Virgin Vision

Virgin Vision (short story) – finalist in the 2005 Katherine Ann Porter fiction contest

Virgin Vision

Each morning, I left my home on Creek Street in the dark. I wanted to crown the Blessed Virgin Mary at the end of the month of May. I was competing against 100 sixth graders, so I would show my worthiness by attending mass before school, through Lent and beyond. I drank deeply from my cup of faith. My daily high came best in the morning hour that led up to the sacrifice of the mass. Weekday mornings, with a handful of other faithful, I got stupid on the body and blood of Christ. On Sundays, I binged on the Holy Name, a rich cocktail of salutations for the One True God. Lord, Jesus, Yahweh, Holy Ghost, Lamb of God Who Take Away the Sins of the World.
I fasted before Communion, as was required by church law, and loved how hunger quickened my intoxication.
One day I skipped along, carrying my hardboiled egg, slice of white toast, and thermos in my book bag. These would dull my hunger after mass so I could sit attentively through Sister Ellen Dominic’s 6th grade lessons.
It was still dark as I headed down Elizabeth Avenue. Beyond Quinn & Boden’s tower to the southeast, the first glint of light appeared. In measured amounts, it became bright and dazzling. Before my eyes it turned into a blinding cross, a molten crucifixion filling the lightening sky. It rose right out of the darkness, a splendorous apparition in the southeast sky above treetops and low buildings of the industrial city of Rahway.
Light-headed, I looked away instantly. I was Saul knocked off his horse. Joan of Arc awaiting instructions. I dared not speak, I only knew how to address God in silent prayer. My hands went limp and my bookbag dropped to the ground. My fingertips rose to my face. It was frighteningly hot.
I was not ready for the Vision. Look what it did to St. Therese, my and many school girls’ patron. It made her delirious with fever, made her body burn with third degree love of God and she went straight to heaven and skipped over stages in life that I still looked forward to. I felt faint, then so fearful I trembled. The flashing moment filled me with all that was now prescribed for me. Everything. And nothing—no music. No more Beatles. No rock n’ roll. No sex, no human touch, no romance. No material things—no clothes, cars, hairdos, nail polish, make-up, no trips down the shore in a new bathing suit—things I craved relentlessly and hadn’t gotten yet because my parents had populated my life with so many siblings. Siblings before me waited their turn for things, siblings born after me waited in line. Siblings next to me at the supper table held their bowls up with mine. They crowded the bathroom when I needed it most. They pounded on the bathroom door when I had finally achieved a moment of solitude.
Although I knew I couldn’t hide from God, I jumped into the hedges inside Wheatena Park and landed on top of my book bag on the soft ground dewy with early spring. My thermos’ insides shattered like eggshells. The ground moved and heaved me upright. The signs were everywhere. A muffled voice said rather impatiently, “Little girl, what in the world are you doing?”
I stood. I pulled the skirt of my plaid uniform down over my knees, too stunned to speak. It was Mr. DeMartino, the school janitor.
“Mr. DeMartino?”
“Madeleine Donitella?”
“What are you doing here?” My voice was shaky from the revelation at hand.
“I’m taking a nap before I go to work. I’m always take a nap a-here. It’s the only place I can getta some peace—usually.” Mr. DeMartino had only seven kids, three fewer than my parents had, but his house was even smaller than ours.
“Oh,” I said. “Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to jump on you, but . ..”
“Yes?”
Something melodious and pleasantly textured in Mr. D’s accent always made me feel safe. “I had a Vision.”
“A vision of what?”
“You know . . . of Christ on the cross, dying for our sins.” I over explained things to Mr. D. the way I did for my grandmother who spoke English the same way as he.
“Yes, he already did that,” Mr. DeMartino said. He crossed himself and said Mio dolce Signor. “Maybe you shoulda tell a whats-his-name . . . Father Murph’.”
Feeling a bit silly and a bit proud, I picked up my bag and said I would think about that. I felt I had something big and I didn’t want to squander it. But as I turned it over in my mind, I thought of the fame I would get. I was more comfortable when I blending in, not standing out. I left Mr. DeMartino to finish his nap in the hedges.
I dared to glance up at the sky again. The dawn was bright pink with no trace of my Vision. But I harbored no doubts that God had tapped me, had singled me out for my devotion to a spiritual life. With every breath, chills prickled my arms and back.
I barely got through school that day. I thought about how my life would have to change. I floated in an invisible bubble at lunch hour in the school yard, unable to hear or partake of my school mates’ chatter. I stood alone in the far corner under the horse chestnut tree. I wished it was a fig tree, like in the Bible. But I knew there wasn’t one fig tree in all of New Jersey.
