by Abigail Stewart
Bree saw demons in front of her eyes. It happened when she was tired — they swirled and twirled and drove her mad. She put off sleeping, sometimes until dawn, for fear of becoming possessed by them, her personal devils. She stayed awake at night staring at the ceiling fan, imagining her own exorcism. The third time she fell asleep at her desk, the nuns sent her to the school nurse.
“Those are just water worms,” the nurse explained. “Everyone has them.”
This information only provided Bree with further proof that everyone was haunted.
She was going on a field trip. The nuns who taught her fourth grade class had been talking about it for weeks, reminding them to get their forms signed, to bring comfortable shoes, to pack a lunch. The buzz about the trip filled their days and made her forget momentarily about her personal invasion of watery evils.
The nuns told the class they were going to see the Stations of the Cross, which still seemed an abstract thing to Bree. She saw the Stations displayed like frescoes on the side of the church walls. Sometimes, after Friday morning mass, they walked the outer edge of the church and stared up at the scenes of Christ’s crucifixion. Bree stared up at the spear entering Jesus’s side, the mix of water that poured out and proved he was dead.
Only he wasn’t.
Did he have water worms, she wondered.
“I wonder if we’re going to see the cave where Christ was buried,” a classmate whispered.
“No dummy, that’s in Jerusalem.”
“How far is that?”
“I dunno, but it’s not in Texas.”
Bree’s plaid skirt fit slightly large, the product of a hand me down shop. Underneath, she had on black shorts, for modesty, and, in the winter, she wore navy blue tights through which her downy blonde hair along her legs still sprouted. She wore white Keds that she rubbed with shoe white whenever she got them dirty, the damp sponge oozing white covered her rubber soles like forgiveness.
“Well, the nuns keep saying we’re going to see the Stations. Do you think we’ll see the spear?”
“No, that’s in a museum.”
“I thought Hitler had it.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Some TV show my dad was watching.”
“My dad watches Ancient Aliens.”
When the day for the field trip finally came, their small class loaded up into a white van with a magnetic sign on the side that read: Sacred Heart Catholic School. Sister Mary Margaret drove and Sister Anna Maria ran her hands over her rosary beads and hissed when Sister Mary hit the brakes too abruptly. The children vibrated with anticipation and alternated between silence and breaking into awkward giggles.
The van finally pulled up to a one-story house with a pink stucco façade and canary yellow door. It was surrounded by foliage; the whole place had the feeling of a lost grotto, damp and dimly lit, permeated by the smell of deciduous rot.
They certainly weren’t in Jerusalem, Bree decided.
A woman wearing jeans and a button-down shirt came out to greet the nuns and introduced herself to the squirming group of children as Sister Katherine.
“I’m going to take you down to the Stations of the Cross. If you could please each hold hands, we’ll walk down the path in pairs of two.”
Just like the ark, Bree thought. She grabbed her friend Samantha’s hand so as not to be left behind.
“Ouch! You’re hurting me,” Samantha cried.
Frightened by her own excitement, she let go and began down the path, separating herself from the group. The path was well-tended and bordered on both sides by a low, metal fence with ornate wrought iron designs, painted white. The little road wove around Sister Katherine’s yard in a wobbly fashion, and Bree walked along unquestioningly.
The first Station was offset by an old door painted blue to emulate the sky. In the foreground, a Jesus figure, made of old milk pails, bent his metal head to receive Pontius Pilate’s ruling, which he held in his wrought iron arms and read from a scroll made of recycled cardboard.
At the next station, a mosaic tile Jesus raised his wooden cross toward a faux dawn of crystal sun catchers amassed into a ball and suspended from a tree with fishing wire.
A group of her classmates ran past, giggling, but Bree ignored them.
She felt moved by these primitive sculptures and odd backlit vignettes so carefully assembled by hand, she wanted to be closer to the love felt by the one who had created them. When a soft wind blew through the yard, the Virgin Mary made of Pampas grass and driftwood waved her arms gently back at Bree. As she passed the sepulcher made of terra cotta pots and housing an invisible Christ, Bree felt tears well up in her eyes.
This was it, she thought excitedly. Her pure tears would purge her of the devils and prove she was as good as anyone else. She thought the nuns might be further moved by her spiritual awakening. Bree walked back to the group and turned her wet eyes toward them in supplication, but the nuns were already corralling the other students for lunch.
During their meal, Bree sat close to Sister Katherine and, too shy to ask her questions, simply listened as she explained her inspiration for the artwork. In one breath, she claimed that her creativity was a gift from God, in the next breath she offered the nuns discounts on the Amway products she kept in her garage.
Bree got up and stood in line for the toilet, her heart longed for mysticism, for the light and the beauty, she wanted to be transformed by it.
Her peanut butter and honey sandwich was all smashed up in a Ziplock bag at the bottom of her brown paper lunch sack and she held it close to her while she waited for the toilet and quietly yearned. She jiggled the handle and another girl shouted, “Just a minute!”
When the other girl emerged and shot Bree a superior glance, Bree rushed inside. She pulled down her bicycle shorts and quickly peed. She balled up some toilet paper to wipe herself and dropped it in the toilet. Only then did Bree notice the handwritten signs above the trashcan that begged in purple ballpoint pen, “Please don’t flush toilet paper! We are on a septic system!” Panicked, she fished the toilet paper out, damp now from the water and her urine, and tossed it into the trashcan.
She looked frantically and in vain for hand soap, only to give up and diligently run her hands under the cold tap.
Finally, she was able to return to the nuns, her sandwich, and Sister Katherine’s odd stories.
That night, Bree recounted the sculptures to her mother, describing in precise detail each of the creative backdrops and materials that depicted Jesus’s tragic journey. She tried again to muster up the emotion she’d felt at Sister Katherine’s house but found herself unable to do so while looking at her mother sitting on the edge of her bed, nodding without expression.
“And then, I had to get the toilet paper out of the toilet bowl because of a septic. Only I couldn’t wash my hands before I ate my sandwich, but it was okay because Sister Katherine…”
“What did you say?”
She stopped.
“You put your hands in the toilet and didn’t wash them.”
“There was no soap.”
“And then you ate your sandwich?”
“Yes,” she gulped, unsure now of how to respond. “I only wanted to follow the rules.”
She didn’t mention how she’d wanted to stay suspended in a sweet state of release and belief in something beautiful, so the bathroom had hardly mattered in the grander scheme of her emotional landscape.
Her mother’s face shifted from anger to fear, and she went to linger near the door of Bree’s bedroom.
“I just hope you don’t get sick from doing that.”
A fresh wave of tears came to Bree’s eyes. “Am I going to die?”
Her mother looked at her and shook her head, “I don’t know.” Then, she turned off the bedroom light.
That night Bree dreamt about tall green demons pursuing her through the trees as she pulled her red Radio Flyer down the empty streets of her neighborhood. Only she could see them and their split open faces laughing at her, their tails that pointed into a spear. Bree kept thinking, the nuns told me when I died, I’d be with the angels. But only the devils pursued her. She awoke before dawn and lay in the purple light, letting the possession take hold. She was alive and the devils had kept her alive through the night.
In the morning, everything was as before. Her mother didn’t acknowledge the previous evening, and Bree went to school with little fanfare or concern. When the nuns asked her how she liked the Stations of the Cross, Bree just shrugged and went to sit at her desk.
Abigail Stewart is a writer from Berkeley, California. She is the author of two novels, The Drowned Woman and Foundations, as well as a short story collection, Assemblage. You can find her at: helloabigailstewart.com.
Isonomia Quarterly 