All This Talking About God

The brightness that sustains me is meant to blow away. Almost every day, I walk down to the college to watch the Buddhist nuns. The young Tibetans fold themselves crossed-legged on the wooden platform, funneling colored sand grain by grain onto a chalked pattern in the center. They wear cloth masks so their breath doesn’t scatter the sand. Grain by grain, color by color, creating a circular mandala, the house of a god. It’s the only thing that brings me peace, makes me forget my empty hands. Silently they pray as they work. Four at a time they bend over the great wheel, heads bowed, hands curled, shaping, as patient as stalking cats. I guess they believe life is only suffering, but they seem so contented.

Talking to God, that’s all some people talk about, at the bus stop, laundromat, the bank. They are full of advice, stories of the Lord’s personal favors. I know that the black woman is supposed to thump on her Bible, serve up the family dinner, and call on God to help her keep it all together. I know that’s my place. But since when did I ever do what I’m supposed to do? Still, these people keep at me, talking about their gods. Even on TV, the running back in the end zone says, “I thank God, he was with us today,” because his god is a Jets fan, his god does not listen to the pleas of the Miami quarterback, the Denver coach. I am told many things by many people anxious to help. They claim to talk to God, and he (or she) tells them things to tell me, things to make me change my ways, my whys, things to make me see the light, to open my heart, and so it does; the chambers open, open, shut, shut, like hands in prayer.

How I’m raised to judge myself: Woman is the pillar that holds the roof when other support gives way. She is the anchor, the rock, guardian of her family’s health, spiritual and mental. So where does that leave me? I couldn’t help my baby. I’m no help to my husband. I haven’t been on speaking terms with God for years, and certainly not since Daisy died, and her so little, not even talking. People keep telling me God has a plan. If that’s so I’d have to believe He had something to do with her death, too busy taking calls from football players and soap-opera actresses. Who can suffer a God like that? Even cruel nature seems more kind.

She was such a little thing, eight months, and her symptoms seemed so slight. When I called the doctor back and said, she’s still fevered, they weren’t really worried. We took her to the hospital, then everything went horribly wrong. The fever kept going up and there lay my poor baby, packed in ice like that with all the IVs. She was blotchy and puffy, and then she just quit on me. Something went, her liver or kidneys, then her heart. The doctors leaped in, blowing air into her with a bag, shocking her chest. Even they were shaken. A matter of hours. I could say I prayed good and hard but frankly, I didn’t have time to mumble one under my breath. And I could say that bitter trial strengthened my faith, but it wasn’t much to begin with, and after—well, just another thing dusted over by neglect.

Then all this crazy comfort, talking about God. Some fool gives me a coffee mug with the story about the one set of footprints in the sand and why, God, did you leave me in my heartache and God says, that is when I carried you—a coffee mug, as if that will mend my heart, clear my head. Well, carry me or not, we aren’t speaking now. Somehow it never took root in me. The church of my childhood was custom more than devotion in my household. My mama, as intelligent a woman as you’ll ever meet, a teacher, wasn’t particularly devout, and she’s got her reasons. My grandma used to “get the spirit” and it seemed to me then, a girl in pigtails, like a demonic possession. Not the Word, a bird, fluttering epileptically inside her. I only saw it happen once or twice; she rarely came to visit. She lived down south, and my mama had a strange pride in saying she would never set foot in Alabama again. We all have lines we won’t cross.

Gerald and I work at the phone company. Gerald is a lineman, out in all kinds of weather, up in the cherry picker, rotating night shifts. It was always Gerald I worried about, not Daisy. Out in ice storms with the downed electric lines and all. Daisy was safe and warm at home with me. She would grow up, have her chicken pox and skinned knees, get her grown-up teeth, have birthday parties, learn her times tables, and be someone. It was my husband in the dark storm I worried over.