Being a Bride of Jesus Christ had its allure. Even if I would be part of his harem with thousands of other spiritual wives. I saw myself living in the convent on Esterbrook Avenue. Only my face and hands would protrude from layers of black and white bunting. Never again would I look upon my weak, mortal flesh. I had read the entire series on saints lives and I intended to live like one of them someday when I got older and undesirable. But not yet. I knew what was asked of the saints for the love of God. I hummed O, Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the angels, queen of the May.
“You better come back in the classroom.”
I jumped. It was Larry Chunklin. I had not heard the bell ring. Sister had sent him to lead me back to class. I told her I was praying silently to Jesus.

My mother scolded me hard for breaking the thermos.
“That’s the third one this week. You kids think money grows on trees.” Her voice trailed off.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” I was sorry for my mother who was like the thermos. She was insulated by her durable exterior from my father’s railing need to battle an enemy he hadn’t finished off in World War II. Inside, she must have had a thousand cracks from being mistaken for the enemy.
The twelve of us sat down at the supper table. Everyone was silent—my father’s orders—as my mother dished out the escarole, bean, and meatball stew. My oldest brother said grace and then we were allowed to talk.
My father ripped off a hunk of sesame bread for himself and passed the loaf. “I was in the jungle again,” he told my mother in Italian. He meant in a dream. His eyes were bloodshot because he had just woken up. He was having one of his tired spells because of something that bit him long ago in the tropics.
“I don’t want to discuss you re-enlisting,” she answered firmly in Italian, tearing into the bread. “Tuition, mortgage, and three layaway payments are due end of this week.” They discussed their money problems in their secret tongue and didn’t notice that I hardly ate. But my sister Rena did.
Upstairs as we did homework on our bed, she asked, “What’s happening?” I couldn’t hide from her. I made her promise a thousand deaths slow and painful, if she told anyone. I made her promise that she would never listen to another Beatle song if she told. I threw in that she would have to rub my back every night until the day we died.
“All right, already.”
“I had a Vision.”
“C’mon, quit goofin’. What’s the secret?”
“I’m not goofin’—swear on the Bible and Rubber Soul.”
“Yeah? from heaven?”
“Yeah.”
“What did it look like?”
“Well, it almost blinded me—you know how they say looking upon the Face of God is like looking directly into the sun?”
“But what was it? What did it look like?”
“I’m getting there . . . it was the Holy Cross, all golden and fiery. Bright as Fourth of July sparklers. It filled the sky above me and . . . I’m pretty sure I heard an angels’ choir. It appeared in the morning before Mass.” I may have exaggerated about the choir, but I got my point across.
“What else? Did God speak or do anything?”
“No, not yet, he . . . they never say anything the first time. I’m afraid what it’s going to say.”
“Well, how do you know it’s your Vision—and not meant for someone else?”
“Cheeze, Rena, you don’t see them if they’re not meant for you—remember Bernadette, Father Juan Diego, Joan of Arc? No one believes you at first.”
“I believe you, but why don’t you stop going to mass in the morning?”
“Because. I’ve gone this long and I’m pretty sure Sister is going to pick me to crown Mary and I got a dress all picked out—it’s at Daffy Dan’s.”
“If you get one, I’ll get one.”
“Then, you better come to mass with me tomorrow.”
“Can I just ask Joanna to come?”
“Only if you’ll trade me that new Beatle card—the one with John.”
“Yeah, yeah—I’ll take your Paul one. I like him better anyway.” So did I, but I liked the currency of owning a secret even more.
Next day, Rena and her friend Joanna got up early and walked with me to Mass. When we got near Quinn & Boden, within minutes, it came—the Shining Cross. I fell backward with goose flesh. I tried to find words to describe it to them. But I was speechless and breathless. My stomach churned and I felt nauseous. Then I realized that they were gazing up with rapt looks on their faces.
“You see it?”
“Yeah, it’s really glowing over there,” said Rena.
“Bright as a falling star,” murmured Joanna.
We huddled together scared, waiting to hear a Voice. We would go down in the annals of church history, like the three children of Fatima. But in a few seconds a cloud moved over our Vision and the morning brightened. We walked slowly to St. Mary’s in silence.
Why had they been allowed to see my Vision?
“We can’t keep this to ourselves,” Joanna said at last. Her head of enviable black curls poked out from under her suede hat.
We sat through Mass and I hardly followed the Liturgy. I was so distracted I walked toward the back of the church at Communion. Joanna grabbed the neck of my coat and pointed me toward the altar. When mass was over, we edged our way over to the rectory.
Father Murphy answered the door and just looked at us. His thin white hair was combed back but he looked as if he just woke up. I couldn’t tell if he didn’t want to be bothered or was deep in thought. He was a man of few words. And even his sermons were very garbled, though thankfully short. Before we could speak, his housekeeper came and stuck her head through the cracked door. I heard Strangers in the Night coming from a transistor radio in the room behind her. Someone clicked it off.
