother of God,” she began rattling off titles that I had never heard applied to anyone but a goddess, “Mother of Sorrows, Immaculate Conception, Our Lady, Our Lady of Lourdes, Guadalupe, Fatima, Our Lady of—”
She went on, her voice hypnotic, and I had a glimpse then, though I didn’t understand it, of thousands of altars to the goddess in cavernous spaces, blazing with candles, while before my image (although I didn’t know it was mine) a few candles guttered, one, two, or none. Prescience is like that sometimes, confusing, more or less useless.
“Maeve,” she spoke my name for the first time, and the vision vanished. “Just call me Ma, as you always have. Goodnight.”
And she lay down again. By the way, in case you were wondering: The Ever Blessed Virgin Mary snores.
PART TWO
AVE MATRES
CHAPTER TEN
MY PEOPLE
Ave Matres
Hail all mothers
graceful or not
God or goddess is with you, believe it or not.
Blessed are all women
and blessed are the fruits of our wombs
whatever names, ridiculous or not, we choose for them
and even when they’re acting rotten.
O mothers
holy human mothers
all our children are divine.
Long after they leave us
they will curse us and pray to us
now and in the hour of our death
now and in the hour of their need.
I HAVE TAKEN THE LIBERTY of making this famous prayer to my mother-in-law a paean to all mothers—myself included. I am about to become a mother again. I am the bright dark madonna of this story, the daughter of mothers, bright and dark, the mother of daughters bright and dark. I take my place, however hidden, in the lineage of madonnas, Mary the mother of Jesus, Isis the mother of Horus, Demeter the mother of Persephone. Mother of a child or child of a mother, you are part of this lineage, too, this holy human lineage, the origin of bliss and loss.
Of
