The Salt Madonna

by Catherine Noske

  *

  Hannah stands in the kitchen and listens. Through the wall, she can hear her mother’s breathing. It is uneven, cluttered. The bedsprings creak, and Hannah waits, her own breath caught in her mouth. Her mother’s breathing starts again, perhaps a little easier. Hannah sighs, releases. Her mother is still moving, still getting up. There is no immediate cause for concern, Hannah tells herself. She is congested, that is all.

  She tries to be quiet as she fills the kettle, finds herself a clean bowl and pours muesli. Outside, she can just make out the horses at the gate, waiting for their breakfast. There is a crossword on the kitchen table and she fiddles with the pen. The clues are cryptic, ambiguous and whimsical. Just looking at it makes her feel slow. Her mother has inked in answers in neat letters. The sound of coughing comes through the wall. Hannah puts her bowl down, slips from the kitchen and heads out to the horses. They nicker when they see her coming, low and deep and comforting.

  Mid-morning, Mrs Culliver appears and beckons her to the doorway.

  ‘I’ve just had a call,’ she says in an undertone. ‘Mary Burnett won’t be coming back to school. You can cross her off your roll.’

  Hannah feels her face tighten. ‘What, she won’t be coming back ever?’

  Mrs Culliver’s face is blank. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s true. Ellen just confirmed it. She’s pregnant.’

  Hannah feels her mouth fall open. ‘We have to report it.’

  Mrs Culliver waves a hand, as though fending her away. ‘Yes, yes. But we will help her. They’ll continue her studies. She’ll be homeschooled.’

  Hannah tries and fails to swallow her anger. ‘They can’t just . . .!’

  ‘They’re her parents, Hannah. It’s their decision. What’re you going to do? We’ll look after her.’

  Hannah flicks a glance back to the curious faces of her students. Wide eyes are following their conversation. She forces herself to breathe. ‘Shall we talk about it later?’

  Mrs Culliver gives her an abrupt nod and leaves. Hannah closes the door slowly, and turns to face the room. Thomas is watching her, his face dark. She wonders how much he has heard, and what he knows. She feels somehow inadequate under his gaze.

  The day at school moves slowly, after that. Hannah can’t seem to focus. The younger students take advantage and run riot across her lesson plans. At lunchtime, she ducks her head into the office. Mrs Culliver is waiting for her, lunch open at her desk.

  ‘Mary . . .’ Hannah starts, but the headmistress cuts her off.

  ‘Just wait,’ she says tersely, as if Hannah is a child. ‘What’s the point in reporting it until we know what has happened? We will talk about it, we will report it, just let me talk to Ellen again first. You know what’s happening right now, yes? With your uncle? It’s a bad moment, things are difficult. You need to wait until I sort it all out with them.’

  ‘Sort what out? What more can we possibly need to know?’

  ‘For God’s sake, you don’t understand.’ Her tone is curt, borders on rude. ‘You obviously don’t remember how it works here.’

  Hannah feels herself recoil. ‘How what works?’

  ‘How we work! This is a small community, you can’t just go around reporting things! We need to think about what is actually best for the girl.’ She is almost spitting, standing now. Hannah realises she has prepared for this argument. She stands a moment in silence, composes herself.

  ‘Ellen said they’ve called a community meeting,’ Mrs Culliver goes on, each word clipped and precise, before Hannah can open her mouth again. ‘This afternoon. They’re asking everyone to gather. You should come. At the store. You should bring your mother down.’

  Hannah snorts, and can’t help herself. ‘So I am part of the community, then?’ she says sarcastically.

  ‘Oh, suit yourself,’ Mrs Culliver says, throwing her hands in the air. It is a performance of resignation – Hannah can feel the woman’s anger still simmering underneath. She picks up her sandwich and pushes back from her desk, brushes past Hannah and out the door. ‘You can’t say I didn’t try,’ she says, leaving. ‘I’ve tried to make you feel welcome here. It’s not my fault if you don’t.’

