Will You Walk With Me?

It hasn’t been the best summer.

August would have been just fine, if it hadn’t been for June and July. For the first time in my life I was almost breaking even before June; I needed about again as many writing projects as I was doing, new writing work anywhere I could get it, and then I’d not be worried and could be happy, but I was managing pretty well anyway. But then I had the two months of colitis tearing up my stomach, with all the pain and exhaustion, and that lemon of a car I’d naively named Serendipity died completely and I’d been months without my stims that make me able to write productively. The tiny little foundation of stability I’d been building since about December washed away like the house built on the sand. I’d barely paid off  July fifteenth’s rent by borrowing from a friend when August was late, and the only reason August fifteenth hadn’t overdrawn the checking account by hundreds was that my landlord was out of the country and the check was on his desk waiting for him to get back and overdraw it any day. Now September was due on the fifteenth and I didn’t know if I dared be late again, but I didn’t have it. And there were more bills due at the same time. And Adrienne’s birthday coming up, and I was so far in the hole I was on the verge of panic. And all I wanted to do was go for a hike in the woods to calm my nerves, but I couldn’t because Serendipity was a pile of junk whose total price in parts wouldn’t quite break me even for rent, if I could find anybody to scrap her. Adrienne was happy at school. I was learning to be happy with Adrienne and the neighborhood children. And now I was stuck again and had absolutely no clear way of digging out.

And it was Sunday, and I hadn’t been to church more than one time in months. I’d tried letting Jimmy the Mechanic give me a ride in the Dodge, but I’d discovered that my religious trauma freezes me in a blind panic if I get dropped off at Mass by somebody else. I can’t do it. I feel safe and a little more bold if I can drive there myself, and have the car to retreat to and pray facing the building if anything goes wrong. But I can’t be helpless at somebody else’s mercy for a ride to Mass, or the panic gets so bad that I’m sick for the rest of the day.

And it was the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, and I’m terrified of the Virgin Mary.

I kept thinking of my nightmare where the Virgin Mary was turning over cars. The one where I barely got the deadbolt thrown before she came bursting in the door to wreak havoc.

Still, I felt guilty not praying at all on a Sunday.

I decided to pray as I went on a walk in the neighborhood.

I went outside that evening as the sun was getting low, and I started to walk, and I tried to pray.

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” I prayed rapid fire like my grandmother used to. She was a stereotypical Irish-American Catholic right out of central casting, and she said the Rosary quickly like stereotypical Irish Catholics do. Once she exclaimed “We must have said a hundred Rosaries today!” after a pilgrimage. My father joked that it probably took her an hour. But I wasn’t blurting out an Ave rapid fire because I’m Irish. I was doing it because I was afraid. I wanted to get the painful words over with and not panic.

If the Virgin Mary is anyone worth my time, would she want me to say a prayer that made me panic?

I pictured the Virgin of Nazareth standing next to me, a brown-skinned Middle Eastern Jewish woman, about my age. She was glaring at me– no, she wasn’t. I forced myself to imagine her with her head turned to the side, so I couldn’t see her face.

“If you are what I fear, stay away from me. But if you are nice, not ‘Catholic’ nice, but REALLY nice, will you walk with me?”

We walked together.

There are two parts to LaBelle: the poor “Bad Part,” and the well-to-do “Good Part.”  My own street is right on the cusp of the Bad Part; the next block up is where the houses cost six figures, and the next block down is where the homeless people squat in derelicts and the shootings sometimes happen. The Good Part has beautifully manicured gardens, and the Bad Part has vacant lots with glorious wildflowers. The Lady of LaBelle lives in the Bad Part with the Baker Street Irregulars. Tink’s Wall is there, though somebody bought it and is trying to remodel the building. The Lost Girl used to live there as well, though she’s homeless again now. The Good part used to be where Father Scanlan’s cult was headquartered, but they’re not anymore. Still, it’s mostly the Catholics associated with the university who live there.

Neither the Good Part nor the Bad Part are very safe at night, but it wasn’t nearly night yet, just early evening.

The Virgin Mary and I walked down towards the Bad Part, to admire the Queen Anne’s Lace.

There wasn’t a sign that it was September, except that it was only very warm instead of stifling hot out. The sky was bright. The trees were all still green. Jimmy the Mechanic’s porch was decorated with a great big purple spiderweb from the dollar store, instead of Hawaiian Luau decorations from the dollar store, or I might have thought it was still August. The main streets were lined with sickly grass from the drought, and the side streets were overgrown with hibiscus which is also called Rose-of-Sharon.

I started talking to the Rose of Sharon, the Virgin Mary.

