The Passion of Mary-Margaret Read online

  That morning, a breeze, soft and filled with the scent of a waning summer, that blend of late flowers blooming and leaves just beginning to decay, caught my hair and fluttered our nightclothes. I thought of Jude who would have been furious over the happenings of the night and I wondered what fires he was quenching, or rather whose.

  “Look! There’s that negro boy with that papist!”

  He didn’t say negro, sisters. I simply can’t bring myself to write the word he did say.

  The words barely registered before a rope banded my arms to my sides and lifted me onto a horse.

  A horse! In 1958! Yes, sisters. The whole thing felt a bit medieval. And not in the fairy princess, knight-in-shining-armor fashion either.

  Those Klansmen sure went nuts that morning after the fire.

  The rider threw me down from the horse and into a patch of muddied ground back in the woods, the earth itself reaching into the fibers of my nightgown. And it was so hot and humid, that summer thickness rendering difficult my breathing.

  The kicking began, their hard shoes slamming against my ribs, my buttocks, my thighs. I tried to cover my head with my hands and arms; I curled myself into the smallest ball I could. I suppose it didn’t last long, but time slowed and each kick took minutes.

  Finally someone lifted me to my feet and in a red flash, something hard made contact with my face. I still don’t know whether it was a fist or a bat or a pipe. I crumbled completely, the rage of agony filling my face in a crimson flash.

  Two men, mocking me for all I held dear, dragged me to a tree and secured me to its trunk, the rope biting into my arms as mosquitoes bit into my legs. Each insult I endured because, you see, what they didn’t know was that Jesus held me while they cursed me, and he wept and moaned with me, tenderly kissing my brow and whispering, “I’m sorry, T—. I’m so sorry. Would I could keep you from this.”

  Why can’t you?

  “Their sin hasn’t yet reached its fulfillment. But it will. My Father and your Father will not let this go on forever. Their days are dwindling.”

  One is the pastor down the street.

  “Yes. He does this in my name if you can believe that. He believes himself one of mine because he prayed a prayer when he was ten. He believes he can do whatever he wants because of that, and that whatever he wants is what I want.”

  Many shall say unto me, Lord, Lord . . .

  “Yes, my dear. That’s exactly what I was talking about.” He talked with me, keeping my mind off what was happening.

  Please don’t let them . . . rape me. Please, Lord.

  And I saw a man coming toward me, good-looking in that raw-boned way, the left side of his face glowing in the torchlight, the right side barely lit from the as-yet-unrisen sun. He reached for his belt, flipped the tail through the buckle, and went for the button at the top of his pants.

  “Oh, please, Jesus, no.”

  I felt the Lord’s arms go around me, and I cried and cried as the chief of police approached. There would be no recourse. He would force himself upon me and would walk away with no punishment. Who would believe me?

  He unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down past his hips as someone began loosening my ropes behind the tree, and he laughed and stroked my cheek. “The little sister finally gets what she’s always wanted but thought she’d never have.”

  Physically ready and exposed, he snapped at whoever was behind the tree. “Hurry up!”

  I shut my eyes and turned my face into Jesus’s shoulder.

  “Watch now, T—.”

  He breathed in, then blew out and that quickly the sky filled with clouds, thunder barreled down the heavy air, fire filled the heavens, and a driving hail pelted the scene, hail so large and thick the men ran, holding their arms over their heads, shrieking and hollering like children, leaving me tied to the tree, the great icy stones pelting me on my head, my shoulders, my feet.

  The chief of police yanked up his trousers as he ran, and I couldn’t help hoping his zipper did a number on him.

  I feel nothing. Each hailstone just bounced off me like a piece of fluff. Maybe I was numb from the beating, but I began to laugh with joy.

  “You won’t even have so much as a bruise in the morning, my dear. At least not by my hail. Your face, I’m sorry to say, will need a great deal of attention. Get to the hospital in Valdosta as quickly as you can. Ask for Doctor Flowers.”

