Flights of Angels

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “You’re the devil’s advocate, Aurora. You’re as evil as a black star.” She ran from the room and found Mother and told her some blown-up version of what I’d said and I ended up having to go to Arsaga’s coffee shop to get any studying done.

  The next day Dad picked up Bill Bailey and brought him home. He had been pumped full of anticoagulants and antibiotics and put on a strict diet of low-fat dog food. He was going to live. Jocelyn gave thanks to God and asked Mother to donate her allowance for two weeks to the United Way.

  “It’s hopeless,” I reported to Ingersol. “She has been programmed past all repair. ‘And who made the scientists and biochemists?’ she told me. ‘God did.’”

  “Maybe you should just ignore her,” Ingersol suggested. “Just try not to notice her for a few years.”

  “That’s easy for an only child to say. She’s in my face with it. She prays over every bite of food. Three-paragraph prayers for cereal at breakfast.”

  “We must record this time in her life. Why didn’t I think of that sooner!” The year before, we had won a home video award at the Walton Arts Center with a video we made of Jocelyn drawing one of her welcome signs on the street in front of the house. It was a life-size colored chalk picture of a maple tree in full autumn colors. Underneath the tree it said, WELCOME TO THE FALL.

  Ingersol had interviewed her while I held the camera. He had gotten her to say some amazing things about why she painted the street and if it bothered her when the rain washed it off and how long it took her and things like that. She was so cute that year. I have to admit she really is a pretty little girl. “Why do you think you paint the street?” he asked her. It was the end of the video.

  “Because it looks so pretty when it’s done and people like it and it makes them feel better to see a painted tree.” She stood up with the brown chalk stick in her hand and beamed into the camera, so sure of herself and of her world.

  We had won second place but still it was a triumph. We had been wondering if we’d enter the contest again. Now here it was, right before our eyes, Jocelyn’s conversion to the Methodist church.

  “If we get it right,” Ingersol said, “this could be the one we send to the competition at the Museum of Modern Art. They love stuff from the South. This will fit right in with their preconceived notions about what goes on out here. If she will let us interview her.”

  “If she will? She wants a podium more than she wants God. Besides, she loves you. She’ll do anything for you.”

  “I love her,” he answered. “I think she’s the cutest little girl who ever lived. Oh, God, I hope she doesn’t lose her faith before we get it on film.”

  “Don’t worry. Jesus spared Bill Bailey due to her intercessions. This has months to run.”

  We waited until an afternoon when Mother was gone. Then Ingersol brought over the video camera and Jocelyn put on her Christian Scout uniform and sat on the piano bench and I filmed while Ingersol asked the questions. We got some good stuff but nothing noteworthy. I think she has become suspicious of our motives. Also, she kept making us run it back so she could see what she looked like on the monitor. We wanted her to wear the hat but she wouldn’t because she said it squashed down her hair.

  We wasted two hours and a lot of film. The next Saturday we tried again in Walker Park with her sitting in one of the swings. Still, nothing good enough for the Walton Arts Center contest, much less the Museum of Modern Art.

  Then we had a stroke of luck. A girl in the scouts got the flu and the Monday-night meeting had to be moved to our house. It would have been Jocelyn’s turn sooner or later anyway, but the way it turned out there was only a day’s notice. All day Sunday she was in fury trying to get our house cleaned up enough for her new friends at the church to see. I called Ingersol as soon as it began and he came over and filmed the whole thing. He filmed her cleaning up the bathrooms with a towel tied around her head. He filmed her vacuuming the living room rug and behind the sofas.

  He filmed her pushing poor old Bill Bailey out into the garage and yelling at him not to come in. He filmed her throwing her cats out the back door. He filmed her yelling at me to clean up my room. He filmed Mother coming in the door carrying sacks of groceries. He filmed the blueberry muffins being baked and Dad sweeping the sidewalks and the carport and trimming the hedges. ALL IN THE NAME OF JESUS, we called it. We got some great audio bits. We got the best one at five the next afternoon.

