Bless the Child (35 page)

F
ather James sat quietly in a chintz armchair in Maggie’s library, his huge frame filling the wingback ludicrously. Maggie had been trepidatious when Peter had said the younger priest would accompany him today. “He’s a rare bird, Maggie,” he told her, “and a good friend. He may see something we’ve overlooked.”

She’d expected Father James Kebede to view her warily; he was Peter’s friend, and she was Peter’s complication. But instead, the charismatic priest greeted her with genuine warmth, his old-world manner charmingly at odds with the linebacker physique. He carried quiet within him, she saw; a unique serenity that extended its gentle comfort to all those in his immediate vicinity.

“Good and Evil, Maggie,” Peter said, standing near the fireplace. “We will tell you what we know, or think we know—in hopes that this knowledge may prove to be a bulwark for you.” She nodded expectantly.

“I think we should begin with an attempt at
defining
Evil,” he said, always on sure ground when he was teaching. “Are nature’s outrages evil? Famine, pestilence, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions . . . all these disasters harm innocent people—are we then, to hold God responsible for their pain? In exorcisms, the Demonic Presence has been known to try to confound his enemies with stories of God’s own wickedness, or at least His unwillingness to protect man from Nature’s rages.

“Moral iniquity seems easier to identify. You don’t need a theological definition to know that Central American death squads are heinous, or Nazi concentration camp atrocities, or Khmer Rouge genocide, or terrorism, no matter what its supposed ideology. As depravity—we know that mass murderers and torturers and child molesters perpetrate terrible crimes against humanity. It is the subtler evils that sometimes sneak by our detection systems; the expediencies, the little lies, the good deeds left undone . . .”

James leaned forward and interjected a thought. “Evil
harms
people and it opposes life itself. It is opposed to civilization, and to order. It
lies
to accomplish its ends, for it is not bound by truth. Evil is mysterious and malignant. In its path, nothing grows, for it scorches the earth behind it.”

“Yet, Evil can be charismatic, in its own way,” Peter chimed in. “In Milton’s
Paradise Lost,
Satan was more interesting than God. Rogues and scoundrels tend to be fascinating and seductive. And, of course, Evil is old and familiar—it has always been with us.”

“So what exactly is God doing while all this is going on?” Maggie asked feistily. “Where does He stand on this subject?”

James smiled. “’I am halfway through Genesis,’” a British writer named Ackerly once said, “‘and I am quite appalled by the disgraceful behavior of all the characters involved, including God.’”

I like this priest, Maggie thought; he looks on life with the indulgent affection of a longtime lover. She smiled back.

“Even Thomas Aquinas admitted that the existence of Evil is the best argument against the existence of God, Maggie,” James said. “But remember, we’ve been given free will. It isn’t God who chooses to let Evil loose in the world, it is
man
who does so.

“In truth, Maggie,” James added gently, “I have always believed the mystery of
goodness
to be far greater than the mystery of Evil. It is so much easier to lie and cheat and steal, than to work honestly, conscientiously, and honorably. It is easier to give way to the grossest sins of the flesh, than to be moral, ethical, and self-restrained. It is easier to sink than to rise, to take the low road, not the high. And yet, Maggie, poor struggling humanity struggles to build, not destroy. To love, not hate. To nurture its children, not to harm them. To heal, and to help, and to strive to be better. And through all that enormous effort, it continues to love God in the face of the odds.”

“‘Trust in God and do the right’ as the poet says,” Maggie mused. “I love the spirit of what you’re saying, James, but, I still must ask the insoluble riddle: God is all Good. God is all powerful. Yet, Evil exists. You can reconcile any two of those statements, but not all three.”

“A plausible answer to that riddle was posited by a psychiatrist named Peck, Maggie,” James said. “An exorcist, in fact. He said God only
creates,
not destroys. And having forsaken destructive force, God is perhaps impotent to prevent the atrocities that we can commit upon one another because He
limited
himself when He gave us freedom. He can only continue to grieve with us. He will offer us Himself, and work to win us to the
good,
but He cannot make us choose to abide with Him, if we wish not to.”

“Yet you’ve both performed exorcisms,” Maggie countered, “in which God prevailed over the Satanic Presence. Wouldn’t that alone suggest that Good is stronger than Evil, God is stronger than Satan?”

Peter nodded. “That’s quite true, Maggie. But you must remember God uses us poor mortals to do His work, and we are woefully imperfect instruments.”

“Yet for all that imperfection, Peter,” she replied testily, “there is more order than chaos, more evidence of love than hate. We poor imperfect humans still spit in the face of tyrants, pick dying babies off dung heaps in Calcutta, race into burning buildings to save perfect strangers, and light one candle instead of cursing the darkness.

