Traveling with Pomegranates (31 page)

“No. Steps,” she replies, stuffing the scarf into her bag.

It’s hard to tell whether the red flush she gets is from a hot flash or a cardio workout. Yesterday, when she began fanning herself at breakfast, I asked, “Is this what I have to look forward to?”

“Yes, it is,” she answered, without the sugar coat.

The steps have made me considerably warmer, too, and on this autumn day, I peel off my overcoat and sling it over my arm, anticipating what awaits us inside. Another Black Virgin.

France is Black Madonna country. There are hundreds of them. Just yesterday, we visited the most famous one, the Black Virgin of Rocamadour, nearly seven hours from here.

My visit to her had turned into something memorable. Before going into the chapel to see her, I sat on a bench outside the door and thought about the question Mom had posed to the whole group:
What do you want to be free of ?

Mom had even handed out pieces of chain that were supposed to symbolize the answer. I placed my piece in my lap and flipped through my journal until I found where I’d recorded the dream I’d had a couple of nights earlier. Beneath it was a stream of thoughts.

I believe my dream is about my potential to do what I’m meant to do. I’m taking a series of home pregnancy tests, as if trying to figure out whether my speculations about becoming a writer might actually be true. Naturally, it takes not one, not two, but three positive test sticks to convince me, but despite that, the idea that I possess the possibility of being a writer resonates with me. And the fire. Creative fire? Baptism by fire? A hint of Joan in the fire? My “necessary fire”? Whatever it is, I conceived something in it. I’m hesitant to say it’s writing even though my soul seems to be suggesting it, even though I said as much to my mother. If I go that route and fail, then what? I need to believe I can do this, but I’m only halfway there
.

Closing my journal, I looked down at my piece of chain and knew it represented anything that would keep me from realizing the potential revealed in the dream.

Inside Our Lady of Rocamadour’s chapel, I began a silent conversation with the Black Virgin. She was the first black Mary I’d ever seen. She looked ancient, and seemed to say: Don’t bother with easing into your scalding bath—just tell me. So I jumped right in and told her that since my dream, I’d felt excitement welling up, but I’d tried to temper it. I told her that I was reluctant, afraid, already worried about the disasters that would strike if I failed. Slipping to the back of the chapel, I placed my piece of chain on a rusted eye hook on the wall. By leaving it there, I was trying to move on from the self-doubt, the fear of rejection—and yes, sometimes even self-hate. I thought: why can’t this be the place I start to love myself?

Now, stepping into the cathedral at Le Puy, I’m anxious to see if the Black Virgin here is similar to the one we saw yesterday. Inside, a woman is singing, accompanied by a violin, practicing, perhaps, for a concert. Her voice echoes through the nave as Mom and I walk toward the high altar where the Madonna reigns.

The stone walls, arches, and cupolas overhead are the colors of flour and cocoa, an alternating brown and white pattern similar to the design in Spanish mosques, a welcome sight to the countless Spanish pilgrims that passed through on their way to St. James of Compostela, or so the guidebook says.

I read the Who’s Who list of visitors aloud to Mom. “King Louis IX, better known as St. Louis, Charlemagne, King Louis XI.” I stop when I come to this name:
Isabelle Romée
.

Six hundred years ago, she came here at the request of her daughter, Joan of Arc, who was on the brink of her mission. Joan had asked her mother to say prayers for her to the Black Virgin of Le Puy.

I lower the book, mindful of the coincidence: my prayer to Joan, the dream with the fire, then coming here with my mother only to find out Joan’s mother had been here, too.

“You won’t believe this,” I tell Mom. “Joan of Arc’s mother came here and prayed for her.”

As we move down the main aisle, I notice the violinist has placed his instrument in its case, and the singer has gathered her sheet music. It is quiet as Mom and I slide into a pew.

In front of us, three steps lead to a kneeler. The Madonna sits behind it on a raised white marble altar lit with six brass candle-sticks. She is coal-faced, wearing a gold crown inlaid with jewels and topped with a cross. Cloaked in a richly embroidered white robe, her face is the only part of her that shows. Jesus peeks out from his mother’s robe like a joey in a kangaroo pouch.

Known as the spiritual heart of Le Puy, she seems softer, more maternal, and younger than the wizened old Black Virgin of Rocamadour. As I stare at her alluring black face, I remember the scene in Mom’s novel in which the women go up to the statue of Mary and touch her heart, and I wish we could do the same thing here. I tell Mom it’s my favorite part of the novel so far, and she smiles and admits it’s one of her favorites, too. “I wanted Mary to empower Lily and the women and be like a loving mother to them,” she says.

