I believe my dream is about my potential to do what I’m meant to do. I’m taking a series of home pregnancy tests, as if trying to figure out whether my speculations about becoming a writer might actually be true. Naturally, it takes not one, not two, but three positive test sticks to convince me, but despite that, the idea that I possess the possibility of being a writer resonates with me. And the fire. Creative fire? Baptism by fire? A hint of Joan in the fire? My “necessary fire”? Whatever it is, I conceived something in it. I’m hesitant to say it’s writing even though my soul seems to be suggesting it, even though I said as much to my mother. If I go that route and fail, then what? I need to believe I can do this, but I’m only halfway there.
Closing my journal, I looked down at my piece of chain and knew it represented anything that would keep me from realizing the potential revealed in the dream.
Inside Our Lady of Rocamadour’s chapel, I began a silent conversation with the Black Virgin. She was the first black Mary I’d ever seen. She looked ancient, and seemed to say: Don’t bother with easing into your scalding bath—just tell me. So I jumped right in and told her that since my dream, I’d felt excitement welling up, but I’d tried to temper it. I told her that I was reluctant, afraid, already worried about the disasters that would strike if I failed. Slipping to the back of the chapel, I placed my piece of chain on a rusted eye hook on the wall. By leaving it there, I was trying to move on from the self-doubt, the fear of rejection—and yes, sometimes even self-hate. I thought: why can’t this be the place I start to love myself?
Now, stepping into the cathedral at Le Puy, I’m anxious to see if the Black Virgin here is similar to the one we saw yesterday. Inside, a woman is singing, accompanied by a violin, practicing, perhaps, for a concert. Her voice echoes through the nave as Mom and I walk toward the high altar where the Madonna reigns.
The stone walls, arches, and cupolas overhead are the colors of flour and cocoa, an alternating brown and white pattern similar to the design in Spanish mosques, a welcome sight to the countless Spanish pilgrims that passed through on their way to St. James of Compostela, or so the guidebook says.
I read the Who’s Who list of visitors aloud to Mom. “King Louis IX, better known as St. Louis, Charlemagne, King Louis XI.” I stop when I come to this name: Isabelle Romée.
Six hundred years ago, she came here at the request of her daughter, Joan of Arc, who was on the brink of her mission. Joan had asked her mother to say prayers for her to the Black Virgin of Le Puy.
I lower the book, mindful of the coincidence: my prayer to Joan, the dream with the fire, then coming here with my mother only to find out Joan’s mother had been here, too.
“You won’t believe this,” I tell Mom. “Joan of Arc’s mother came here and prayed for her.”
As we move down the main aisle, I notice the violinist has placed his instrument in its case, and the singer has gathered her sheet music. It is quiet as Mom and I slide into a pew.
In front of us, three steps lead to a kneeler. The Madonna sits behind it on a raised white marble altar lit with six brass candle-sticks. She is coal-faced, wearing a gold crown inlaid with jewels and topped with a cross. Cloaked in a richly embroidered white robe, her face is the only part of her that shows. Jesus peeks out from his mother’s robe like a joey in a kangaroo pouch.
Known as the spiritual heart of Le Puy, she seems softer, more maternal, and younger than the wizened old Black Virgin of Rocamadour. As I stare at her alluring black face, I remember the scene in Mom’s novel in which the women go up to the statue of Mary and touch her heart, and I wish we could do the same thing here. I tell Mom it’s my favorite part of the novel so far, and she smiles and admits it’s one of her favorites, too. “I wanted Mary to empower Lily and the women and be like a loving mother to them,” she says.
I look at the Madonna. My feeling for her doesn’t surprise me as much as it might have, at least not after yesterday when I poured out my soul to the Black Virgin of Rocamadour. Something about her did empower me, maybe the boldness that shone through her, or the faith I found inside myself by hanging my piece of chain on her wall. I actually felt like some loving presence in the universe was bent over my life, tending it.