  By the time the sun rose over Bainbridge that same morning, by the time Morpheus found me tied to a tree downriver, by the time he cut me loose with his pocketknife and carried me through the woods to an old home overgrown with vines that he’d found on one of his treks to cut down saplings, I was almost unrecognizable, my right cheekbone was smashed in and my eyes were swollen shut. “Shh, shh,” he kept saying, his whisper tortured and melancholy. “Oh, Lord. Oh, Lord, have mercy. Let’s get you away from here, Sister Mary-Margaret. You just hang on.”

  “I need to get to Valdosta. My face.” To this day I don’t know how he understood me.

  “Don’t you worry, Sister Mary-Margaret. I’ll run for help.”

  Did I tell you I loved Morpheus? Really and truly? My heart filled with the love of Christ and the love of a human. And my sisters, you will find, if you seek to own such a heart, God will be more than happy to give you one. Of course, don’t expect it won’t get you into trouble.

  After the plastic surgery and the general recuperation time in the hospital, I was sent by train back to the motherhouse in Baltimore to heal completely. I couldn’t draw; I couldn’t sculpt. All I could do was look at art books, go to Mass, and work in the garden. Every once in a while a musician would come and give a concert, and I’d attend, sitting in the back row, letting the sound that bounced off the plastered walls of the stone chapel seep its way into my soul, cleanse me a little more of the fear that had soaked into my psyche during the attack. I kept seeing those men, knowing they were still down there with my sisters, with Angie, and with Morpheus and all the children.

  My sisters gathered around me. Young and old and all those blessed in-betweens. They blessed me with care and loved me just as I was, so broken and frightened, and they told me that I would be fine one day, and what was more, I believed them. Not because I simply wanted to or needed to, but because Jesus told me exactly the same thing, and his word was true, at one with his utter faithfulness. How can his faithfulness include that attack? A question for the ages if there ever was one. All I know is, he is found amid suffering in a way like no place else. Why that is, I can’t say. Perhaps we’ll know one day. In the meantime, accepting it will give you one less thing to worry about because as Jesus said, “The day has enough troubles of its own.”

  WELL, IT’S A NEW DAY OF WRITING, AND I NEED TO TELL YOU more about the saga of my father while it’s fresh in my mind. As you can imagine, the times of the past are a bit more cemented than these days. And I feel more at ease filling in the missing bits, what people actually said and whatnot, when writing about the past, than I do when writing about the present. So I headed up to Mount St. Mary’s Seminary on that beautiful fall morning. I stopped and purchased a cup of coffee to sip and a pack of chocolate Donettes to nibble as I made my way east.

  Mount St. Mary’s Seminary’s main building, McSweeney, spreads its stony arms like a giant lady dressed in gray with white lace trim. She must be German because she’s as boxy as my grandmother was. I ascended the steps and located the Office of Records on the directory board near the door. Second floor.

  Okay, Jesus, if you say so.

  Not that he’s spoken a peep on this, but I figured since he wanted me out at the lighthouse, this must be tucked in his pocket of plans somewhere.

  I approached the desk and the sound of a real keyboard pounder. “Excuse me?”

  A young woman in a burgundy blouse and gray pants, brunette hair pulled back in a ponytail, looked up from her computer and ceased her clacking. “Yes?”

  A charm bracelet dangled from her slender wrist.


  Time to pull out the Catholic credentials. “I’m Sister MaryMargaret Fischer. I’m looking to find the whereabouts of a family member I lost track of years and years ago. He was a seminarian here back around 1930.”

  “Oh. That’s so long ago.” She tapped her pen on the desk, the charms jingling. A cup of cold coffee rested forgotten on her blotter, the cream coagulated into an island on the beige surface. “Anything past twenty years is down in the basement.” So be a nice lady and leave me alone. Got it?

  I’m really not what anybody would call a “sweet old lady,” but I decided that’s the direction I needed to go. “I’ve driven all the way from the Eastern Shore.”

  “Oh.” She tapped her pen again, then glanced at her wristwatch. “Hmm. Well, let’s see. It’s almost noon.”

  “I could come back around three, perhaps?”

  Leaving time for lunch and a look-see down in that basement, dearie.

  “Oh. Well . . .”

