Bright Dark Madonna. Elizabeth Cunningham

didn’t answer right away but she began to hum again as she rose and went to lie down on one of the couches.

      “You’d better get some sleep, too, if we’re to start before dawn.”

      “We?” I said. “We? As in you and me?”

      “As in Miriam and Mary, Ruth and Naomi,” she crooned. “Naomi and Ruth. Mary and Miriam.”

      So it had come to pass. Deep (way deep) down hadn’t I always known it would, since the moment I saw her standing outside the root cellar, the onions she had fetched slowly dropping down the folds of her dress and arranging themselves in rays at her feet. I had dreaded it, too. Really, I thought, husbands ought not to let their mothers outlive them—wasn’t there a pertinent law somewhere in Leviticus?

      “Ma, I appreciate your concern,” I finally spoke, “but if this is my cue to say, whither thou goest, I will go, thy people shall be my people, thy gods—or rather god—my god, whither thou diest, there I shall be buried, forget it, it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to convert. And there is no way I am lying down at James’s feet on the threshing floor or whatever it was Naomi told Ruth to do to cozen Boaz into marrying her. Carpenters and apostles don’t have threshing floors, anyway. But the point is, I don’t want another husband—”

      “Hush, Mary of Magdala. Hush. Listen.” And she sang, as atonally as she hummed, “Whither thou goest, I will go, whither thou livest I shall live, thy people shall be my people, thy goddess, my goddess, whither thou diest…” Her voice trailed away and she had a rare moment of uncertainty. “Well, don’t worry about the dying and burying part. I’m afraid it may be a bit complicated. As for husbands, I don’t want one, either, so don’t fret, child.”

      She lay down and pulled a blanket up to her chin.

      “Ma,” I said. “I’m going home to Temple Magdalen, a heathen whorehouse.”

      “Don’t you think I know that?” she said crossly. “The trouble is, other people will figure it out, too. But we might as well stay there for a time. I do recall that the Temple spring water is curative for bunions.”

      “It is,” I said, pensively. “Ma?”

      “What now, Mary of Magdala?”

      “If you’re coming with me, you have to call me Maeve. The angels got my name wrong, you know.”

      “Harumph,” she said. Or that’s as near as I can translate the sound she made.

      “What would you like me to call you?” I asked politely.

      Miriam sat bolt upright on the couch and gazed into the middle distance.

      “The Ever Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea, Mother of God,” she began rattling off titles that I had never heard applied to anyone but a goddess, “Mother of Sorrows, Immaculate Conception, Our Lady, Our Lady of Lourdes, Guadalupe, Fatima, Our Lady of—”

      She went on, her voice hypnotic, and I had a glimpse then, though I didn’t understand it, of thousands of altars to the goddess in cavernous spaces, blazing with candles, while before my image (although I didn’t know it was mine) a few candles guttered, one, two, or none. Prescience is like that sometimes, confusing, more or less useless.

      “Maeve,” she spoke my name for the first time, and the vision vanished. “Just call me Ma, as you always have. Goodnight.”

      And she lay down again. By the way, in case you were wondering: The Ever Blessed Virgin Mary snores.

      PART TWO

      AVE MATRES

      CHAPTER TEN

      MY PEOPLE

      Ave Matres

      Hail all mothers

      graceful or not

      God or goddess is with you, believe it or not.

      Blessed are all women

      and blessed are the fruits of our wombs

      whatever names, ridiculous or not, we choose for them

      and even when they’re acting rotten.

      O mothers

      holy human mothers

      all our children are divine.

      Long after they leave us

      they will curse us and pray to us

      now and in the hour of our death

      now and in the hour of their need.

      I HAVE TAKEN THE LIBERTY of making this famous prayer to my mother-in-law a paean to all mothers—myself included. I am about to become a mother again. I am the bright dark madonna of this story, the daughter of mothers, bright and dark, the mother of daughters bright and dark. I take my place, however hidden, in the lineage of madonnas, Mary the mother of Jesus, Isis the mother of Horus, Demeter the mother of Persephone. Mother of a child or child of a mother, you are part of this lineage, too, this holy human lineage, the origin of bliss and loss.

      Of course, I did not think about any of that then. I had tunnel vision. The only thing that mattered was getting home to Temple Magdalen, the only home I had ever made. In my heart, I had never left it.

      Ma and I arrived just at first call of the Sabbath shofar. The gates stood open, and I paused, relishing the sight of home: whores and children singing the evening hymn to Isis; Judith and various helpers hurrying to lay out all the food before the third call of shofar sounded. Cats stretched, strolled, or lolled; chickens scratched the dirt and strutted. Old men entertained the bedridden with dice games, while old women scolded them for being in the way. On one of her trips back and forth, Judith caught sight of us and dropped a tray of figs. “Aren’t you just like him!” she complained and exulted. “Always showing up just when it’s time to eat!”

      Shabbat dinner at Temple Magdalen was one of our untraditional traditions. Our creed, to the extent that we had one, was to celebrate all and any holy days, especially if it involved eating and drinking. Judith, who was Jewish and not, by the way, a whore, knew all the Sabbath songs and blessings, so she presided over the table, so to speak, which really meant all of us sitting on the ground together in a big circle, reaching into common dishes, passing wineskins around and around, torchlight and starlight lighting our faces, the air alive with jokes and laughter.

      After dinner, when our bellies were full, there would come a lull as people settled back, leaning against each other, sometimes dozing a bit, and generally digesting. I gazed around the circle, content to let everything be a little soft and blurry. Judith had taken charge of Ma, who rested her head on Judith’s shoulder. Reginus, once my fellow slave in Paulina’s household, reclined with his lover Timothy spoon fashion. I had my head in Berta’s soft, abundant lap, while Dido, my other sister whore, massaged my feet. I had met them both at The Vine and Fig Tree, the Roman brothel where I was first a whore. But all these stories I have told before.

      At the moment, you only need to know I was with my best friends, all of us exiles of one sort or another. Their friendship sustained me through all the years of longing and looking for my beloved. When Jesus appeared at our gate, more dead than alive, my friends rejoiced with me. They welcomed him and came to love him, too (Dido held out the longest), but I’ll tell you a secret: they loved me more. When I left to wander with Jesus, they loved me enough to let me go, and the life of Temple Magdalen went on in its quirky, practical, joyful way, whether I was there or not. That “way” never turned into an institution; it was, in some sense, the antithesis of an institution—which is why it was so wonderful, which is why you have never heard of it.

      After Sabbath dinner, we usually told stories, and in time I became aware of people turning toward me expectantly. I had been away for six months and turned up with a round belly, an eccentric mother-in-law but none of Jesus’s followers, whose company I had kept for more than two years.