Lit_ A Memoir Part 32

Instead, I lie facedown on the carpet, repeating the prayer about G.o.d taking my will. Speaking it, I feel the words sucked from my mouth into a vacuum where G.o.d is not. My head's a hurricane, and to pray at all is like screaming into a gale.

Lying there, I remember the Scriptures I've forgotten for days. Margaret specifically gave me two pa.s.sages, saying, While I was praying this week, these pieces came to me. I'm very strongly guided to give them to you. How touched I'd been when she handed them over, but I hadn't picked them up.

I find in Mother's still-boxed books a Bible, floppy and old, its binding cracked and peeling like a batwing. Opening it, I see Mother's name carefully inscribed: For Charlie Marie Moore, from her loving Mother Mary, Christmas 1927 For Charlie Marie Moore, from her loving Mother Mary, Christmas 1927.

I flip through the onionskin pages to my first a.s.signment, verses seven through twelve of Psalm fifty-one. What I see makes the skin of my scalp p.r.i.c.kle, for the lines are marked in pale blue chalk. A child's hand has drawn a wavy line in the margin-not across the whole psalm, only alongside the lines I've been steered to-verses seven to twelve, which very deliberately traverse two sections of verse from the middle of one to the other. Kneeling, I sit back on my feet and feel the flesh on my scalp creep. I read the words. (Later, I'll learn this is the hanging psalm the hanging psalm read to English prisoners as they approached the gallows.) read to English prisoners as they approached the gallows.) 7 True I was born guilty, a sinner even as my mother conceived me.

8 Still, you insist on sincerity of heart; in my inmost being teach me wisdom.

9 Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be pure; wash me, make me whiter than snow.

10 Let me hear sounds of joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.

II.

11 Turn away your face from my sins; blot out all my guilt.

12 A clean heart create for me, G.o.d; renew in me a steadfast spirit.

How odd, I think, for I never thought of Mother as particularly devout in childhood-she wasn't. But it seems vaguely significant still.

Only when I flip to my second a.s.signment-St. Paul's letter to James-does my breath catch, for as I turn page after page after page, there are no other blue marks in the Bible, not one, until I reach the New Testament, where Margaret has a.s.signed a pa.s.sage about temptation, James one through thirteen. Mother's childhood hand has marked one through twelve, using the same blue chalk as the other pa.s.sage.

Blessed is the man who perseveres in temptation, for when he has been proved he will receive the crown of life that he promised to those who love him. No one experiencing temptation should say, "I am being tempted by G.o.d" for G.o.d is not subject to temptation to evil, and He Himself tempts no one. Rather each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire conceives and brings forth sin, and when sin reaches maturity, it gives birth to death.

This is not the parting of the Red Sea. This is not a dead friend arisen from his gauze windings and peering out of the stone tomb or stilling the waves about to upend my boat. This is not the healing of a leper, nor a bullet hole entering the front of my helmet and exiting out the rear without touching the head that wore it.

As miracles go, it may not even seem like one. But it feels as if G.o.d once guided my mother's small hand, circa 1920-something, to make two notes I'd very much need to find seventy years later-a message that I could be made new, that I am-have always been-loved.

I see the small blonde my mother had been, on the cusp of running like a s.h.i.+thouse rat into her own torments. And I know how specifically designed we are for each other. I feel in a bone-deep way the degree to which I'm watched over-how everyone is. And how my stone heart is moment by moment softening as I embrace that.

Maybe all any of us wants is to feel singled out for some long, sweet, quenching draft of love, some open-throated guzzling of it-like what a baby gets at the breast. The mystery of the Bible pa.s.sages, marked just for me, does that.

I stay on my knees a long time, and sometime near dawn, my cell phone trills, and I ask my sister the math genius what are the odds-in terms of probability-that those two pa.s.sages would've been marked of all the verses possible. And she says, Very slender.

Seeing the marked Bible, Mother's not in the least flabbergasted, saying, I knew we were born to be together a long time ago. Maybe you do now, too.

Mock that experience as random chance if you like, but from then on, I start to arrive in the instant as never before, standing up in it as if pushed from behind like a wave, for it feels as if I was made-from all the possible shapes a human might take-not to prove myself worthy but to refine the worth I'm formed from, acknowledge it, own it, spend it on others.

Easter, I visit Father Kane, recently ensconced in the home for retired priests, to make my confession. I sit weeping across from him, fully aware of the ingrat.i.tude I've occasionally nurtured and fertilized like a garden of black vines. Which posture rankles him. Oh, get up, Mary, he said, you know d.a.m.n well G.o.d loves you.

And I do. I (mostly) always do.

I'd like to say I never waver from that place, but on a crowded subway, I still pine for a firearm some days.

Though by the time Mother died, any of the old anger had been siphoned out of me like poison from a snakebite. Major organ system failure, the young doctors said. Old age, said the older ones.

I'm sick of this s.h.i.+t, she said. She'd set her jaw to die fast, I think. To lodge one last cry of outrage against Daddy's lingering five years' death, she let go in as many days.

