The Garden of Happy Endings (25 page)

One afternoon, her mother dropped her off at the church early. Later there would be a meeting of the Youth for Christ, but she was the first person there. She carried her potluck dish into the kitchen then, emboldened by the silence in the building, wandered up the hallway. The nave was empty.

Elsa slipped inside, telling herself that she was only going to sit and pray for a while, perhaps light a candle. On one side of the sanctuary reigned the Blessed Mother in her blue robes, her kindly face seeming to encourage Elsa to move forward.

She sat in the very first row, her hands in her lap. Candles flickered in petition on either side of the nave, to Mary and to St. Therese. There was no sound, not anywhere in the church, and it wasn’t the sort of local spot where old ladies would come and sit and pray all day. They were home now, fixing supper. The priest was probably going to have his supper soon too, in the rectory.

She glanced over her shoulder, her heart pounding, and stood up. Before she could chicken out, she moved toward the sanctuary. At the foot of the stairs, she stopped, and looked around again to make sure no one else was about.

Then she climbed the steps into the sanctuary, her heart in her throat. She could feel the veil of holiness as she crossed into it, a hush of grace, as if Jesus himself held it in His embrace. She could feel it on her skin, and taste it in her throat.

Cloaked in awe, in joy, she turned and faced the pews. Standing there, she imagined herself resplendent in the robes of a priest, vestments shining over her shoulders, and she raised her arms, quietly reciting the priest’s part of the call to worship: “Our help is in the name of the Lord.”

She imagined the swell of voices returning,
Who made heaven and earth
.

“The Lord be with you!” she said, spreading her hands in priestly fashion.

Imaginary voices responded,
May He also be with you
.

A swell of joy moved through her body, almost lifting her feet off the floor, and she moved toward the altar table, still imagining she was the priest, forgetting that she was only a girl. She ached to ring the little bell, but did not dare. Instead she lifted the chalice, feeling the vibration of love and tradition and
God
in the
very molecules of it, her head light as down, her heart swelling with the honor of it.
Oh, please
, she said to the heavens.
Please let me be a priest
.

The first blow caught her across the ear, and she fell sideways, dropping the chalice on the floor. “Stinking daughter of Eve!” the priest roared. “How dare you foul this sacred space with your fetid, unholy sin!”

Elsa scrambled to capture the chalice before it rolled down the steps. “I’m sorry—”

He hauled her up by her arms, his fingers digging into her flesh like pincers. His face only inches away from her, he screamed, “How dare you!”

Elsa yanked away from him, terrified, guilty, and cowered, tears rising in her eyes. “I’m sorry! I just wanted to know how it felt to be a priest!”

His face was purple with rage. “Women
cannot
serve! By their very existence they are the containers of all evil, the original sin. You have fouled this holy place!”

Elsa began to back away, and stumbled, falling to her knees. She picked up the chalice and offered it to him, ducking away as he released a howl of such fury that for a moment Elsa feared he might kill her.

“Get out!” he cried. “Get out! Get out, get out!”

Sobbing, she scrambled to her feet, snot running down her face. And there, at the back of the nave, were four of the boys who did serve. They had expressions of horror on their faces, and at first, Elsa mistook it for pity, that they were shocked that the priest should behave so badly.

But as she ran toward them, some of them her friends, boys she had known for years, one of them spit on her. “What were you doing?” Another pinched her, hard, on the upper arm.

She could feel the danger in them even before the priest screamed, “Out, Eve’s whore!”

She fled. And she did not return for four years.

* * *

I
n the field, listening to the words she had so loved once upon a time, she could still feel the horror of that long-ago day. As an adult, she saw that the priest had been deeply wrong, but that didn’t change what had happened.

As a high school senior project, Elsa had volunteered for a local political agency that provided shelter, food, and financial assistance to the immigrants, legal and illegal, who swarmed north from Mexico to work in the fields. It was led by a devoted and passionate nun.

