The Devoted

by Blair Hurley

  All those shepherds in the desert with their sheep metaphors. They spoke so confidently of that old external figure, God; the way she pictured him as a child, he was the intangible hand on the basement stairs, grabbing her shoulder. The hand on her head. Sometimes he was God the judge, doling out laws for your own good, God the parent, loving you in a disappointed, Catholic way.

  Buddhism seemed to respond to all declarations with intriguing questions. Her teacher sometimes called Buddhism a philosophy. They watched a fuzzy VHS of monks filing into a monastery, Zen gardens raked into exacting concentric circles, the sound track the chiming of bells. A smiling monk told an audience of long-haired American followers, “All you must do is chant the single phrase ‘Awake, I breathe in,’ and you will be liberated from your sorrow.” The teacher invited parents who were practitioners of different religions to come in to discuss their faiths, but no one could be found at the school who was a Buddhist (Kumiko had moved away, taking her model horses, her shrine and incense with her). This silence seemed fitting.

  Nicole loved reading about the gods in the Buddhist universe, who were jealous of human beings. It was better to have a body, to experience hunger and pleasure and suffering. Only with the lesson of suffering could you attain enlightenment.

  While her mother watched the church closings at high volume, listening to priests denying that they knew anything, Nicole lounged in headphones, reading about the cycle of suffering. Anger, greed, and delusion kept the giant wheel turning, rolling relentlessly through time. The cock chasing the swine chasing the snake.

  The mother cat, still making nests, kept dragging wool sweaters into closets. Nicole had held the kittens in her hands and felt their heartbeats like moth wings. She’d felt the last, lightest flutter. The last beat. Her mother held the little body to her ear to be sure. “That’s it. Gone to heaven,” she said.

  “Even though it’s a cat?” Animals didn’t have souls. Everyone knew that.

  Her mother looked at her. “Go add this one to the box.”

  Nicole added the last kitten to the plain shoebox in the garage. They’d been told it could spread the disease if they buried the bodies, and so they went into the trash. When she returned, the kitchen chairs were all upended on the table, as though they were in a restaurant closed for the night. Her mother was scrubbing herself furiously in the sink, working long red tracks down the pale skin of her arms. Then she went into her bedroom and closed the door.

  Nicole sat on the floor of her own bedroom, listening to the hushed negotiations, muffled sighs. Her father was standing in the hall. She could see him through a crack. The flat of his palm was pressed to the bedroom door. “Liza, just let me in and let’s talk.”

  “I can’t talk to you, Bill. You don’t listen or understand. I’m sick of it. They’re coming for us. They’re coming for us.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “Is this about—”

  “They’re coming for good Catholics. My home, Bill. I grew up here, on the next hill. I used to wake up and see those steeples across town and know everything was all right. Or even if it wasn’t—if I wasn’t—there was a place I could go. I thought I’d see our children married in the church where we were married. But everything’s been ruined.”

  “I’m coming in so we can talk about this like reasonable—” His rattling the knob was interrupted by her mother’s cry: “What the fuck are you doing? What the fuck are you doing?” Nicole opened her door and saw her father rubbing his temples. He saw her and smiled. “Let’s get out of here for a while. Give your mother a little air.”

  They went walking through the park where she used to play softball and where he would coach her, throwing endless underhand fastballs, trying to get her to follow through instead of flinching. Neither of them were natural athletes; the balls flew wildly, sometimes at her head, sometimes in the dirt. But she remembered the time she finally trusted him, sent the ball soaring up and away over the green meadow, and the look on his face—this unabashed surprise and delight.

  “Your mother—” he began without looking at her. She expected him to say that she was going through a rough time, that we all had to pitch in, the usual familial clichés. But he didn’t.

  “Your mother was so exciting when I met her,” he said instead. “She had all these crazy ideas. Plans for great adventures we’d have. And then she’d get these moods. No one could bring her out of them. Except sometimes when she went to church and prayed, it calmed her.”

  If the Buddha was right, her mother had lived many lives. Even inside this one, she was many people, many different mothers. Nicole had always known this to be true. There was the mother who loved you and the mother who didn’t want anything to do with you. The mother who cooked resplendent French meals. The mother who told you not to take as much of them as your brother, potatoes were fattening. The mother who pressed a hand absentmindedly in your hair while reading to you from a favorite book, Kidnapped or Treasure Island. The mother who wondered who would ever want to marry you, with your hair in that state.

  The mother who was afraid of shadows in the stairwell and lakes where you couldn’t see the bottom.

  The mother who was afraid of what she called her “blue period.”

  The mother who was afraid of the contents of her own mind.

  The mother who might never forgive you.

  The mind is everything, Nicole read in Sayings of the Buddha. What you think you become.

  “‘The mind is its own place,’” her father began softly, amused and sorrowful. Occasionally they shared this surprising moment of thinking the same thing. “How does it go? ‘. . . and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.’”

