Adrienne Celt: The Daughters

I feel the tremors of sound before I hear them, and then I hear smears, snatches without meaning. As the sounds warm up and gain flesh, almost distinction, I’m aware of something physical: my hands are shaking.

Slowly, more leaks in. My hands in other pairs of hands, being held against a face that feels like ice. No. The face is warm. It’s my own skin that’s cold and pale as frost.

“Baba?” So I have a voice, too. I open my eyes and see my husband, looking concerned. “John.” Only the people who are supposed to be here are here, after all.

“Lu, what happened?” John asks. “My god, you really did blow a gasket. I thought that was a joke.”

“So did I.” My hands find my abdomen, pressing gently against the schism of string and scar tissue that’s been holding me together. “Sort of. Am I bleeding?”

“No, of course you’re not bleeding,” he says. Though even at that moment he’s looking, touching me gingerly, finding the same thing. Nothing. But he keeps checking, placing his hand against my forehead and lifting my chin with three fingers. Moving my face from side to side, inspecting me with urgent eyes. Everyone else is standing, peering, but keeping their distance as John waves them back. “Do you feel like you’re hurt?”

In fact, for the first time in several weeks I feel calm, and whole. My body is radiating a peculiar heat, so it feels liquid and elastic. Beyond the possibility of harm. I don’t know if I can stand, but I don’t care. I lie propped in John’s arms, letting myself ebb and flow. What just happened? I can only half remember. There was a party. Or not quite a party. I sang a song.

“I’m fine,” I say. “I just— It was too hot. I need something to drink.”

John signals and someone runs to get something for me, bringing back a thick, riveted glass of cold water. I sip and it’s the best water I’ve ever tasted.

“John, listen,” I say.

“What is it?” His brown eyes find mine, and I think, I chose you. I would choose you again. John has told me many little lies, ones I know and ones I haven’t yet discovered. But in his arms now, I feel there is a larger truth still. Montmartre standing. Sacré-Coeur. The lies seemed so significant to me that they’ve shrouded the fact that I haven’t been better. Waiting for him to discover me. Waiting for him to call me out.

“Listen,” I say again. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

Kara — the real girl, the one who lives and breathes and probably has her own thoughts, though I cannot yet fathom the shape of them — she deserves a real baptism. It’s a thing about the soul: even if you doubt it’s real, even if you don’t believe in heaven, you want your child to go there. To be invited, with or without you.

John shakes his head. “Why would you tell me that?” he asks. I take his hand.

“What do you want me to say?”

No one else is standing close enough to hear what we’re talking about, but I can imagine what we look like, two dark faces shedding tears, and then nodding.

“You think this is the right place for this conversation?”

“I don’t know.” I lick my lips. I was afraid for so long, and now here we are. Talking. It’s not so hard. I look at John, who doesn’t seem to agree. “I don’t want something to happen to me without you knowing the truth.”

At this, he softens. Just a bit.

“Still though. Why?”

“Because,” I say. “You’re the right father. The one who loves her.” I’m not quite brave enough to say us. “I wanted to make sure I told you that.”

John keeps waving people away as we talk — they must think I’m very badly broken to stay so long on the ground, crying. And there may be some truth to that. But as much as I want us to be alone — two souls on an iceberg, together, at sea — I want to move forward with the ceremony more. For the moment at least, John agrees. To fix things. Keep them going.

Eventually it’s established that I can stand.

“Who is the godmother supposed to be?” I ask. Realizing that I do not know. It was meant to be Ada, but if John has picked someone new in the meantime, I wasn’t aware of it. Life goes on, despite our best intentions.

“Michelle said she’d do it,” John tells me. “Pinch hitter.”

“Can Sara?” My emotions are like bats, flying around my head at odd angles. I can’t understand where they come from, where I’m getting my ideas.

“Your mother?” His hands in his pockets, John looks up at the ceiling. “That’s what you want?”

I try to take it as a good sign that he isn’t looking to fight me. So I nod and he goes over to talk to the priest, while I lean against the altar, smiling with what will I can at the little audience. John comes back with Kara in his arms, and the father with him. We look at one another as if to gauge tempo, all waiting for a signal from someone else.

“Haven’t you done this before?” I ask the priest. He is gentler with me than I deserve.

“I wanted to make sure you were well, my dear.”

John hands Kara over, her white gown fluttering around her and her face creased with confusion. The priest crosses his fingers over her head, raises a golden cup, and trickles it slowly over her forehead.

“ Ego te baptizo in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti ,” the priest chants, his voice high. “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.”

He then calls for godparents, spiritual sponsors, to guide Kara’s admission into the church. Sara, having been primed, comes up to stand with us, and one of the altar boys hands her a lighted candle. She tries to smile but gives up. Her face is serious. She raises one eyebrow at me, silent.

“And the second sponsor?”

From the audience Rick stands up and brushes off his tuxedo pants. The action is reflexive, as they’re perfectly crisp and clean. His hands are white and manicured, as always, as if washed in boiling water and scrubbed with steel wool. I watch the flame of Rick’s candle travel up with him to the podium. The side of the candle is emblazoned with silver paint, and a single drop of wax drips down its length only to be caught in the paper base.

“And now the child’s mother and father will join me as we present her Christian name and invite her to join the society of God.”

John stands by my side. His hand brushes mine but moves away, so we’re close enough to feel heat radiating off each other, but not touching. The priest whispers in Kara’s ear and her face breaks open, bright red with sobs. Addressing Sara and Rick, the priest gestures over Kara’s form.

“Do you believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting?”

Ada always told me that Greta slept beneath the earth and would come forth if she was needed. Perhaps resurrection is another talent we all hold in common. I wonder what I might be asked to give up for that.

Rick and my mother assent to the priest, and hold out their candles as he crosses Kara three times.

“Receive this burning light,” he says. “And keep thy baptism so as to be without blame: keep the commandments of God, that when the Lord shall come to the nuptials, thou mayest meet Him together with all the saints in the heavenly court, and mayest have eternal life forever and ever.”

Later, in our apartment, John and I sit at the kitchen table drinking tea. Kara is asleep on the floor beside us, in her car seat. She cried all the way home — the water was too cold, or there were too many people. Or the music was too loud. Who can say?

“So we made your mother the godmother, huh?” John says. He has retreated back into himself, no more hand on my forehead.