“Are you really what they said you were? Are you some scary tyrant who chooses children to be your victim souls and then ruins our lives so we can offer it up for other people’s salvation? Because I never, ever, ever want you to do that to me again. And I’d rather be dead and in hell than come to you in trust and have you ruin my life with such a toxic abusive sect of Catholicism again. I will never, ever, ever offer it up to you again. I don’t want my pain to be profitable to you. I just want you to leave me alone. But if you’re not who they said you were, if all of this is an accident and you’re appalled by what happened to me, you can walk with me.”

The Queen Anne’s lace was waist high in some of those vacant lots, and so was the blue chicory. There were walking trails worn cattawampus across the middle of the lots, where people took shortcuts to get through the market, but I didn’t dare follow them. It would be too easy to catch a tick there, or annoy a stray cat.

Mary and I walked around near Tink’s Wall and up close to where the fire was, but it’s just a vacant lot with more weeds now.  Then I turned and went west, towards the Good Part of LaBelle. Up past that Protestant church where the rape apparently happened, which is under new management now. I know the name written on the kiosk is actually a Greek word that sounds like “Ah-gah-pay,” but it looks like “agape,” and makes me think that everyone who goes into the church is struck with awe, and stands there with their mouth wide open. The grassy place by the church is where Adrienne and I used to fly kites when she was little. Thinking of that made me sad.

“All I wanted was to be a holy housewife and homeschool my children, but then it all went wrong,” I told the Virgin Mary.

We walked down under that tree I call “The Widowmaker.” It died years ago, but whoever owns the house never cut it down. One day it will drop a branch and flatten a car or kill someone. And it’s hard t o walk beside it because the vacant lot nearby is all thistles that stick to your ankles.

“I feel like I’m going to sick and have to go to the hospital if I can’t go hiking and swimming again. They’re the only medicine that helps my PTSD. They’re the only way I can pray. Did you steal them so I could offer it up, or was this all a stupid accident?”

We crossed over the side street that divides the Bad Part from the Good Part, and then I was surrounded by gardens instead of wildflowers. The people in the Good Part have so many beautiful rose bushes, and they were all still bright with blossoms in the lingering summer.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us, sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen!”

It wasn’t me praying that time. It was a procession of neighbors who live in the Good Part. They often get together and say a walking Rosary in the evenings on important feasts. I’m sure they’d all been to Mass together earlier and not felt the cold grip of a panic attack either. There were several lay people and a few priests, besides an acolyte in a white cassock.

I tried to stare at the sidewalk as they approached and skimmed by me, still praying.

I feel like a being from another planet when I’m around other Catholics.

Next thing I knew I was cringing from lawn ornaments. The Catholics in the Good Part of LaBelle have plaster statues of the Virgin Mary and Saint Francis in among the rose bushes. They are those commonplace statues of Our Lady of Grace with her arms out at her sides like she’s pretending to be an airplane.  I still recoil a little, sometimes, when I see an image of the Virgin Mary. I’m afraid she’s going to slap me with one of those plaster hands.

The Virgin Mary in my mind’s eye was still walking next to me, turned sideways so I couldn’t see her face.

“Do you know what they did to me? Do you know what it’s like? Everyone who hurt me, hurt me in your name. I was a Charismatic and I didn’t know the Charismatic Renewal was a cult. I got deliverance prayer from a cult leader and he groomed me and kissed me and I can’t stop thinking about that. We were told we should throw everything away and follow Jesus, and be your slave, stick chains on our wrists and let you send us terrible pain, always choose the path that hurt the most, obey even when it didn’t make any sense, and it would all be worth it because God would provide. But you and God left me here.”

She did not answer.

I rounded the bend and walked out past that place the great big field where the deer come out of the woods at night, past the mulberry trees where nobody harvests mulberries but lets them drop messy to the ground, past the place that used to be a school. Then back around past Jimmy’s house, to my house on the block which is neither in the Good Part or the Bad Part.

Maybe the Virgin Mary was looking at me– not with that glare I’d imagined at first, but with compassion and understanding. Maybe she was sad for me. Maybe she was angry, but not at me.

Maybe I looked right back at her, in my mind’s eye.

“If you are good, you can come in, but you can’t come in if you’re bad. If you are really good– not Catholic good, not passive aggressive and blessing me with pain and suffering, but actually generous and kind, you can come in. If you are justice and casting down the mighty, you can come in. But if you’re bad, if you want to hurt me, you have to stay out.”

And maybe the Mother of God came in with me, on her birthday.

Anyway, that’s what I thought of on my walk last weekend.

And we’ll see where we go from here.