stealing mary

by peggy newland

    When Mother told me I had to be Mary for the Jesus Pageant I said no way, there was no way I was going to put on some damn robe, a halo, and walk up the aisle of All Saints Church and stand there being pregnant and smiling. There was no way I was acting that fat and stupid. Especially when she told me that Garnett Stetson was Joseph, this Choose the Right to Be a Virgin asshole who actually—and this is the truth—carries the Bible around and spouts off shit like He is coming, He is coming indeed, which is exactly what he said two months ago after we did it in the graveyard, his breath stinking of Skoal and Bud. He is coming indeed like I should be so proud. 

“No,” I told Mother.

“Grammie Wolfie is about to die,” Mother had whispered. “She has Alzheimer’s or a brain tumor or something terminal for God’s sakes, Kristi, and all she wants is for you to be Mary. Will it hurt you to be Mary?”

“Probably,” I told her. And there was something crazy in Mother’s eyes that I liked, something over the edge that took the tip off of all her repressed Aren’t I holier than thou bullshit.

“Why can’t you be happy about one thing in your life?” she said, like she always said when she was done with me. 

And then I made a mistake.  I said, “I bet Mary had an attitude about sleeping in some barn when she was knocked up.”

And Mother couldn’t help it. She smacked me.

And so now here I am, dressed like a virgin.

.

***

“Quit with that fiddling, Bobby,” my father says. And I obey. Because I am a Marine. And there are reasons for rules and order and control.

“Yes, sir,” I say. And I adjust my tie again until he pulls my hand down from my throat.

Church is good for me. The hard benches.  Standing and sitting and kneeling. Everyone dressed up. You really have to pay attention. Find the pages before they come at you. Mark the prayers. Read the scriptures. See what’s really underneath the words. Because that’s where messages are. Between what’s said and what’s meant.

“I love God and country,” I whisper, but my father doesn’t want to hear that now. He’s  interested in hymns. He is a good singer so I listen to him to him sing about the Holy Night and the Virgin Mary.

“Oh, holy night,” I sing. My father tells me to stop shouting. He tells me to remember who I am. Bobby Tulane, twenty-three year old United States Marine.

***

“Grammie,” I say. “Can I have another one?” And she gives me a Maker’s Mark—her favorite kind because she likes the red plastic melted around the lip of the bottle.

“Here, Kristi Baby,” she says, and I kiss her rouged cheek and she pushes me away. We click our mini bottles and I’m done before her this time. Then she starts up with her laughing, this smoky kind of giggle that smells of Pall Malls she’s not allowed to smoke inside church. Which is why we’re outside in the prayer garden hidden by some ivy that’s gotten all bony now that it’s Christmas. “Let me see that thing,” she says about my plastic doll. She lights up again, that bright red tip glowing in the dark, making her eyes sink deep into her head. “Jesus Christ,” she says to its fake baby face.

“Yes,” I say. “Jesus H. Christ,” I say in mock deepness.

And that starts us laughing again, until Grammie holds her chest, and I sit her down. She blows smoke over plastic Jesus so that we can’t even see his clicking eyes, his tuft of fake baby hair. Her hand quivers in mine. So I rub my thumb along her palm the way she likes.

***

There were documents stating I had allowed insurgents to resupply, that I did not hold onto intelligence well. That I conversed with fundamentalists. But I say, no sir. That was not me.  It was mistaken identity in the desert. It was flawed information. There were larger forces at work. Only no one will confirm that. They just say: No stars on your shirt, no pension in old age. Go home. It’s a consensus. And I’m a fine soldier. So I went home.

“Please son,” my father says again. “Stop with that fiddling.”

“Yes, sir.” I mark our places for the gradual hymn. Push that book ribbon hard into the crevices of the Book of Daily Prayer.

***

They found me in front of the Crystal Lake Church of Christ in a manger. The nurses in the hospital named me Mary and my picture was in all the newspapers with captions like “An Angel Fell to Earth in Crystal Lake” and “Abandoned Christmas Baby” “Mother’s Whereabouts Unknown” “Unloved and Unwanted.” There were lines of people wanting to adopt me, save me. They figured my mother was an unwed mother or a prostitute, most definitely some sort of sinner.  I had a birth mark over one eye that gave me a patchy pirate look until a plastic surgeon donated his time and energy to scrape it off. They tied my arms and legs down.

