I said "I do" , and then we did. And we did it as often as possible, until God blessed us with our daughter. How my man loved her when she toddled across the floor on her fat little legs, her face a fright with jam, her eyes this big. Thinking she would be His forever, not understanding that the reason she learned to walk so early was so that she could get an earlier start on leaving home.
Ah, but when she turned five, He understood. Quite a little miss she was by then, and He looked at her and I could almost see those wheels turning inside his head. "Daughters grow up and away," He was thinking. "But a son--a son is a son forever." Forgetting how fast He forgot His own father and His father's father and His father's father's fathers.
"Shall we have a son?" He asked. As if I could open a cook book and there would a recipe printed all nice and neat. "A dash of snail, a pinch of puppy dog's tail..."
But there was no saying no to Him. He was too dear when He looked at me like that, His great brown eyes full of pleading. Break a woman's heart, it would, to see a tear fall from that eye.
"I was thinking the same thing myself," I replied.
So we had our son. And a dark night I was. A terrible night. We had him, then we lost him, poor wee thing. I, near out of my mind with grief. And Him--Him so strong, so sweet, so gentle. So daft.
"He's in heaven," He said to soothe me.
"What do I care of heaven," I wailed. "I want my son!"
A well could not contain all the tears I cried. They would have overflowed an ocean. But the tears dried up as they always do, and the grief passed with the passing of the days. And then the nights, which gave me such terror in the months after my boy died--then the nights turned gentle and warm. I would throw off the blanket, then the sheet. Sometimes, I would throw off my nightgown, too. But He would just turn His back. Or maybe He would said "Shall I open a window, my dear?"
"No," I wanted to say. " I want you to open me, you fool." But I could not speak the words. Not with the grief hanging heavy over Him like a cloud of soot. Yes, grief. All that time I thought He did not miss our boy, all those nights I hated Him for not caring enough, and now I saw the truth. He cared too much. Grief had eaten Him up inside. Grief had carried away His soul and it was up to me, his wife, to find it and bring it home again or He would forever be a half man, living in the past.
"Give him time," my friends said.
"Give him time," the priest said.
So I gave Him time. But time was not giving my man back to me. Time plays tricks with us. I took me a while to see, but see I did, in the end. If I wanted my man back, I would have to go get Him.
My friends told me "Fix your hair different. Buy a new dress." But was not I already the belle of the stage? Did not I already have men swearing on their knees that they would die of love for me? Did not He have me near naked every night in the same bed?
"Give him more time," the priest said again.
I wondered what he would say if instead of complaining that me and my man were having no kids because He would not, I was to tell him instead "Oh Father, he is all over me. But only in unnatural ways."
That would have been the end of "Give him more time." Then the father would have sang a different tune.
Ten years passed, and finally even the Father got tired of saying "Give him more time." But not one of my friends had a word of advise, not one I cared to hear anyway. Annulment was out. I loved Him. If I did not love Him so dearly, I would have been thanking heaven every day that He had lost interest in me, instead of banging my head against the wall trying to think of some way to win Him back to me.
Love can make a woman desperate. And a desperate woman can do anything. She can pick up the pieces of her dead brother as that Egyptian princess did and glue them back together with her tears and breathe life into him and get herself with child by him. If an Egyptian woman could do all that with a dead man who had been torn to pieces then what was to stop an Irish woman from performing the same miracle with a man still living and in one piece? What magic did the Egyptians possess, I wondered? I asked my friends. All they knew was what they had read in romance stories. I asked the priest--no, I am joking. I know better than to ask the priest a question like that.
Finally, I asked myself. "Molly, if you want to know the secret of the Egyptians who do you ask?"
The answer was as clear as the nose on my face. You ask the Egyptians. In my profession, we meet a lot of travelling types. Finding a gypsy was as easy as finding grass in a pasture. Finding a real gypsy, one who knew more magic tricks than just how to make fools give up their money--that was a task worthy of Hercules. But I did it. A twisted up little slip of a woman, she was. Older than Methuselah but with a sparkle in her coal black eyes that told me at once "This old woman knows a thing or two about love."