Sitting here before this Mary, the “spiritual heart” of the cathedral, I have that same feeling—the sense of being loved, the desire to love myself.
It does not escape my notice that Mary is becoming important to me. I tell myself that if Athena represents independence and self-belonging, and Joan of Arc a passionate sense of mission, then Mary represents the spiritual heart—my ability to love and be loved. Athena, Joan, Mary. It’s an unlikely combination, but I realize they’ve become my female triptych.
There are other people sitting nearby staring at the Black Virgin, too. I imagine them composing their prayers, all the urgent questions that must weigh on them.
I turn to Mom and whisper, “Is it crazy? Me being a writer?”
She scoots closer to me and says, “No, it’s not crazy; I think it’s great. It’s kinda always been there, hasn’t it? When you were a child, it’s what you wanted to be.”
I remember the headlines I broke in the family newspaper I wrote: Brother Rips Wiring from Dollhouse. Pound Cake Falls. Spaniel Eats Baby Robin.
“Yeah, but is it too late?” I ask. “I never studied writing in college. I dropped my grammar class.”
“I didn’t study it in college either, remember?”
I ponder this for a second. “A few articles and one dream doesn’t make me a writer. Maybe I should take a class.”
“A class is good. You can start to learn the craft. I think you have the instinct—you’ve given me good feedback on my novel.” She pauses. “Now, I can be your reader.”
“Okay, but be prepared—the stuff I write now is pretty bad.”
“I think that about my stuff, too, sometimes. I’ve been writing twenty years, and I never expect to get it right the first time. If you sit down at the piano, you can’t expect to play like Beethoven right off the bat.”
This makes sense, but I wonder about the Beethoven analogy. I think maybe Beethoven did sit down and play a masterpiece the first time. I don’t know if Mom senses how overwhelmed I am at the thought of beginning.
For a few moments, Mom and I are silent, gazing at the Black Virgin, at the people kneeling before her with their collections of questions and prayers.
“Are people going to think I’m becoming a writer because you’re a writer?” I say.
“Why would people think that?”
“I don’t know. Because that’s what can happen when kids don’t know what else to do. They join the family business.”
Mom says, “It’s not like you’re defaulting to writing. Look at the dream you had—that was all you.”
I know. It was all me. It came from the inside. Yet I remember the rule I set for myself—that I do something different from my mother. When I put the Athena ring on my finger in Greece, I promised to forge my own way and be autonomous. I started to believe I couldn’t really do that if I was following in the path of either of my parents. My love of Greek history, of all things Greek, felt like mine alone. That so-called rule helped me separate more fully from my mother and father, I realize, but maybe it also kept me from seeing what was right in front of me.
We gather our coats and walk to the kneeling bench where we settle onto our knees side by side. It’s not anything we planned or talked about, but here we are, and I’m positive this is a first. We’ve never knelt and prayed together before. I fold my hands, a motion so involuntary that in a flash I glimpse the child in me who learned how to pray. My eyes fall on the hem of the Black Virgin’s robe. Her feet are hidden beneath it, but I imagine they are dainty and black, shod in ballet slippers.
I glance over at my mother. Her eyes are closed, her fingers interlocked. I wonder what her prayers are about. Her novel? Her blood pressure? Peace on earth? The two of us praying like this to the Black Madonna suddenly w
ashes over me, and I’m filled with love for my mother. The best gift she has given me is the constancy of her belief. Whatever I become, she loves me. To her, I am enough.
I look up at Mary and concede what I am coming to know. I will become a writer.
Wandering through the cathedral, gazing at the elaborately carved capitals, I consider asking Mom what she prayed for, but I’m distracted when I spot a sculpture in the nave. Joan of Arc. An inscription says the statue commemorates her mother’s visit to the cathedral to say prayers for Joan at the feet of the Black Virgin. There’s no place for offerings or I would light a candle.