Dorothy brought Elsa back to the Church. She led by example, providing the hands of God for the lost and hungry and lonely. She connected Elsa to the very best of the Church, the arm that served the homeless and hungry and poor, all over the world, in concrete ways.

So she returned to Mass. She studied comparative religions, trying to find her place in the Church and its place in her life. She walked the Camino as a pilgrim, an act of petition that had ended with punishment and loss.

Joaquin’s voice, not Father Jack’s, said with vast kindness, in the fields, “Almighty God, we humbly appeal to your kindness, asking that you pour out the dew of your blessing on these fields.”

Elsa felt tears streaming, streaming, streaming down her face, and it suddenly made her furious. Abruptly, she turned and made her way blindly through the crowd. Joaquin’s voice followed, filled with numinous power: “Wipe out any infertility from this land, thus filling the hungry with an abundance of good things, so that the poor and needy may praise your wondrous name forever and ever.”

“Amen,”
said the crowd.

She had no idea where she was even going, just that she needed to leave the crowd. She made her way to the courtyard,
where bright sunlight now poured down over San Roque, and there was her own dog, asleep at his feet.

He leapt up when he saw her, big feathery tail wagging apologetically. She knelt and put her arms around his shoulders and let go of the tears. They were not noisy, but violent, silent heaves. Charlie made tiny whimpering sounds, and eventually shifted to lick her face, her neck, putting his paw on her shoulder to hold her still.

What was she mourning? The Church, Kiki, her own lost ministry? It was all a tangle, triggered painfully by the familiarity of the words she had so loved.

As she leaned into her dog’s hot fur, letting him comfort her, she said to the universe at large, “Show me that you are really there. And where I’m meant to be. Where do you want me to go?” She squeezed her eyes tight. “I am so lost.”

Then, aware there would be others drifting this way soon, she got to her feet and headed into the church. Charlie padded behind her in concern, even following her into the ladies’ room, where she washed her face with cold water—very, very cold water—to ease the red around her eyes and mouth. She looked at herself in the mirror. “What the heck was that?”

Her sad eyes looked back at her.
He deserted you
.

Joaquin.

And God.

Quite a pair.

And yet, the people still needed to be fed. They still needed the help of those who would not judge them. Today she would help the children plant their garden, and plant the collards Deacon had given her, and give her sister a task to do. She would simply be present, for anyone. For all of them.

She did not need God to tell her that. “Come on, Charlie,” she said, squaring her shoulders, pulling open the door. “Let’s go plant some corn.”

Everyone was headed toward their plots as she returned to the
field. Elsa did the same. Tamsin was in their garden, gloves on her hands, looking at the soft open space with fierce intent. “Did you bring the map I drew?”

From her back pocket, Elsa pulled the folded map. “Yes. This is a sketch. We need to add collards.”

“Okay.” Tamsin pointed to the northwest corner of the plot. “Corn there. And beans. Sunflowers along that edge.”

Elsa knelt in the earth, smelling the heady, damp fertility of it. Joseph and Joaquin were rounding the fields, drumming and dispersing holy water. Elsa ignored them when they paused by their plot, but a sprinkle of water touched her head. She glared at Joaquin, who had done it on purpose. He winked and moved along in his white satin vestments.

She thought of roosters crowing in the twilight of dawn, and smelled, briefly, the sweetness of churros frying in hot fat.

Long ago.

With her spade, she made a row. It clicked against something in the dirt. She paused, and put her fingers in the soil, fluttering around until she pulled out a string of beads. They were pale green quartz, carved like leaves. Even with dirt all over them, she could see they were beautiful.

Then she noticed the pale pink carved quartz roses between each decade of leaves. And the clear quartz cross at the bottom. A rosary.

For one long minute, Elsa held them up, shaking her head. Light touched the beads, setting them aglow, and she could see the rosary would be very beautiful once she washed it. “Good start,” she said aloud, “but it’s going to take more than that.”