And I wouldn’t stop screeching. The operation didn’t work. “She needs a family,” they all said. “A loving family.”

And the lottery went on and on.

***

I kneel directly on the floor. Press my knees to the wood and hold my breath. If you keep your head down, get your chin to lie directly on your chest, there are cracks that come out of your body. My neck cracks first. My knees second. I squeeze my eyes closed so that I see colors behind my eyelids instead of them. The dead bodies. My doctor told me to do this three times or more a day. Squeeze my eyes shut and push the dead bodies out of my head.

But they keep coming back.

They are eye-less, ear-less and leg-less. They come out of piles and walk toward me in black and white. There are no colors in Iraq.

So that’s why I squeeze my eyes shut. To bring in the colors and keep away the black, the white, the dead.

“Get off the floor, Bobby,” my father says. “It’s not time for prayer.”

I keep my eyes squeezed shut. 

***

“Mama, what are you doing out here in the garden?” Mother’s pissed because she sees Grammie’s cigarette and Grammie isn’t supposed to smoke.

“Getting advice from Mary,” Grammie says, and the mini bottles clank in her macramé purse.

“Bless you my child,” I say to my doll and that gets Grammie cough-laughing again.  “And bless you, old lady.”

She leans on me and keeps up, her cheeks flaring then deflating. And I should stop, stop all this joking, because when I asked if she was sick, Grammie didn’t answer, she just said when she dies, she’s going straight down to the red man with horns because she heard the parties are better down there. And when she laughed at her own joke, she lost her breath and had to sit still for long moments whispering for me to shut up, shut up.

“It’s cold, can’t you see that?” Mother says to both us, trying for Grammie’s arm. Grammie swats her away. 

“Not for the saved, Sally,” Grammie says and Mother slams her purse to her chest. And glares at me.

***

“Stop with the whispering,” my father says under his breath.

But he really doesn’t know. He can’t know. That I’m in charge here. What I say goes. If I stop, this church will blow up. The walls will come tumbling down. The people will crumble.

I’ve seen it happen.

I shake my head no.

My father rubs my shoulder. I don’t cringe. I just take it. And keep up with what I have to do. “Popular resistance is not readily available,” I whisper.

“Please,” Father says. “It’s Christmas.”

I smile at my father and say, “Happy Birthday, Jesus.” And start up again, organizing safety.

***

No one wanted me. The surgeon who messed me up never visited and eventually he transferred to Texas. The news crews found other crises to report. I was that girl with the rubbed red face and the high-pitched screams. The foster families weren’t answering phone calls. Then, one day, a call came from the new family in town. They needed something in their lives. And they took me to their home just past Interstate Exit #7.

They renamed me Kristi. Short for Christmas. 

At two, I chewed off two stuffed animal heads. At three, I cut off all my hair with Mother’s electric knife. By five, I’d been kicked out of three pre-schools and two kindergartens. “She has anger issues,” they all said to Mother, and Mother never disagreed. She’d just sigh and roll her eyes right along with those teachers and take me by the hand past the colorful paintings and piled carpet squares, pull me out the door as the nursery rhymes were being sung, and then slap the shit out of me in the car.

“You’re just like me,” Grammie would say, kissing my cheek, when we got home. And she’d tell me stories of running wild in Brooklyn, making her baby sister smoke cigarettes, stealing candy from Eisenbalm’s Deli. “Just not of me.”

***

.

I begin with “Our Father” and end with “Hail Mary,” a prayer I learned from Joey, a Catholic. He died.  A mortar hit him square in the face, decapitating him. He was my friend.

That camel stares up at that gold cross. Then he punches one of the sheep.

I try not to blink. That’s what Corporal Smith said to do. Keep your eyes open. Open at all times. You never know where the enemy is. He could look like a woman. He could look like a boy. He could even look like a cow or a donkey strapped down with explosive. Don’t think they don’t know where to place the bomb. Or booby trap. It could be under a barn. Inside a car. Under a manger. Ready to detonate. When your guard is down.

