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“Pretty sure there wasn’t a female pope, Ana. We were like even more backward in the Middle Ages than we are now.”
“Barely,” I muttered. “You haven’t heard the story of Pope Joan? You’re Catholic.”
She shrugged. “I assure you, all our popes have been dudes.”
“Pope Joan dressed as a man. She was, like, the smartest and most talented scholar; I think she went by John or something. She was so well respected that they picked her to be pope. So the story goes.”
Heidi sat up now, looking at me with interest. “What happened to her?”
“Well,allegedlyone time she was getting on a horse, and a baby fell out of her, and they stoned her to death on the road. But that part isn’t important.”
“I bet it was super important to her!” Heidi exclaimed.
I rushed on. “The important part is that she dressed as a man and was even better than the men.”
“And they didn’t find out she was female until she literally ejected a baby onto the street?”
“Allegedly. That’s like the one thing men can’t do,” I said. “And they killed her for it. Those old priests must have been terrified of her.”
“Like I told you before, nobody likes being tricked.”
“I bet if she’d been tall like you, she could have delivered a killer right cross and knocked them all out. And run off to live a nice life with her street baby. I wonder if she knew she was pregnant. Can youimagine not knowing? I know there’s a whole TV show about it, but I still can’t—”
Heidi waved her hand in the air. “It freaks me out to think about it, especially with all the margaritas I drink. But this story…her posing as a dude, but being better than the dudes? Sounds like you.”
“Thanks, I guess.” Then I grinned. “Want to hear the best/worst part of the whole thing?”
“I already did. She punted out a baby and was immediately stoned. No one stopped to see if maybe she’d just hidden the little guy in her robes. Like, ‘Oh, maybe our pope found a baby on the ground and tucked them in there because he’s nice and nice people do that.’ It doesn’t sound like they even asked.”
“No, it doesn’t sound like they asked. But the wackiest part is”—I lowered my voice—“some scholars think that’s why we have the Pope potty seat.”
“Ex-fucking-scuse me?” Heidi squeaked.
“I took art history in college, and I thought I was going to pee my pants when I first saw a picture of it,” I said. “There’s even more than one. It’s a carved wooden chair except instead of having a seat, it has a hole in the middle.”
Heidi’s face turned a little green. “Did they put a special chamber pot under it so he could poo in style? Because I don’t like where this is headed.”
I shrugged. “Possibly. Butmaybe, if the legend is true, it was because they felt they needed some dude to reach up under there and check for testicles. Because of how they’d been humiliated by Joan. Then the dude would stand up and say, ‘Duos habet et bene pendentes,’ or ‘He has two and they dangle nicely.’”
She threw a pillow at my face. “I went to Sunday school every week foryears, and nobody ever said anything about dangling!”
“Well, it’s not exactly a Sunday school topic, don’t you think?”
“I dunno, it’s way more interesting than a lot of the stuff we talked about. How come I’ve never heard of this before?”
“The Catholic Church doesn’t acknowledge Joan. They say she’s a myth. And that the pope chair is more about ‘dung’ than about balls, which, personally, I don’t think sounds a lot better. But there’s no proof shedidn’texist, and she was first mentioned in the ten hundreds, so…”
“I’m gonna have to spend some time on Wikipedia later. This whole story isnuts. And way more relevant to today’s world than I’m comfortable with. Like, even now—look at you. We have a girl dressing up as a man just to get some freaking respect.”
I drew myself up. “I’veneverdressed up like a man. And we agreed I’m going to come clean as soon as I’ve won this account for Melvin. He’ll love me because I’ll have saved his job and the team, and everyone will be super happy.”
“Yeah, that’s totally how it worked out for Joan, huh? Sounds like she was a kick-ass pope, but one unexpected baby, and it all goes south.”
That twisted my stomach. I’d been thinking about the story a lot, but I hadn’t made the connection with theendof the story like Heidi had. Would the Artemis team stone me in the street?
I wandered over to the tank to examine Hopper and his babies. They were starting to get some color and looked like fish now instead of baby frogs. I watched them swim for a moment before I turned back to Heidi. “Like, why have men always been so threatened by women? To the point that they erased this woman and even now refuse to acknowledge that shemight have been real? We’ve come so far, and yet we haven’t at all. We still don’t have a female pope, even if we did, or a female president, even if she got the most votes.”
“It boggles the mind,” Heidi agreed. “But we know way more good guys than we do bad ones.”