  He scrubbed her hair with his hand, as though she were much younger, still his silly goose, his nickname for her because of her honking bronchial cough. She waited for him to say that everything would be all right, that this too would pass. But he said nothing.

  Here they were in church, all dressed and scrubbed and jostling in the narrow pew. Her mother, bright-eyed, her hand steady on Nicole’s shoulder. Here they all were, singing the old favorites. The haunting “Ave Maria,” the imploring “Faith of Our Fathers.” Paul home from college for the weekend, leading the family with his strong baritone. Her father, warbling off-key, shifting up and down octaves. And high and straight, running like a taut thread through their family’s voices, her mother’s fragile soprano.

  Here was the priest, gliding by in his silk stole; here was the lantern of incense, filling the air with the smell of holidays. Here was the fervent prayer of St. Augustine: “Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I love but what is holy. Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit, that I always may be holy. Amen.”

  Filing up to receive the sacrament, Nicole watched her mother close her eyes and open her mouth. Was that what ecstasy looked like? Rapture?

  Many of the closing churches had been taken over by their members, in round-the-clock vigils. As long as someone was in the church worshipping, went the thinking, they couldn’t tear the place down. There was something sweetly naïve about this. She pictured construction crews removing their helmets as they entered the space. Respectfully skirting the faithful.

  Walking home from the T one day, Nicole saw the black flag flapping high from St. Augustine’s steeple. Already there were signs on Augustine’s stone wall: KEEP THE CANDLES BURNING. DON’T CLOSE OUR CHURCH. KEEP FAITH ALIVE.

  She found her mother in the kitchen, tying packs of bottled water and saltines together. “We’ll take it in shifts,” she told Nicole. “We all have to do our part. I’ll go during the day, and you can go after school. And Paul can come on the weekend.”

  “Mom, we’re not actually doing this vigil?”

  “Of course we are.” Her mother handed her a crate of clementines
to put in the car. She was impeccably dressed, sleek and stern in a blue blazer and skirt, wearing the good Chanel shoes. “This is our church. We have to protect it.”

  “You go if you want. I don’t care whether it closes or not.”

  Her mother slapped her, hard against one cheek, and then clasped Nicole’s face in her hands, gently. For a moment she looked puzzled, then concerned, the way she’d looked when Nicole was sick with bronchitis as a girl. “Remember Hildegard? Remember how you loved her? You were going to be a nun. What happened?”

  What happened was that what she did at night, a hand in her underwear under the covers, stroking herself into a nervous exaltation, meant she could not be a nun. She knew she was not built for it, but she did not know what she was built for.

  Her mother straightened. “You’re not your own. You are my daughter. You’re a part of this family, and you’re a part of this church.”

  Nicole agreed to go; there was no way she couldn’t.

  She watched the light changing on the old plaster statues, the deep bronzy gold of the altar. The priest told them that when good Christians were truly in need, their Savior would help them. It was the higher law that all the universe obeyed.

  There is no savior in the world except the truth, said the Buddha. She had read it in the books she was taking out of the library.

  The priest told them that the church was more than a physical place; it was a sanctuary for their souls. It had protected generations. It would protect them again.

  Men, driven by fear, go to many a refuge, to mountains and forests, to groves and sacred trees, she had read. But that is not a safe refuge, that is not the best refuge; a man is not delivered from all pains after having gone to that refuge.

  She stayed with her mother for many hours on the hard pews, long after the color in the stained-glass windows left them and only the watery candles lit the pews. Each time she fell asleep, her mother shook her awake.

  In her daydream the priest said, There in that corner, a boy stayed after choir practice and a youth pastor asked him to hold something in his mouth. On that pew a priest sat next to a girl whose brother had died and he consoled her and fondled her. In that corner, there, with the plaster statue of the Pietà, the one where Mary is holding her dead child in her arms, boys were held and caressed. They were told they were different, that no one would love them. They were told they liked it.

  Of course the priest didn’t say that. Nicole shook and straightened, tried to stay awake. But surely he would say he was sorry. How could he be such a hypocrite? Here was the time to acknowledge what had brought them to this brink—abuse and corruption and lies. You looked away and looked away, for years you did this, she thought, staring at the priest. To children, your brothers said, Put your head down and take it. To children, your brothers said, There are no words for what is happening to you, so remain silent.

  Your brothers said, Here is your first taste of suffering, and it’s good for you. Drink it up.

  The priest’s voice grew high and frantic in the great space. He read from Matthew. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.

  Nicole clutched her mother’s arm. “Can we go? Please, can we go now? I feel sick.”

  “We’ll go in a little while,” her mother whispered.

  When they left the church, she staggered into the yard and retched among the gravestones. There were still people inside, starting the late shift now. She heard them singing as she leaned on a headstone, panting, her mother stroking her hair. They were singing “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling.”

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” her mother asked, gently.