"Your man is a Hebrew, I take it," she said.
"And what if He is?" I replied, all haughty.
She cackled like one of the old witches in "MacBeth" "I'm not trying to give offense," she told me. "I am asking a straight question, and I need a straight answer."
"Yes, He is. Or He was. He is not much of anything anymore."
She nodded her head. "As I thought. Jehovah is a vengeful God. He does nothing without reason. But once he gets a reason in his head, he keeps it there."
"You are saying that God is doing this to my man?"
"No, I am saying that your man is doing this for his god. He wanted a son. He got a son. And then he lost him. So now he is afraid to want."
"Look," I told her. "It's Him that always has His head in a book. Him that is always talking philosophy. I need to hear things straight."
"Then straight to the point, I'll be," she says. "When your son died, you cried and then you got over it. Oh, you still miss him, and occasionally a tear still comes to your eye. But you paid your price to love. Your husband, he has never paid the price. For ten long years he has been telling himself 'It was something I did wrong. God would not punish me in this way unless what I did was sinful. What did I do? I wanted a son. So wanting a son was sinful. Praise God.'" She rolled her dark eyes to show what she thought of this. "And meanwhile the Goddess of Love is saying 'What is wrong with you man? Are you daft? You lost your only son. You should be crying. You should be beating your breast. You should be shaking your fist at the sky and cursing God.' But your man, being of the mind that there is only one God and only one way to talk to him, does not even hear her.
"So now the Goddess is good and mad. She tells him 'If you don't let yourself feel this, my man, I'll never let you feel at all. No more love for you. Do you understand?' But still he does not hear her." Her eyes narrowed to two slits. She looked a bit like the cat when it watches a sparrow. "That is where you come in."
"Me? I have already tried love. I have tried every french perfume, every piece of indecent silk lingerie, every---"
She shook her old head. "You have hardly tried at all," she told me. "You are as bad as him, waiting for him to come home on his own. It is a wonder you have not lost him for good. Ten years? Are you mad? In ten years a man can change completely. How do you know that if you find him now you will still want him?"
I pounded my fist against my bosom. "I know here."
At that she smiled. "Very good. Maybe there is hope for you yet. Here is what you have to do if you want your man back." And then she told me.
My face must have been a picture, eyes wide, chin dropped to my chest. "I could not!" I exclaimed.
She gave me a wry look. "Why not?"
"Because I love my man! I could never do that to him."
She shook her head. "Then you do not love him as much as you say. What's a woman's virtue to the Goddess of love? A womb full of cobwebs. What's a woman's good reputation to the Goddess of love? Blasphemy." She spat on the ground at my feet. "Come back when you find your own love. Then we can start looking for his."
For months, her words haunted me. By day, I fought them. At night there was no escaping them. The old crone had planted seeds in my dream. The seeds brought forth unholy fruit, a garden full of naked men like so many trees. Their arms outstretched, their eyes on me. "Please," the wind seemed to whisper as it ran its fingers through their lustrous hair. "Please." After a few months of this, I could bear it no longer. I went back the the Gypsy. She did not seem at all surprised to see me. "Have you found your love yet, Mrs. Bloom?"
I took a deep breath. "If it will win my man back, I am willing to do what you say. But not how you said it. Surely this Goddess --" Even though I knew that to believe in a Goddess was to condemn my soul to Hell for all eternity, I was willing to believe. For His sake.. "--if she is so all powerful, won't she know what I do behind closed doors? Won't it be enough for her if I take a lover in secret? Do I have to put my man through shame?"
The old gypsy shook her head and turned away. "You still do not understand," she said. But this time her voice was a bit more gentle. And she did not spit at me, which I took to be a good sign. I went home and thought about it. And thought about it. And thought about it some more. Until my head ached from thinking almost as much as my heart ached from missing Him.
And then I gave up thinking.
Next morning, bright and early, I was at her door step. "Tell me what to do, " I said. "And I will do it."
