Bruce Wagner - I'll Let You Go

When she tired of Geri’s bedside and the babies were napping or settled and there was no more gathering to be done, Amaryllis sorted through her treasured “classifieds”—the cigar box of pages torn from yellowing newsprint and magazines. There was a sheaf about the child-goddesses of Nepal that told of a Special Council of Selectors, who went from village to village looking for little girls. If the parents agreed, the child was plucked from the family house and put in a palace. Her face was painted and her body adorned with golden robes and she was then called the Royal Kumari. The Royal Kumari was allowed out only during holy festivals. The Royal Kumari couldn’t play with other children, because if she cut herself, her godly powers seeped away with the blood. Amaryllis thought she would like to be chosen, but when she read that the Special Selectors wanted a child with unblemished skin, she cried. They would probably want the girl to be virginal, too.

She reread another brittle bundle — this one about Audrey, the Massachusetts girl who’d been asleep with open eyes for the past eleven years. She had fallen into a backyard swimming pool when she was three and had been in a magical coma ever since. Audrey never spoke, but seemed aware of her surroundings; when the family said mass in the house, they noticed that blood sometimes appeared on communion wafers and light-colored oil dripped down statuary. Soon, people made pilgrimages to gaze at her through a big window. Audrey had become a “victim soul,” who took on the suffering of those who came to ask for intercession with God to hear their pleas. Though she would be performing a valuable service without having to do much — without having to do anything, really — Amaryllis didn’t relish the idea of being half asleep, stared at by strangers all day. She looked up at her mother, imagining for a moment that Geri was Audrey and they were separated by candles and a pane of glass.

She kept her very favorite at the bottom of the pile: the dossier on Sister Benedicta, formerly known as Edith Stein, a “Jewish” who converted to Catholicism and was killed at a place called Auschwitz. The article said that Edith Stein was on a “fast track” to sainthood. When she first read about her, Amaryllis didn’t understand. For one thing, she didn’t even know saints came from people; she thought they came from angels or myths. When she read about this mere girl, this Jewish who the pope wanted to canonize — which, to Amaryllis, meant shot into sainthood — whole worlds opened up. The orphan was smart enough to know there wasn’t such a thing as a Jew saint (her mom had told her), so when she learned Edith was “eligible,” it was confusing. But then she grew hopeful; she wanted in. If a Jewish who died not so long ago — a girl —could officially become a saint, why not Amaryllis Kornfeld, a half-Jewish herself? Was not the name of their very motel — corner of 4th and Los Angeles — the St. George? Was this not a sign and a wonder? (St. Amaryllis Motel would have been more of a sign, but it was still something.) A quotation read in a Reader’s Digest left in the lobby clinched it: If they, why not I? If these men and women could become saints, why cannot I with the help of him who is all-powerful? A man named Saint Augustine had said it, obviously before he’d been shot through the canon. Amaryllis’s father was a Jewish and her mother, part African, but maybe none of it even mattered.

One of the Times religion articles was long and detailed, and she set about learning the rules and regulations by heart. Inside the Vatican lived a Congregation for the Causes of Saints, somewhat like the Special Selectors for the Royal Kumari. In the Congregation for the Causes of Saints there was a “postulator,” who did the nominating. The postulator was the one who needed to come up with evidence of the holiness of whoever was elected. He needed to find examples of what they called heroic virtue and did that by interviewing people who knew the nominee. Once the person was found to have heroic virtue, they received a declaration from the pope allowing them to be called Venerable. They could then be venerated in their local community. Amaryllis thought the Congregation could interview Topsy, who would attest to her overall humility and general hardships, and made a mental note that if she received a declaration, she would be in a stronger position to nominate the charitable Englishman himself. But first things first: if all went well, she might eventually be allowed to carry the title of Venerable Amaryllis Kornfeld of Los Angeles. The Congregation usually waited until the person to be sainted actually died, but this pope had waived all that and in the case of Mother Teresa already had an archbishop working on beatification— this pope seemed to be in such a hurry that the rules were constantly changing or being broken. Anyhow, Amaryllis didn’t think it was important if, when crowned, she was dead or alive, but thought it would probably be more fun to be alive, at least for a little while.

Some people said Pope John Paul II was hurrying to make new saints because he didn’t think he had long to live and wanted to spread the Gospel of Christ far and wide. Because he moved with such dispatch, the clippings spoke of his sacred mandate as if it were an evangelical car race — the process had been “streamlined” and “overhauled,” becoming altogether “speedy.” Things certainly were moving along at a fast clip. For example, in olden days there used to be a Promoter of the Faith, whose entire job was to argue against new nominees to ensure that no one unworthy became a saint. The Promoters were called Devil’s Advocates, but John Paul, in all his streamlining, had sent them packing. Another example of speediness was the beatification. After a person was declared Venerable, the next step to being crowned was beatification, which used to require two miracles, but now you only needed one unless you were a martyr, in which case you didn’t need a miracle at all (they never explained what a martyr was, but Amaryllis reasoned it must be something good). It had to be what they called a “healing” miracle, something science couldn’t explain.

After beatification, all that was left was to be canonized, which also used to require two miracles, but because of John Paul, the Congregation for the Causes said they’d be happy with just one: now it was one miracle for each step, plus no Devil’s Advocate! Amaryllis hadn’t yet come across any child saints, but this pope was a maverick and anything seemed possible. He had already beatified something like a thousand people, “eclipsing the 20th-century record of Pius XII, who only beatified twenty-three.” Nominees were pouring in every day. One of the articles even said the next pope might be from Mexico or Vietnam.

She stared at the picture of the Blessed Edith Stein, dark and sad, her long handsome face framed by a halftone wimple. She’d been beatified a few years before Amaryllis was born, on the basis of the 1987 case of the daughter of a pastor, who overdosed on Tylenol samples she’d thought were candy. When the girl fell into her magical coma, the family prayed for Blessed Edith to intercede with God on their behalf; when she awakened, her Jew doctor was surprised. He was summoned to the Vatican to be interrogated by the Congregation for the Causes. The doctor said he didn’t believe in miracles per se — reading aloud, Amaryllis pronounced it “percy”—and that in his heart he had never expected her to recover. (Amaryllis thought that wishing patients the worst was maybe the way of Jew doctors.) There was a photo of the saved girl, with big features like Amaryllis’s but lily-white.

Before going out, the novitiate knelt by her mother, a demon who had sold her for drugs and held her down to be raped and burned by a tubercular woman. Amaryllis shut her nose to the putrescence and closed her eyes, willing Geri to come alive; she would perform a healing miracle that the Congregation would need acknowledge “percy.” She would make her mother live. And if she didn’t rise, there were other “proofs” science could not explain — wasn’t Amaryllis’s survival a miracle in itself? The Congregation for the Causes of Saints would come and see that the babies were well cared for; under her hand they had bloomed, with defiant unruly innocence, like succulents in hell. There were manifest miracles from which the Congregation could choose.