“Save yourself,” she whispered, and looked up.
Cecilia searched the south side of the sky in vain for some sign of Sebastian. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. It was almost impossible to focus on her music. She searched for his smile in a rainbow, his face in a cloud formation. It was unlike her. It was uncool. Desperate, even. Like a girl sitting by the phone, waiting for a guy to call, a call that might never come. Oyo said that others saw him everywhere, but Cecilia could only see him when she closed her eyes. Lately, it was so intense, only causing her frustration to grow. She began mumbling to herself, fighting back the rage that was slowly building inside of her.
“What do you want from me?” she erupted, fist clenched in frustration. “Tell me, goddamnit!”
A sudden loud smack startled her, but Cecilia didn’t flinch. The windowpane was breaking before her as if in slow motion. It cracked but didn’t shatter.
“Nice ass, bitch!” She heard one of the teenage boys scream out from the lot across the street, still wielding a piece of brick in his hand. “For a saint, that is.”
Cecilia looked down at him impassively as he laughed.
Still thinking intensely of Sebastian, she suddenly began to feel woozy. Light as a feather. She looked down at her feet and felt herself lift up off the floor. She was petrified.
“Sebastian,” she called out.
The boy dropped the stone and frantically motioned for his posse to leave. Their mouths fell wide open at the sight of the levitating girl in the window. They turned white as ghosts and ran backward, afraid to take their eyes off her as the “leader’s” pants turned soaking wet with urine.
She hovered a few inches above the floor in the bay window, knowing that it was Sebastian who’d lifted her up. Lifted her when she needed it most.
“You’re here,” she whispered. She was comforted as if he were right there, holding her. “Inside.”
The boys turned the corner and Cecilia glided gently to the floor.
“I miss you,” she said.
She paused for a moment, closed her eyes, and took it all in, gathering herself before returning to her six-string. She tore a piece of paper from her spiral songwriter’s notebook and began to make something she hadn’t made in a while. A set list.
3 Martha burst into Agnes’s bedroom and pulled back the vintage lace curtains. “Well?” she fumed, hands on hips.
“Well what?” Agnes groaned, still groggy, squinting her eyes to make out her mother’s form in the sunlight.
“Are you coming?”
“Where?”
“To church,” Martha shouted, buttoning her new blouse and tossing on her jacket. “It’s Easter, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Agnes exhaled, considering it. “I don’t think so, Mother.”
“You don’t think so?” Martha queried. “What will people think if you don’t come?”
“Honestly, who cares? Besides, I didn’t buy a bonnet this year.”
“Don’t be disrespectful to me, or to God for that matter.”
“To God? Seriously?”
“It’s a mortal sin, Agnes.”
“What is? Me or not going to church?”
“You had no problem going to church when that guy was in it,” Martha said. “Guess you’ll do anything for a boy, even go to church!”
“I’m not boy crazy, Mother.”
“Your old enough now to do what you want. Your soul is your own responsibility.”
“Right. Let’s keep it that way.”
“Oh forgive me, I forgot Saint Agnes, ” Martha said snidely, clasping her hands. “You’re too busy being blasphemous.”
“You know all about blasphemy!” Agnes was pissed. She popped out of bed. “Going to church for all the wrong reasons. The same way you live your life!”
“You have no idea what my reasons are. You’re just a little girl, holed up in her room, pining for some guy she’ll never see again.”
“My father?”
“That’s it, Agnes,” her mother said. “Get dressed, you’re going to church!”
“You know what happened the last time I went. Ash Wednesday. The nasty stares from the ushers and whispers from the blue-haired ladies in the pews. That uptight deacon who is always cheating on his wife even refused to give me communion. Hypocrites. All of them!”
“He didn’t refuse to give you communion. That’s so dramatic. He was probably star struck or something.”
“Oh please. If not for that visiting priest from Kenya, I’d still be standing there.”
“I need to put on my makeup and get out the door if I want a seat. The church will be packed, whether you come or not.”
