CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

VERONICA

I was happy when I got to Gina’s, even after a twelve-hour shift at that godforsaken hospital. I hated nursing. It was a job and a woman could do it, but there was nothing about it to love. I was never meant to be a nurse. I had a higher purpose. I always knew that. I counted all those years as the refiner’s fire, purgation to make me the woman of faith I am. And finally, something big was happening.

When I arrived at Gina’s, Anthony was morose, as usual, in the kitchen sulking. He picked at some health food blessed Gina must eat for spiritual sustenance. She lounged on the love seat refusing to talk or eat. I didn’t know what he’d done, but the idiot had done something.

She’d eaten for me before. Never gave me a minute of trouble. I knew I should have called off work. She was too delicate for him to run roughshod over. You can’t just approach the sacred like a bull in a china shop. I’d be switched if I’d give him the chance to be alone with her again. I may as well have cast my pearls before swine.

I let him have it but good. “What did you do, you retard?”

He tried to ignore me, and I’d be switched if I’d let him.

“I said what did you do to her?”

Once I read Anthony the riot act I planned on asking her how she fasted for Lent. I wanted to make sure she had whatever she needed. She was like a child in a lot of ways. Somebody had to take care of her and keep the riffraff away.

Since he wanted to act as mute as she was I made that horrible sound those poor deaf people make when they try to talk, and I pretended to sign it out. “Antwaanee! Whaaa nid n’you n’do?”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m going to go get Zoe from day care.”

“Come here,” I said. No way was I gonna let that kid get in the car with him if he was stoned out of his mind.

He stopped. Grimaced at me like I was being unreasonable. “Why, Ronnie? Why do I need to come to you?”

“I want to look in your eyes.”

He mumbled, “I’m not high, Veronica.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. So let me see already.”

He tried to walk away from me, and lemme tell you, I sure as sharp wasn’t gonna let that scrawny little jungle monkey get outta there without answering to me.

I snatched his arm and pulled him back, then grabbed his face. I looked right into his eyes, but his pupils weren’t constricted, for a change.

“Hurry up and get back here, and next time don’t take Zoe anywhere without my permission. Or Mike’s.”

He looked at me like he was up to something even then.

Hmmph. Not if I could help it.

PRIEST

Stigmata: wounds of Christ, or marks corresponding to the marks left on Jesus’ body after the crucifixion. Seen as a special grace in the Catholic Church, a favor of God granted to those of extraordinary piety who identify with Christ’s suffering.

Stigmata: a mark of disgrace associated with a particular quality, circumstance, or person.

Gina had the wounds of Christ.

Me, I just had drug addiction as my stigmata. I wasn’t revered, and didn’t want to be, truth be told. I can’t even say I wanted my mother to respect me. I’d let go of that dream when I was twelve, long ago, when I was still innocent and wanted to be a Franciscan who wrote great books about God. Now all I wanted was to be treated like a human being.

But nobody loves a junkie.

I trudged inside of Miss D’s and Zoe ran to me, wrapping her little arms around me like she did Mike. It was the only moment during that day so far, except for when I’d locked lips with Gina, that I felt some semblance of happiness.

In that moment I understood why Jesus said unless we changed and became like children we couldn’t enter the kingdom of heaven. Zoe loved without reservation. She didn’t mind that I was lousy with wounds.

Not so Miss D. Upon seeing me her lips poked out in a frown and she put a hand on one of her cow-flank hips. Her eye flickered up and down my body. I don’t think an MRI could have scanned me more thoroughly.

“What you doin’ here?”

“I’m Anthony Priest. Mike told you I’d probably pick Zoe up.”

“He told me somebody name Anthony Priest was comin’ if he didn’t. He ain’t tell me enough, I see.”

I wouldn’t mind if she wanted to cream me. But I didn’t want her to do it right in front of Zoe. “Would you like to see some identification?”

“I’d like to see more than that, brotha.”

I wasn’t going to do the “brotha” thing. Not now.

She wanted to see something. I pulled out my driver’s license and press card. It was from a major newspaper. She took them both, and scrutinized them.

“Go get your coat, Zoe,” I said.

But Miss D stopped her. “Wait a minute, baby.” She searched the sign-in sheet. “I’ma see if yo’ mama’s pastor left a number I can call.”

She couldn’t find a number and actually got the telephone book and looked up the Vineyard. When she couldn’t find a listing in the Wayne County Yellow Pages—and why would an Ann Arbor church be in the Wayne County phone book—she called directory assistance.

I stood there red-faced with embarrassment and anger. At myself, mostly.

Miss D couldn’t see the scars on my arms. I wore a coat. No, she saw the less obvious ones I bore on my body. My gaunt appearance, the dark cast shadowing my skin—something I only saw on other addicts, and am, for all my words, hard pressed to describe. She looked like she could see through what was left of the body I dragged around like a cadaver into the dead soul rotting on the inside. It would have been easy to hate that shrew, or disregard her in the way I cut everybody off so I didn’t have to feel, but she’d turned a harsh microscope on me and forced me to take a look at myself, the same way I brutalized Gina with “the truth.” Only I’d treated Gina worse.

Miss D quite effectively made me hate myself a little more.

Zoe asked Mike if I was going to be her daddy. Not a chance, lucky kid.

Miss Dolly finished her phone calls. She never reached Mike. She called Gina’s house. I stood there listening, not hearing what Veronica said, but knowing every contemptible detail.

She turned to Zoe. “Take yo’ coat off, baby. Miss Dolly gon’ take you home soon as I close. I’ma let you have a special treat for waitin’.”

Zoe cried, and Miss D shooed her off to play with the other kids.

She leaned close to me and said, “Looka here. That baby’s mama ain’t wrapped too tight. She don’t need no trouble. You hear? You stay way from Gina and Zoe Merritt. They don’t need yo’ kind.”

I felt so low. I thought I might as well yell, “Unclean! Unlean!” before I came into a place. Clanging my bell of indignity with every step like any other leper.