  Hannah stands in the empty office, watches the flyscreen door swing shut behind her. A fly buzzes on a windowsill, but everything else is quiet. The voices from the playground are muted, distant. She swallows and inhales. She picks up the phone. It takes her a moment to find the number, but when she says the reason she is calling, the receptionist puts her straight through to a detective.

  ‘I – ah, I need to report an underage pregnancy,’ she repeats, when the line connects.

  ‘And you are?’ It is a male voice, young, bored.

  ‘I’m her teacher.’

  ‘I’ll need a name,’ he says slowly.

  ‘I’m Hannah.’

  ‘Hannah what?’

  ‘Hannah Mulvey,’ she says, and tries not to feel affronted.

  ‘You’ll need to leave me your contact details as well,’ he says. ‘And your teaching registration number. So?’

  ‘A girl in my class is pregnant.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Her mother told us. She’s taken her out of school.’

  ‘So it’s not confirmed?’

  ‘Well, her mother has confirmed it . . .’

  ‘But you haven’t any evidence for it being confirmed by a doctor? You’re going off what you’ve been told?’

  Hannah hesitates a moment. ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Have you seen the girl?’

  ‘Not this week.’

  ‘And was she showing any visible signs of pregnancy when you last saw her?’

  ‘No, but . . . She’s been absent from school.’

  ‘So it is unconfirmed.’ It isn’t a question this time. ‘Is there any possibility this could just be gossip? Or a miscommunication? Did the mother tell you anything else when you spoke to her?’

  Hannah can feel her throat contracting. ‘I didn’t speak to her.’ Her voice is small.

  The detective sighs audibly down the line. ‘Have you had any other explanations for her absence?’

  Hannah tries to gather herself into something sounding like authority. ‘They said she was sick, to start with. But now her mother has told my colleague that she is pregnant.’

  ‘The mother or the girl?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘The mother or the girl is pregnant?’

  ‘The girl,’ Hannah bites, and her temper rises.

  ‘And you’re sure about that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’ve nothing to corroborate this.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can’t help you until you can definitively say that the girl is pregnant. We have at least three of these calls every week. What has the girl’s father told you?’

  Hannah gasps. ‘I haven’t spoken to her father. What do you mean you can’t help?’

  ‘Just that,’ he says. He is nothing more than businesslike. She realises she has not affected him at all. ‘Talk to the girl’s father,’ he continues. ‘If you get any confirmation that the girl is pregnant, then we can look into it. But there’s nothing I can do until then.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Leave your details with the receptionist, please,’ he says, interrupting her, and puts her on hold. Shrill and tinny music swells through the line, and it takes her a moment to recognise it as ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’. Hannah feels herself hyperventilating, feels the tears of frustration starting down her face. She hangs up before reception connects.

  Outside in the playground, after she has composed herself again, Hannah looks around at the children’s faces and wonders if they already know what’s going on, if there is some covert system of communication she is not privy to. All through the final lessons of the day, she watches them for whispers, nods, secret signs.

  The minutes tick down to the final bell and they be
gin to pack up the classroom. One of the younger kids stands poised by the door, his backpack on already.

  Hannah nods and signals to the bell monitor. As the child goes out onto the veranda and rings the bell, the class erupts from the doorway and scatters. Thomas pushes through in the middle of them. Hannah watches them all go, then collects her things. Mrs Culliver is waiting for her at the bottom of the classroom steps, chivvying the children on.

  *

  Father John stands at the top of the main street, dressed in his robes. He is using a milk crate for a podium and he can feel it creaking with his weight. Mrs Keillor is beside him, the esky open at her feet, and the other women are there with their baskets. There is a steely kind of confidence simmering between them. People have already started to gather.

  ‘Are you ready, Father?’ Mrs Keillor asks.

  He nods.

  ‘Everyone,’ she calls out, her voice high-pitched. ‘Everyone, please, there is going to be an announcement!’

