speak elvish to me (original) (raw)

I. LOVE-FEAST

I converted to Christianity partly on a whim, but also because I was seeking to worship. The name of the God was not important. I wanted the "love-feast," the common experience of religious ecstasy.

I got some of that at the church service. But it was afterward that I really fulfilled my need. I loved to talk with the churchgoers while they took their coffee and doughnuts or sat on the bench outside waiting for the bus. Instead of talking about their grandkids or their doctor's appointments, we talked about God.

But I knew it couldn't be this easy. First off, I had never read more than a few parts of the Bible-- the first few books of the old and new testaments. When it really came down to it, I couldn't quote a passage to save my life. And was I really converted? Sure, I sat in my pew and stood when it was time to stand, and sung, and praised God with open arms. But I was a queer, a political radical, and deep down I knew that Jesus was just another name for something much greater. At some point, someone was going to find out-- there would need to be "a conversion." Christians love the conversion, the idea of it, the renouncing of the old ways. If I never really "converted," it would seem to them like it was too easy.

But as of yet, I'd had no problems. When an elderly parishioner asked me what I knew about Jesus, and whether I read my Bible, I responded with passion. "I know he gave people bread, and he gave them fish. He gave them comfort. That's all I need to know." The woman and her friends nodded, unable to think of why they shouldn't be satisfied with this answer. What I meant was "Jesus was love, he gave love, and that alone is reason for worship and emulation." I was speaking to the heart of Christianity, and they sensed it.

II. INTO DEATH

One day, several months into my churchgoing, I noticed that several elders, all of them unknown to me by name, were watching me with unusual attention. Their gaze was intense, and discomforting. I registered this, but could find no reason for it, and so I was startled when they blocked my way when I tried to leave after the service. They brought me back into the church, now empty except for us, and told me I needed

to tell them now if I would accept Jesus Christ as my savior. If I accepted, they would baptize me. If I did not accept, I could continue to attend, or not, until I accepted Him. Though the choice contained no threat, the intensity of the moment was astonishing. Speaking quickly to disguise the tremor in my voice, I told them I would accept Him and be baptized.

Their faces-- three male visages-- remained impassive at my answer. The air of ceremony was heavy on us, and I felt that I was being swept up into it, into a great current that would carry me, and which I would not be able to direct. The men led me to the small back courtyard, a poorly maintained sunken garden with stone walkways and several small, ancient statues that seemed vaguely menacing. There they put me on the ground and rubbed dirt into my dress and socks. I briefly struggled, confused. One of the men stood in the center of the courtyard and read in a loud voice from the Bible open in his hand:

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Hearing this, I stopped struggling and lay still, breathing hard. My light-colored dress was flung up, exposing my thighs, which were smeared with mud. The men rubbed my hands and forearms with dirt until they were brown, then closed a rosary necklace around my neck. A heavy cross hung in the middle of it, warm against my chest as if it had been held tightly in a human hand. Silently, the two men offered to draw me to my feet. I let them raise me.

We walked into the church, I flanked by the two who had rubbed dirt onto my skin and clothes, and the other one leading. They took me to the alter, where the ceremonial bath stood empty. I stood and waited for someone to turn on the taps, but no one moved. The hands gripping my forearms were gentle, but insistent. I looked at one man, then the other. The head elder stood impassively nearby, as if listening for a signal to be given. None of the men seemed the least bit attentive to me. I could hear the ticking of the clock in the kitchen, two rooms away.

Abruptly, as if the signal had been given, we began to walk again, away from the alter. I looked back, craning my neck, but they simply brought me forward more insistently. Their grip was now forceful, almost painful, their hands digging into the soft flesh on my forearms. They walked with me to a closet door in the side of the room, opened the door, lifted me high without warning and flung me down. I felt my elbow contact something hard and metallic, the sudden wetness of blood. There was darkness, sudden, inky. I could hear a low grinding noise, then a key being withdrawn from the lock.

Panic came to me instantly. I struggled to right myself, scrabbling at the smooth metal walls. I had been dumped on my back, it seemed in a box made of sheet metal. I had been delivered into it with no care at all, and my legs sprawled haphazardly, with one foot outside of the box, my socked ankle resting on the sharp edge. I felt an insane fear scrabbling in me, as if trying to crawl its way out of my stomach, up through my chest, and I gave myself over to it. Confusion reigned, and I felt as if I would become unconscious. Unknown time passed this way, perhaps thirty or forty-five seconds, in which I made no effort to make sense of my surroundings.

Then, abruptly, my mind ceased to turn. I noticed my body, still curled in the box. I was lying mostly on my left hip and buttock. I shifted my weight cautiously, pulling my feet into the box to provide more leverage. The structure seemed no larger than three feet in any direction. As I had thought originally, the box was in a closet, tall enough to stand up inside of. I stood and felt the walls. There were a few shelves, one of which held a book of medium heft, which I assumed to be a Bible. The next shelf down held several candleholders, which my hand sent rattling. Besides these objects, the box, and myself, the closet appeared to be empty.

