The Passion of Mary-Margaret (31 page)

I loved teaching at the consolidated school. My little art barn was, I hate to say it, the envy of all the other teachers. But I put in a hot plate and a percolator, and soon we were meeting after school for a cup of coffee. If you've got something everybody else wants, I find that sharing it actually takes away the resentment. After the first week, the other members of the faculty were bringing in sweets to go with the coffee.

I felt so white.

I don't know if it's all right to say that, but I did. And I often wondered what they said about me behind their backs. Did they call me a do-gooder, the great white hope? I hope not. I hope Regina Bray told them I was in dire straits. Thankfully they probably heard about Jude and thought I was as crazy as a betsey bug. Believe me when I say they were the ones doing me the favor.

In quiet moments I wished Jude had been the type who had hidden who he was, but no, everybody in Abbeyville knew what he'd been doing with his time for the past decade or so. I never did find out how that leaked into seemingly everyone's basement.

Jude ate dinner with me most nights as well. Our time together during the days lengthened from one cup of tea at seven thirty to him walking me home from school after a day on the boat and staying until nine or so. As promised, he wouldn't so much as kiss me. And when he emerged from my bathroom, all washed up, still smelling of water and wind, his skin now browned and his eyes glowing the blue of the periwinkle blooms in the Bray's yard, I wanted him to kiss me. I missed all those kisses in our teens and wanted to kick myself for not relishing them. They'd just felt like something to enjoy and then regret back then.

“Mary-Margaret,” he said about two weeks before our wedding. “Sit down and I'll make the tea tonight.”

I rested my chin in my palms, my elbows perched on the edge of the table. My arms pressed my breasts together and a stunned feeling washed through me as I realized how easily sexuality was coming to me.

Jude laid a hand over mine. “I know all the signs, MaryMargaret. I know you want me.”

I sat up straight. “You're crazy.”

“You look nice when you blush.” He sat down and sighed.

“You're the sweetest thing I've ever seen. You always have been.

It's almost hard to see you acting like a woman. I guess I always wanted you to, but now, the way you're brushing up against me when you really don't have to, and letting me know you have breasts . . .”

I couldn't help it. I burst into laughter. He joined me.

“This is awkward,” I said half a minute later after the teakettle had screamed and he was pouring the water into the pot.

“You're right. It's like the tables have turned in a way.”

“A very small way. Your overtures are sweet, Mary-Margaret.

Much better than what you see down on The Block. Honest and natural. It's hard to believe how contrived sexuality can become in the name of doing what comes naturally. Honestly, if they had just two naked bodies and nothing else, they'd be bored to tears in thirty seconds.”

“Oh. You're not going to go on and extrapolate further, are you?”

“Nah. I've already said too much. But here's the thing. Being on the other end of the sex business, the supplying end, I've seen a lot.”

“I know,” I whispered.
I don't want to know
, my heart wailed.

“People keep thinking if they have one more thrill, one experience further down the road, take even greater chances, they'll find it.”

“What's
it
?”

He shrugged. “I guess it's different things for different people.” He set the pot in the middle of the table.

“You know what I have to say to that, Jude.”

“I'd agree with you if I didn't see the Church as providing the same service as I did.”

“How can you say that?!”

He took the sugar bowl off the counter. “People going in and out of church don't look any happier than the people going in and out of the clubs.”

“But the Church is nothing without Jesus. Do you see him like someone plying the sex trade?”

“No. I wouldn't go that far.”

“You can't confuse Christ with his institution on earth. The Church is temporary, you know.”

“Then why are you so devoted to it?”

“Because, as imperfect as it is, it's all we've got. I've always been content there. Yes, it's had its share of scoundrels to be sure, but the Holy Spirit always seems to correct things.”

“Like the Crusades?”

For some reason, I never flinched at those accusations.

“Exactly! Christ loved his Church too much to let it keep doing those things!”