  “Get out of the way,” she yelled at me. “I’ve got to get this table set. Get your books out of here.”

  “Can’t I do my homework first? It’s only five o’clock.”

  “They’re coming at seven. These are rich girls, Aurora. They live in rich houses. I have to get this place fixed up. And get rid of that dog. Every time I put him out he comes back in. I don’t want that old sick dog lying around the living room.”

  “Could I help?” I volunteered, knowing Ingersol was getting every bit of it on tape and she was so stupid she had forgotten he was there.

  “Put the bikes away. Go shut the garage so they won’t have to look at Mother’s old car. Then go get dressed. Put on some nice clothes for a change and some makeup. Please get dressed, Aurora. Don’t embarrass me to death.” She stood with her hands on her hips. Poor little Christian martyr, little social climber, little artist trying to make the world a more attractive place.

  She was about to cry. Ingersol caught it all. Afterward both he and I helped her as much as we could and then we left while she got dressed and only came back and filmed the part of the meeting where they do the prayers and the pledge of allegiance. I have to admit they looked adorable all lined up in their uniforms and sashes with their hats on their heads.

  Needless to say this video is going to make our reputations when it’s edited and finished. I know I should feel guilty about taking advantage of Jocelyn and using her pitiful little life as material for our work, but I don’t really have any choice in the matter. If she does these things in my presence, she had better watch out. I’m a creative person on my way to fulfill my destiny in the world. The Jocelyns of the world are here for me to plunder.

  Besides, what do you think the chances are of her being at the Museum of Modern Art next year when they give out the prizes? Zero. My mother is a classicist. She doesn’t even like modern art.

  Let’s say she was there, sitting in the audience watching herself on the big screen. Would she recognize her obsession and begin to doubt it? I doubt it. She’d be thinking about the opening scenes when she was sitting on the piano bench looking like a child movie star and reeling out the party line about love and service to the world. There is one thing I must admit, and Ingersol admits it too. Christianity is a force for good in the world in many ways. It is a civilizing force in the midst of chaos. Not everyone is able to look out over the chasm of space and time and say, that’s it, that’s how it is, maybe it’s even beautiful. Some people have to have the Pope or the Methodist church. They can’t all worship Freeman Dyson and Timothy Ferris like Ingersol and I do. We are studying like crazy. We can’t wait to get to Princeton or Harvard or Stanford or wherever those guys are teaching. We are going to be happy just walking around a town where great minds live. Meanwhile, we are doing the best we can with Fayetteville. More later.

  Aurora Harris

  Ocean Springs

  It was November. The north wind had blown the water from the beaches, and the casinos across the bay rose up like bad memories to remind us of greed and craziness. Not that anyone in Ocean Springs needed to be reminded of craziness in the fall of nineteen ninety-seven. We had spent September and October fighting off a plan to build a waste treatment plant in the marshes beside the Pascagoula River. Don’t even think about that. Think about good things. Think about the herons that nest along the shore. The sea gulls and rooks and crazy little terns that sing to us when we go walking in the morning, a song made of crackles and the beating of wings and hunger. Think about the wonder of flight and the improbable, yes, divine
creation all around us and for God’s sake don’t think one rape wreaks a fall or defines a culture. Even if it was Miss Anastasia Provine. Even if it was the sweetest lady who ever lived.

  Was the rapist black or white? She won’t tell. I want to tell you something about this little town of five thousand souls down here on the Mississippi coast, across the sound from the casinos in Biloxi, where the French first landed three hundred years ago this winter, where they first set foot in what would later be called the Louisiana Purchase. In the first place it belies the cynics who think a southern town can’t have good relations between black people and white people and all the shades of people in between, from albinos to darkest Africans. A long time ago the city fathers of Ocean Springs decided not to accept the government’s offer of public housing. Because of that, the black people of Ocean Springs are the same black people who have always lived here. They are handsome and tall and very proud. The poet Al Young is from Ocean Springs, although he never comes back to visit. The mystical painter Walter Anderson lived here all his life and left his legacy everywhere. Everyone paints. Ten-dollar sets of watercolors fly off the shelves of the expensive toy store on Washington Avenue. Back to the rape.