“Yes,” said the housekeeper.
“We need to talk to the Pastor,” Joanna said to her.
“You girls follow me,” she said. She brought us into a parlor and made us sit in leather chairs.
Father Murphy, who seemed as tall and imposing as the Quinn & Boden tower, followed us into the parlor and just stood staring down at us. “What is it?”
“Father,” Joanna started. “Madeleine had a Vision and me and her sister Rena can vouch, cause we saw it—but I mean it was her Vision first.” We all bowed our heads as if she had just said the name, Jesus Christ.
“What the he—eck? Where was this vision?” he asked as if we’d reported a mugging or other crime.
I stood up. I wanted to dart out of the room and roll back time to two days earlier. I felt Rena’s and Joanna’s eyes on me and I looked at Father in his floor-length black garb. And I felt the comfort of making full disclosure to a man vested with divine power to transform bread and wine. I sat back down.
“It only happened twice, Father,” I said, “before sunrise, coming up Elizabeth Avenue.”
“All right,” he grumbled and ushered us out the door. I could smell smoke all over his clothes and it added to my upset stomach. He told us to meet him at the corner of Elizabeth and Scott next morning at 6:45 a.m. where he’d pick us up.
That night, Rena and I rubbed backs for an extra long time, then lay awake all night and wondered what we’d gotten ourselves into with Visions from heaven.
“Maybe we should tell Mom and Dad,” said Rena.
“You kidding? Remember last year when we told them about the psychic’s prediction?”
“Oh yeah . . . they thought we were silly.”
“Beatles would be dead and gone now, if we hadn’t called the Plaza and told them not to get on that plane.”

With Joanna, we got to the corner early. Father Murphy pulled up in a big black Cadillac.
“Get in,” he growled.
My nerves are shattered. The very phrase my mother used on Saturday nights after she had bathed all the little kids and collapsed in her rocker to dream of Paris, came into my head. We all squeezed in back and Father crawled up the street. There were no other cars.
He mumbled something several times. Eventually I realized he was saying, “This where?”
“A little farther . . . Father,” I said.
“Get out,” he said when we got to the spot. We stood and waited. Time passed slowly. Father Murphy smoked a cigarette and then another, blowing out a mixture of smoke and gruff sighs. He hummed a song—Strangers in the Night. He cleared his throat and spit once, twice.
And then, we all saw it at the same time, even Father Murphy, who seemed to gasp as the Light appeared. He groaned loudly and said clearly, “Godfrey Daniels. Get in the back seat.” He sped in the direction of the glowing crucifix, which we lost sight of quickly as he turned corners and screeched a few times. When we got to the corner of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on Main and Esterbrook, he jumped out with the door open and the motor running. He craned his neck back and with his hand extended he waved for us three to look up. We craned our necks and saw that the cross that appeared to us, to everyone who cared to look, was the gold-plated crucifix on the Episcopal church steeple.
“Maybe you girls should learn about fool’s gold,” said Father. “Do you know what fool’s gold is? It’s something that turns to dust as soon as you grab for it.” He shook his head and I thought he laughed, but he might have just cleared his throat.
Rena, Joanna, and I all stared down at our feet. I noticed a small cross, a surveyor’s cross, engraved in the sidewalk, as if to further mock my ignorance and self-deception. Oh, this was the devil’s work, I thought, the serpent of grand illusion. I was inconsolable, I couldn’t even look at Rena or Joanna.
Father took us to the convent on Esterbrook. In the back seat I sat in the middle and Rena and Joanna kept elbowing my side.
“A Vision,” snickered Joanna.
“Straight from heaven,” whispered Rena. “I want my John Lennon card back. I looked down at my hands so they couldn’t see my face.
We waited in the car while Father ran inside to talk to the Mother Superior. He came back and made us go in alone as he screeched off in his Cadillac. Sister Theresa appeared and said, “A little housework is good for the soul, girls.” She beckoned Rena and Joanna to help her sweep and tidy up the sitting room. Her voice and eyes were, as always, gay and sparkly and I thought even if she knew that behind her back everyone called her Tessie or Tstetse Fly, they would remain that way.
Sister Ellen Dominic seemed to float down the long, broad spiral staircase. She stopped at the landing and fumbled for something tucked inside her sleeve—a man’s handkerchief. She looked stern but her voice was soft as she handed it to me. “Wipe your tears, Madeleine. Come up.”
I followed her up to the third floor into a bedroom where she made me sit on a brocade chair. Sister vanished into a big closet, then came out carrying a dress with layers of taffeta and nylon. I knew what it meant .
