Ave Maria
by Grace Donovan
In the corner of the church, beneath the shadow of the hanging cross and sound speakers, is the statue of a weeping woman. She crouches, her head in her hands, a blue shawl around her shoulders, her brow scrunched in misery. During the first reading, the Lord’s Prayer, and the homily, Maeve watches the statue. Its sagging figure, its mounds and mounds of clothing — marble carved delicately so that it appeared like piled fabric, moldable and fine. The woman’s hair is covered by the blue shawl, wrapped around her like a blanket or a scarf, and folded delicately around her temples so that the sadness on her face, the pout in her lip, can be seen from all angles.
The church is decorated for Christmas. There is a real, tiny pine tree on the altar behind where the priest stands, delivering a sermon. Maeve can smell its sweetness from here. They’ve dressed it in old, twinkling lights, most blown out, so that half of the tree stands cold and dark. Plastic, gold baubles brighten it up—sprigs of berries, and lace snowflakes.
There is something lonesome about this time of year—even with the twinkling Christmas lights, the candles in the windows.
When they rise for communion, the congregation dividing up into lines, Maeve is sure to pick the one that wraps around the statue. She studies it as she goes past; its curved shoulders, the back of its doleful head. The wood of the church floor creaks below her feet, the organ drones long and low. Ellie Gilmore, a sixth grader, a grade above Maeve, is oo-ing in the choir, her hands clasped at her front; all the ends of the earth, have seen the power of God. Her lips, wet, parted in an “o,” are delicate and pretty. When Maeve gets to the front and the priest places the Eucharist, a flat wafer, in the palm of her hand, she feels the dry skin of his fingers rasping against it. He wears a white robe that cascades over the swollen lump of his belly. The wafer is chalky in her mouth.
In the cold parking lot, after church, Maeve studies the dampness of the pavement beneath her feet. It is bitterly cold for so early in December. It's like that in Ohio—will sometimes snap to winter before the last leaves have even fallen, before her mother has picked out a turkey for Thanksgiving or thrown out the pumpkins. The snow comes, thick and heavy, and gives Maeve days off in a row from school. Her father says it's the lake, that it sends these big, gusty snowstorms their way. She is glad for them, and enjoys the time away from the sticky desks, the yellow overhead lights, the girls like Ellie Gilmore who refuse to give Maeve the time of day. There is something lonesome about this time of year—even with the twinkling Christmas lights, the candles in the windows.
In the car, with her breath fogging up the windshield, Maeve’s mother switches on the heat full blast and tunes the radio to 102.1. They listen to the Christmas station all through the month of December. Sometimes in November too, and on those sad days between Christmas and New Year’s. Maeve likes it, is used to it, enjoys rolling up to the parent drop off curb at school listening to “Frosty the Snowman.” This morning, John Lennon and a pitchy children’s choir sing about Christmas and war.
“What’s a virgin?” Maeve asks her mother.
Her father, a blue beanie pulled so far down his head that it covers his eyebrows, pulls into a line of cars waiting to exit the parking lot, the wheels of their car stuttering on the ice.
“Where did you hear that?” says her mother, her face sour, like Maeve had just repeated a foul word. She is flipping through a stack of Christmas cards they’re dropping off at the post office before heading home. A picture of all three of them bundled up in wool sweaters, Season’s Greetings. Maeve’s mom likes to get them out early.
“Church,” Maeve says.
Her mother laughs, addressing an envelope.
“Oh!” she says, licking a stamp, “Don’t worry about it.”
They are between snows. Only a crust of frost covers the ground now, the grass flat and frozen underneath it.
“My PSR class is putting on the Christmas Eve nativity play this year,” Maeve says.
“That’s nice,” says her mother.
“Maybe I’ll be Mary,” Maeve says.
Her mother presses the flat of the stamp to the envelope, pressing down the edges, delicately, with her pinky.
“That’s nice,” she says.
***
On the weekdays, after school at 4:30, PSR, Maeve's church’s version of Sunday school, was held in the church basement. They set up foldable room dividers that smelled of must, through which you could hear the rumble of each of the classes packed into the temporary, removable classrooms, hardly muffled. PSR was like Girl Scouts or a visit to the Dentist, an afterschool activity you had to do, because your parents made you, but desperately hated.