  Miss Anastasia lives in a white house set back from the beach. When she was young she was the president of Mississippi College for Women. After she retired she came home and moved into her mother’s house and began to do good deeds. Good deeds she has done include tutoring bright children in Latin and French, overseeing the school lunch program for four years, including eating lunch at the public schools in town at least four times a week. Teaching children not to complain or put their elbows on the table. Walking everywhere she goes unless it’s raining. Setting an example of superior behavior twenty-four hours a day and lending books to anyone who likes to read.

  After he banged her head against the wall and forced her to undress, the rapist relented and fled her bedroom. Why did he do that? Because she began to chant a Buddhist chant she had learned in her youth from a devotee of the Dalai Lama. Om, mani, padme, hum, she chanted over and over and he lost his erection and fled the house. She put her clothes back on before she called the police, which is probably why the police dogs lost the trail at the railroad bridge.

  Rape is a capital offense. You could be put to death for raping an eighty-year-old woman at nine o’clock on a Thursday night. She was in her bedroom trying to stay awake to watch ER. “I didn’t know you watched ER,” I said when she told me that. “I would have come over and watched it with you.”

  “They have it on too late,” she answered. “But I have to watch it. One of the writers went to MCW. I knew her mother. I’m fascinated by television. If I were younger I would write about it. No one since McLuhan has really tried to plumb the phenomenon of watching television. Of course we didn’t question the printing press, did we? We just made and read the books.”

  “Are you all right?” I kept asking. “Is there anything we can do for you?”

  “Come over on Sunday afternoon,” she said. “We are going to plant daffodils on the front lawn.” Her house is on a rise of land beside a small harbor. There is a wide front lawn with two live oak trees that shade the way to the beach. On Sunday afternoon the members of her Latin club were gathering to plant hundreds of flowers in honor of her escape from the madman. We have all decided he is mad. The police want to know why neither of her dogs went to her defense, but one of them is fourteen years old and the other one is blind. The police have also spread a rumor that her back door was unlocked and many who know her secretly believe it’s true. The rumor has slowed down the affixing of dead bolt locks to every door in town. For several days after the rape locksmith trucks from Biloxi, Gulfport, Pass Christian, and Pascagoula were descending like a cloud of locusts adding dead bolts to doors that already had perfectly good locks on them. I had a vision that for years to come I would be noticing the double locks on bedroom doors and think of them as a communal art form, a monument to the night that madness entered the home of Miss Anastasia Provine and made us think we were not safe.

  “Except we are safe,” she insisted, when I told her that. We were on our knees digging holes for the daffodils. She had spread out a piece of canvas and we were kneeling on it, trying not to get the Mary Copelands mixed up with the King Alfreds. “We are safe because our ancestors have striven to create a civilization where the weak and strong serve each other. The young men who came out when I called were so wonderful. The young woman who took the phone call sits up all night to guard us while we sleep. The people at the hospital also. We must have an appreciation day for everyone who is awake all night and on duty. When the daffodils bloom I will take baskets of them to the people who came to my rescue.” She sat back on her knees. How does an eighty-year-old woman kneel on the ground without pain? By walking seven miles a day, rain or shine, along the shore, her hair tied back with colored ribbons, her feet encased in the latest model Nike running shoes, her arms swinging, an example being set.

  There is a long red mark along the side of her face and the white of her left eye is blood red because he tried to choke her and her arm is bandaged. Aside from that she seems just like herself. This worries me. I think she is in denial. I think we had better get someone to come and live in the house.

  I dug down into the earth. I heaved a long sigh. I turned and looked her in the eye and was quiet. Miss Anastasia is not a lady to whom you give advice, even if you are the principal of Ocean Springs Middle School, which is my hard-won post.

  “I was thinking I should come and give a lecture on preparedness to the young women in your school,” she said. “Do you agree that should be done?”