In the gift shop, Mom and I buy books about the Black Virgin of Le Puy in English and in French, which, of course, we’ll never be able to translate. We buy small pewter medals bearing her image, the same one the pilgrims once stitched onto their hats and clothes. I decide in the moment that I’ll wear mine on my wedding day along with the one I bought at Rocamadour.
As we descend the stairway, I tell Mom that since we only have two more nights in France, we should go all out on the meals. No hamburgers. Bring on the baguettes. The cheese plate. Steak au poivre. Champagne.
Then, after a few moments of wondering, I come out and ask her, “What did you pray for back there on the kneeler?”
“You,” she answers, and peels off her coat again.
Sue
Charleston, South Carolina
Given in marriage by her father, the bride wore a gown of white French organza over peau de soie. The hemline of her A-line skirt was trimmed with Alençon lace. The Empire bodice was enhanced by a sheer bertha cape, accented with seed pearls. Her cathedral-length train was adorned with lace appliques.
I read the paragraph in the yellowed newspaper clipping while waiting for Ann to come out of the alterations fitting room where she’s trying on the gown. The article, from my hometown weekly newspaper, has been tucked away in a box for the last thirty-one years, and I’m sure I have not looked at it for the last twenty-five. I’ve forgotten how earnest the wedding coverage could get in 1968 in my hometown. It goes on for half a page and even includes a passage about my “going-away” outfit: a white, knit two-piece suit (knit!) with a navy-and-white-striped jacket, a navy straw hat, and white gloves with navy “monogramed” initials (monogrammed, I notice, is misspelled).
This morning I pulled out the article, reasoning that if the seamstress needed to remake any part of the dress, such details would be useful. It barely survived the “acid treatment,” which has left the organza white as snowflakes but nearly as fragile. A tiny tear has appeared in the skirt like a run in a pair of hose.
With my reading glasses perched on the end of my nose—a new and necessary nuisance these days—I smooth the clipping out a bit further across my knees and stare at my bridal photo. The bertha cape dipping to my elbows, the endless train, the bouffant veil, the single strand of pearls, the young woman with the beaming face.
Across the room, Ann’s bare feet are visible below the curtain drawn across the dressing room cubicle. I watch as she stands on one leg to slip on her panty hose and does the wobble-hop-hop as she loses her balance, then tries again. I fold up the article and slip it back into my purse.
It is a warm, bright day in early February, three and a half months since Ann and I returned from France. The matter of my blood pressure goes on unresolved like a small, daily trauma. Each morning after breakfast, I wrap the cuff around my arm and stare disconsolate at the readout. “That can’t be right,” I’ll say to Sandy, then take it again, only to find it’s worse and becoming a self-perpetuating stress all its own. I am in the midst of yet another medication change. I exercise, visualize, watch my diet, take my supplements, and excise all sorts of things from my schedule, trying to do less, but nothing seems to lower it for long.
Now wedding plans have begun in earnest—invitations, florist, musicians, caterer, wedding cake, a morass of details—though quite honestly I am delighting in them, savoring this time with Ann. Lately, we’ve been writing her marriage ceremony together, using the beautiful old liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer as a guide, but adding inclusive language and touches of feminine sacredness. Last Saturday we sat in the wicker chairs on the screen porch and penned the opening prayer:Eternal Spirit, Mother, and Father who art in earth and
heaven:
We acknowledge your presence on this holy occasion.
Like the oak branch that reaches into heaven,
And the roots that travel into the earth,
You are above us and below us, and everywhere around us.
May we know You in the beauty of the green earth,
In the music of the flowing river, and
In the hearts that rejoice together at the wedding of Ann and
Scott.
Amen
I read the finished version of the prayer out loud, then we sat and stared at the oak beside the marsh.
When I can, I work on the novel. Instead of launching the second half of it, I rewrite and polish the first seven chapters, telling myself I should send them off like I envisioned in France. Not only have I not done so, I notice that when I finish sprucing up chapter 7, I start over again at chapter 1. As if I cannot see through what I am doing.
