Authors: Carmel Bird
I recalled the tribulations of the Venerable Joan of Arc and
I saw how small are my own trials compared with the great
troubles of holy people. For true glory there is no need to
perform outstanding deeds. I must remain hidden and must
perform good deeds in secret humility. My glory would consist
in becoming after my death a great saint.
I must remain hidden as a thought in the mind. Let my eyes be mirrors that reflect the world, pools where the sky and the clouds drift by, where dark mysterious thinking fish cruise beneath the surface, concealed from sight. I must never see the light of day. In the darkness of the waters I will hide underneath the rocks, in the shadows, in the depths of jasper waters. My eyes will not be the windows of my soul; my eyes will be reflec-tors. I have seen souls fly from open windows, fly on small blue wings, dart out suddenly and take off into the heavens. I will have shutters and mirrors and my thoughts will all be hidden deep inside the waters of my head. Keep me hidden, keep me as the apple of an eye; hide me in the shadow of a wing for I
Little Ferret, Little Queen
63
am small and feeble and the world is dark and dangerous. I will wait in the earth, as a poppy waits in a poppy seed. I am the crumpled petals inside the hairy pod and I am the spirit of the poppy in the seed. I am a grain of sand, a drop of water. I will disappear forever, a drop in the ocean, a drop in a bucket.
I sat beneath a tree in the garden of a hospital somewhere — I think it was here — and I heard some children playing. There were three children two girls and a boy and I heard their laughter and the sound of their voices as they called to each other.
Then they rode past me on bicycles, shining silver bicycles, glowing golden children, and I thought I must be seeing things.
Sophie! Sophie! the boy called. And then he cried out Come back Jane! They all went spinning by on whirling wheels, three children moving through the world on bicycles. Where did they come from? Where were they going? They left behind them a fragrance of something fresh and fruity — it reminded me of chewing gum. It loses its fragrance and its flavour when you chew it for too long. Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight? Yes, yes, and yes.
God taught me mental prayer in secret. I would go into the
space between my bed and the wall, and I would shut off this
space with the bed curtain. There I used to think about God and
life and eternity. Such things lose their fragrance when opened
to the air.
On the day of my First Communion I, Therese, disappeared
forever like a drop of water in the vastness of the ocean. I
pledged myself to my heavenly Mother, and she looked down
on her Little Flower and smiled. She placed her Jesus within the
petals of her Little Flower. How sweet was the first kiss of Jesus
to my soul! It was the kiss of love, and I gave myself to Jesus
forever and ever.
THE SPACE BETWEEN THE
BED AND THE WALL
THERESE GILLIS
At home, far away, in my attic bedroom, I have a cupboard in the roof, a roof cupboard, a truth cupboard where I keep my stones. Some of my stones came from the graveyard, some of them came from the beach. A boy gave me one. White stones, white bones, marble souls of marble angels. I sit on the floor and I count my stones, number my bones, and the hairs of my head are numbered. The stones — I stroke them, caress them, suck them, build with them, pray with them, pray to them. I give them secret names. To every soul in Heaven will be given a white stone, the sign of the secret name. With my stones in the cupboard I keep my tiny little books, my
Pippa Passes
, my
Early Poems of Dante Gabriel Rosetti
, my
Sleeping Beauty
and in the very moment when she felt the prick she fell down upon the bed and lay there for a hundred years in a deep, deep sleep.
I have my
Golden Thoughts from the Imitation of Christ
. I love these books, and I curl up in the space between the bed and the wall where I have silky cushions and a feather quilt so old the feathers poke through the surface and fly into the air, and I read the books and stroke the golden edges of their pages. I feel the soft old leather of their covers with the tips of my fingers. Then as I hold the books, I lift up my skirt and slide them inside my butterfly. All alone with the golden thoughts and the quiet poems, I search again for Violetta and the angel and the blue light of heaven. I stretch out on the cushions in that magic out-of-time space and sometimes I read a golden thought and sometimes I hum a quiet song and I think of my sisters smacking me. I roll on my stones. She had three lilies in her hand and the stars in her hair were seven. That good and sweet affection wherewith thou art delighted now and then is a foretaste of the celestial country between the bed and the wall. She felt the prick and fell down upon the bed and lay there in a deep, deep sleep.
The Space Between the Bed and the Wall
65
THERESE MARTIN
When I received my Confirmation, which was not long after
my First Communion, the bishop drew the mystic cross on my
forehead, and I felt a gentle breeze entering my soul.
I had to return to school, and I felt myself to be set apart from
my companions. During playtime I stood by a tree and thought
of serious matters while the other girls skipped and laughed
and whispered and played their frivolous games. When I buried
dead birds some of the girls came to help me, and our cemetery
was very pretty for we planted it with tiny shrubs. But in time I
became so troubled by religious scruples that I could no longer
go to school, and I went instead for private lessons to the home
of Madame Papineau. There I used to overhear visitors remarking on how pretty I was, and what lovely hair I had. How very
easy it would be to go astray. I remember once aching to go to
confession, and not being able to rest until I had confessed my
sinful pleasure at wearing a sky blue ribbon in my hair. At this
time my beloved sister Marie went from me, from our home, into
the convent at Lisieux. First Pauline, I thought, and now Marie.
So I then turned to my four dead brothers and sisters in heaven,
four little angels, and I talked to them about my longing soon to
join them in heaven.
