Nonfiction by Martina Preston
Note to the Attentive Reader:
Many liturgies operate with a call and response format, where the congregation speaks as a unit before a designated reader proceeds with the remainder of the liturgical recitation. In the Jewish synagogues, where the congregation and the reader will speak in Hebrew, there is also an interpreter present to provide a translation of the passage in the lingua franca. The following meditation explores the boundaries of religion and art by sharing a series of personal stories, and their related interpretations, propelled forward by the Chorus reading of Joy Sullivan’s poem “Of wildflowers.”
CHORUS:
When I was young
I heard so much
READER:
I have never not been young. Over a table of pasta and undercooked chicken in The Cheesecake Factory, I took a skeptical eye to three of my fellow college freshmen. It was our first week in school, and I was occupied with syllabi and directions and learning who not to be. David, a musician who couldn’t feel his own hands (a story I never quite trusted him enough to believe), started asking for our birthdays. Ages. He was young, and you could tell– but I was even younger. I stayed silent.
Elijah, the quieter one who I respected immediately for the humor in his eyes, asked me directly. “Wait, aren’t you sixteen?”
I couldn’t lie. They’d never see me the same, but I couldn’t lie.
“No way! I thought so. A bunch of us were talking about how there’s some sixteen-year-old freshman here, and it’s you. That’s wild.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty crazy.” I hadn’t learned yet what to say. I wanted to throw up. I also hadn’t learned yet how little gluten I could physically digest, which may have exacerbated the feeling. “So where are you guys from again?”
INTERPRETER:
Inside, I am still four years old. Nothing bad has happened to me. I am not twenty. I am twenty, nineteen, fifteen, twelve, five, three. I am scared at how little I understand these girls that I have kept inside of me.
***
CHORUS:
When I was young
I heard so much
about being
READER:
When I was baptized, I was five years old, and my confession of faith was broadcast via live video to the furthest corners of our old church’s auditorium. I faced the wrong direction when I got into the baptismal tub, and the pastor didn’t bother to correct me–I think he knew it was only fair. The church watched the back of my head as I spoke.
INTERPRETER:
Are we predestined to believe? Are we predestined to leave, then come back, with the prayers and tears of a mother guiding us like dripping baptismal water off the hem of a child’s soaked t-shirt? Are we predestined to stand backward in front of a church who never thought of us as more than “cute,” and tell a story that people clap for? Are we predestined to doubt?
***
CHORUS:
When I was young
I heard so much
about being
a child/man/woman
of God but then I grew
READER:
Michael got a bicep tattoo of Jesus crucified, arteries ruptured and bleeding in trails down his body. Jesus wore a blue loincloth, and a needle-thin line of a yellow halo rested just above his thorn-crowned head. This was the most recent in Michael’s tapestry of tattoos, and the colors hadn’t yet dimmed with age. Red–life. Sacrifice. Passion. Blue–holiness. The Virgin Mary. Peace. Yellow–light. Beginning. Newness. Jesus hung on Michael’s personal Gethsemane, just centimeters above the tattoo of Mickey Mouse where Mickey’s body is replaced by the Japanese characters for “magic is everywhere.” Michael leaned against the back wall of the shop and rolled his sleeve back down.
“Why Jesus?” I asked. Namesake aside, my ex-Catholic coworker was much closer to the occult than to the Orthodox.
“I liked the way it looked. I showed it to some Christians, and I thought they would like it, but I kinda forgot that they’re all anti-tattoo and everything.” We both laughed.
“Hey, at least you tried.” I shrugged, tamping down the shot of espresso I had just pulled.
He laughed again. “Are you religious?”
“I was raised Christian.”
Michael smiled wryly and held a Ziploc bag of ice back up to his arm. “Interesting. So, how’d you fall out of love with the Lord?”
“Did I say I had?”
INTERPRETER:
Michael, the archangel of latte art, made Jesus an item on his arm to remind himself of what he lost. His body is a temple, and he’s building it up brick by brick, embossed and gilded with the ink of his wife’s tattoo parlor. Why Jesus? I liked the way it looked.
***
CHORUS:
When I was young
I heard so much
about being
a child/man/woman
of God but then I grew
up and all I ever wanted
was to be of wildflowers,
READER:
I remember the day Peter told me that God had left him. It was summer, and we were in the woods, and I had never yet seen him cry. We sat on a log beside the creek, and some part of me registered surprise that the July heat hadn’t dried up the stream already. I held him as his body shook with sobs, and I tried to understand whether the tears were out of shame, or guilt, or some mix of catharsis and the relief of finally feeling safe. Peter apologized with every breath. I matched each apology with reassurance. He said that he loved me. I matched the admission with my own. On the other side of the creek, over his shoulder, I watched the indecisiveness of a red-winged blackbird as he hopped in and out of the sun-warmed water.
The way Peter told the story, it was his twentieth birthday, and he woke up, and he knew that He was gone. In a few weeks, I’ll turn twenty, but I don’t think I need a revelation to understand how my friend felt that day. I followed him out of the woods.
INTERPRETER:
Would it have hurt the bird to stay in the creek? Would it have hurt the bird to fly away? I wonder if the bird enjoys the option.
***
CHORUS:
When I was young
I heard so much
about being
a child/man/woman
of God but then I grew
up and all I ever wanted
was to be of wildflowers,
of willow, toad, and bone,
of swallowtails, sow thistle
and cedar, of birds.
READER:
I screwed the hook for the hummingbird feeder into the wall of my second-story, school-appointed balcony. I might as well have ceremonially ignited a twenty-dollar bill as its christening in place of the maintenance fine I knew I would receive at the end of the year, but every cent of that fine was worth it. I watched as the year went on, and the hummingbirds found their food, brought friends, left on vacation, came home again. I liked to think that they missed me, that bundle of yellow flannel blanket in her camping chair who would wait patiently to sketch the deft and subtle movements of each bird in its mundane sort of glory. Every morning that the hummingbirds returned, I learned to love again.
INTERPRETER:
People ask me where I see myself in five years. I’ll probably still be outside, watching the birds. I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else. There’s no Cheesecake Factory, no church, no coffee shop, that could live up to the feeling of losing religion but finding faith in the deepest parts of the forest. Creation is the artwork of the divine, and I’ve always been partial to the idea of respecting artistic intent. If–When? God comes to me on wings of a raven like food to Elijah, I’ll accept. Until then, I’m content to sketch the wings as I see them.
Mary Oliver knew what she was talking about when she wrote about that grasshopper, that summer day. My one wild and precious life.