  “It would be marvelous. I can’t think of anything that would be more helpful. Anytime you feel like doing it. Just let me know.” I looked down across the lawn to the beach and the clear bright air above the water. The barrier islands that guard the coast were very clear in the distance, their tall pine trees like sentinels. It has only been a year since we fought off a plan to build a bridge out to the nearest island. The developers wanted to cut down the trees that keep the sand in place and put up a hotel and a casino. We are not the only town fighting for our life against insanity and corruption. We do not have petrochemical plants spewing toxins into the air like they do on the Louisiana coast. We have pollution of the spirit. The slot machine addicts wet the seats rather than leave their machines long enough to go to the bathroom. Forget I told you that. It was told to me by the parent of a student at my school. She was working in the all-night restaurant at the Grand. I got her a job at the school cafeteria so she can be home at night with her children. We do what we can.

  “He told me he was going to kill me.” Miss Anastasia got up from her kneeling position and pulled her tall body into its most commanding posture. I stood up beside her. The great live oak tree behind her was not more powerful or imposing, and I tried to imagine a madman encountering this vision. “And I said, ‘No, it is not me you wish to kill. I am only a symbol of someone who has been cruel to you. Let me give you money. Let me give you food and drink. Tell me what is troubling you.’ So I got up from my chair and that is when he grabbed me and banged my head against the wall and began to choke me. Then he released me and told me to disrobe. I said, ‘Oh, please, let me put on my robe and slippers. I get cold so easily. Surely it is not me you hate. I have done nothing to engender your hate. Please think this over before you go any further.’ That is when he threw me down upon the bed and the dogs began to whimper and I saw the photograph of the Buddha Celine brought to me from San Francisco last year and I began the chant I used to console myself when my mother died. Om, mani, padme, hum, I began to chant and he raised up from the bed and fled the room. It was a miracle, Louise. I was saved by a miracle. By Celine going to San Francisco to meet with the Save the Oceans people and by their taking her to the museum to see the jade Buddha and by her kindness in wanting me to have a photograph of it and all the web of being in which we live.” She looked of
f toward Deer Island, and I rededicated myself to fighting evil wherever I find it and especially when it only seems like simple ignorance, which is all a teacher does, which is what we are here for, our mission.

  “He thought you were some sort of witch,” I answered. “He thought it was voodoo. There you were, in that bedroom full of artifacts from the religions of the world, and he thought he had wandered into a voodoo den. Will they catch him, do you think?”

  “He may harm another person first.” She hung her head. “I will regret all my life that I stopped to put on my robe before I called the police. I was cold, Louise. When I was a child my mother would warm my clothes before she dressed me on winter mornings. Well, it’s that memory I will focus on. Not this evil I have told you. Bury the evil with the daffodils. Come, let us go and see about the others.” We walked over to where the Episcopal bishop was planting a circle of Semper Avantis beside the driveway. The director of SCAN, the society for the prevention of cruelty to children, was beside him. It would impress you if you knew who was on that lawn planting flowers. When they bloom in the spring we will have obliterated the footsteps of the madman. We have taken back the ground beside the harbor in Ocean Springs.

  He was caught by a series of events that are as bizarre as the crime itself, as strange as the chemistry that will turn the bulbs we buried into flowers, as miraculous as the flight of herons, as dark and troubling as the misplaced hope that causes a human being to urinate on himself or herself while playing a slot machine.

  A young man Miss Anastasia helped get into Harvard University several years ago was home for Christmas and out walking on our beach at dawn. He noticed that the dog who prowls around the yacht club was tied to a post by the pier. This is not normal. For years that dog has stood by the driveway waiting to follow joggers down the beach. No one has ever seen him tied to the pier and besides the tide was coming in and the rope that held him wasn’t long enough for him to reach the pier if he needed to go there. So this small, neat-bodied young man named Howard who used to play a trumpet in the marching band slowed his pace and went to investigate. There, beneath the yacht club in the hammock, was a dark-coated figure asleep beside an empty vodka bottle. The young man untied the dog, walked quietly back to the road, and pulled out his cellular phone and called the police.