I wore a sky blue ribbon in my hair. Blue is for boys. My sisters loved me, little baby sister, and from the first moment I swam with them. I swam in the sea with my sisters. But my father and mother were sorry to see me. Girl number six then is it? There was wailing and gnashing of teeth and tearing of garments and hair out by the roots. Where is our son, our baby blue-eyed son, our sun, our star? Where is our prince, our king, our namesake?
They murmured to each other in the dead of night. ‘Let us take her,’ they said, ‘to the top of yonder hill, and there we will leave her naked and cold, new and naked and cold as a toad. We will leave her in the icy starlight and the animals will come out at night to look at her and marvel as she weeps. The long-eyed fox will sink into her his wonderfully needled teeth. Rip her open and snap up her heart in one triumphant chomp. Drag her off
66
The White Garden
like a torn-up chicken. A fox with a box of chicken guts and chips tied up with a sky blue ribbon.’
Nobody wanted the me of me. For my sisters I was a plaything, a live doll, a squealing toy. They dressed me in fairy wings and made me stand on the windowsill behind and above the Christmas tree. I was the fairy on the Christmas tree, silver sparkling twinkling dazzling. Blinding. I said: ‘Do you think my hair is too short, too long?’ And they said it was just right for a girl of my age. I was flooded with torrents of light; I blazed with heat. I was a beacon, a roman candle, a bright star in the starry firmament. So they hoisted me up and put me on top of the tree, and they left me there. That was the sad part. Lonely at the top, people used to say. Yes, I found it very lonely indeed at the top.
I was unendurable company for others when Marie entered the
convent. I wept a great deal — my eyes were frequently red and
my lips swollen with distress. It needed God to perform another
miracle to make me grow up and come to my senses.
On Christmas Day the Holy Child Jesus who was only one
hour old, but wise beyond all wisdom, came to me and flooded
my small soul with torrents of light. So, on Christmas Day, 1886,
I emerged from childhood. I look back on my life now and I see
that when I was four and my mother died, I lost the strength of
my soul. But now my strength returned.
I was a roman candle, a catherine wheel and it was fireworks night. They pinned me to a post and lit my fuse and I spun and fizzed and blazed and everybody was delighted. Who would have thought she had it in her, they said, such strength of character, such spark, such zip and zup and get up and go!
We had come home from Midnight Mass, Papa, Celine and I,
and by the fire were my shoes with presents in them, just as they
had always been at this time. I would always go upstairs and
then come down again to open the presents and provide delight
for my father, my King, with my cries of pleasure. However, on
this night, as I was going up the stairs, I overheard my father
saying impatiently, ‘Thank goodness this is the last time we
The Space Between the Bed and the Wall
67
shall have this kind of thing. Next year Therese will be too old
for this.’ I was filled with grief. Celine saw my distress, and
said I should not go down and open my presents at all, since
to do so would cause me too much pain. Ah, but Celine did not
realise that the Therese she was speaking to was not the same
Therese she had seen five minutes before. In those moments
between my father’s words and Celina’s concern, I had grown
up. I suppressed my tears and ran downstairs. I picked up
my shoes from where they sat on the hearth, and I opened my
presents one by one, exclaiming with joy. The clocks made and
tended by my father’s hand ticked in the house like the beating
of happy hearts.
I have heard that the length of the pendulum determines the ratio of the wheels and pinions needed to show true time. True Time. Fine time, nice time, true time of time and tide, and how time flies. Time Bomb. True time is a time bomb. The time of vibration of a pendulum depends on its length. The vibration of love depends, I have heard, on its depth and intricacy. Still waters run deep, and deep in the heart you will find the heart strings, thick and thin smooth shining strings for plucking and playing tunes. True Love is determined by the time of vibration which depends on its length. But if the thread of the heart string gets loose and the bobbin begins to unwind, you can wind the bobbin to the length you want and finish by winding the thread twice round the neck of the bobbin and pulling it tight, tight, tight. Snap. You can snap a heart string, twang, like that.
Twang.
On that Christmas day the third period of my life began, and I
decided to dedicate myself to snatching souls from hell.
For my first soul, I chose the soul of a murderer, a man by the
name of Pranzini who was condemned to die for his crimes. I
prayed that God would forgive this man, and I asked for a sign.
To my great joy my prayer was answered. I read in
La Croix
that
Pranzini had mounted the scaffold, still without confessing to
his guilt, and when he was about to thrust his head beneath the
blade of the guillotine he suddenly turned around. With a fierce
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The White Garden
and urgent gesture he seized the crucifix from the hands of the
priest and he kissed with passion the Sacred Wounds. ‘Pranzini
was my first child’. I would from that time forward snatch many
souls back from the fires of hell.
When Violetta scratched her legs on the blackberry bushes at the bottom of the garden, she lay down on the grass and we watched the bright bubbles of beady blood as they pushed up through the slits in the skin. ‘Kiss them,’ she said, and I kissed her wounds with passionate kisses, licking and sucking her sweet bubbly blood. She moaned and spoke of death and smeared my face with blood and blackberry juice. We ate blackberries until we were sick and I spattered pink gobs of vomit all over the grass as we rolled around in agony. Poisoned. We had been poisoned. Somebody had sprayed the ripe blackberries with a deadly thing. We would die, die together in agony and blood.
We rushed for the hose and drank from its long red snake, splashing water into our mouths, spraying each other until we were drenched and the danger had all passed.
It was a most dangerous time of life. I was a young girl, and,
when he was passing by me, Jesus saw that I was ripe for love.
In his understanding of the peril I was in from the world and
the flesh, he threw his cloak about me, washed me with water
and anointed me with oil. He clothed me in linen and silk and
decked me with jewels and priceless gems.