  A head appears out of the doorway of the store and a few more people trickle from within, Sarah behind them. She comes to stand alongside the others, picks up her basket. A child hangs off his mother’s arm, brought straight from the school. The group is growing, but it is all women and children.

  ‘Betty,’ Mrs Keillor murmurs, ‘duck down to the pub.’

  Betty frowns and starts down the street. They all watch her push open the pub door, hear her call out cheerfully, and see her then retreat. A couple of men saunter out behind her, onto the footpath in front of the pub. They are laughing. One of them sticks his head back through the doorway, shouts something indistinct, and a couple of the old boys appear, mouths tight. It is their wives who are gathered around him, Father John knows.

  ‘Everyone,’ Mrs Keillor calls again, ‘come on, we’ve got an announcement.’

  She is looking mildly smug. Father John can see her husband leading the way from the pub down the street. There is a satisfaction in drawing them all together. He waits until there is a solid group around them before he begins.

  ‘Friends,’ he starts, and has to clear his throat. The theatrical pitch to his voice feels false, but he can’t control it. ‘Friends, we’re here because we wanted to reach out to you all. I know we are facing difficult times. But God shows his love even in the smallest ways, through our kindness to each other, through little gestures. And impossible things, wonderful things, can happen, even here on our island. Please, do not lose hope.’

  He pauses and the group is silent. He looks around, waiting for the question, but nothing comes. They are staring at him, waiting. He nods to the women, and they start working their way through the crowd, proffering the baskets and the esky, the bread and the fish on their bed of ice. It was Mrs Keillor’s idea.

  ‘This is an offering,’ he says. ‘Just as Jesus fed his people in the Bible, so he will feed us now, in our time of need. Things are tight, right now. Take these and feed your families.’

  The crowd looks confused, he notices, but they are taking the fish. Mrs Keillor is standing in their midst, wrapping each fish in foil, passing them along. The women with the baskets are working their way around the edges of the gathering, handing out the loaves.

  ‘Come to the church,’ he continues. ‘We will not abandon you. There is hope, here!’

  People are bundling the food into their bags, tucking loaves under an arm. A small child runs from the group stiff with excitement, two fish held out before him. More people arrive, as if news of the bounty has spread on the wind. It is working.

  ‘Come to our service tomorrow,’ Mrs Keillor is saying to each of them. ‘Come. There is a way for us all to be saved.’

  Father John smiles. The women are almost finished, and more and more people are coming to gather around them. ‘Come to the church tomorrow,’ he says, voice steady now and clear. ‘The service starts at eleven. God bless you all.’

  And when the women stop and look up at him, he nods and steps down off his rickety crate. Mrs Keillor stoops to pick it up. The crowd makes way for them, and they all walk as a procession back up to the church, the women laughing and chattering behind him. Like this, he thinks. Gently, gently. Beside him, his wife smiles.

  *

  This is Thomas’s nightmare, it comes back again and again: Mary, glowing softly, standing in the light before him. She is pale like a ghost. He wants to touch her. He wakes up tangled in damp sheets and with no idea why the dream is so powerful. It’s something to do with fear and desire, both at once, intermingled.

  They are at the church. His mother has made them come. The whole village seems to be there. At least half of them, he thinks, are just hoping for more fish. But it has a carnival feel to it. It is like Easter again, something hopeful, a treasure hunt with Easter eggs, a celebration. People have dressed up. Outside, the bell sings out across the village. It is a new voice playing in their psyche. The reflex reaction is still to hear it as a warning, fire or something wrong. It ignores the fear, goes on calling them all. Sitting with his mother, the light in the church reminds him of his nightmare, soft after the brash glare outside. It has the same quality of unreality that the dream does. He looks around the church for Mary but he can’t see her. Her mother is seated with the women at the front, but Mary is not among them. The women are all smiling, almost bouncing in their seats. Picnic is not there either, Thomas notes. He wonders if he is with Mary, and digs his fingernails into his forearms. Their cleaning lady is in the pew across, waving at them. Thomas looks at his mother. She doesn’t seem to have noticed.

