Messi@ (32 page)

The man paused to wipe his sweaty forehead with a yellow bandana, then shouted so loudly everybody jumped: “
Imagine a pink elephant!
” He hit the cherry globe, making it spin fast.

Felicity did not want to play this game. It was not amusing. And this shouting was unpleasant. She did not want to imagine a pink elephant. It didn't look to her as if her fellow students needed to imagine pink elephants; they had seen plenty of pink elephants. The teacher man was being disrespectful; did he know whom he was addressing? She realized that he did
not
. The teacher had no idea that this small room contained some of history's best-known women. She couldn't help smiling. Here was another secret means of resistance to whatever was being prepared for them. The man had to remain ignorant. Strengthened by this knowledge, Felicity allowed herself to play the game. She couldn't help it; the suggestion had already taken hold. A huge pink elephant filled her mind. It was like a stuffed toy, a piñata full of hidden things. She understood that she must not look inside this elephant because
it contained false memories
. Yes, Felicity thought, this is a Trojan elephant full of somebody else's stories; if it breaks I will be filled with memories of a life that is not mine.

After a sufficient time had passed, time that was either a pregnant pause or a wave of nausea, depending on how much pink elephant one was actually imagining, the teacher shouted: “
Now try
not
to imagine a pink elephant!
” He set his palm on top of the globe and it ceased spinning.

Felicity rolled her eyes and thought, I hate this class. The man hissed triumphantly: “See? You cannot
not
imagine a pink elephant! This is called your
reactive mind!
Your
reactive mind
has been with you all your sorry life. It has prevented you from seeing
the truth
. It has prevented you from letting in
the light
. It has
obscured
your soul like a big pink elephant.
Jesus
will
free
you from it!”

The teacher was a middle-aged man dressed in black with heart-shaped pink eyeglasses. When he said “Jesus” his hands went up in the air and his voice broke as if he were about to cry. Felicity finally banished the pink elephant from her mind. But then she saw what the elephant had been concealing: a scene of utter destruction. A building was burning and a child was running from it with her wings on fire. Felicity grabbed the child and blew on the fire, which, amazingly enough, went out like a candle. She stroked gently the child's charred feathers. Stop, she willed herself. This is
his
game; this is what
he
wants you to think. The world isn't ending; you just can't remember it. She concentrated hard on keeping from this man the secret of who the women in the room were, but she kept slipping into a lazy, dreamy trance that drained her of will. She kept hugging the child with the singed wings. What had they done to her?

She raised her hand. “I can't seem to remember anything,” she protested. “Have I been given some sort of drug?”

“Not at all,” the teacher replied somewhat indignantly. “You are simply an American. You are amnesiac by definition. We Americans are people without memory. Don't need it. Everything we need to know is available on-line. You are simply a secular-humanist citizen. Relax. Soon you will know your Savior, and your heart will be filled with longing for Paradise.”

“Fuck that,” she shrieked, “What have you done with
me?
”

The teacher spun the globe again. It had an oddly calming effect on Felicity, and she felt as though she slept for a while, submerged again beneath the waters.

The man passed out a questionnaire and pencils. She raised her hand again and the teacher pointed to her. She stood with some effort and addressed him: “Sir, if I may, I believe I am grown up. Judging from my size. And I don't want to be in school.” There were murmurs of agreement from the other women.

The teacher looked stern. “Sit down, young lady, and answer the questions. You are disrupting the class.”

To her amazement, Felicity sat down and examined the questionnaire.

FIVE QUESTIONS YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON

1. Have you ever seen an angel?

2. Has an angel ever told you things you feel that you must share with the rest of the world?

3. Are you psychic? Can you tell, for instance, what the radio will say before the radio says it?

4. Are you angry about the evil in the world?

5. When you speak, does everyone listen?

She answered yes to all except the last one, though honestly she didn't know if she'd ever seen or talked to an angel, or if she was angry and psychic. The child she had saved from the flames was not an angel. She put her head down on her desk and closed her eyes. She felt extremely tired. She was taking a test and didn't know why, though she knew that asking would have been useless. She was small, a schoolchild at Our Lady of Perpetual Succor Ursuline Elementary, and the teacher was a nun, a white cloud, a ruler in her hand. Felicity touched her breasts through her thin white shirt. They felt small, young, unripe. She couldn't wait to be a woman.

“Now you can go to your assigned rooms to change, and then it's time for the music lesson,” the teacher said. “After the music lesson you will go to the Bible lesson. Tonight you have electronics workshop.”

It sounded like a nice plan.

“I think we're slaves,” Joan of Arc whispered in Felicity's ear as they trooped down a narrow hallway with doors on each side. “I think that they are going to sell us.”

Felicity was led to her quarters by a petite woman clad in a white gown, who gestured but did not speak. She opened a door above which was written,
The Lord's Hands Apartment No. 3
. Felicity was shown to a lower bunk in the far left corner. The dormitory had twelve beds. The walls were bare but for a black crucifix between two bricked-in windows. An ashen light from an unknown source filled the place.
Like a rainy day
, thought Felicity. She wove that tender thread around her arm with the others.

Lying on her bunk was a white robe and a pair of white Chinese slippers. The woman gestured to her to change. Obediently, Felicity took off her boots, her sweater, and her fuchsia jeans. She kept on her black panties and slipped into the robe. It was a little too big, but soft and quite comfortable. She felt free and unencumbered in it. The sleeves fell below her hands. She was warm. The slippers felt better than her boots, which had weighed her down.