Maeve was in Ms. Regina’s class with the fifth, sixth, and seventh graders. All the other teachers were moms from the community, volunteers who usually had their own child in class with them. Ms. Regina was nobody’s mom. She was young and skittish and seemed to have volunteered to teach just because she liked church—Maeve couldn’t imagine liking church. Ms. Regina wore a chunky enamel cross around her neck and had trouble keeping the students from acting out. Once, Milo Turner had thrown an Expo marker at Ms. Regina’s temple when she’d asked him to quiet down. She’d turned away, but Maeve thought she’d seen a tear or two.
At PSR, they learned about the things Father Ed talked about in the homily. They learned about the Ten Commandments, about Peter, John, Andrew, James, Judas and all the rest. They learned about John the Baptist and the meaning of the word “decapitation.” They did arts and crafts with glue and construction paper donated by their mothers.
At PSR, they learned about Mary. Mary, maybe, was one of the first things they learned about. Because how could you learn about Jesus without first learning about Mary?
***
A week or so before Maeve had really noticed the statue of the Virgin Mary, studied its blue shawl and imaginary tears, Ms. Regina had told them it was their turn to put on the nativity play. Last year it’d been Mrs. Brown’s class, a disaster, the first graders too young to memorize their lines. But the congregation had cooed at their little faces, the costumes from church storage dragging at their feet. Ms. Regina was determined that Maeve’s class be just as memorable.
“There’s too many of us for everyone to have lines,” Ms. Regina told them.
Most of the class would be playing barnyard animals, of course.
“But we’ll have tryouts in early December for all the speaking roles: the Three Kings, the Little Drummer Boy, Joseph, and, of course,” she said, “the Virgin Mary.”
Mary never seemed to be happy. The voice Maeve used when she played with her, as her, was warbling and soft, always on the verge of tears.
And maybe, on that wintry Sunday morning, two weeks later, that was what drew Maeve’s attention to the weeping statue, to its sunken, pale face. The Virgin Mary. What was a virgin, anyways?
Perhaps Maeve and her family had never sat so far on the left side of the church before. Perhaps she’d always been too bored, half asleep, to do anything but glaze her eyes over the statue of the slumped woman, her face in misery. But that morning, at church, the statue had felt new to her. Almost as if she’d never seen it before.
When she was younger, she used to play with the wooden manger, a Christmas decoration they had at home; dragging the plastic baby Jesus around the carpet like a doll, bouncing the Little Drummer Boy so hard on the couch cushions that his drumsticks broke off. The little, plastic Virgin Mary wore a blue shawl just like the statue. She was sad, too; weeping over her newborn baby. From the joy of it? From the awe? Mary never seemed to be happy. The voice Maeve used when she played with her, as her, was warbling and soft, always on the verge of tears.
Please, sir, will you let us in?
Please, sir, my baby is coming.
Please, sir, he is the son of God.
***
Ms. Regina holds auditions on the first Tuesday in December. Maeve reads the lines in her best Mary voice. She’d been practicing since Ms. Regina had announced they’d be doing the play, bent over the manger scene in her dining room, the statuette of the Virgin Mary in her hand. The figurine had a small, pointy nose, her body a shapeless lump underneath her blue shawl. There was something about Mary, her simpleness, her plainness, that intrigued Maeve.
Thank you.
His name is Jesus.
Mary has surprisingly few lines, far less than she did when Maeve practiced with the manger at home. But Maeve thinks about what she would look like wrapped up in Mary’s blue shawl, silky and fine, and the image is tantalizing enough to keep her yearning for the role. She imagines wrapping herself in it, stuffing a flimsy pillow underneath her dress to mimic a bump, shuffling across the altar with Joseph at her elbow. How the church lights would shine on her, until her eyes glistened. How docile, how sweet she would look curled up by Jesus’s makeshift crib, stroking the plastic baby-doll’s cheek as if it were a real child of her own. The Son of God.
Ellie Gilmore gets the part. Maeve is cast as Innkeeper One.