“You know, Peter, the more we talk about this the more I realize, I don’t need to know about heresies. I don’t need homilies or dialectics to know truth when I trip over it. If God and the Good weren’t stronger and better, we wouldn’t be standing here, today. Because the bad guys don’t
build
civilizations, they tear them down. They don’t
nurture
children, they brutalize them—they’re not capable of the feats of courage and daring we are, because they just don’t
love
enough. And we do.” She paused for breath. “I don’t have to define Evil, Peter. I can spot it a mile away.”

James caught Peter’s eye with his own. The look said,
Now I understand.

James
had offered to accompany Maggie to the store to buy groceries for dinner. Peter had extolled his friend’s ability as a chef, and volunteered his services, to produce their evening meal; so Maggie had offered to supply the necessary ingredients. To her surprise, Maria Aparecida had taken an instant liking to the Ethiopian priest, proudly showing off her kitchen, when she heard he liked to cook.

“In the end of calculations, dona Maggie,” she had said, bustling Maggie and Peter out of the kitchen, and taking James’s arm in her own, “the padre and I will collaborate.”

Maggie could see the delight James took in the abundance provided by the Jefferson Market and Balducci’s. He handled each selection of fruit or vegetable as if it were both sacred obligation, and indescribable pleasure. It took quite some time for him to complete his selections, but she didn’t want to hurry him, he seemed enthralled in the joy of the task.

“You wanted to speak with me alone, James, didn’t you?” she asked finally, on the way home.

“You have found me out,” he answered amiably. “I must confess I simply wanted to get to know you, Maggie, at least a little, and one-to-one is always best for that, don’t you think?”

“Do you disapprove of Peter’s trying to help me so selflessly?” she asked.

“Not at all. I believe he is doing as he should. As he must, in fact. Peter Messenguer is a unique piece of God’s handiwork, Maggie. He must follow where his unusual intellect leads him. And, in this case, his heart, as well.”

Maggie looked up and saw James was smiling, just a little.

“I believe you and Cody have been placed in his path for a purpose, Maggie. At the moment, only God knows precisely what that purpose is. Peter must find out.”

They walked on silently for nearly a block. “What is it you wished to ask me, James?” she prompted finally. “I’ve been feeling the prickle of your question marks all afternoon.”

He nodded. “If you cannot save the child, Maggie . . . how, then, will you feel about God?”

“I guess I haven’t really let myself consider that possibility, James,” she said slowly, a little taken aback by the awful question. She sensed that for some reason her answer was important to him.

“When my husband died,” she began slowly, “I railed at God. I’d stormed heaven with my prayers and pleadings, for the three years of his illness, and I just couldn’t believe God would allow such a good man to die—for no reason, and under such horrifying circumstances. The waste of it filled me with rage. And the loss I’d suffered . . . the terrible aloneness of widowhood . . . ate at me like a corrosive acid. Then, I was hit with the horror of Jenna’s addiction and her disappearance. That, too, overwhelmed me . . . I felt like a modern-day Job.
I’ve tried so hard, God!
I ranted.
Why won’t you help me? What is it You want from me?”
Her voice was electric with emotion.

“And then one day, after a very long while of asking for understanding, it occurred to me that perhaps all He wanted was my surrender to His will. There’s so much soul’s growth that comes from hardship and sorrow, James—not the kind you’d volunteer for, mind you. But it finally dawned on me that you can’t
change
Fate, but maybe you can learn enough from it, to change
yourself . . .
and perhaps that, too, is what He requires of us. In a way, I guess, I decided I couldn’t let my husband’s death be the deciding issue between me and God.”

She smiled sadly. “This is no easy battle we’ve been sent to wage, here, James—you have to be courageous just to survive, never mind grow. But, I do think God expects us to try our damnedest, whatever the obstacles.” She paused to search a little further, then continued.

“All of which is just a roundabout way of saying this, I guess: I believe God wants me to fight like hell to save Cody. If I fail—or if for some reason, far beyond my ability to comprehend, He takes her home to Him, instead . . . I’ll try very hard to surrender to that, too.” She looked up at him with great vulnerability apparent in her face. “She was His, before she was mine, James,” she said softly.

James Kebede was deeply touched by what Maggie said, for he understood the magnitude of her declaration of faith, and what it would likely cost her to live up to it.

The
dream began softly, carrying Maggie on its billows out beyond the mists of time. She tossed and turned with its movement, rhythmically propelled by an unseen force that could not be denied.

The time-mists dissipated; she was in a royal court. Pharaoh sat upon a golden throne made in the form of great winged lions; his dignitaries stood around him, and his warriors, archers, spearmen, fully armed, stood at attention, row upon row, along the limestone pillars of the great hall. Their oiled bodies gleamed, and scarlet feathers adorned their shields and helmets, for they were the elitist bodyguards of Pharaoh.