A long time ago
, thought Felicity,
I was clad like this as I stood by the side of a tomb
. She saw herself among a group of silent women dressed like her, in white robes, looking into the open door of a small mausoleum. Light came from within. Someone very dear to her had just abandoned the tomb, leaving it empty.
He rolled away the stone
, came to her, and then she knew what she was seeing. She was among those who'd come to look at the empty tomb of Joseph of Arimathea after Jesus had risen from the dead. The picture was bright and vivid, but Felicity knew that it did not come from her own experience but from the pink elephant, who still crouched in a corner of her mind, sending pictures into her head.

The woman led her to a small theater. The other girls were walking in at the same time. Felicity smiled at them. Amelia Earhart, still disguised as a redhead, whispered, “We are fucking nuns now!”

On the stage was a tiny man in a tailcoat, who shouted at them to hurry up and take their places on the risers facing him. There were already other girls there, who looked without curiosity at the newcomers. They were dressed in loose white robes. The conductor inspected each girl as she climbed into place. When he saw Felicity's jewelry he shouted: “The rings must go! The rings must go!”

Felicity felt suddenly a sharp pang of fury that nearly returned her to herself. She had already surrendered her visible bracelets, but she would give them nothing else. She felt the threads of her secret bracelet, wound around her arms. She doubted if the conductor could see this, but nobody fucked with her rings. This she knew. Let the little penguin try. She'd tear his head off.

“No,” she squeaked, trying to make her eyes fierce.

The music teacher shrugged and picked up his baton. A cherubic little girl with gold ringlets passed out hymnals. Felicity took one, and the girl looked straight in her eyes. It was the girl from the house on fire, minus her wings. A current of recognition passed between them.
She too is someone who resists
, thought Felicity.
She knows that I saved her
.

The conductor hit the stand with his baton and directed the listless-looking chorus to simply repeat what he sang. The hymnal was already open to the right place.

Rock of ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee
—
let the water and the blood
…

Felicity soared. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to a vast blue simplicity.

Not the labors of my hands can fulfill the law's demands
—
could my zeal no respite know
—
Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling; naked, come to thee for dress
…

She floated up there, naked, and Jesus poured a diaphanous robe around her. From the tips of her toes to the crown of her head, a sense of well-being flooded through her, sweeping away her doubts.

While I draw this fleeting breath, when mine eyes shall close in death, when I soar to worlds unknown
…

All she wanted to do was sing. She was no longer tired; she was a pure voice, clean as a spring, soaring and spreading delight.

Felicity glanced at the others and was startled. They were all in the process of being transformed. Some of the girls looked partly made out of light, as if their bodies were undergoing some kind of chemical process. Joan was shining as if she were wearing her gold armor in battle. Amelia's red hair looked as if it were on fire.

And then everything changed. The teacher led them into the singing of “Nothing but the Blood,” and persistent sadness, like a small rain, touched her everywhere.

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus
—
For my pardon this I see: nothing but the blood of Jesus
—
Nothing can for sin atone; nothing but the blood of Jesus
—
This is all my hope and peace: nothing but the blood of Jesus
.

He who had given her her robe of light now stood pouring blood from his wounds like a fountain. His blood covered her, the sky, the other girls. They were immersed in its cloying waves and there was no hope for anyone, no matter what the song said. She wanted to sing “Rock of Ages” again, but there was no going back. Not for her nor for the world. From where did such despondency come? In the absence of memories to anchor her sorrows to, Felicity was a puddle of unhappiness, this all the more distressing for being pure feeling. If such sorrow was in the world, there was no saving it. The job was too big even for Jesus.

Just as Felicity was about to sink to the floor, the maestro led them into the singing of “Alone in the Garden,” and joy returned to the world.

I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses, and the voice I hear falling on my ear, he speaks, and the sound of his voice is so sweet the birds hush their singing, and the melody that he gave to me I'd stay in the garden with him though the night around me be falling but he bids me to go
…

This time, the sweet joy that suffused her was without ecstasy. It was the sad joy of knowing one's aloneness but also the comfort of the mystic night. The song had plainly named “the voice I hear falling on my ear” as the source of all feeling. She had known this once: sound was the universal source. A song suffused creation and dictated its shape through its notes. Either God sang all the time, giving form to the world, or God was sound, in which case everything was song. And things, such as they were, were only seemingly solid; they were only projections of sound. All of this occured to Felicity in an instant, in the interval between two notes. And just as instantly, she forgot it.

Days passed, merging with one another, each day very much like the next. The woolen blanket on her bunk was too small, and there was only one pillow, but the strangest thing happened. Felicity, who had always had trouble falling asleep and had spent hours adjusting her two pillows in a special way, now slumbered as soon as she lay down. At the end of each day, sleep closed in on her like water. She did not know the other women in her dorm, who seemed always to be humming under their breath with their eyes half closed. They did not speak to her but appeared friendly and kind.

Two plain meals were served every day at a long wooden table. The women took turns cooking, serving, and doing the dishes, but Felicity had not been asked. For breakfast, there was oatmeal and skim white milk. The midday meal was a plate of boiled white rice, white beans, and cauliflower. Pitchers of decaffeinated iced tea were quietly passed around. It was poor and bland fare, but it suited Felicity fine. The meals were eaten in silence, after one of the women said grace. They ended with a grateful hymn. Felicity studied her table companions, a dozen women or so, and wondered where they had come from. From rare occasional remarks she understood that some of them had been recruited from the streets of New Orleans by Bamajans. They did not know why they had been chosen, but they had readily acquiesced, or been made to acquiesce, to their new situation.
It is a long time ago, far away. I have taken vows of poverty and silence
. Sometimes an image came to her in the wake of this thought: a convent perched on a rock face while a blue-black sea foamed below. She found herself sometimes wanting to ask Joan of Arc and Amelia Earhart questions about their lives, but each time something in the women's demeanor stopped her. In the end she realized that Joan and Amelia, like herself, did not remember their lives. Perhaps they did not even know who they were. Perhaps only she, Scheherazade, knew her own name.