Maeve thinks about what she would look like wrapped up in Mary’s blue shawl, silky and fine, and the image is tantalizing enough to keep her yearning for the role.
Ellie Gilmore is perhaps the prettiest girl that Maeve knows, and, in hindsight, it only makes sense that she would get the role. A sixth grader, she sometimes sings with the choir on Sundays. When she does, Maeve likes to watch her, the sweet curve of her throat, the warble of her lips, fluttering delicately in song. She never wears jeans to church, always skirts or dresses, and she wears her hair in a tight ponytail atop her head. Her hair is long and straight, chestnut brown, just like Mary’s. When she gets the part, she smiles, small, in a way that seems, to Maeve, incredibly smug.
“Cool audition,” Ellie says to Maeve, after the cast list has been revealed.
They are standing in the annex by a line of plastic Christmas trees; underneath are clumsily-wrapped used coats and hats for the food bank in Akron. The sky is almost completely dark, they are the last two waiting for their parents to pull into the pickup line.
“The line delivery was...touching,” Ellie says.
“Right.”
It is so rare for Ellie to address her, to actually talk to her, that Maeve must stop herself from giving in to the excitement. She tries, desperately, to hold herself apart, holding on to that bitter disappointment that settled in her gut after Ms. Regina read off Ellie’s name for the role of Mary. At school, Ellie walks through the halls with a crowd of girls surrounding her, hot pink clips in her hair.
“Have you done any acting before? I’m helping out with the spring musical this year. The high school spring musical, that is. I’m young Eponine,” Ellie says, pulling a knit headband over her ears as she prepares to walk out into the cold. Her mother has just pulled up in a gold Chevy Suburban, idling at the curb.
Maeve thinks of telling her about the manger at home. About the plastic Baby Jesus, the sorrowful voice she used for Mary and had used for her audition. About the drummer boy, with his broken drumsticks. Ellie places a palm to the cold glass of the church door as she prepares to open it; an outline of humidity surrounds it.
“Not really,” Maeve says.
***
On the radio: the sweet, mournful sound of Charlie Brown and his friends singing in a choir. Christmas time is here—the barren skies and stretches of Ohio land, the long drive to grandma’s house on Christmas morning—the dark commute home from PSR in the passenger seat of the minivan. The Christmas lights in town are lit up all the colors of the rainbow.
Maeve pictures Ellie Gilmore under the stage lights that she is already so accustomed to, a blue shawl wrapped around her thin shoulders—the perfect Mary. She thinks: how could she allow herself to believe she could ever be as important?
On the radio, the piano is soft and sleepy. Her mother clicks on the turn signal, the rhythmic light casting her face green. It is 6 pm, as dark as midnight, their street shadowed but for the few houses lit up with decorations.
Maeve pictures Ellie Gilmore under the stage lights that she is already so accustomed to, a blue shawl wrapped around her thin shoulders—the perfect Mary.
They pass a house with a nativity scene in front, lit up with a spotlight. It is wooden and bare, a tiny manger surrounded by hunched, two-dimensional people. Joseph holds a staff, his beard thick and brown. The Three Kings hold their gifts, silver and gold. Mary bends over her child, shawl covering most of her face. Through the cold glass of the car window Mary is watery and unfocused, painted in splotches and delicate colors, a watercolor blur. Jesus is nothing but a bundle of fabric in the manger, a tiny pale face, a red nose. Above them is a little crescent moon; the spotlight lends it a shine, almost like a real star.
The car lurches into the driveway, the windows of Maeve’s house glow yellow.
“I didn’t get the part,” Maeve says.
“Hm?” her mother prompts.
“In the nativity play, Mary.”
Her mother hums, turns off the engine, and the car begins to turn cold.
“I’m sorry, honey,” she says.
She pulls Maeve in for a hug, presses a hand on the back of her head and leads it to her shoulder. She breathes in, quietly, and out, the curve of her chest pressing against Maeve’s cheek. Beneath the cushion of her winter coat, her mother’s body is warm, solid.