Like the sex scandals nowadays.

“You're a
weird bird, Mary-Margaret. A weird bird with very beautiful breasts. I like the way you're sitting.”

I sat back against the rungs of the chair. “You're a pill.”

“I'm more than flattered. I've always wanted you, you know that. I'm wishing I could take you up on your offer.”

“I didn't offer anything,” I whispered, thinking of the disease quietly attaching itself, mostly likely, to his liver and internal organs, and even his brain.
Dear Jesus, help me not to want
him. It just wouldn't be good.

“You're right.” He spooned some sugar into my cup and stirred it for me, his breath brushing my cheek. “I've been trained to act on the signs. Assigned some sort of motive on your part.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.”

He fixed his own tea, which basically meant pouring it into his cup. “I want to tell you what's happened to me over the years, Mary-Margaret. Everything that I can remember.”

“Are you sure?” My mouth dropped open so far, I was surprised my lower lip didn't end up in my teacup. Was
I
sure was the better question. Certainly it was better just guessing how he'd lived, wasn't it? Certainly I knew the basics. Wasn't that enough?

I remembered something I read in a Church history class in college about the early Church. Confession, at the beginning, was done before the entire congregation. Imagine! That would keep you from doing a lot, wouldn't it? (At least if you had the fear of God in you, it would.) Right then, in that little kitchen, with tea and blowing curtains, and the old folks still murmuring next door, with plans for an unpredictable future stemming from an impossible request for obedience, I knew Jude Keller needed to confess his sins.

We all do. It's like cauterizing a wound. It hurts like the devil but feels like you emerged from his pit of despair afterwards.

As he began, I saw Jesus sitting in a chair in the living room, his face toward me, nodding. The High Priest came to hear it firsthand and he would offer absolution. I'd lived twenty-two years with Christ visiting me from time to time, but this time was different, this time his grace glowed with such clarity I wondered if somehow he'd taken our little place to the gates of heaven itself. If I turned to the window, would I see deep space and not the light whirling around at Bethlehem Point Light?

Then Mr. Plumber next door (I'd found out their names) said, “Myra, I've got a terrible case of gas tonight!”

And Jude, Jesus, and I laughed.

“Perfect timing,” I said. “Go ahead, Jude. Do you want to go sit where it's comfortable?”

“Okay.” We picked up our teacups and sat on the couch. Jesus stayed in his chair.

“Would you like me to close my eyes?”

“Okay. Actually, that might make it a little easier. Where do I begin?”

“Wherever you'd like.”

The words that came out of his mouth I never expected. “My mother began fondling me when I was four. At least that's the earliest I can remember it.”

“Oh, Jude!”

“Close your eyes, Mary-Margaret. Please. I've never told a soul that.” He paused and took my hand. I felt the warmth of his skin in the darkness of my closed eyes and I tried to relay my feelings through the contact. “Hate killed my heart except for one place, the place I saw a little redheaded girl on shore from the time I was five years old and she was three, sitting with her aunt under that tree.”

Jesus pulled up a chair beside me, one I couldn't see, and I felt his hand on my shoulder, and I felt it shake as he cried. If only Jude could have seen who had been weeping with him all along.

“Why did you move with her from the lighthouse?”

“Because my father made me. He said it wasn't right for her to go there alone. I was her son. She was my mother. Children needed to be with their mother.”

“Did he know?” I opened my eyes again.

“I'd hinted, but he never took the bait. He wanted to pretend we were okay, that nothing bad infested our life there on that lighthouse.”

“No wonder you hated him,” I whispered.

“Now you know.”

“It's so awful. I always thought she was so nice. Wild, surely, but a good person deep down. I'm sorry I didn't see it, Jude.”

“Oh, Mary-Margaret.” He squeezed my hand, making me a conduit between him and Jesus. “I'm surprised you know what fondling is!” He laughed. I didn't. “Well, anyway, so there were those things I did with her. I thought I was partly to blame because I could . . . perform. Because my body . . .”