“Hey, maybe I can score you a better seat? Do they have Saint Seating, a whole Saint Section, Mother?’ Agnes shouted, trying to get under her mom’s skin. “Make up your mind! Am I a saint or a sinner?”
“Do you think it’s easy to be mocked because of who your daughter is, or who she’s pretending to be? Do you think for one second showing up with you in church, with you anywhere, is easy? I’m worried for your immortal soul, Agnes.”
“You don’t believe me. You don’t believe any of it, do you?”
“I believe that you should go to church.”
“What do you believe about me?”
“I believe you are my daughter, though lately I’m not so sure you weren’t taken over by something or someone in that church,” Martha answered, almost breaking down.
“You think I’m brainwashed?”
“I really don’t know anymore,” Martha spit, and slammed the door behind her.
Martha’s skepticism, mostly unspoken until now, hit Agnes harder than she would have thought, exposing doubts she herself had been harboring.
“When you figure it out,” Agnes murmured to herself, “be sure to let me know.”
Agnes exhaled and fell back onto her bed, transfixed by the rays of morning sunlight blazing through her window, warming the room. Birds were chirping, blossoms on the trees in her yard beginning once again to bloom. Stressed out and shaky from the blowout argument, she reached for the tablet next to her and noticed an alert from a local club flashing on her screen.
JOIN US FOR THE MOST UNBELIEVABLE COMEBACK
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“She’s doing a show?” Agnes muttered out loud to herself. She was stunned. “Now that’s an Easter service I won’t miss. I need to see her.”
The front-door buzzer got her attention, as did her mom’s shouts from the hallway bathroom.
“Agnes! Get the door!”
Agnes didn’t budge. She was glued to her tablet, searching for ticket details, and in no hurry to get back into it with Martha.
“Agnes!” Martha shouted again. “The door!”
She lifted her bedroom window shade slightly and eyed the small crowd loitering, as usual, near the front of her home. One of them must have gotten the nerve to ring. “She’s got to be kidding.”
Most of Agnes’s followers were especially respectful of her and her privacy. If anything, they’d become a kind of community watch, looking out for her. They gathered in front of the Fremont home, left gifts on the sidewalk or on the stoop, but never, until now, had one of them come to the door. Cops, reporters, family, neighbors all knew to call or e-mail first. Martha knew this. In fact, it had been her rule, which made Martha’s end of my rope bitching seem more authentic to Agnes than usual.
“Christ, are your legs broken?” Martha groused, heading for the front door.
“No, are you blind?” Agnes sniped. “You see those people outside, don’t you?”
Martha rolled her eyes and reached for the knob. “Yes, I see them. I always see them.”
“I can’t just get the door.”
“Nothing’s happened Agnes. No threats. No attacks. You make it back and forth to school every day. If someo
ne was out to hurt you, they would have done it already.”
“I honestly think you’re trying to get rid of me, Mother.” Agnes’s tone suggested she was only half kidding.
“I don’t want to feed into this paranoia any longer.”
“You mean you don’t want to be inconvenienced any longer.”
Exactly what Agnes had hoped to avoid was now on deck. The resumption of hostilities.
“They never come to the house,” Martha huffed. “I would have thought you’d show a little more grace under the circumstances.”
“The circumstances,” Agnes mumbled once more. “Here we go again.”
She bristled at her mom taking a cheap shot. Of course, it was her fault, all this saint stuff, and now she was complaining. Something else to blame her for.
“What would you know about grace,” Agnes said, fuming as Martha answered the door.
“Can I help you?” Martha said uncharacteristically sweetly, the surprise in her voice making Agnes wonder who had darkened their doorstep.
Agnes’s curiosity got the best of her and she joined her mother in the doorway. Facing her was a young boy, small boned with dark hair, eyes, and complexion, holding a gift. He looked at Agnes in disbelief, like someone would look at a famous celebrity, and held a small box out to her.
“For you,” he said.