***
Father Ed gave the same homily every Christmas, and Maeve knew that this year, after the Christmas play, after Ellie Gilmore made her stand as the sweet, red-cheeked Virgin, it would be the same. Maeve’s mom liked to go to the seven o’clock mass on Christmas Eve so that she didn’t have to worry about church on Christmas Morning, could start on the roast whenever she wanted. The church was different at night. Softer, almost eerie. In the narthex, a little side room near the altar where women sometimes soothed their crying babies, was a small, flickering lantern made of red stained glass. When the candle inside was lit, it meant that the Holy Spirit was present. This wouldn’t be so unnerving if the candle was always lit, but it wasn’t. Each time Maeve spotted that warbling light, its ghostly glow, she felt a prickle on her scalp. There was something threatening about the Holy Spirit, it watching her while she listened, bored, to the same homily she heard every year.
The homily was about a farmer and some birds and a big, white barn. The barn was drafty, its doors swinging wildly in the wind, its roof dusted with snow. Father Ed always spent a while describing that barn.
In the snow, the cold, a farmer prepared to go to Christmas Eve Mass with his family. His wife, his children: all packed up in the car. And his wife was telling him to hurry along, because they were already late for the service. Because, if they weren’t quick, there wouldn’t be any seats left for their little ones to sit in. Because, if he didn’t start driving now, they’d be stuck in the far corner of the church standing with their children at their sides—the wife with a squirming baby on her hip. But the farmer had to check the barn before they went, had to check that the doors hadn’t swung open, the falling snow piling high inside.
And, of course, the barn doors were open. The farmer went to fasten them when he noticed a cluster of birds, doves, land bound by the snow, huddled just outside the barn. He wondered what they were doing so far north, thought they must’ve been blown off course, sidetracked on their journey south for the colder months. For a moment, he left the doors open, hopeful that the doves would notice the warm barn and its hay-covered floors. But they didn’t. He attempted to lure them inside, cooing at them, clicking his tongue like he did when the barn cat got out. But they didn’t listen.
The farmer grabbed a bag of chicken feed from inside the barn, left a trail, kernel by kernel, attempting to lead the doves to warmth. They nibbled curiously at the chicken feed by their feet, dusted in snow, but didn’t move any further.
The farmer tried every trick he could think of to get the doves inside the barn, but they were unmoving. Around them, the snow fell thicker and thicker, the barn door wavered in the wind, the cows inside moaned in the cold.
“If only I were one of the birds,” the farmer thought to himself. “They would surely listen to one of their own. They would surely follow me, then, into the barn.”
Father Ed never told them if the farmer and his family made it to Christmas Eve Mass. He left them with the farmer’s words, his thoughts. Let them ring out into the silence of the church for their shuffling bodies in the wooden pews. For the far corners of the church, for the mothers standing with their whining babies.
***
A week before Christmas Eve, in the church basement, surrounded by gray, foldable walls, Ellie Gilmore wears a pained, submissive expression. Milo Turner stands above her in an altar boys' cassock, his hands outstretched: the angel, Gabriel.
Maeve thinks how odd it would be, to be empty one minute and full the next, like a glass of water.
“Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.”
Ms. Regina tells Ellie to look scared, terrified.
“He’s an angel. Like nothing you’ve ever seen before,” she says.
Maeve’s class is standing in the wide, open area between the makeshift classrooms, the carpet crushed and crusted under their feet. Overhead, the lights buzz. Mrs. Brown’s class is discordantly singing Christmas carols in the classroom nearest, I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my heart.
“It is His will that you, a virgin, will bear his child. And you will call him Jesus,” Milo says.
Mary doesn’t have any lines in the Annunciation scene. Ms. Regina, who has cast herself as the narrator, trades lines back and forth with Milo.
Ellie must sit in a crouch, wrapped in her blue shawl, and feign fear. Ms. Regina had told them all how scared Mary must’ve been when Gabriel came to her. How angels were not beautiful and white winged as they thought, but frightening. How Mary, though pliant to God’s will, was fearful of motherhood, its responsibilities. Maeve thinks how odd it would be, to be empty one minute and full the next, like a glass of water. Ellie holds her hands over her head, whimpering.
“Well- not so scared dear. It’s the will of God, after all,” Ms. Regina says.