When I went back to work they all knew about Daisy, so I didn’t have to excuse my bone-tired stare. Checks kept coming in and I kept them credited right. Credits and debits, cool, clean numbers, safe enough; people pay a lot to talk. Lately friends point out to me it’s free to talk to God. That big hearing ear, big piggy-backer, enfolding hand; he’s all there in bits and pieces for some game-show winner, but who’s minding the store for the rest of us? Charlanne just sat quiet with me at coffee break, for which I was grateful, sometimes rattling her braceletty arm toward me and putting a warm hand on mine. Just keeping me company in my devastation. No chatter about taking up the burden, following in His footsteps. You don’t talk that trash to a grieving mother. You don’t go around saying that her baby girl is in a better place.

One day on our lunch hour Charlanne said, get your coat, we’re going out. We walked down the street to the college. In a room with high ceilings, almost like a chapel, the Buddhist nuns worked quietly. They sat on a big platform in their maroon robes; their heads, shorn to black stubble, all looked alike as they bent over their work. Charlanne and I pulled up chairs and watched the mandala take shape. Now I go back almost every day.
They are Tibetans living in exile in Nepal, here for some special occasion at the college. At moments when they take a break, smiling, chatting, we realize that they are just girls, college-age themselves. One of the older nuns, perhaps my age, takes me by the hand. Her English is good; she has a lazy eye. Smiling, she explains their rituals, the symbols of the mandala. It represents the home of a deity of compassion, with a central medallion, the four gates, a symbolic tapestry of color. In tempera-bright colors—red, yellow, blue, dark and pale green, orange, and white—they sift tiny lines: scrolls for clouds, religious symbols, small rainspouts for the palace roof. The patterns are bright and fine as embroidery, a quilting of sand, held together by nothing, yet whole. She nods toward the altar, explains the offerings of flowers, waxy cakes, incense. How they asked the Dalai Lama (I guess that is like asking God) to be allowed to learn the sacred art from their brother monks. For this act of devotion they’ll gain merit in the next life, my guide explains. They’ll dismantle the mandala in a ritual, to return the blessings to the earth.

Sometimes the nuns climb down and refold themselves before the altar at the far end of the room, each clasping a bell and a charm of bronze like interlocking figure-eights. I don’t understand what they’re saying, but they’re talking to God with fine, curling, undulating hands, low chanting that rises and falls. Then they shake out their limbs, chat for a bit, crawl back on the platform and pick up their narrow silver funnels, their meditations.

The pattern must be a mystery my heart knows, not my head. I come back as often as I can.

“These things just happen sometimes,” the doctor had said, meaning to be kind, laying a hand on my shoulder—a young woman like me, tired and stunned. “The infection was just too persistent. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t tell me that, sometimes—not to my baby,” I’d cried out, throwing off her touch. “Don’t gimme no sometimes, there’s my girl, there’s supposed to be antibiotics, there’s supposed to be—” One minute in my arms, the next, small and lifeless on the bed. I collapsed against Gerald, his own hot tears washing his face, knowing I should be comforting him, that he needed me to hold him up. But I had no strength. We cried into one another’s neck and shoulders, our baby girl before us with a tube in her arm and the mask off her face, done with struggle; cried there without pride, without hope, as the hospital shuttled all around us.

She was named Danielle after Gerald’s mother, a tall woman with a long face, soft-spoken and fiercely dignified. But I called her my little Daisy. She was born February 7, eight pounds, twelve ounces, with a little mole above her butt on the left. She was only eight months, still at the breast, a child with a sunny disposition, a curious expression of surprise on her fat cheeks, a squeaky laugh.

I took a week’s vacation and lay around the house crying, or stone-faced, unable to. My mama came for a few days, quietly took over the kitchen, let me cry when I could. “I should’ve taken her to the doctor sooner.” Cold, like it was someone else’s life, a movie I’d seen. “Tell me what to do, Mama.”

“Times like this it’s hard to find your way, I know,” she said, rubbing my back.