“Try this on, I’ll be right back.” I took off my jumper and stepped into the dress, which smelled of moth balls. It was pink, the only color I didn’t like. The dress I had picked out to wear to the crowning was blue, dotted Swiss silk. I wanted blue. Blue, like the primary color Mother Mary wore.
This one was so big, it slipped off one shoulder and came to my ankles.
When Sister returned, she smiled at the sight of me and said, “Oh dear.” She collapsed to her knees. Her habit pooled on the floor around her like a dark, forbidding moat. “Well, I knew it would be big, but . . . ” She began to pin the hem with straight pins. The dress, which seemed destined for a girl more endowed than I, made me feel even smaller than I was. I was mortified, the way Gloria Horvac must have been when she walked back in the classroom from the lavatory with her jumper stuck in her underpants. I was wretched. I belonged in a convent.
“Sister, I . . . I . . . didn’t mean to have false gods before me. . . ?”
She pulled up the dress’ shoulders and pinned them. “I know.”
“So, I don’t have to confess . . .”
“Of course not. You know what it takes to make a sin. Examine your conscience.”
“Yes, Sister. . . does this dress mean I’m the chosen one?”
“You are the one chosen—to crown Mary.”
“Thank you, Sister.”
“Humm-hummm,” she said through three straight pins held between her lips. “You understand what your vision was?”
“The crucifix on St. Paul’s.”
“How glorious—it caught the rising sun, as it always does this time of year, as Earth tilts on her axis heading toward the spring equinox. Did you notice the vision came a little earlier each morning?”
“Sort of . . . I guess.”
She didn’t belabor the subject. “We’ll just take some tucks in here,” she said, pulling the dress sides together. “So it’s not a perfect fit, but I think your mother will be happy we can save her some money. Don’t you think so, Madeleine?”
“Yes, Sister.”
I was not the least bit excited. The very hope and anticipation of being the chosen one were gone so suddenly I grieved their loss. I stared through a lacy curtain, down into the school playground. I saw the horse chestnut tree and wondered if working toward being saved was more intoxicating than salvation itself?

Attending daily mass felt like a layaway payment for merchandise I didn’t really need anymore. But I went the rest of May by myself. I saw the shining cross one more time before the sun no longer torched it for the season. It was no less magnificent even with my knowledge of its earthly origins.
The last Sunday in May, my parents drove me to St. Mary’s Church.
“You remember to put in a word to the Virgin on behalf of your needy parents and all their children,” said my father. His chuckle lightened my heart, heavy with anxiety about being the focus of attention.
“We’ll make an offering for the conversion of Russia and light a candle in Mary’s honor after,” said my mother. She eyed me critically in the backseat. “Whoever wore that dress last year must’ve been twice your size—too bad we couldn’t afford a new one for you.”
All the other sixth grade girls were lined up double file in the vestibule of the church. I took my place at the end of the long procession. Two boys in all white suits, ties, and bucks walked behind me. One carried the hand-crafted crown of pink tea roses on a white satin pillow. We stood there still and silent, our folded gloved hands pointing toward heaven, as the organ played and a soprano sang the Ave Maria. At the start of O, Mary, we crown thee, the procession started down the middle aisle. The parishioners stood in their pews and sang along.
The girls marched in the trail of frankincense to their seats in the nave’s front pews while I and the two boys slowly marched to the side altar. We stopped and stood before Mary, cloaked in all her blue virgin glory. I waited for my cue from the faithful—the song’s refrain, Queen of the angels, Queen of the May—then picked up the crown. Slowly I made my way up the first two marble steps. On the third and last, the hem of the dress caught in my white patent leather shoe heel. Before God, Mary, and the congregation, I tripped. An inebriate, drunk on an overdose of Catholicism, I lost total motor control. Mary’s crown of tea roses flew out of my hands.
But Father Murphy, instead of letting the altar boy pick up the crown, strode over and picked it up with his consecrated hands. He looked at me, detached and serene. I looked up at him. I glanced over to my parents in the front pew. My father always sang louder than anyone—I could almost see down his wide dark gullet. I heard at once, in the hymns roaring in the church, all the fury of hell and the grandeur of heaven and I knew that both realms were at hand. And at that moment, as Father’s hands brushed mine, I knew I could always see things two ways and that might be the only power I would ever have. I felt absolved of my flawed nature, the way I felt forgiven my imperfections when my mother’s voice trailed off in resignation, or when my father excused his kids their ignorance of what it was like to see your buddy’s brains blown out on the battle field.
The joy and purity of Father’s gold-embroidered white garments were transmitted to me, a child of God. I sang as I placed the crown on Mary’s surprisingly small head. It fit perfectly.