Try not to blink.

It’s not safe.

To close your eyes.

There are eight windows. Approximately one hundred pews. The candles are in circles overhead and up at that altar. Men in dark suits at all the doors. Children in animal costumes--donkey, cow, sheep. There’s a camel. I don’t like camels. They spit and bite and roll over in the dirt. You can’t trust a camel. I keep my eye on the one just going up the aisle now. His hump is lopsided. He wears sneakers that are black. You can’t see his camel eyes. He could be dangerous.

***

“We should go inside, Mama.” Mother points at the door.

Grammie just ignores her. “Here,” she says to me, pushing her China Cherry lipstick into my hand. “Brighten up, Mary. Life isn’t so bad.”

“Not red, Mama,” Mother says. “The pageant director said pink or clear or chapstick because in the biblical times they didn’t paint themselves unless…”

“They were whores, Mother?” I ask, smearing the lipstick over my lips.

Oh, I want her to smack me in front of Grammie, want her hand on my face so I can have a reason to escape with Grammie into her beat up Volkswagon Bus like we did last Thanksgiving after Mother found my pot under the mattress and said I was going to rehab. Oh, I want Mother  to smack me.

But she doesn’t.

“Yes, there were some Jezebels back then, Kristi,” she smiles her decapitating smile at Grammie then turns to me. “But there were also some wonderful folks who came for a miracle.”

“A virgin birth?” I ask, drawing red circles on my cheeks and rubbing them in. “Just like me?”

Mother holds my gaze. Her hands push into fists, which makes me smile and I think, here it comes, here it comes, I’ll be free to take off, and get loaded with Grammie. But then Grammie ruins it.

“Cut the shit, Sally,” Grammie says. And she pulls Mother through the doors of the church.

***

They are singing in a large group. There is something wrong about that.  Their mouths are open. And they close their eyes. I don’t like this choir. I don’t trust them. They’ve never seen angels. But there they are singing about them. “You don’t know,” I say.

I press my hands together.

“You don’t even know.”

I grind my teeth.

“Hold my hand,” Father says. He presses his fingers into my fist. I open my hand wide. His skin is chapped. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he says.

When I look over at him, I don’t know him. I don’t know him at all.

***

I could smell him before seeing him. Garnett and his Skoal. He came up behind me and pushed his hands under my Mary robe and I let him grab my tits for just a second before I landed a heel kick to his balls.

“God,” he says, bending over. “Damn-it.”

“Hey Joe,” I say. “What’s hanging?” I pause. “Or not hanging anymore?”

“Bitch,” he says under his breath.

“Is that any way to speak to the mother of Jesus?” I ask, throwing that fake baby at his head.

The organ starts up again, this time with “What Child is This” and I hear all of them singing, this low hum that really grates on my nerves, and I can see their shadows swaying through the yellowed windows. My feet are cold and my nose is running but I still have one of Grammie’s mini-bottles stuffed down my underwear. Before I can reach in to get it, Pastor Brad, calls out from the front door.

“Hey, kids,” he says in a hushed voice. “Twenty minutes until show time.” Pastor Brad’s face is too kind and too round.  I think he’s in love with Garnett.

“Great!” Garnett tries to straighten up, but it’s not working especially well. He leans on his knees.

“Where’s Jesus?” Pastor Brad asks, looking at my empty arms.

Garnett reaches over and hands that plastic baby to me, but I don’t thank him.  I just take it and let it dangle in my arms.

“Good man,” Dad says just before going back inside his church.

“I got a joint,” Garnett says once the church door is shut.

“Great!” I imitate the voice he used with Pastor Brad.

“Be nice to me and I’ll share.” He cracks his neck and smiles that smile he uses with all the teachers, the Pastor, my mother. What a nice, boy, Mother had said, what a nice boy.

“Just say what you mean,” I say, holding that doll between us because he’s walking closer.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah?” I don’t sound tough at all, my voice too high, too loud, as I down Grammie’s mini-bottle. Smash it against the tree next to us.