After rehearsal, they stand in a clump around a folding table and decorate sugar cookies. The icing is watery and thin, red and green. Maeve shakes a bottle of sprinkles, and it dusts the carpet at her feet white. Ms. Regina is gathering their costumes in the vestry. They are taking them home with them so that their mothers can iron them flat before the play.
Milo has frosted a candy cane shaped sugar cookie with thick, red icing. He places it to his groin.
“Look!”
The boys laugh.
“Gross, Milo,” Ellie says. She is placing her sprinkles on her cookie with her pinky finger, one by one, so that they are spaced perfectly—Christmas ornaments on a tiny, confectionary Christmas tree.
Milo, with the candy cane still held to his groin, angles his body to where Ellie stands next to him. A glob of frosting drips from the cookie, splattering on the carpet. He begins to thrust his hips back and forth.
“Hail, favored one!” he says.
The boys howl, bang their fists on the table and send frosting and sprinkles flying.
Ellie’s face is bright pink, “Stop!”
There’s a quick jolt through Maeve’s chest, though she isn’t sure why. She curls her lip, tries to turn back to her cookie, but it’s difficult to look away from Milo, his hips moving faster and faster. The cookie lurches in his hand.
“It is His will.”
“Stop,” Ellie says, trying to scramble away.
But Milo follows, his legs dancing back and forth as he juggles the cookie between his thighs. The girls at the table are squealing, pushing each other aside to keep away from him. Maeve, shoved from the table, watches the scene from behind a mess of shrieking girls and jostling ponytails.
The cookie cracks down the middle, half of the candy cane landing on Ellie’s snow boot with a plop.
She stares down at it in shock, her face bright pink. The boys laugh. The girls, timidly, giggle.
Ellie glances up, looks, blushing, into the crowd of girls, and meets Maeve’s eye. Maeve hovers in the back, blinking at the cracked cookie, the smear of frosting on Ellie’s boot, the wet shine on her trembling lower lip. There’s a dullness in her throat, a great big lump, nearly choking her.
Ms. Regina comes rushing in with bags of crumpled costumes, lured by their shrieks and laughs echoing through the hallways of the church basement. Her enamel cross swings wildly at her neck. She throws the costumes down, sees Ellie’s flushed cheeks, and demands they tell her what has happened.
Lost in the crowd of rowdy children, sprinkles in hand and chest heavy, Maeve is not sure, even if she could find her voice, even if it was strong enough to be heard through the clamor, what she could really say.
***
Christmas Eve, and the church is all lit up. Garland hangs from the rafters; tall, white candles topped with shaky flames line the aisles. The pews are packed, and people are standing, pressed against the back wall. Maeve’s PSR class stands in the wings behind the choir risers. To their left, tiny tea lights flicker: prayers for passed loved ones. The statue of Mary stands over them, her face dark in the low light, the December night black through the windows at her back.
Maeve is dressed in a tunic and scarf. She thinks of her line, “there are no rooms left,” over and over again, until she’s sure she won’t forget it. Timmy Bianconi, Joseph, scratches at his stick-on beard. Across the church, the red lantern with the Holy Spirit inside flickers.
The door to the vestry is thrown open.
“Maeve,” Ms. Regina whispers, waving her over.
Inside, the room is lit only by a couple of fading candles, the overhead lights turned off. Ms. Regina ushers Maeve inside.
“Take off that costume, quick,” she tells her.
“Why?”
Ms. Regina is holding Mary’s blue shawl, Ellie’s shawl. “Hurry,” she says.
Behind her, on an old, lumpy couch, Ellie sits in the dark. She is curled up, her head in her hands, and Maeve can hear her sniffles.
“What happened?” Maeve asks.
Ms. Regina begins to pull the cotton tunic over Maeve’s head, “Never mind,” she says. “Maeve, you’ll be Mary.”
“Me?”
“Yes, now put this on,” she hands her a white cassock, Ellie is still wearing hers.
She tells Maeve to get dressed, fast, and hurries to tell the rest of the class. The door shuts behind her with a click.
“But I don’t know the lines!” Maeve says, looking helplessly at Ellie.