  Work with me, young lady. Hop to!

  “I’d so hate to have to go back empty-handed, Miss . . .”

  “Porter.”

  “Miss Porter. Poor Sister Angie, you know.” Indeed, she was probably nursing a gigantic headache after a nature walk with three people with canes, two walkers, and a wheelchair. Not that it had anything to do with my father.

  “Well, I guess I could go down there myself.”

  “Oh, would you?” I sucked in a little breath like I’d just been told I won the lottery. I even allowed my voice to crackle, like people do when they’re imitating someone older. I must say, my voice has held up better than I’d hoped.

  “You said you could come back at three?” She actually took a sip of that coffee.

  “Yes.”

  She sighed. “Well, all right. I’ll have it at three.” She picked up her pen. “Now what’s the name of the seminarian?”

  “Brendan Connelly.”

  “Nineteen thirty you say?”

  “Yes.”

  She wrote the information in a tight scrawl. “That should be helpful. Do you know where he was from originally?”

  I shook my head. “No. But I think Baltimore.”

  “You said you were related?”

  “Yes. A very long story.”

  “Because we can’t pull records for just—”

  “He was my father.”

  Her eyebrow raised. “Oh?”

  Thank you, Lord! Here was the angle I needed!

  I nodded and leaned forward, whispering dramatically, drawing her into my conspiracy. “And he still became a priest!”

  “Oh!”

  Standing up straight, I gathered my purse higher on my shoulder. “Is there a good place to eat around here?”

  “Main Street Grill is pretty good.”

  “That sounds like just the ticket.”

  She rubbed her chin. “This is interesting. I don’t get a request like this every day.”

  I walked out of the room hoping that little bit of intrigue would send her down to the file room in time for me to grab the info and get back to the motel before rush hour. I decided to spend the night as I hate to drive in the dark.

  The thrifty side of me won out and I ended up with a Big Mac on my plaid blanket by the playing field in front the seminary building. We don’t have a McDonald’s on Locust Island. I sipped on a Coke and read some Julian of Norwich. The sunshine heavied my eyelids, so I set my watch for 2:55, reclined back in the gilded light, and fell into a delicious sleep. I dreamed of Jesus. Only a dream, not a visit, and it was like one of those dreams after a loved one passes on in which you’re sitting with them, eating a bowl of cereal, talking, or maybe watching some television, and suddenly you look at them and say, “Well, this is nice, but you’re dead, aren’t you?” And as the realization dawns, they fade away as if only allowed to be with you as long as you don’t realize the real nature of the visit. I kept trying to bring him back as I dozed there, and sometimes he came and sometimes he didn’t. But as I said, it was just a dream.

  When my watch beeped, I gathered my bag and blanket and deposited them in the car.

  Miss Porter was ready for me with a file and she was wearing her happy face! She was all chummy, her interest clearly piqued. “Well”—she tapped the edge of the file on the palm of her hand—“we actually had a Brendan Connelly from back then, and, I have to say, Sister Mary-Margaret, you have his eyes and mouth.”

  Those words scraped through me like barbed wire being pulled through the long channel of my spine. That I had a father had always been abstract. No talk of eyes and noses, or hair, or attributes of any kind.

  “May I?” I reached out my hand.

  “Here, take the file. I made copies for you. It’s all there. You’re going to be surprised.”

  The manila paperboard felt smooth and cool, and the racing pulse in my red fingertips heated the surface right away. “Thank you, Miss Porter.”

  She shook my hand, her bracelet sounding its music. “I hope you find what you’re looking for. Most likely he’s already passed away. I mean”—she chuckled nervously—“who lives to the age of ninety-five?”

  I shrugged. “I’m actually counting on that, truth be known. I’m too old for that sort of upheaval.”

  She sat back down in her desk chair. “Did he know about you?”

  “I don’t know. I have my doubts, though.”

  “Wow. I’ve got to admit, I’m curious.”

  “Me too. I thank you for your kind service, Miss Porter.”

  “I hope it all works out.”

  She truly did. I could see it in her eyes.

