Pity for the Virgin Mary (unedited)

Outside in the cold stone schoolyard we were to stand facing the flag for the morning pledge. Warm spring mornings I would stand obediently in my jumper, one more speck in a sea of green, grey and yellow checkered print dress. A forest of stockinged legs, shiny black shoes holding ruffly socked feet, all stood at attention. Hand firmly placed on the chest, I pledged my beating heart to a piece of land and an abstract concept just as easily as I’d brush my teeth or tie my shoes. On cold days, jumper stiff and cold against my skin, legs wind whipped pink and raw, my black shoes danced impatiently and my pledge was stolen from me in distracted mumblings.
Inside the wide arches and dark corridors of St. Catherine’s, the truth was asserted, released from dry white chalk and ancient primers. A before B before C. 1 before 2 before 3. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. When teacher coughed it was time, we walked single file over dreary grey tile. In the gym we ran circles. Thursdays it was silent couplings, partners in prayer. In the church we learned quiet reverence,stained glass light extending from an angel’s wing, or the robe of a saint and hanging in the dust and air above us like a blessing. This was life. Pews, dress shoes, and sacred readings.
To my infant eye, all that was was small and tame, neat and ordered and to be expected. Things simply moved and turned like the gears of a clock. Life, I, everything moved along accordingly. Everything had a place. Everything had a function, and purpose was something never sought for it seemed always to be mysterious, and more times than not beside the point. Things simply were, the reasons held in one mind, the mind of God- the Man in the sky.
After the day’s lined paper had been soiled, pencils worked to a nub, and chalk from crumbling erasers beaten into the air in thick clouds, the bell would sound. I would return to the schoolyard and continue my education in the order of things. Leaning against the wall under the exposed steel stairway, I watched. First to leave where the kids who walked, migrating from the school in a mob of pressed ivory shirts and lunch time stains. Next were kids running to the lot behind the school to meet parents and babysitters for the drive home. Then came unfortunate ones kept behind for detention or tutoring, trickling out into the late afternoon sun. I stood in my spot under the stairs, waited and watched as shadows grew longer and cast themselves like long fingers across the side of the building, the children held for detention long gone. And finally there it would come, the busted old buick, whining in anguish as it pulled up in the lot.
I would pass in front of the car, run my hand over the dry bubble of paint where the sun baked the hood, and hop in. Some days I was invited to recount the day’s events, and things learned. Other days the car was stuffy, tight and tense. These days I kept to myself and stared out the window, waiting, letting my hand ride waves of wind. Sometimes it was better to watch things slide by. This I learned early on. It seemed to me that lots of days were like this.
At home I did a lot of watching, but never in silence. There was always the clanging of pots and pans, the rushing of water, the wailing of my baby brother, the roar of the television, outdoor sounds, neighbors fighting or laughing, and mother singing or scolding from the kitchen. At home Mom broke her nails scraping food from plates. She twisted her spine with a baby on her hip. At work she made enough for us to live and we took it, every paycheck. She weaved a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, clothes on our backs, and candy for children’s weekend tongues. Bending, scrubbing, singing, dancing, and praying, she held things up while the rest of us watched. After dinner, the family full from taking all they could, Mama would find an empty corner, sit down and sigh when she thought nobody looked Sometimes it seemed as though life had consumed her. Some days, early in the morning, before the rest of us woke ready with our many needs and demands, she would pick up a pen and notebook and steal time for her hidden worlds. She was worn down, giving herself down to the essence, only half waiting for the life she earned, as if even the waiting was a luxury.
And so pain and sacrifice became woman. Women were alive not to live, but to create the possibility of it for others. Women were tools, facilitators, vessels. This was the order of things. As a child who knew her fate, I began to mourn a life yet lived, a life that would never be mine, for I was, am, always woman. I knew where my place lay. I felt it in my very bones.
In the church basement, standing in the bathroom with the other girls after Thursday mass, secrets and truths were whispered like sins. Older girls spoke of older boys, schoolyard crushes. Youger girls foraged for scraps of information that fell from the tongues of those older, things they could bring back to the others in exchange for wide eyed awe or glee. One particular Thursday, a few of us gathered around an older girl as she shared the story of her pregnant sister who found out, she said, when she went to the bathroom one day and her pee turned blue. And that was it.Her sister was now a mother. The simplicity of it didn’t make it less horrific.
I had overheard the women in my family at dinners or cousins birthdays, gathered on porches or in kitchen, discussing the trials of childbirth. They told matter of fact accounts of excruciating pain, the greatest pain imaginable or endured by any of the women in the family. They told of flesh literally being torn apart to make way for another. They told of streched skin, earlobes torn open by the curious hands of a baby going after a dangling earring, scars that would never fade, skin that would never quite regain it’s shape.