Gerald and I passed like ghosts, not saying much, brushing closely past each other, grazing fingertips, curling desperately together in bed for fear the other would vanish. I made myself cook him proper dinners, meat and vegetables, potatoes or biscuits, so he could keep his strength up. I couldn’t eat. My breasts were still swollen. I had to express the milk with that pump, everything flowing out of me, all milk and tears, leaving me empty. The doctor said I’d have to stop soon, to let my body adjust to the absence of suckling. Sat in the rocking chair with my hands empty except for that damn breast pump and my body grieved for my child, my arms aching for the weight of that little warm shape. It took all the will in my slack body to do the dishes at night, to rake myself out of bed before noon. Sometimes Gerald got the coffee on, washed the pots.

One morning, passing the half-open door to the bathroom: Gerald’s face lathered up but only half shaven, his palms braced on the sink, his head hangs, he’s crying so quietly I hear only breath. I hushed past. He used to curl her on one arm like a sack of flour, a football, tickle her chin with a finger to get that squeaky duck laugh. For some reason we tried to smile bravely at each other, but it was grotesque and we sank into wordless touches. I felt like I had no voice.

It’s Gerald I come home to, but I don’t like being in the house alone. I make excuses to go out, invent errands; the botanical gardens, the mandala-makers, movies, window-shopping. One day I’m driving to work and I hear an ad on the radio for the zoo. I think of toucans and flamingos all day as I sit at my keyboard. It’s not far and I stop on the way home, pay my three-dollar donation. I look at the birds but they don’t hold my interest long; the gorilla is throwing his poop at the spectators. My feet take me to the cats.

When I was little I begged for a cat like my friend Donetta had, but my mama had a horror of them, I don’t know why—some ancestral voodoo nonsense. I walk down the ramp into that cat smell, and I can see the pens are too small, though they’ve tried to shape them with landscaping and all. A Siberian tiger sleeps on a concrete ledge, its back pressed against the thick glass, half an inch from my hand. I could tap on the window and I bet the big cat wouldn’t even jump. The sign says there are new cubs, but I don’t see them. Her fur looks stiff as wire, luscious black and white paintings on her face; the bristly whiskers twitch occasionally, a paw as big as my face flexes. Some hunting dream.

In the next pen the leopard is restless—pacing, pacing, a lopsided arc around the oak with its clawed bark. The sunken enclosure must be a good half-acre, but he is hemmed in, no horizons; the autumn sun gives little heat. He belongs someplace huge, the African savannah scorched yellow, not in a grimy northern city. Tongue lolling out, he stops, pants listlessly. I know this look, this dulled perseverance. The look says, what are we doing so far from home? Where’s my sun? However did we get here? Capture, displacement.

On my way out I pass seals barking, begging children for fish, a polar bear swimming laps in the too-small pool. Someday we would have taken Daisy to feed the seals. The smell of fish makes me want to cry. I am late to make dinner.

Gerald knew when he married me that I didn’t claim faith. Man and wife four years, and I still marvel at his. My husband, he’s got a man’s God and a man’s minister, all sanctifying and testifying, scouts all in uniform, merit badges shining.

I love Gerald—but his words have no more wings on them than mine. Yet he stands up and sings his hymns, accepting grace as his due. I sing, too. Rock of Salvation. Someone’s singin’, Lord, kumbaya. Go tell it on the mountain. Someone’s sing-in’, Lord, but it’s for my own comfort; preachers know the power of giving voice.
Gerald is a kind man, quiet like his mother, confident, without anger. He goes to his church and comes back full of rescue. The world owes him better for his uncomplaining patience. I owe him better. I should be his rock, but right now all I’ve got is blood and milk, tears and sweat, animal things washing through me, things that don’t bear reckoning. I’ll suffer through and give him what I can—my love for him is primitive and holy. He’s my sun. I can’t help it; I love that man more than I could love any god.

