PART THREE

I stood behind the moth-eaten curtains that separated the sanctuary from the nave of the church. If I squinted my eyes just right, I could see through one of the holes enough to view the six rows of women in their Sunday best – pearly white dresses and bonnets paired with long, thick stockings. Most had faded to a yellow colour, since Grandmother’s sickness meant she had to stop dressmaking. I tried to count how many people were in attendance this Sunday afternoon, maybe thirty, thirty-five? I hadn’t seen anyone except my family and Father Callahan in almost nine months, now sweating through the summer, rotting in my bed. They had told everyone that I was ill, the same illness that claimed Lizzie Smith. I could see Mrs Callahan handing out the hymn sheets, which were a similar yellow to the dresses. Everything once white was now yellow, men’s teeth stained by the stale tobacco they chewed, women’s teeth stained by the weak coffee they drank. Both were against the rules, but it seemed like some rules were okay to break if no one acknowledged it. It didn’t matter anyway, the colour of your teeth, once you were dead. We all look the same to the insects in the ground. I thought of Lizzie, and how her face was still stretched into a rotting smile as they lowered her into the ground.

A firm hand landed on my shoulder. “Are you ready, Mary?”

I nodded. Father Callahan cracked his knuckles, one by one, then went to reach for the wooden rope that would pull the curtains aside and reveal me standing there. There were tears in my eyes, and I wasn’t sure why. This was a good thing, wasn’t it? My pregnancy had been successful, and though my pretences were false, it would bring hope to the dwindling community. That’s what Father Callahan kept saying. He gave me a reassuring smile with his small lips. I’d always liked him. I’d always wished he were my father. My father had always doted on Nathaniel more, but after what the tree had shown me – I didn’t know what to think anymore. I took a deep breath, and then the curtains parted, and the silence of the church was filled with gasps. There I stood, in my white nightie, bathed in the golden dawn streaming through the stained-glass image of Jesus high above me.

Mrs Baker let out a gasp. Mrs Smith screamed. Mrs Callahan and Mrs Lowry began to cry. Meggie Bright, as always, just smiled and waved. I needed to tell her what I had read in the red diary she found, but mainly, I had missed her so much over those past months. She had grown so much. Thirteen now, too. I looked to my right at the large mirror; the blue sheet that covered it had been knocked askew, and for the first time in nine months, I caught a glimpse of myself. My stomach was huge and round, and my face was puffy and red and spotty. I couldn’t smile. 

“My dearest women of Eve,” Father Callahan spoke softly. “We have a miracle on our hands. The Virgin Mary, reborn. Our dearest Mary King has experienced immaculate conception – how our Lord Jesus was made.” 

Everyone clapped and prayed. I wanted to cry, but I smiled and waved as Father Callahan told me. He’d been with me every step of the way, these past months. They really did think I was the Virgin Mary. I hadn’t told anyone what had happened to me, but I knew Grandmother suspected something. She was sitting at the back with Meggie’s family, not smiling, not clapping, but sobbing. Maybe it happened to her, too. 

“Now, now.” Father Callahan hushed the crowd. “Would anyone like to raise any questions whilst we’re all gathered here under the gaze of our Lord?”

I turned around and fled out the back door of the church, but there was so much noise and chatter from the pews I wasn’t sure anyone had even noticed. No one was out in Eve. It was Sunday afternoon, as it always seemed to be, and the men were busy in the town hall, planning the harvest. I glanced into Lowry’s as I passed, and a smug face was staring back at me across the counter. 

(go in) 

I hadn’t heard that voice in months. I had seen the tendrils in my dreams, but nothing except the wailing had come to me in my room. Why had it come back now? I had needed it the whole time. I pushed open the door, and the little bell above me rang out.

“Ah, Mary! Long time no see.” His voice was raspier than before, and he seemed taller yet thinner. Those nine months had made him shrink as I grew. His eyes flickered down to my belly. “Ah,” he repeated, quieter this time. “I had a feeling…”

(He did this to you)

The voice spoke clearly, but I ignored it. It hadn’t protected me before. 

“It was unexpected,” I said, placing my hands on my belly. “A miracle. A virgin birth like my namesake.”