  She was supposed to go straight to church after school each day. And for the first week or so, she did. Each day, the vigil was thinning out; there were fewer people with signs outside, fewer faithful in the chilly pews in the middle of a cold spring afternoon. One day, she was the only one there. She drifted through the shadowed apses and behind the altar, where normally only altar boys were allowed. She had never been alone in a church before; it was eerie. She poked through cramped little back rooms: the offices, the custodial closet. Here was the music room, where she and Paul had practiced their Christmas carols, and a tiny girl with a lisp had been chosen to read: In the countryside close by there were shepherds out in the fields keeping guard over their sheep during the watches of the night. An angel of the Lord stood over them and the glory of the Lord shone round them. They were terrified, but the angel said, “Do not be afraid. Look, I bring you news of great joy, a joy to be shared by the whole people.”

  She kept looking up to the sad eyes of Jesus above the altar, which watched her from every angle. She wanted to ask him what would happen next, who would keep her safe. But she was not a child; she knew he would not speak.

  Finally, she went to the stone basin of holy water and dipped her fingers in and brought them to her lips. She had always wanted to know what it tasted like. But as she’d expected, it tasted of nothing. She put on her coat and slipped out.

  That week she looked up the address of the Tibetan arts and crafts store in Cambridge and took the T there, then stood shyly in the back by the colorful Nepali wraps and scarves, stroking the fine silk, the scratchy linen. She drank in the vermilion dyes and the scarves of lapis blue, the color of the kittens’ dreamy unseeing eyes. She pored over the posters of mandalas, blushing at the gods copulating with goddesses. The gods, horned and fierce as bulls. Erect and enormous. Here, the dakini of wisdom, a lovely cat-eyed goddess, impaled herself on the god of compassion, her legs ensnaring him. Nicole looked and looked.

  The shopkeeper, a small, round man, kept his eyes on the security TV, watching her. She was only a teenager in a sweatshirt, and she knew he was waiting for her to stuff something into her pocket. What was she doing here, anyway? What could she possibly want? She listened to him chat on the phone, in Nepalese or Tibetan or Hindi, she couldn’t possibly guess. When she reached for the Buddha statues under the glass counter, he waved her hand away. “Too expensive for you,” he said.

  On Friday, Paul returned from college. They ate ice cream in his car before they were due at church. She felt like a child, being rewarded for good behavior. “This won’t last,” he said abruptly. “Just hang in there a little longer. Either the vigil will break—”

  “Or Mom will,” she finished for him.

  “She’s in one of her blue periods.”

  Paul had no idea what it was like. He was away at college; he hadn’t seen the way their mother prayed now, in a frantic breathless rush, appealing to Mary, to all the saints and angels alike. He hadn’t heard the shuddering cries that came from her room at night, the way she pleaded with their father, then raged at him. “I’m not going back,” she said.

  “Back where?”

  “To church.”

  “You have to go. It will kill Mom if you don’t.” Paul turned off the low buzz of the radio, and they stared at each other. “Look, once you get to college, you won’t have to go anymore. I tell Mom I do, but I don’t. Just pretend for a little while longer.”

  She knew there were plenty of people who went to church because their families did, or because they had always gone. People who didn’t demand anything more than habit and ritual and the same old songs. “So lie and fake it?”

  “That’s what growing up is all about, sister. We’ll go to church tonight with Mom, and then you can come with me to my friend’s party tonight.” He smiled. You have your fun, and you do your penance, and the scales stay even.

  Paul had a way of sweeping through the front door and making things right. In the past, when black silences had spread through the house, he had returned from college, cheering up their mother, cooking, inspiring Nicole to scrub the bathroom tiles or bag leaves on the lawn. She could see the way their mother’s tight, brittle mouth loosened into a smile, and the way she held on to him as he left, reminding him how much he woul
d be missed. With his blond prep school hair, the cheerful way he called, “Hello, family” and stamped his boots on the mat, he exuded sanity. Even when Nicole hated him, which was especially right this moment, she knew that he was good for them, that he wanted what was best.

  A crowd was gathered in the graveyard when they pulled up to St. Augustine’s. The parishioners were milling uneasily, but there were no picket signs. Their mother broke loose from the group, running to the car, her hair flying. “They’ve locked the church,” she said. “Those bastards have locked us out.”

  Nicole followed her mother to the great oak door. A giant padlock and chain secured the handles. There was no sign, no explanation. The message was clear.

  “How about a back entrance?” Paul asked.

  They circled the building, looking for a way in, poking through overgrown shrubs. But lines of gray caulk filled the back door and the basement bulkhead. Every window was barred, every spare opening sealed. This was careful work; the church officials must have had people working through the night. These protesting churches were an embarrassment to the archdiocese, and they were being dealt with this way across the city. Wait until the last member leaves; then hurry in with concrete and chains.

  “I guess that’s it, Mom,” Paul said quietly.

  Their mother turned. She didn’t seem to recognize them at first; her eyes were too strange and wild, too uncomprehending. Then they found Nicole. “You were here yesterday, weren’t you? Until dinner? Who else was here?”