“You’re special, Kristi,” he says.  “You have like this light.”

“Get away from me.” But his hands are on me.

“You know you want to.”

I push that broken mini-bottle glass into the palm of my hand, liking the burn of it, the slice.

“No,” I say.

“That’s not what you said the last time.” So I let him kiss my neck, grab my ass.

***

The organ is so loud. It shakes the walls. Shakes the walls. I cover my head. Even with my father pulling at my arms. Even with.

And here it comes.

I felt the tremor first, under my boots. And then the dots behind my eyes. And there was the sound. Like nothing ever heard before. A crashing whistle. This white hot light. And that stink. Metal but not metal.  It was blood. Mine and twelve Taliban hiding in their hole under the street.

We are all rabbits in a pit. And rabbits scream like tiny girls.

I still hear her.

Mary screaming at Jesus who was shouting at God. It was on a stretch of road nicknamed  Purgatory Lane. Concrete ruins and brown kids with white smiles. Women all covered in black. Flies that went up your nose and died in your snot. My head was filled with them. Sand flies

“I’ll take you home,” my father whispers.

But I shake my head no.  Home is here. Home is this church. Home is this hymnal, this organ, this gold cross. Home is my father pulling me over to him. Rocking me quiet.

***

When Pastor Brad doesn’t come out, Garnett pulls me to the dark side of the tree. I tell him, “I’m done with you.”

He swats plastic Jesus away. 

“It was a mistake,” I say. But his breath comes out heavy and for one instant I put myself in that other place. That corner in my head where I’d rise sometimes, my cousin Jimmy over top of me, not stopping really, even when I asked, even when I told him no, even when I told Mother about it, about Jimmy doing all those things to me.

“Stop,” I say.

“You like it,” Garnett says.

I’d spin off, once Jimmy was gone, past our rooftop, over the stars to the moon. Grammie told me the angels played up there in the sky, with the cows jumping over the fences. That the angels made music with the cows. 

“Stop,” I tell him.

When I told Grammie, she went after Jimmy with a knife.

“He said you did.”

We went on the roof later that night, Grammie and I, to watch the stars and I imagined them shooting down on top of us, lighting our bodies into flame. She told me about the cows again, about them jumping over the moon, and the angels always watching over me, keeping me safe.

“Stop.”

“Jimmy said all sorts of things about you,” he whispered into my neck.

I close my eyes.

***

“You been over?” the old lady asks.  She has sparkles in her hair. Tinsel, I think. I smile at her. 

“Yes,” I nod. She stares at my face. There are no mirrors in our house. Because I sometimes break them. My aunt covers hers when we visit for Sunday supper. My father calls her just before we arrive. To remind her about the glass.

She opens her purse. There are mini-bottles of alcohol in there. “Take one,” she says.

I shake my head no. I see my father coming back from the bathroom.

“Come on,” she continues. “You deserve it.”

“No,” I whisper. I used to play hockey. Me and Ronnie used to cruise through Tilton in my Chevy. I used to kiss girls. But I can’t kiss anyone anymore because I don’t have an ear and one of my arms is metal and the girls don’t want that around them, don’t want to whisper anything to my earless, burnt head.

“Here.” And she stuffs one into my pocket and rests her hand on my thigh.

Her eyelids are painted sky blue. 

“I know Mary,” she says.

One of her eyes is glassy.

“The virgin will be appearing soon,” she whispers.

. The only thing left to do is focus on the wood of the cross for five minutes. Then count the pews.

“She’ll save us all.” The old lady keeps her hand on my thigh.

And this keeps me quiet when my father comes back.  

***

I painted the pink walls black and ripped down the strawberry and heart curtains when I got back from the first Jesus Camp.

“If you don’t paint the walls back to their original shade of rose, you’re going back to Boot Camp,” Mother told me. She was still in her pajamas and it was five o’clock in the afternoon. Father was on a fishing trip with a friend. We didn’t have any fishing poles in the house.

“That’s okay,” I told her. “I like the girls there.”