He drummed his fingers on the countertop. A steady beat. 1-2-3-4. “That’s blasphemous.”

“Perhaps it is,” I smirked, feeling more comfortable and confident than I had in my entire life. It didn’t feel as though I was talking. I felt so far away from myself. “Is it as blasphemous as what you did to me?”

“There is nothing wrong with procreation, Mary. If you’d told me about the baby, I would have been there to help along the way.”

“Procreation?” My voice was high and demanding. The scriptures played themselves over and over in my mind. “Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and HIS WIFE were both naked and were NOT ASHAMED! I am not your WIFE!” I screamed. “AND I AM ASHAMED!”

I stepped forward, each step with more conviction than the last. It felt as though the ground beneath my feet was trembling. 

“If anyone were to find out I was the baby’s father, we would be married right away, before the birth.” He kept his eyes firmly on me as I approached the counter. “But now, I suppose you’re not fit mother, having lied about immaculate conception; Mrs Lowry and I could take the baby as our own. We have been trying for years, you know.”

“You would take MY baby as your own?!” I laughed. It no longer felt as though it was me talking, like I was watching and hearing myself from across the room. I’d never been so angry in my life. I’d never been allowed. I could feel my baby’s heartbeat as though it were my own, and we were stronger in that moment than any man who dared stand before us. 

“If you think I’m letting you anywhere near my baby, you are wrong!”

Mr Lowry sneered. Then, he smiled. A smile that told the tale of the trickery of men. He was scheming. Thinking. I knew that thinking could be a dangerous act, for why else would they try to stop us women from thinking for ourselves? I listened to my father, and my grandfather when he was alive, and I listened to my brother, but in return, I was given more chores. More dirty sheets to wash, more food to chop and prepare. In that one moment, Mr Lowry was all men, and all men were Mr Lowry, and I was all women, and all women were me. The ground beneath me shook harder, and the entire room groaned. 

“What happened to Lizzie Smith’s baby? I know what you did to her, too.” I spat at him, my words harsh and vulgar-sounding. 

“I don’t know what you’re –”

“DON’T LIE TO ME!”

The countertop that separated us suddenly split in two as I screamed, the wood splintering with a loud crackle, like when Meggie and I threw wood from the wrong pile onto the bonfire Father lit last winter. The sides parted, and I saw hundreds of thousands of ants erupt from the broken floorboards. I stepped through them, and they parted too, and I felt as Moses must have when he parted the sea. Powerful. I watched in awe as these ants, carpenter ants – how funny the ants that seemed to come to my rescue would share such a job with our saviour, Jesus Christ – chewed through the wood, spitting the dust back out into the air. Mr Lowry looked upon them with horror. I laughed. 

“What curse have you brought upon me, you witch!?” He screamed, and the ants began to climb his spindly legs, cascading his body in a sarcophagus of tiny black bodies, a cacophony of tiny legs scuttling. “Get off me, GET OFF ME!”

I had no part in this. I simply stood and watched. A good Samaritan would have saved him. My faith, my whole life, told me to save him, despite what he had done to me. He was trying to scream, flailing his arms and legs about like a madman. It was almost comical. His head thrashed back into one of the shelves behind him, and he came crashing down onto the very same floor he forced me down upon. I stepped forward until I had one foot on either side of his body. Where there were no longer ants, there was red raw flesh, skin stripped from his body. Blood had begun to drip down his face too, and I watched as a thousand tiny ants burrowed into his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He was still squirming, but his mouth was so full that he could no longer make a sound. I glanced around at the ants, which were now scuttling back the way they had come, into the floorboards, as casually as though they’d just found a scrap of grain to take back to their nest. I learned about ants from Grandmother; she had these old books tucked away in her wardrobe. This wasn’t their typical behaviour. I retched and threw up beside the body.

Tears streamed down my cheeks. One dropped down onto Mr Lowry’s still body. I had no idea what had just happened, but I felt powerful. As though I had done that. 

(Come to me, my dear child)

The voice rang out in my ears like the bell above the door. The tree was calling to me again. No, not to me. It was calling to the baby flailing inside my stomach.