I look at the Madonna. My feeling for her doesn’t surprise me as much as it might have, at least not after yesterday when I poured out my soul to the Black Virgin of Rocamadour. Something about her
did
empower me, maybe the boldness that shone through her, or the faith I found inside myself by hanging my piece of chain on her wall. I actually felt like some loving presence in the universe was bent over my life, tending it.

Sitting here before
this
Mary, the “spiritual heart” of the cathedral, I have that same feeling—the sense of being loved, the desire to love myself.

It does not escape my notice that Mary is becoming important to me. I tell myself that if Athena represents independence and self-belonging, and Joan of Arc a passionate sense of mission, then Mary represents the spiritual heart—my ability to love and be loved. Athena, Joan, Mary. It’s an unlikely combination, but I realize they’ve become my female triptych.

There are other people sitting nearby staring at the Black Virgin, too. I imagine them composing their prayers, all the urgent questions that must weigh on them.

I turn to Mom and whisper, “Is it crazy? Me being a writer?”

She scoots closer to me and says, “No, it’s not crazy; I think it’s great. It’s kinda always been there, hasn’t it? When you were a child, it’s what you wanted to be.”

I remember the headlines I broke in the family newspaper I wrote:
Brother Rips Wiring from Dollhouse. Pound Cake Falls. Spaniel Eats Baby Robin
.

“Yeah, but is it too late?” I ask. “I never studied writing in college. I dropped my grammar class.”

“I didn’t study it in college either, remember?”

I ponder this for a second. “A few articles and one dream doesn’t make me a writer. Maybe I should take a class.”

“A class is good. You can start to learn the craft. I think you have the instinct—you’ve given me good feedback on my novel.” She pauses. “Now, I can be
your
reader.”

“Okay, but be prepared—the stuff I write now is pretty bad.”

“I think that about my stuff, too, sometimes. I’ve been writing twenty years, and I never expect to get it right the first time. If you sit down at the piano, you can’t expect to play like Beethoven right off the bat.”

This makes sense, but I wonder about the Beethoven analogy. I think maybe Beethoven
did
sit down and play a masterpiece the first time. I don’t know if Mom senses how overwhelmed I am at the thought of beginning.

For a few moments, Mom and I are silent, gazing at the Black Virgin, at the people kneeling before her with their collections of questions and prayers.

“Are people going to think I’m becoming a writer because you’re a writer?” I say.

“Why would people think that?”

“I don’t know. Because that’s what can happen when kids don’t know what else to do. They join the family business.”

Mom says, “It’s not like you’re defaulting to writing. Look at the dream you had—that was all you.”

I know. It
was
all me. It came from the inside. Yet I remember the rule I set for myself—that I do something different from my mother. When I put the Athena ring on my finger in Greece, I promised to forge my own way and be autonomous. I started to believe I couldn’t really do that if I was following in the path of either of my parents. My love of Greek history, of all things Greek, felt like mine alone. That so-called rule helped me separate more fully from my mother and father, I realize, but maybe it also kept me from seeing what was right in front of me.

We gather our coats and walk to the kneeling bench where we settle onto our knees side by side. It’s not anything we planned or talked about, but here we are, and I’m positive this is a first. We’ve never knelt and prayed together before. I fold my hands, a motion so involuntary that in a flash I glimpse the child in me who learned how to pray. My eyes fall on the hem of the Black Virgin’s robe. Her feet are hidden beneath it, but I imagine they are dainty and black, shod in ballet slippers.

I glance over at my mother. Her eyes are closed, her fingers interlocked. I wonder what her prayers are about. Her novel? Her blood pressure? Peace on earth? The two of us praying like this to the Black Madonna suddenly washes over me, and I’m filled with love for my mother. The best gift she has given me is the constancy of her belief. Whatever I become, she loves me. To her, I am enough.

I look up at Mary and concede what I am coming to know. I will become a writer.

Wandering through the cathedral, gazing at the elaborately carved capitals, I consider asking Mom what she prayed for, but I’m distracted when I spot a sculpture in the nave. Joan of Arc. An inscription says the statue commemorates her mother’s visit to the cathedral to say prayers for Joan at the feet of the Black Virgin. There’s no place for offerings or I would light a candle.

In the gift shop, Mom and I buy books about the Black Virgin of Le Puy in English and in French, which, of course, we’ll never be able to translate. We buy small pewter medals bearing her image, the same one the pilgrims once stitched onto their hats and clothes. I decide in the moment that I’ll wear mine on my wedding day along with the one I bought at Rocamadour.