Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen

Author:Ron Hansen [Hansen, Ron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780060981181
Google: qorMnQEACAAJ
Amazon: 0060981180
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1900-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

December. First Sunday of Advent.

Evening recreation. A squat tallow candle is lit. A yellow thumb of flame trembles on a draft. Reverend Mother Céline is just as sick as she was five days ago, with skin as white as the undersheets, and tiny beads of night sweat that finally break and sketch across her forehead. She hears the sand rasp of sandals on the floor and opens her green eyes.

Mariette is there with a pastry bowl of soap and hot water and an ironed towel. She says nothing as she uncovers the prioress and unties the strings of Annie’s nightgown.

The prioress says, “I have become so weak. I hardly belong to myself anymore.”

Mariette reaches down to the prioress’s knees and inchingly draws the nightgown up over her body, skirting her gaze away from her mother superior’s nakedness. She asks, “Was the medicine any help?”

“No.”

Mariette sits on the palliasse and puts the bowl of hot water onto her lap. She soaps her own palms. “Shall we send for Papa?”

“God shall be my doctor,” the prioress says.

Mariette tenderly washes her sister’s hands and arms as a mother would a child’s. She pushes a kitchen sponge underwater and then squeezes it dry and softly pets the soap away. She rinses the sponge and soaps it again and then hesitates. “With your permission?”

Mother Céline turns aside a little and Mariette unseeingly washes the prioress’s knobbed and ribbed back, her indrawn stomach, her insignificant breasts. The prioress says, “When Jesus washed Saint Peter’s feet it was surely a lesson in humility for his apostle, not for himself. We do not like to be done for.”

“Especially you, I think.”

Annie dresses her breasts with the gray wool blanket and says, “You presume too much.”

Mariette just sits there with her palms turned up in her lap. And then she stands up and intricately collects everything she’s brought in. She goes out without a word, only pausing at the sill to make a sign of the cross with holy water.

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