She lifts her head, sniffles. “It doesn’t matter, there’s only two.”
Her face is white, tear streaked. She has bitten her lower lip raw. Standing in her underwear and training bra, Maeve fumbles with Mary’s costume before tossing the tunic over her head.
She had wanted so badly to be Mary, but now her stomach felt as if she’d swallowed lead.
Ellie’s hair, usually held back in that tight ponytail, sits loose around her shoulders. Her face is damp with tears, miserable, and Maeve thinks that she has never looked more like the Virgin Mary.
“When Milo puts his hand on you, the Annunciation, the line is, ‘thank you,’” Ellie watches Maeve struggle into the cassock. “Then, at the end, when they hand you the baby-doll, ‘his name is Jesus.’”
Maeve looks at her, waiting for more.
“That’s all,” she says.
Maeve wraps the blue scarf around her head and shoulders. It’s long, and her hands fumble as she tries to tie it in place.
“Help?” she says.
Ellie shakes her head, “I can’t get up.”
“Can’t get up?”
She shrugs.
“Why, what happened?”
She is silent, dejected, the tears have dried on her cheeks. Maeve fumbles with the scarf, her hands shaking with nerves. She had wanted so badly to be Mary, but now her stomach felt as if she’d swallowed lead. What would her parents think when she stepped out on that stage? Who would play Innkeeper One?
Ellie sighs, stands up, takes the ends of the scarf from Maeve’s hands and ties them together at her middle. Ellie’s hands are soft against Maeve’s, warm, the feeling of them makes her brain buzz.
“What happened?” Maeve asks again.
Ellie turns around, showing Maeve the back of her dress. For a moment, there is nothing. Had she fallen and twisted her ankle, had she broken an arm?
Then she sees a big, red stain on her bottom, seeping into the thin, white fabric of Mary’s dress. It’s bright, vibrant, like food coloring or cranberry juice. There is a towel left on the seat of the couch where Ellie had been sitting.
For a moment, Maeve doesn’t know what she’s looking at. Then, she does.
“Oh,” she says.
Ellie sits back down onto the couch, adjusts the towel beneath her, “it’s my first one.”
The thought of stepping on stage is making Maeve’s knees lock, and she consciously bends them, bouncing a little.
“Oh.”
“Ms. Regina’s finding me a change of clothes,” she says, hesitates, “you’ll do great.”
Maeve smiles, small. “Thanks,” she says.
The droning of the organ, the murmur of the crowd, is muffled through the walls. The thought of stepping on stage is making Maeve’s knees lock, and she consciously bends them, bouncing a little. There is a crumbling sugar cookie placed on a napkin next to where Ellie sits on the couch, a smiling snowman.
“Sorry,” Maeve suddenly thinks to say.
Ellie’s face is pale, her lips downturned. “It’s okay,” she says, picking at the cookie. “Really, I'm relieved.” Her voice cracks, and she gulps wetly. “It was too hard. Mary’s too perfect, anyways.”
Maeve nods.
Ms. Regina hurries back into the room, tells Maeve to pull her hair from its ponytail.
“Good luck,” Ellie says.
Ms. Regina leads Maeve out of the vestry, places Timmy Bianconi’s arm in hers and hands her a pillow to stuff beneath Mary’s dress. She fumbles with it, glancing out at the crowd of parents and churchgoers, the flickering candles.
“Go, go!” Ms. Regina says.
***
On stage, the lights are bright, blinding. Maeve can hardly see the crowd, her parents sitting in their pew, the statue of the Virgin Mary, its face cast in darkness. Timmy leads Maeve to the corner of the stage and leaves her there. The wooden manger scene, lined with hay, looms behind. A spotlight shines on her head, and Maeve cowers beneath it.
“Hail, favored one!” Milo Turner stands above her, his arms outstretched, his tiny, feathered angel wings poking out from behind his back. “The Lord is with you.”
Grace Donovan is a fiction writer from Northeast Ohio. She currently resides in the DMV area where she is getting her MFA in fiction writing at George Mason University. Grace loves ice cream, her cat Patsy, the fiber arts, and the Brontë sisters. She often writes about women, queerness, and childhood.
