Looking for Mary by Beverly Donofrio

Author:Beverly Donofrio [Donofrio, Beverly]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

Within twenty-four hours a violent windstorm rips through the village, leaving us without electricity, heat, or hot water for three days. Luckily the stove is gas, so there’s no shortage of tea and bread, which the fifty of us eat, three times a day, at two long tables. We try not to stare at one another as we chew, and listen to tapes supplied by Annalena and Bruce, who turn out to be purveyors of some fairly hard-core, scare-tactic Catholic dogma. A deep booming male voice: “RIGHT IS RIGHT. WRONG IS WRONG. TRUTH IS TRUTH. LIES ARE LIES. YOU KNOW WHAT IS RIGHT AND YOU KNOW WHAT IS WRONG. IT IS WRONG TO WORSHIP FALSE GODS. MONNNNEEEEY . . . AAAMMMMBIIITTTIOOON . . . YOOOUUURRR OOWWWNNN BODDDIIIEEESSS. GOD SPEAKS THE TRUTH AND SO MUST YOU. IT IS WRONG TO SIT IDLY BY AS MILLIONS OF BABIES ARE MURDERED IN THEIR MOTHERS’ WOMBS. THEIR MOTH-ERS’ WOMBS. . . . IF YOU DO NOTHING, GOD SEES THIS AND IS NOT HAPPY. YOU HAVE AN IMPERATIVE BY VIRTUE OF YOUR BAPTISM TO SPEAK UP, LOUD. . . .”

The speaker’s fire-and-brimstone tone is enough to make me experience this as water torture. But gradually, as the week passes, during which I’m continually awakened in the night by the wind screaming like a banshee at my window, I enter a numb zone, where I chew like a cow on cud, adding more and more honey to my tea, as though sweetness will provide an antidote to this limbo state.

Beatrice and I have been assigned a room on the second floor, but Beatrice sleeps there only one night. The rest she spends with a blanket and pillow in adoration in the chapel. I shiver under the covers in my tights and down pants, which I wear under my velvet skirt, my SS jacket over it all, a beret on my head and gloves on my hands, which are still peeling and have begun to reveal raw, quilted flesh dotted with blood, but still, thank God, do not itch.

Day and night I read the Bible with my flashlight: “Ask and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. . . .” And when I can read no more, I pray the rosary and meditate, picturing Mary patting my heart, or pulling me up by my hands so she can hug me and stroke my head. I pray Memorare after Memorare, begging Mary to teach me how to love, to know what it is, to feel it in my heart, to teach me how to show it. I implore her to enter my son’s heart to give him the mother he never had, to heal him. And I pray to the Holy Spirit to enter me so I can make a good confession. I have signed up

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.