Aleys kneels at her squint as Lukas elevates the host, arms outstretched. Watching Mass through a small window concentrates the experience, she thinks. There’s no distraction from fidgeters, no looking for dust motes over bowed heads. Nothing but the sacred ritual. She notices that the candlelight strikes the wafer from below so that it shines like a distant moon above Lukas. He takes in the body of the Savior, then drinks Christ’s blood from the chalice, and she wonders whether he is filled with spirit or whether it is merely flour and grape in his mouth. Maybe she doesn’t want to know. He places aside the paten with her wafer and blesses the congregants.
The church clears out, the people emptied of their sins, eager to fill themselves with dinner. Aleys watches Lukas utter some instructions to the altar boy, hears the child skip toward the door. The doors shut and silence falls. She remains on her knees.
Lukas approaches the squint, coming in and out of view as he walks toward her with the plate, so that it is startling when he appears large before her. “Sister,” he says, “behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who taketh away the sins of the world.”
Aleys leans into the squint, wedges her open mouth into the cross. She feels like a baby bird, stretched wide, yellow throat exposed. She doesn’t like the feeling. She has to remind herself: You’re receiving Christ, not Friar Lukas.
Aleys repeats to herself a verse from the Canticle.My beloved put his hand through the window, and my inner self was moved by his touch.She must be open to receive. And to give. She should tell him about the visions.
Next time.
Friar Lukas dips the wafer in the wine and places it on her tongue. “Corpus Christi,” he says.
“Amen,” she replies, pulling back into her enclosure with her beloved.
When God returns, he is Christ is mother is child is Aleys. She is the infant in the manger, she has entered the egg. She vibrates with life, without edges, seeping into the sheep, the kings, the sky. This nativity is made of layers and layers of moment, as dense and pointed as the six-tipped star above Bethlehem, exquisite beyond description. Her birth, his birth, all births in one.
And then the vision shifts. Mary the mother becomes Christ the son who reaches a hand to Aleys.Come, beloved, we are waiting for you.He kisses her hands, and she knows herself blessed.
When she opens her eyes, Mary is before the hearth. The blue of lapis surrounds her, a vivid aura emanating from her naked flesh; she is unrobed. This is not the doe-eyed Mary, not the humble Mary. This Mary is ferocious, hair radiating coiled and bristled from her head, teeth bared. She is swollen to the size of a mountain with Christ. Her hands present her naked belly. Mary’s eyes are uncompromising. She smells of charred wood.The priests are blind, she says.The pillars crumble. If you would join us,you must bear the truth.
But what does that mean? What does all of it mean?
Marte comes bearing porridge in the morning. “Miss,” she says as she passes over the bowl, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“A ghost?” Aleys laughs. “Quite the opposite. Mary came to me in the night.” Aleys knows Marte is wary of the visions, but didn’t Mary just bid her to bear the truth?
Marte steps back from the window. “Christ’s mother?” Aleys spoons the porridge into her mouth and nods. “You mean in a dream, like?”
“She was real.”
Marte looks at her sharply. “You’re sure?”
Aleys swallows. “As real as you.”
Marte considers this, turning to straighten the cloth on the parlor table. She steps back and folds her arms. “Miss, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Why do they visit you, who can read the Latin for yourself?” She nods toward the bound Bible on Aleys’s desk, the Latin scripture Lukas brings her to copy for personal study.
“Why do they speak in showings? I suppose they have more to say.”
“More than is in the book?” Marte sounds skeptical. It’s a long book.
“Yes.” Aleys hesitates. “It’s not always easy to understand what they mean.”
“Hmphph,” says Marte. Then she adds, inexplicably, “I can see why Saint Mary has words to add. She lost her child. Seems like the scripture abandoned her like yesterday’s bread after that.”
The curtain is black, a gulf between. Aleys will confess everything to Lukas.
“Confiteor Deo... I confess to God and the Blessed Virgin Mary and to you, Father, because I have sinned exceedingly in life.” Her voice is strong as it recites the formula. And then: “Oh, why do we waste time speaking of sin when the sun rises so splendid? I have much to tell you. Last night, I was shown marvels, I have seen ... I have seen Saint Mary. And”—she hesitates—“God. He is love. We have misunderstood. Everything he does is love, everything is—”
“You have seen him?”
“Yes. He is magnificent beyond imagination.”
“He showed himself to you? How?”