  Back in the car I rifled through the pages. Brendan Connelly, born 1905 in Towson, Maryland. Parents: Etta and Niall. My grandparents.

  And there was his picture. The raping seminarian.

  He was thin-faced and handsome in a fragile way, his light eyes kind. His hair, most likely red and coarse like my own, waved back from his forehead in that Danny Kaye manner.

  I ran my fingers down his face and tried to feel something akin to affection.

  “Nothing,” I muttered.

  I had a Father in heaven already, and despite the distance I felt between us, I felt I really didn’t need one more.

  My eyes skated over the papers, grades and such—he was intelligent judging by his marks, room assignments, mostly administrative details, until I came upon an interesting little scrap—a letter to a teacher who obviously felt it worthy of putting in his file. In June of 1940.

  “You’ll most likely be surprised to learn I have become a Franciscan brother. I’ve taken on my confirmation name: Joseph.”

  The Franciscans?! The raping seminarian? A Franciscan? Well, I supposed he must have felt bad about what he did, at least. And a brother too. So he didn’t enter the priesthood after all. Or maybe he did eventually. Oh, all still such a mystery.

  “I’m now at a mission in downtown Baltimore situated just off our red-light district known as The Block. We call it Heart of the City. The folks call me Brother Joe.”

  Brother Joe? Brother Joe?

  Oh, Jesus. I could hardly believe what I was reading.

  You haven’t met Brother Joe yet, sisters, but you will. And you’ll be shocked I didn’t actually faint when I realized he was my father. Some folks would call it a great coincidence. But I stopped believing in coincidences long ago.

  He looked so different as a young man from when I met him in 1959. The kind redheaded man whom Jude adored. Jude knew this much, but he didn’t tell me it in his papers, I was sure of it. But if he had been sitting there in the car with me, I wouldn’t have had to look to see the expression on his face.

  “See, Mary-Margaret?” Jude would have said. “You just can never tell. You needed to know. And now you know why. I think somebody was lying. Either your grandmother or your mom. Can you imagine Brother Joe raping anybody? But people go nuts sometimes, right? I’ll give you that.”

  I knew how people went nuts, that was for sure.

&n
bsp; Brother Joe. I owed him more than I could say.

  I’M SITTING IN THE KITCHEN NOW WHILE MY BREAD RISES. I missed the time to plant those bulbs and now I’m going to have to wait until spring. So I’ll get back to what happened after receiving the file that day at the seminary.

  I decided to head down to The Block, where Brother Joe worked at the mission. At first I couldn’t bring myself to get out of the car; I just drove up and down the street, staring at the bouncers and the hookers and pictured Jude, overcoat wrapped around him on a cold night, collar upturned against the angle of his jaw, gold-brown curls brushing the wool. Most times I couldn’t think about what he did all those years to earn money, so much potential so thoroughly wasted in backseats and fleabag motel rooms, or high-rise office suites. It didn’t matter the location when it was someone you cared about. It wasn’t like I thought, Well, hopefully he’s servicing someone well-mannered and with good hygiene tonight. The vice wasn’t less if the venue and the players were disinfected.

  I slowed to a stop by Blaze Starr’s Two O’Clock Club and watched a variety of men trickle in and out. Men in respectable suits, young guys in jeans and polo shirts, the requisite hairy-chested, slick-shirted men who flaunted their sleezeball status unlike the respectable-looking people who fooled themselves. I wanted to pray for them, but all I could do was stare in wonderment at so many lives gone so sour and putrid they failed to smell their own stink any longer. At least Jude never fooled himself. I had to give that to him. He didn’t make excuses, didn’t act like sex-for-sale was okay if it was between consenting adults. “It’s sickening, Mary-Margaret. It’s nothing but people using each other, not one bit of romance. Don’t you think I know that? Why you still want to be my friend is a mystery to me.”

  But what Jude didn’t know then was that in comparison to God’s love and holiness, our own goodness is but a tiny shell in a sea. My shell in comparison wasn’t much bigger than Jude’s. I tried to explain it, and I think he got it eventually, but it was a long time coming, and a very long road to navigate.