A sewing machine starts to hum just outside the fitting room, a sound I cannot hear without thinking of my mother and the music she made with her Singer. It played all through the house as she sewed clothes for herself, for me, and even for my dolls, who had fur-trimmed ice skating suits, poodle skirts, lounging pajamas, and dozens of other creations she dreamed up. She gave me my own Singer sewing machine when I got married. I eagerly sewed three pairs of overalls for Bob when he was an infant, an enterprise that involved so many tortured, ripped-out little seams I retired the machine to the closet, along with any desires I may have had to follow in her accomplished footsteps.
“You must be the mother of the bride,” a voice says, breaking into my thoughts, and I look up to find the seamstress beside me with a pincushion on her wrist like a bracelet.
“And what are you wearing to the wedding?” she says after we’ve dispensed with every other wedding-related topic and Ann is still in the dressing room.
“A black dress,” I answer. “Floor-length, silk—it’s very simple with a sheer matching jacket.”
I sound like the newspaper clipping.
“Black?” she says.
Which is exactly what the salesclerk said when I tried on the dress last week in a shop on King Street. It was just the opposite of now: I was in the fitting room while Ann sat outside waiting for me to emerge. I paraded out in mint green, aquamarine, persimmon, lavender, champagne—perfect colors for the mother of the bride at a garden wedding in Charleston in June. I disliked every one of them with an intensity I could not account for.
In the yellowed article, the preposterous fashion coverage had extended to my mother’s dress, which was “blue crepe with a jeweled and lace yoke,” and to my mother-in-law’s, “rose pink with a scalloped neckline.”
“The black dress fit perfectly,” I tell the seamstress, “which isn’t the easiest accomplishment anymore.” I wonder why I am explaining myself to her. The truth is the dress simply felt right the moment I put it on, and it wasn’t because of the fit; it was because of the color.
“You don’t think it’s too . . . somber?” I asked Ann. “Because that’s the last thing I feel.”
“It’s great,” she said. “And it’s the one you like; you should get it.”
Now, stepping from behind the curtain in the wedding gown, Ann holds the billowing sides of the skirt under her arms like two small, white barrels, dropping them around her as she steps onto the platform in front of the mirror.
I watch as the seamstress fusses with the bodice—aware of how I force away the image of myself in the wedding dress. The way my daughter takes me back, against the ferocity of my will, to what was.
On February 14, as the sun sets over the marsh behind the house, the cr
eek turns dark magenta and the egrets lift out of the tall grass and fly home. I watch this familiar circadian rhythm from the windows in my study. Sometimes I think I should never have faced my desk toward the creek. The view is a constant distraction from work, but with the birds moving like flares of white in the gathering dark, I know the desk is exactly where it should be. There is wisdom in this sort of loitering. I watch until the egrets are gone, until the light becomes a piece of fringe on the horizon.
Downstairs in the kitchen, I hear Sandy beating a wooden spoon in a mixing bowl, cooking Chicken Biryani—my Valentine’s Day present—which has spiced up the whole house with turmeric, cumin, and minced gingerroot. “Dinner in half an hour,” he shouts up the stairs, used to me tarrying at my desk.
I’ve been tampering with the novel all afternoon, changing words and changing them back. I glance at the picture of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour that I keep propped on a stand atop my desk—the beautiful old black Mary face—and I think about the piece of chain I left in her chapel.
Send the novel off already.
My mind winds back to that time, years ago, when I unveiled the first chapter at the writer’s conference and got the tepid reception, the teacher saying its potential as a novel was small. For a long time I believed the teacher was right. Now I think he was right and wrong. He saw a truth, regardless of how he interpreted it—my work wasn’t ready then; I wasn’t ready.
But sitting at my desk with the windows glazed dark and black Mary staring at me with her bold, impenetrable look, I know the first half of the novel is probably as ready now as it will ever be and maybe I am, too, because nothing is perfect and I should lay down my ego and let happen what will happen. It is just life. It’s time to settle more fully into my own condensed truth and find my strength and boldness in that.