I know it’s a jealous God in the Old Testament, envious of a woman’s love, her ability to bring forth life. Woman is fierce in her loving, like a cat who owns you, commands you or is your equal. A cat wants to sleep up against your heat, to breathe in your face, share your space as close as possible; then walk away, walk the perimeter on the fence tops, before she comes back. A cat has secrets. A cat could talk to God. Never a dog; a dog only wants to please master, whatever the cost. All these people throwing platitudes at me: “Offer it up.” They only understand a god they can be subservient to, give up their will to, cast off the burden of their own hearts and minds. “Give over the burden.” They want me to hurry up already, get it over with, a sudden resolution—as if grieving has a deadline, like it’s not a long, hard walk.
In bed I listen to Gerald’s breathing go loose and soft; his hand brushes my hip. As I start to doze I see the leopard looking for its big sun. The tiger twitches her paw, her whiskers. Why can’t God be a creature like that? A sensual creature, a thing with fangs and claws. An instinctual god, no promises, no preaching. My spirit has longings, too. I need a god that wants us to dance. One two three, one two three, a fine old waltz, scandalous. A holy roller shaking in the ring of a great colorful circus. None of us want to feel so small, so alone, shut off from the sky. But I need power here at hand: old gods out of the forest, all kinds of howling juju and Mary in her motherly sorrow, animal spirits.

Beside me the tiger stirs and growls. I feel her warm back pressed against me as in some deep dream she prowls her territory, sniffs the Siberian air, recalls only in sleep the scent of freedom, some other way of being.

The nuns are serene as ever and I can tell the mandala will be finished soon—the huge wheel is almost filled with intricate shapes, a colorful fever-dream. My guide, the nun with the smile and lazy eye, says there remains only the lotus-petal border of white sand. Her name is Domo. The blessings multiply as they work and pray. In a few days, she says, it will be completed, then demolished, because the devotion of making is enough; nothing is permanent. Domo says the gift remains precious, not less cherished for being destroyed. I guess their gods, too, have ways that come to us as mysteries. In the end they will sweep all the colors together, carry the sands in a procession to the river, return the blessings to water, to earth. Maybe someone will be talking to God meantime, among the waving tangerine sleeves and shaved heads, cymbals and horns. Yes, I think, that’s right. Shouldn’t we dance behind the nurses, the hearses, to celebrate the freed soul, give back its many brilliant reds and oranges and blues to the dark water, stars in the pond? But no; we mutter, wear drab, drape in crepe. Did so, myself. Did not raise a mighty noise. Back into the brown earth, brown child.

It’s a Saturday, just three weeks after we lost her, when I send Gerald out to the store. I’ve been wearing a cabbage leaf in each bra cup because the doctor said it would help stop the milk flow—folk wisdom, not medicine. But after a couple of days, the soft crinkle and cabbagey smell is making me so sad, I go to the kitchen, peel the wilted greens from my breasts, throw them in the trash can. I take out a box of old friends—Mahalia Jackson, the Clark Sisters, Sissy Houston—music, what’s left of my faith. I pull out an old record of the Terrell Sisters and I turn it way up and let the gospel music full of praise and sorrow wail up around the walls, splatter over the furniture, slide along the floors. Guide us through the storm, oh Lord, through the bitter rain, they sing. I go into the little room we’d made into Daisy’s nursery with the flowered curtains and wallpaper border. My Lord, oh my Lord, speak to me. I know these songs not just by heart, but in my heart, harmony and melody; hymns, that’s what I’ve kept from churchgoing.

I go in there with boxes and I take out the clean clothes, the onesies and the tiny T-shirts. The little pink knit sweater and cap, the frilly dress from her Granny Danielle, ridiculous for a child so small. Is there only darkness? Only pain and strife? I sing along. I take those things and the tiny booties out of the little drawer and I fold them neatly and pack them away. The little ribbon bows for the barely kinky hair she barely had. The shoes. The plastic pants, little towels, all the while my eyes burning with tears. Do my prayers fail in darkness? Stand on a chair and take down the mobile over the crib, tear off the light blankets, put them in a bag. I start to choke on the words while I let my madness out, singing hard. I pound the wall with my palm, I shout out with the Terrell Sisters, No, no! The Lord shines down a light—but it’s just howling. It’s release but not rescue, just more tears clacketing through my back, my ribs, the wailing that has to come. I take the sheets and the toys—Do my tears go unheard?—and stuff them in a bag to burn them, burn them all, all the traces of the infection that robbed me of my baby girl. Scalding, hacking with sobs, resolute. I turn the record over and get a bucket of hot suds and that’s where Gerald finds me, on my knees, scrubbing Lysol over the crib, walls and everything and wailing at the top of my lungs because Clea Terrell can sing Awake to Miracles but there wasn’t one coming for me.