Agnes took the cardboard box with the cellophane window. “Chocolate?”
“For you,” he repeated, like someone who didn’t speak English very well.
It was an Easter chocolate molded in the shape of a lamb.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “But why?”
“Jude tell me. He tell me to bring you.”
“Bring me where?”
“To my house. My grandmother. She sick.”
“How do you know Jude?” Agnes asked, kneeling and taking the boy’s hands in hers.
“He live with us.”
Agnes reached behind the door for her wool shawl and brought it over her shoulders. Martha grabbed her arm tightly. Her lips were pursed in anger, and fear.
“You are not going to some stranger’s house!” Martha commanded.
Agnes stopped; she heard a voice in her head, clear as a bell. It was his voice, Sebastian’s. Go to her.
“You don’t know if this boy is telling the truth,” Martha said.
“Yes, I do,” Agnes said.
“You won’t go with me to Easter mass but you’ll leave with a total stranger?” Martha shouted.
Agnes bounded down the brownstone steps and onto the sidewalk. Turning back, she touched her heart and blew Martha a kiss.
The small crowd that had gathered in front of her house and across the street parted silently as she walked with the boy. She nodded to them in thanks.
“What’s your name?” Agnes asked him after a while.
“Manny. Manuel.”
Church bells rang from every block, heralding Easter as they walked down Union Street past Fourth Avenue, past Third Avenue, over the Carroll Street bridge. The boy couldn’t help but stare in awe at Agnes—her brassy auburn hair against the moss-colored water of the Gowanus actually made it look far less toxic and way more fantastical. The farther they went, the tighter the boy’s grasp became, until they reached the drawbridge between Nevins and Bond streets, where it became vise-like.
“Are you afraid of something?” she asked.
He shook his head no, but his eyes, open big and wide, gave him away. He pointed at a large double-width townhouse at the end the canal, right before the projects.
“It’s a bad place,” Manuel said.
Agnes looked at the building. It was well kept and appeared to have been recently renovated, from the construction permits still taped to the windows. In fact, it was city owned and operated, according to the signage. A health care facility of some kind.
“Let’s keep walking,” she said, smiling. “Take me to your home.”
They continued down Union to Henry Street, deep into Carroll Gardens, and stopped at a small home in obvious disrepair. It was dated, and not in a good way. An eyesore in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. There was, however, an Easter decoration in the yard—a large wooden crucifix with a deep purple scarf draped over it.
The door opened as Agnes and Manuel turned up the front walkway. Another child’s face was visible behind the tattered screen of the storm door.
There he was. Standing there, looking at her with his dark black eyes.
“Jude,” Agnes gasped.
The boy ran out to greet her, grabbing her at the waist and holding her tight. She brushed the hair away from his face and kissed his forehead.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” Agnes said, looking him in the eyes.
Jude made a Y-shape with the thumb and pinky of his right hand and positioned each digit so that one was pointing at Agnes, the other back at himself.
“Same,” Agnes said, recognizing the word in sign language.
Jude nodded and smiled.
Manuel and Jude each took one of Agnes’s hands and led her inside.
The home was as modest as the exterior signaled it would be. Outside a room near the end of the hallway a family kept vigil. Agnes and the boys approached, and the man and woman stood and bowed their heads.
“This is my mother and father,” Manuel explained.
The couple smiled at her, the gratitude in their eyes unmistakable, and ushered her into a small bedroom where a woman lay motionless. She moaned in agony. Agnes approached her without hesitation.
“Her name is Teresa,” the woman said.
“Please have mercy on me!” the woman called out in tremendous pain. The family was trying whatever they could to ease her suffering, but nothing was helping her. A vaporizer on a mahogany dresser was pointed to her face, candles were lit, serene music played, and she was dressed in a soft flannel nightgown. The woman was emaciated and frail, her eyes yellowed and sunken, lips cracked and cheeks hollowed by illness and time. Family portraits and photographs of memorable occasions crowded her nightstand, telling the story of a woman much loved and a life well lived. Beside them, bottles of prescription pills, religious statues, lotions, and holy water. The woman held tight to a rosary with clear crystal beads.