Mother stared at me. “Then I’ll send you to another-”

“Jesus Camp?” I smiled. “Fine. I’ll make a Jesus Baby there.”

“We should never have saved you.”

“I know.” I flopped on my bed, kicking her black splattered slippers off.

“There’s something wrong with you,” Mother said. “Perhaps you should be in a foster home.”

“Fine.” And I started taking all my clothes off and Mother had to leave because she never liked nudity in the house.

***

The sheep are now clashing with the donkeys. Dozens of children are dressed as angels.  A wayward shepherd runs to the back of the church screaming. Pastor Brad is standing in hostile territory. No one is listening to him. And he’s not making any plans for an offensive. He should round up the small militant group. Fight the occupation. 

“This is a nightmare,” the old lady says to me.

“A pageant is a complex operation,” I tell her.

We both nod.

This actually could be a precursor to a possible cut off of electricity. Although there are candles at the altar. And also at the choir stall. The Advent wreath is brightly lit. Who controls the territories? The  boundaries? If there is more aggression? Air space? I haven’t checked the roof yet.

“I need to be of service here,” I say, standing up.

My father stops talking with the old lady’s daughter. He pulls me back down into my seat. He hands me the hymnal.

“Find the next hymn, son,” he tells me. “Mark it with the blue ribbon this time.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

But I keep my eye on a suspect just entering the vestibule. He wears a crown and carries something in a bag.

I know to prepare for an air strike or a ground assault.

There are ten rows of pews between us.

I don’t blink for one minute.

***

“Where’s Joseph?” everyone asks me when I walk into the lobby of the church. All I do is shrug.

He’s still outside by the tree. He hasn’t moved.

“Mary must go before Joseph who must go last and then the Wise Men following with their jewels.” Pastor Brad paces the foyer of the church. “Myrrh, where’s the myrrh?” he asks but no one answers.

I hold this little angel’s hand because her mother had to go to the bathroom. I can’t stop shaking. That mother trusting me with her kid just because I was dressed up as Mary. I could be a killer, a porn star, drug addict or sinner.

“Are you scared?” the angel asks me.

I nod my head yes.

She’s three, with black hair and slitted almond eyes. She told me that her name is Jade five times.

“Can I hold him?” she asks, pointing at the doll.

“Sure,” I tell her, and I show her how to cradle the baby’s head in her elbow and drape the blanket over the legs so the foot doesn’t show.

“Is that because he might get cold in the church?” she asks.

“No, he’s not real.” I say.

Her eyes get round, too white, and soon there are tears down her cheeks, so I bend down to her and tell her over and over again, that yes, baby Jesus is real, and that yes, baby Jesus might get cold in the church and we have to keep him warm, so warm, but she keeps up with her crying, and I almost want to cry along with her, because when her mother comes back from the bathroom, she holds that little angel daughter in her arms and wipes her cheeks so gently dry that I wish I was dead.

***

I mark the hymns for Father. But I can’t stop. Thinking.

The bodies. The way their arms stiffened. Their open eyes. They were so lonely. People walked past them. Children played next to them. Sometimes the dogs would come.

I would lie down next to them. At night. When no one was looking. I’d press my temple to theirs. But there was nothing. They had no thoughts in their heads. Their emptiness became my emptiness.

But still I kept finding them. And lying next to them. The bodies.

One day, a little Iraqi girl saw me lying in the road with one of the bodies. She stared right into me. Her eyes were brown. They didn’t blink.

I motioned for her to lie down too. But she ran away.

And I was left with the emptiness.

***

I should do something, tell someone. But what am I going to say? That I went at it with Joseph in front of the church and then got pissed and sliced the guy, should I say that? No, I don’t think so.

I stare at that angel child because she’s smiling at me now, smiling really wide, and she loves me. She loves me.

This angel.

“We’re next,” Cole, AKA the Wiseman, whispers into my ear. “Garnett told me about…”

I don’t even turn to him. I just stare over at that angel child. She’s raising her hands to the sky and her halo is golden and sparkles and I don’t even care that Garnett’s blood is on my big toe, maroon, just like Grammie’s lipstick. I just care about the angel in front of me. Her eyes are pressed closed and it’s like she’s floating, rising high up through the ceiling of the church and her hands are waving me on, telling me to follow her into the stars, to the angels on the moon.