I will not tell you what she did then, what bitter potions she made me drink, what blasphemies she had me utter. To put the words to paper so that another's eyes can read them would be to multiple my sin, and in that morning I sinned enough to merit a thousand eternities in Hell. I would have done it for no man but Him. I only hope that when my time comes and I stand before St. Peter, the Gypsy's Goddess is standing behind me to tell the old saint "Let her be. She did it for love."
On my way out the door, the old Gypsy handed me a package. "Put this under your pillow." From the gleam in her eye, I knew that it was not a charm to give me sweet dreams.
You know the rest. Everyone in Dublin knows the rest, how I put horns on my husband, how I made myself a whore. What no one knows is why. I did not do it for spite. I did not do it out of boredom. I certainly did not do it to get myself with child--unnatural acts were the only ones featured on the program that day.
I did it for Him. And it was the hardest thing I have ever done, let me tell you. The night after, when midnight passed and He still had not come home, I thought "He has finally done it. He has jumped into the River. That old Gypsy was nothing but the Devil's minion sent to drag me and my loved ones to Hell."
When the church chimed two and still no sign of Him, I got down on my knees and prayed."Jesus, talk to the Father and tell him that my Poldy has suffered long enough for his sin--if sin it was to want a son. And Mary, please tell him that the only thing my man is guilty of is being afraid to love."
When the church chimed three, it seemed to be tolling His death. He. Is. Gone. And then, in my darkest hour, a strange peacefulness came over me, and I seemed to hear a little voice whispering "Mama, don't cry. You've found him, Mama. Papa is coming home."
And so he did. And so we did. And did and did and did again. These men, with their soul searching and quest seeking, these men with their Holy Gimics and Flimsy Grails. Running round and round in circles, they are, like dogs chasing their own tails. No doubt He thinks He had a long journey, my man. And that all the time He was gone I have been sitting here knitting or making jam or taking lovers. I have been to Hell and back for my man, and I am bound for Hell again unless a miracle happens--
"What a greedy one, you are," a voice whispered in my ear. Inside my ear, where only I could hear it. Poldy was fast asleep, His head on my bosom.
"You have had one miracle already today, and now you want another."
"My lady," I answered her. My lips moved but my voice was silent. Instinct told me that this conversation was not for His or any man's ears. "Are you the Goddess of Love?"
"Indeed, I am," she answered me. "And I am in your debt for bringing this man back to me."
"I brought him back to you? I thought you brought him back to me."
"You have had him all along. Name your boon. I am in a generous mood today."
I thought about it a moment. It did not seem right to be asking favors for myself. But on the other hand, I would not do my Milly and Poldy much good in Hell. "Can you put in a good word for me up there?" I pointed towards heaven.
Have you ever felt an angel smile, deep inside you? That was what I felt then. Warmth and coolness, one following the other, from the top of my head to the tip of my toes. "Your place in heaven is secure. Now tell me, what do you really want?"
"I want a child. Another child."
"It is already done."
I laid a hand over my lower belly. "You mean? But I can't. This is not the right time of month--"
"If that old wive's tale was true, there would be only half as many people alive today in Dublin as there are. There is something else you wish to ask me?"
"The baby, can you make him----?"
"Healthy this time." I felt her shake her head inside me. It was like a shudder but more gentle. "No, but I can give you both the strength to love him whatever he--or she---turns out to be."
With that, she left me. But she is still here, deep inside me, and will be forever, as long as He is beside me and within me. Being a man, He will wake up and tell me about the long journey He made, about how He fought the demons (of jealousy) and mastered the ghouls (of doubt) and overcame the banshees (of grief). And being a woman, I will nod my head and murmur "How brave!" and "You didn't!" at the appropriate times, never letting Him know that it was I who went looking for Him.
Bio:McCamy writes speculative fiction with elements of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Her long fiction can be read on her web site at http://www.nationwide.net/~taylorjh.
E-mail: taylorjh@nationwide.net
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