“Don’t do this, baby, don’t do this,” he says, taking the brush out of my hand and wrapping his arms around me. I can see he is scared, of me, of my passion; he doesn’t see it’s just the body’s alarm. I hold my hands out to the side with my wet rubber gloves and howl some more, ’til I can get a grip on myself. “It’s okay,” I say between gasps. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I—just been quiet as a church mouse, so quiet, and I need to cry, I need to yell. Oh no,” as the tears well up again. My body has the rhythm of the sobs and it won’t let go. “I just need to cry for a week of Sundays.” Tears in his own eyes, he lets me go, pats my back and nods, and I stand stupidly crying in the middle of that room with my yellow gloves dripping, and wave my husband out the door.

I cry, I sing, I yell ’til I’m drained, then I put out the boxes of Daisy’s things. I ask Gerald to burn the small bag of sheets, the few crib toys, all infected, tainted—to burn them, burn, I want to see my rage done up in kerosene. He shakes his head at me, no; no, girl, goes and pushes the bag deep into the trash can.

So the sun keeps rising and somehow Gerald and I do, too, something to be continued, and hold our breaths or silences, and hold each other. The future seems heavy as a roof. And so goes all this talking to God: those Black Muslims down the block calling on Him a dozen times each Friday, the Jews who don’t say His name, and earnest Christians, the football stars and the bottle-blond rappers testifying. But I need a God more fierce and close. Maybe it’s me, in my loss, in my need, that can’t cotton to theology, sermonizing. An old-school African nature-god might suit; some long, masked face that speaks in dance and movement, music instead of testaments. She needs to come shameless and simmering around my leg, saying, You’re mine. A god who wants my speech, she’s got to take it. She’s got to say, you and me, we’re attached; then maybe I’ll start talking. She’s got to make me hers, rake her claws up and down my shabby bark, mark me with her fine, scented whiskers, and yowl.

More than ever, it’s hard to find my place, my breasts still leaking unclaimed milk, my body missing my baby in ways that won’t meet words. What’s a body to do but go on—it’s in our blood to continue. I guess maybe Gerald and I will have another child someday—I owe him that, too. But right now my body’s still slack from childbearing and weary with grief. I will need to make up some kind of faith before then, a cat faith or a dog faith, something to hang my mortal hat on. I need something to cling to, otherwise there is just the sand sifting in a random dance. Things don’t happen for a reason, not things like that—unless you give them a pattern to fit into, “God’s will.” How else does a people bear strife and loss, oppression and cruelty and downright evil? They say, “God’s will.”

I’ve got those longings for a thing that might be faith, a wheel swirling with color, a mystery only the soul and body understand. One day I may find myself in veils and trousers, like Khalila who found Islam and a husband in Cleveland. I might yet find my way back to Jesus. Maybe I’ll go Buddhist like Tina Turner, like the nuns, and then I can learn to just be in the universe and lose my prideful pain.

If there’s nothing else, there are the seasons that govern all creatures, music that dances in our veins, senses beyond knowing. Or I’ll have to find some other way, between the parked cars and rainstorms and monthly bills, the blizzards in my heart, cyclones churning history around our ears until we fall down wailing—because that’s what animals do, in the heat and the storm, without reasons, without shelter; we cry out, we endure, and we suffer.

“All This Talking About God” appears in Alicia Conroy’s Lives of Mapmakers (Carnegie-Mellon University Press).