***

“You’re a kind man,” the old lady tells me after Father leaves to help pass the offertory plate.

I think: I could make a run for it. Before that crowd of teenagers at the door is killed by a random rocket. Or shell.

“A good man.” She pats her heart. “I can tell because I’m psychic.”

“Mama, shush,” her daughter says.

“You shush,” the old lady tells her daughter. “I’m busy.” The old lady turns back to me. “Do you ever watch Sylvia the Psychic?” she asks. Her eyebrows are drawn on in deep black.

I shake my head no.

There would be little apparent interference if I ran straight at that jeweled Hamas, that possible Taliban fighter.

“Sylvia thinks angels are living among us,” the old woman says.

I could seize control of this whole situation. I could oust any security forces loyal to any Islamic terrorist.

“Just look for the halos or auras over their head.” The old lady shakes a mint out of her purse for me.

“Mama…”

“But I don’t see any damn halos in this place.” She elbows her daughter. Then rests her hand on my thigh.

  “I bet you’re psychic. I can tell by your eyes.” She nods. Stares directly into my face. “You can see things.”

The old lady keeps nodding.

“Hear things.”

I nod my head. Then nod it again.

“Know things.”

The daughter knocks the old lady’s hand off my thigh. “Leave that poor boy alone, Mama,” she tells the old lady. “Can’t you tell he just wants some peace?”

And then I see her.  Holding the Christ child.

“Mary!” the old lady shouts, waving her hands and hooting. “Mary!”

Mary turns. The church freezes. The organ begins, louder this time. Mary incites the choir.   And I fall on my knees. Even with my father pulling me up. I fall on my knees. The jeweled terrorist with his brown bag is at Mary’s side. He wears Nike sneakers and leans to her holy ear.

Mary stares up to the heavens.

Her eyes telling me, “Now.”

I look around the church but no one notices. They hold their hymnals up in the candlelight. They sing “Oh Holy Night.” But can’t they see? That Mary is lost? That Mary is dying? That Mary doesn’t want to go inside of that manger with those animals. The wise men want to rape her. The shepherds want to slice her apart.

Look at her tattered robe, the way it hangs over her face. Look at the way she grabs onto that baby Jesus. She’s frightened. There might be pipe bombs under her feet. That camel will suffocate that baby. The donkey will eat it. There will be no more religion in the land because Baby Jesus is dead and Mary is on the streets alone.

There are no wise men here. They are not even men. They’re boys with fake rubies on their foreheads and they have bombs in their wrapped boxes. One of them pushes Mary.

And that’s what does it for me. 

***

It happens so quickly, arms around me, lifting me up and over the crowd. He keeps calling me Mary and I don’t have the heart to tell him that I’m not real, that I’m really Kristi and that I jabbed, maybe even killed fake Joseph with some broken glass, but he just keeps smiling so I let him murmur, “Mary, Mary, Mary.” His arms are really strong and I just lift my arms high as he runs first left then right to his truck. It’s a nice truck and he tells me not to worry, that he can keep my safe, he knows the way out. He’s a Marine. He’ll save me, save us all, from everything.

The guy’s not actually as old as I thought. He’s just burnt in the face.

There is screaming, yelling coming from the church. But he tells me it’s okay, I won’t be alone in the desert anymore. He’ll save me from all my emptiness.

He also knows my grandmother and she approves. “She’ll meet us,” he tells me

And you know what? I believe him.

"Stealing Mary" is part of P. Newland's collection titled BACKWOODS. Other stories from this collection have been published or will be published in Mississippi Review, Daedualus, Chelsea, Conte, 971, N. New England Review, Meeting House. She was recently awarded 3rd place in Playboy College Fiction Contest. Newland writes in her basement most mornings, coming up for coffee occasionally. The rest of the time, she works as a psychotherapist with angry boys. They cuss and she listens.

                                                                            MAIN