At the foot of the bed was an old carved wooden case. It was open. Rows of small wooden crucifixes and miniature bottles of what looked to be holy water beckoned her.
The woman gasped for air.
Slowly and with great effort, Teresa turned her head toward Agnes and gestured for her to come closer. The woman was praying. Agnes recognized it as a portion of the prayer to Saint Agnes.
“Saint Agnes, you refused to give up your faith; help us to be proud of our faith, to love it, to be strong in it, and to give witness to it daily.”
The smell of roses cut through the menthol mist and filled Agnes’s nostrils like they had in the sacristy of Precious Blood, but there were no flowers or vases on display in the room, or anywhere.
“Help me,” the woman pleaded in pain. “Have mercy on me.”
Agnes stepped closer to the bed and knelt at the side of it.
Teresa’s lips were parched, cracking from the lack of saliva. Her hands and feet were starting to mottle. But, still, she would not go. “Please,” she continued.
Agnes stood and left the room without a word. Overwhelmed.
“She’s dying,” Agnes said to the couple standing there.
“Yes,” the man agreed. “We keep telling her it’s okay to go, but she’s still hanging on. Suffering.”
“Can’t they do anything?” Agnes ordered. “She needs medical help.”
“Her body is beyond care, but not her soul,” the man said. “You are what she needs now.”
“I can’t help her. I’m so sorry,” Agnes said, feeling like a fraud in front of the desperate woman and her family. She began to panic. Doubt flooding her mind. “I’m just a girl. A teenager. I don’t know what to do.”
“She is tor
mented,” he said. “As if there is an evil inside that will not let her die.”
“You don’t understand. I don’t know what to do.”
“This kit has been passed down to us through generations; in the right hands these things can help to drive out demons.”
Agnes swallowed hard.
“I’m not an exorcist,” she said trying to keep calm in the face of such a request. “I don’t have any such authority.”
“Do whatever you think you should do,” the man answered, gesturing to the open wooden case. “It will be enough.”
The man mouthed the words, but it was Sebastian’s voice she heard. Agnes bowed her head and closed her eyes. She was transported back to the sacristy at Precious Blood. Sebastian gently cleansing her wounds with water filled with rose petals and fragrant oils, then dressing her wrists delicately with bandages. She had felt cared for, comforted, and loved.
Jude looked at her, eyes fixed on hers as if he were trying to encourage her, communicate with her nonverbally.
Agnes looked at the old woman and asked Jude for a bowl of warm water and a soft cloth.
“I will only take what I need,” Agnes said, echoing Sebastian’s words, before heading out into the hallway to look around. She took some white petals with magenta tips off of an orchid and put them in the water. Then she added a few drops of lavender oil from a small bottle on the dresser and returned to the old woman’s room.
“Do not be afraid,” Agnes said softly in the woman’s ear. Her lips morphed into a trembling smile as Agnes put some water to wet her lips, and her eyes lit up as she reached for Agnes and took hold, not of the girl’s fingers, but of the chaplet dangling from her wrist. One by one, the woman fingered the bone beads with great effort, whispering prayers on each, a look of peace coming over her as she progressed along the bracelet.
“Let us gain courage for our own battle by honoring the martyrdom of the glorious virgin Agnes. Saint Agnes, vessel of honor, flower of unfading fragrance, beloved of the choirs of Angels, you are an example to the worth of virtue and chastity. O you who wear a Martyr’s palm and a virgin’s wreath, pray for us that, though unworthy of a special crown, we may have our names written in the list of Saints.”
Agnes stroked Teresa’s white hair and fevered forehead gently until she completed her prayers. The woman mustered all the strength she had left and pulled Agnes’s arm, sat up, and kissed the heart-shaped milagro dangling from the chaplet. Then she fell back onto her pillow.