I hate that you're leaving, I said to her. I just got used to you.

Well, I'm not doing it on purpose, she said with vigor. How old was she? She'd lied so much, n.o.body knew-eightyish, we're guessing.

Your husband's outside, Miz Karr, the nurse said when one of her suitors showed up, hat in hand.

He must look like h.e.l.l. He's been dead two decades.

If Daddy lived his final years in a haze, Mother's hazel eyes-when they were open those last days-stared at you sharp as a pair of ice picks.

Who's the president? the doctor said, to determine if she was cogent enough to say no to life support.

Bill Clinton, she said.

Who was the president before Clinton?

That a.s.shole George Bush, she said, and before him, that a.s.shole Ronald Reagan.

She opened her eyes once to find Lecia powdering her nose while I caked on another load of mascara. What are y'all getting fixed up for? she said.

The handsome cardio dude's coming to examine you, I said.

Oh my G.o.d, she said, pooching her lips out-Put my lipstick on.

Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.

Sometimes when I walk the New York streets, I find in the occasional pedestrian's face my long-dead parents. An Indian garment worker in overalls ferries a bin of Chinese silk-the bright rolls at different heights like pipes in some candy-colored organ. Beneath his baseball cap, his eyes glance off mine, and it's Daddy for an instant. Or gliding off a shopwindow, I see Mother's winged cheekbones and marble complexion that halt me in my tracks. But it's only my face impersonating hers, and if ever I miss her broad, sharecropper's hands, I have only to look at my own, growing from the ends of my own arms, which are replicas of hers. Good days, I see myself in others, and I know-in my bone marrow-nothing we truly love is ever lost, no matter what form it a.s.sumes. There are days when through fear and egoism I shake my fist at the sky, afterward feeling silly and worn out as a toddler posttemper tantrum.

Every now and then we enter the presence of the numinous and deduce for an instant how we're formed, in what detail the force that infuses every petal might specifically run through us, wis.h.i.+ng only to lure us into our full potential. Usually, the closest we get is when we love, or when some beloved beams back, which can galvanize you like steel and make resilient what had heretofore only been soft flesh. (Dev, you gave me that.) It can start you singing as the lion pads over to you, its jaws hinging open, its hot breath on you. Even unto death.

Mary Karr 2009 Pax Christi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

From conception to forward, Courtney Hodell practiced her extraordinary midwifery, birthing this book from my obstreperous psyche. Without her and Jennifer Barth of HarperCollins and my agent, Amanda Urban, I'd no doubt still be writhing on the delivery table.

My sister, Lecia Scaglione, and her husband, Tom, helped me through innumerable hard stretches; so did Rodney Crowell, Don DeLillo, Dan Halpern, Robert Ha.s.s, Brooks Haxton, Terrance Hayes, Brenda Hillman, Ed Hirsch, Patti Macmillan, Mark and Lili Reinisch, George Saunders, Case Scaglione, J. W. Schenck, Mark Scher, Kent Scott, and Donna Zeiser. My consigliore and champion, rabbi and homeboy, was and is Michael Meyer.

Readers vetting pages to keep me honest include my ever-patient family plus Joan Alway, Mark Costello, Doonie, Deborah Greenwald, John Holohan, Deb Larson, Thomas Lux, Patti Macmillan, and Tobias Wolff. Special thanks to Elizabeth Auchincloss and Patricia Allen. Spiritual guidance came from most of the above as well as Uwen Akpan, S.J.; Father Joseph Kane; Sister Marisse May; and Matthew Roche, S.J.

Writers granting the right to excerpt their lit'rary works gratis include Don DeLillo, Nick Flynn, Louise Gluck, Robert Ha.s.s, Brooks Haxton, Terrance Hayes, Sebastian Matthews, Heather McHugh, George Saunders, Charles Simic, Chris Smither, Franz Wright, and Dean Young. Other permissions were valiantly rustled up by Chris Robinson and Jason Sack.

About the Author.

MARY KARR's first memoir, The Liars' Club The Liars' Club, kick-started a memoir revolution and won nonfiction prizes from PEN and the Texas Inst.i.tute of Letters. Also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, it rode high on the New York Times New York Times bestseller list for over a year, becoming an annual "best book" there and for bestseller list for over a year, becoming an annual "best book" there and for The New Yorker, People The New Yorker, People, and Time Time. Recently Entertainment Weekly Entertainment Weekly rated it number four in the top one hundred books of the past twenty-five years. Her second memoir, rated it number four in the top one hundred books of the past twenty-five years. Her second memoir, Cherry Cherry, which was excerpted in The New Yorker The New Yorker, also hit bestseller and "notable book" lists at the New York Times New York Times and dozens of other papers nationwide. A Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, Karr has won Pushcart Prizes for both verse and essays. Other grants include the Whiting Award and Radcliffe's Bunting Fellows.h.i.+p. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University. and dozens of other papers nationwide. A Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, Karr has won Pushcart Prizes for both verse and essays. Other grants include the Whiting Award and Radcliffe's Bunting Fellows.h.i.+p. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.

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