The picture of them pushed its way into my brain and I pinched my eyes shut against the image. “I'm so sorry,” I whispered.

“My mom relied on me emotionally too. Called me the ‘man of the house' and treated me like a husband and like a slave too. And this d--- island . . . I felt so powerless. So when I got older, I was already well versed and I realized I finally felt in control when I was with those girls. In high school and all. And then later, on The Block, it was completely on my own terms.”

“You don't have to go on.”

“Yes, I do. Brister's ideas about what makes a man a man, along with my mom, made sex a little less valuable than you've always made it out to be.”

He moistened his mouth with a sip of tea and continued, so much of his sexual precociousness making terrible sense now.

“I truly lost my virginity, my intercourse virginity, I guess you could say, when I was thirteen.”

“With your mother?”

He nodded. “If I had wanted revenge, I wouldn't have had to lift a finger once we moved in with Brister. The anger at my mother went so deep, when Brister started hitting her, I didn't do anything to stop it.

“One slap and she'd snap to,” Jude said, shaking his head. “I've always felt guilty about not stepping in.”

“Really?” I found I couldn't feel an ounce of sympathy all of a sudden. At least Jesus was there to do that for the both of us.

Yes, T—, I am. You see, Petra has a story too. And it breaks my heart as much
as Jude's. She was the sweetest little girl long ago. Her uncle, you see . . .

Jude blew through his junior high and high school foibles, all, as far as I was concerned, understandable considering what had been going on at home.

He stood up and rinsed out his teacup. “I think getting through my high school years is enough. Maybe we can continue the rest tomorrow.”

I had to agree with him on that one. Already we were up to seven partners.

“Mary-Margaret, are you sure you can handle this?”

Jesus squeezed my shoulder again and whispered. “Yes, you can.”

“Yes.”

He leaned over, kissed my cheek, a quick, brotherly peck, grabbed his jacket, and headed out the door. “'Night.”

I walked into the arms of my Friend and cried as if I could fill the bay to overflowing. He cried with me, his tears soaking into my skin, holy water, blessing what I was about to do.

“You must love him, T—. Completely.”

“Physically?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“You are his bride, he is your bridegroom.
You must be infused with him to be in true union.”

I looked up into his eyes. They were kind and filled with more love than I can possibly tell you. Oh, we mortals try to describe the infinite, but we can't.

“There is nothing to fear,” he said. Then he kissed the top of my head and left.

I just checked my watch. John should be here in about an hour or so, so there's plenty more time to write. Jotting this down has brought back such a flood of feeling I'm surprised it's not sweeping all the luggage away here in baggage claim. Nowadays, we're well aware of sexual abuse, but back then we didn't even have a name for it, other than incest, which almost sounds consensual. And then as now, male victims were more likely not to tell a soul. But my sisters, what I want you to know is that Jesus truly means it when he says not to fear. The syphilis was just one of many of Jude's ills, and yet he stood with me the entire time.

There's so much I'd like to convey to you with this story, but perhaps it would be best to simply let you draw your own conclusions, to let God speak as he will. Feel free to be the judge of me when you've turned the last page.

The next day, as Jude collected me from the art barn, figuring we'd be in for more confession, I suggested we do something different. “Let's go by the Tastee Freeze and get a couple of ham­burgers and have a picnic.”

So we sauntered together down Main Street toward the burger joint. I threaded my arm through his, held my head high because the most handsome man the island had ever produced escorted me down the sidewalk, and even though nobody understood why I cast my lot with his, it didn't matter. He loved me and I loved him in return. I didn't understand why or how, but as we sat out on the docks eating hamburgers near Brister's boat, our feet dangling over the water, each word of confession he spoke I took into myself, covering it with my own innocence, drowning it in my own inexperience, until all he had done, or at least could remember he had done, had gasped its last breath inside my heart.