  The service is slow to start. The bell stills and the people turn expectantly, lean forward and wait. Father John takes his time in entering and when he does it is not like normal. He smiles, and the women at the front smile back.

  ‘We are people of God,’ the priest begins, standing behind the lectern. ‘We need to confess our failures knowing that Jesus intercedes for us with the Father who freely forgives.’

  Thomas stares around the church. His father beside him is looking down at the order of service and frowning. The sheet shows only an unfamiliar hymn.

  ‘And we have failed, here! We have not been as we should. We have lived in sin and dissolution. We have not met His testing of us with faith. The poor seasons, the salt, the grape rot, the river and the fish dying like plague, the poor pasture, the poor crops. We need to see this!’ He is gesturing insistently, enumerating each failure on his fingers. In front of him, Thomas can see a man nodding, and his stomach tightens. Father John continues on, voice tight. ‘And now, bankruptcy. All these challenges to our ability to continue to live in this place. We are being tried, and we are failing! And God is tired of us. He has run out of patience. Can we blame Him for that? We haven’t changed, we haven’t tried to fix our world.’ He bows his head. ‘I am sorry,’ he says, after a pause. The pantomime quality of his speech fades, and for a moment he is human. ‘I too gave up hope. I didn’t try to help you all as I should have. I am so sorry.’ He hangs his head. One of the women in the front pew is reaching out to him with a comforting hand. Another has her hands to her mouth. There is silence.

  Eventually, the priest recovers himself, begins to speak again, his voice softer now, less forbidding. ‘Yet still,’ he says, ‘God has not abandoned us, or this place, as we have Him. Hope with me. Pray with me. Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we have gone our own way, not loving You as we ought.’

  Most stumble along, repeating his words out of habit. Here and there, Thomas can see people sitting silent in their confusion.

  ‘We have sinned against You in thought, word and deed, and in what we have failed to do. We deserve Your condemnation.’

  Do we really? Thomas wonders. His mother nudges him. Had he said it out loud? Again he digs his fingernails into his own skin, feels them burn in the fleshy muscle of his forearm.

  At the front, the women are speaking together. They either know the words or have it written; they are proclaiming it in a voice of collective superiorit
y. Thomas can see Mary’s mother in the middle of them, face alive.

  ‘Father, forgive us. Help us to prevail as You test us. Help us to love You and our neighbour, and to live for Your honour and glory through Jesus Christ our Lord.’

  The priest, still standing at the altar, has his arms open as though he would draw them all in, love them, as though he can offer the forgiveness from above. The people beneath him are smiling, if incredulously. They love it, Thomas thinks. They are all feeding off it. Around him, people are leaning forward in their seats.

  Suddenly, Mary is there, dressed in white and standing in the light.

  ‘Yes,’ Father John says, almost in a whisper. ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways. We have to love Him, and to be open to the miracles He offers us – even the most mundane of things, even the everyday miracle of a child being conceived.’

  Thomas rubs his eyes, but the scene doesn’t change. She is still there, the cross lit golden behind her. You wouldn’t know, he thinks, without being told. There is no sign that she is pregnant. There are black shadows under her eyes, dark rings like bruises. She almost ripples at the edges. She is his dream, and she is there. He wants her, or he hates her, or he is scared of her, he can’t tell. The priest is still talking, his head thrown back, his soft voice raised over the voices of the people who are whispering now, exclaiming, wondering. Thomas stares at him, drags his eyes from the ghost in the white dress to stare at the man who is telling them she is their Saviour.

  ‘Even a child like this girl can show us the way to redemption!’

  Someone snorts, half laughing, but it is quickly stifled. Thomas feels himself shouting, yet nothing comes out but gasping noises of disbelief. There is a ringing in his ears. Tiny flecks of spittle are flying from the priest’s mouth, catching the light as they fall. Thomas can feel a vein throbbing in his neck, and he wishes desperately he could wake up.