I sat down cross-legged, my body pulsing with comfort for having been released from its original position. I cupped my elbow, which throbbed mildly but was already clotting. I breathed deeply for a while, and finally felt my breath begin to slow a little. I thought.

This must be part of the ritual, I told myself, Sort of a shocking reenactment of burial. I wished I had somehow gotten away, left the service a bit earlier. It was a cloudy day that had yielded an abundant downpour throughout the bus ride and subsequent walk to church. Yet a long, rainy bus ride home would still be better than being trapped in a dark closet for God knows how long.

I didn't consider yelling. The only ones within earshot were the ones who had put me in the closet. I had nothing with which to attempt to pry open the door or pick at a lock. I was reasonably sure I could not kick my way through a solid wood door. I thought of trying anyway, but instead lay down inside the box again, and waited.

In the dream that came after many hours, I was being baptized in the little tub. My mind had returned to the last comprehensible moment and was dutifully completing the story. I was submersed in the tub by the elders, whose hands were gentle. Soon, I was raised to the air and gulped oxygen. The second submersion was longer, and I started to fear I would drown. I fought for breath until I found myself awake again, in the closet. Before I could reassemble my mind around my situation, the door opened and light flooded in.

III. The Sisters of Mercy

She was silhouetted, this nun, and in the blinding suddenness of the light behind her I couldn't see any detail of her face. I didn't see the ones behind her, either, until she reached for me, and pulled me up into her. The heavy, voluminous folds of her gown encompassed me, like a baby. The others came forward then, and helped her to lift. I tried to help them, but I was dizzy and my head fell back. They carried me, and I seemed to slip in and out of awareness as if I was in an infantile stupor. I later would remember smelling talc through the fabric, and would easily trace the nuns' path as one that took us through the back door of the church proper and into a room there. At the time, though, I seemed to have no wits at all. They might has well have been taking me to the moon, for all the difference it would have made in the reaction of my sagging body.

They deposited me with gentleness on the floor, which was carpeted, but soon picked me up again as if they only needed to rearrange their positions around me. The light that I saw in between the folds of their gowns was too bright. When I was set down again, it was in a white tiled room, old and cracked, lit by a high row of dusty windowpanes on either side. A series of pale claw-foot tubs filled the room, as well as a sort of built-in bath with steps in the floor. The light that filtered in was ghostly, peaceful. It was quiet as a chapel. The black-caped nuns stepped back from me, and I became aware of my dirtiness, my short dress that was not covering me adequately. For the first time since my ordeal began, I spoke.

"What's going on?" I asked, somewhat more softly than I'd intended. It was hard to know whether I meant to be indignant or pitiful. Being as I was, sitting on the floor, gazing up at black-cloaked figures who seemed to tower over me, my question ended up seeming childish to me. After a moment, I repeated my question with perfect vocal control. I would have a measure of control in this situation, whatever was happening. I was determined not to let it go on without my knowing what would come next. The nuns remained quiet. I stood, slowly.

"I'd like to understand what's happening," I said slowly and firmly. I was making note of my position in relationship to the door of the tub room. I racked my brain to try to determine where in the building I was, and reasoned that I was in the basement of the back segment of the church, which was cross-shaped; the high windows must be just above ground level. I could see nothing through them. If I got through the door, I'd need to find the way up, and then the door out.

One of the nuns advanced toward me and grasped my bare arm. "Cecile," she said gently, "You are exactly where you should be."

I was doubting that more and more. What was next in this initiation ritual? I kept my eyes from flicking toward the door-- I wouldn't give myself away beforehand if I chose to bolt. Would it be locked?

IA nun began speaking to me, leaning down over . We were eye-level, and spoke soothingly, explaining. I saw her face-- wrinkled with a fullness belonging to a woman in her sixties-- and beheld two startlingly green eyes. In the room of white filled with black-robed women, the woman's eyes were compelling. I looked at her and without knowing why, I enjoyed her face. I liked the way her mouth looked, the vital aliveness in her eyes. I heard myself think that I was being enchanted, or worked over somehow, but truthfully I felt very aware.

She was explaining that the ritual was almost complete. I had expected to have been made one of Christ's children gently, safely, in a predictable way. She reminded me that faith was not a game, and that it was my soul at stake. I had, she told me, died with Christ now, and been reborn into this room, where I "was going to be made ready to be with God." Her voice was soothing, rhythmic, hypnotic, though her words felt frightening. I fell into her strange cadence without meaning to. The other nuns were very quiet, the only other noises the movement of their robes and their feet as they shifted.