I would have asked why it had to be that way, but I knew the answer. That was woman. Woman. Pain and sacrifice. Still, I spent time wondering, yearning for a purpose for the pain, a reason for all of it. Purpose remained mysterious and beside the point. Whether or not there was reason for it made no difference. Everything is everything. Things simply were and you went along with them. It was here that I learned dread and resentment, thin and dark, on the edges of my existence. If I could I would have rejected my intended role. I wanted nothing of it. I dreaded living to find my end as woman- collector of agonies, vessel of life, living not herself. Woman- the walking dead. I hated my femininity. I cursed it for cursing me.
In the days and months to come, I gathered more and more about the order of things. In school we read of the Virgin Mary. I remembered her from the church. To the left of the pulpit, hands softly touching, fingers pointed toward the heavens. Her head was bowed gracefully , her blue robes flowing yet reserved. She who we prayed to with wooden bead rosaries in hand, she who we prayed to for forgiveness after confession. She who still answered to motherly duties in death. She was the figure of beauty and grace, the model for all worshipping women;someone to be revered.
Chosen by God to fulfill His almighty purpose, Mary was impregnated with His seed. Her body was taken from above, used to create man, our savior. She lived meagerly and rough, a baby she had not made with any will or purpose growing inside of her, nourishing itself from her body. She traveled to Bethlehem and gave birth like an animal on the scratchy earth and hay of a manger. She raised Him, cared for Him, and had Him stripped from her in his death, something for which He was always intended. She- put on this earth to feel loss.
What I felt for the Virgin Mary was not reverence. Not purely. For while I had respect for a person so strong in the face of the life she had lived, I could not help but pity her for a life made, taken, used, and intended for one other than herself. I had pity for a life unowned, pity for the horror of what that meant. Pity and fear. Fear that I was as she was. Fear that I would be taken and used just the same, and not only be taken and used, but be meant for it and made for it in my entire essence. Fear that it could strike at any moment.
Sometime during that second grade year in school, all of the kids were gathered on the carpet of the classroom to watch a certain film. It was common for us to watch cartoons approved by some distant Catholic society designed to make God and religion more palatable to us. This day it was to be the story of Adam and Eve. It began with Adam, naked, all of humanity in one man. He had all of earth for himself, to share only with the beasts which he was to rule over. And yet Adam was not satisfied. He grew loney. God then created Eve, an afterthought, a tool to satiate man.
When Adam cried to the heavens from the screen in front of us, we all watched in awe as a voice boomed in answer, and Eve was wrought from his flesh. The wonder, however, lasted only moments before giving way to giggles, points and whispers at the screen in front of us for Eve was naked. Naked, and while nothing but a bellybutton could actually be seen past Eve’s flowing brown hair, and well placed leaves and flora, just as nothing of consequence had been seen on Adam’s naked body, Adam’s nakedness had been ignored while Eve’s had been acutely noticed and ridiculed, answered with childish indications of disgust, even shock.
I began to avoid restrooms and locker rooms, anywhere I had to be alone with my femininity, anything that made me recall what I was. I hated my body, watching it grow into something I knew was the cause for disgust. I imagined leaving class to use the restroom only to find I had grown big with child and would have to give birth in the hallway before lunch. I was still unsure of exactly how babies were made, but had the understanding that God gave them to us when He deemed us ready. I didn’t think I was ready, but then I couldn’t imagine ever being ready. I wondered if Mary of Nazareth ever considered her future as a woman. I wondered if anyone did. I wondered, but didn’t dare discuss it, for I knew I was somehow guilty, secretly detesting God’s will. Always questioning, always wanting answers. I knew that was sinful. I had heard the scolds of my parents, and I had heard the story of Eve.
Weekends were my salvation. Saturdays meant freedom from bunchy jumpers and tight shoes, freedom from headbands that poked and pinched. Freedom from frilly socks and biblical tales. I threw on overalls and a hat and ran outside to forget all about my future. I was a child. Saturdays meant days at Junior’s place two doors down, making club houses from boxes and paint or riding bikes 'til our calves hurt. Together we wandered the neighborhood, ran to the bodega with our beggar’s change for pieces of candy or small toys and balloons. There was no girl or boy. Kids were kids.
Until they weren’t anymore. It was the next year and I was watching Saturday morning cartoons when my mother came in from the laundry room, with a pair of my panties in hand, the one’s I had shoved to the bottom of the hamper, embarrassed of the blood stains, wanting to forget they existed. She held that dirty, disgusting piece of cloth and demanded to know who had touched me. Nobody. Was it Junior? His brother? Who had touched me? Nobody. She didn’t believe me. She looked like she wanted to cry. I wasn’t allowed to Junior’s for months. This was my introduction to womanhood, the violation.