“Who are you talking to?” Tamsin said.

“No one,” Elsa said, and tucked the beads into her pocket.

I
n a plot on the other side of the field, Calvin helped his mother. Paris had specially asked for the day off from the nursing home, and it was good to be outside with her son. She had too many
seeds, she knew that, but when she’d found out she could buy them with her food stamps, she’d gone to the dollar store and picked out a bunch of things. Lettuce and peas, which they could eat early; potatoes, which she’d taken from old potatoes in the house, red potatoes growing eyes that she cut into pieces like her mama had always done, and now planted deep. “This is good earth,” she told Calvin. “See how dark it is?”

He nodded seriously, and smelled it when she did, his big eyes always taking everything in. The sun sparkled over the top of his head and she could see his handsome daddy in him, but some of her, too, in his good cheekbones and his smile. “I still don’t like peas, though.”

“Maybe you’ll like them better when they’re fresh and you pick them yourself.”

“How are y’all doing here?” asked Mario’s Big Brother. She had to squint to look up at him, and he noticed and moved around to the other side. “Sorry about that.”

“We’re doing fine, thank you. Got the lettuce and peas in, and fixing to put in squash and corn.”

“You’ve done this before, I think.” His smile was kind, lighting up the sadness in his eyes. “You’re a Southerner, like me.”

“Kentucky,” she said, and ducked her head, suddenly wishing that she could go back there, to her old town and her family. It had been rash, leaving. She picked up a packet of pumpkin seeds and shook it. The big seeds rattled inside. “How about you?”

“Mississippi, long time ago now.”

“Deacon, look!” Calvin said, showing him a small cellophane package of beans. “These here are my magic beans. We got ’em in school. You know about magic beans? They grow to the sky!”

“You don’t say!” Deacon admired the seeds. “I can’t wait to see what happens!”

Calvin looked at the seeds very closely, his shy look. “Maybe a vine will grow all the way to heaven and I’ll ask Jesus for a dog.”

“Hmmm.”

“Grown-ups never believe in things like that, but sometimes they’re true. I know it.”

“I reckon you’re right, son. We need children to remind us that there’s magic in the world yet. Thank you.”

Calvin looked up. “You’re welcome.”

“Ms. Jennings, would it be all right with you if Calvin comes with Mario and me sometimes? And maybe it’d be okay if I took the little tyke on his own now and again?”

Paris raised her chin. She knew all about how somebody could seem to be nice and end up being not nice at all. “I’ll think about it.”

“That’s fine, honey. Let me know.” He straightened. “You have fun now, Calvin.”

Calvin turned and looked at his mother. “If Jesus sends me a dog, you have to let me keep it, you know. It would be a sin not to.”

She laughed softly, pretty sure nobody was delivering a dog. “I hope he sends bags of dog food, too, ’cuz we sure can’t afford it.”

E
lsa had bought a dozen popsicle sticks from the church booth run by the teens, and now she stuck the last empty seed packet onto a stick and poked it into the corner of a square Tamsin had paced off with her feet, insisting it would be easier to grow the garden if it wasn’t arranged in long rows. “There,” Elsa said. “Done.” She stood up next to her sister and slapped her gloves together. “What do you think of that?”

The squares were visible now. “We have to get something to mark the edges,” Tamsin said. “Maybe string and spikes or something like that would be easy. Or rocks.”

“Good idea. After lunch though. I’m starving.” She took off her gloves and slapped one against Tamsin’s arm. “How about you?”

She shrugged.

“Let’s go wash our hands.”

Walking through the middle of the field with her sister, Elsa peeked into the gardens, smiling at the other farm-holders, who smiled back. The sound of happy voices and laughter filled the air. Children chased one another through the pathways between plots, and not a few dogs trotted along behind them, Charlie
among them. He spied Elsa and came running forward, his tongue lolling. “You look thirsty, big boy. C’mon, let’s find a trough for all these dogs, shall we?”