For the Love of a Mother

For the Love of a Mother

She was a young girl, aged twelve, barely into puberty.  The muslin material felt coarse against her skin as sweat drops carrying dirt and dust ran down her legs.  Her heart pounded as if to almost jump out of her chest; but she kept running.  In the past days she had mentally and emotionally reviewed her miserable life. She thought of ending it, but the fear of even worse misery had stopped her. Her mother had been deeply religious and impressed upon her the wages of sin. Taking your own life was one of the worst sins. So, she just ran.  Sheer adrenalin kept her going.  She could no longer hear her name being called, still she ran.  Hearing the sound of her name by this man was indeed strange. The tone it was uttered in was even stranger. Marie equated addressing someone by their given name as an act of respect. The man now yelling her name had hardly shown her respect. Nor, was the tone in any way respectable. The syllables were cried out in both a desperation with a hint of regret. The voice screeching out the name Marie, came from the man who was running after her in the distance. She had called him Papa. Any tender feelings she had once felt for him were replaced by a loathing and shame.

With each pound to the earth that her feet made, she recounted what had led her to abandon this existence and how she was escaping into what surely had to be a better life. How could things be worse? This was what she kept telling herself as she ran on towards something, not knowing what that something was. Everything had changed with the death of her mother. Life had gotten progressively worse. Marie was five when her mother died.  This was shortly after the birth of Jean-Phillipe.  Her father had hired a woman as a wet nurse from the nearby village to come to their isolated farm; but as soon as the woman left most of the responsibility of caring for her brother lay with her, a scrawny young girl of barely six.   

Marie's father would spend a large part of the day in the fields.  Jean-Phillipe, now aged two, followed Marie around like a devoted puppy dog.  Papa, immersed both in grief and with the duties of running the farm, largely ignored them. He provided them with the necessities of life, but nothing more. The closest thing to emotional contact was an aloof, stony stare he would sometimes bestow upon them. Marie took it as if a judgment of some formidable nature was being cast upon her. She would shutter and freeze in her tracks at the same time, thinking, "She was there, her brother was there. Their mother and most importantly, his wife was not."

On a few occasions Marie would try to bring some resemblance of a loving family life to their home. This was the family she belonged to and remembered when her mother had been a part of it. She would ask her father how his day was or mention trivial household matters, for lack of knowing what better to say. His responses were terse and uncaring. Once, while at the dinner table, Marie mustered enough courage to ask about her mother. Papa gave her a look that suggested she had done something terribly forbidden and abruptly got up, leaving his dinner unfinished, and in almost a run went outside. Marie thought she detected a tear drop before he turned his back towards her. This had briefly given her some kind of hope of a returning to some slightly acceptable father-daughter relationship. Not having any real basis for how this should be she imagined what behaviors might be normal for such a situation. The dysfunctional coldness that transpired between them only seemed to occur within the confines of the family. Marie had often heard his conversations with the workers in the fields. These exchanges, although not many as her father was basically a quiet man, seemed normal enough. So why could he not be normal with she and her brother, she wondered. All hope of normalcy had died with her mother.

Marie tried to carve a niche for herself in caring for her brother and doing what chores she could perform for a girl of her young age. She reinvented a family life for herself consisting of her brother and the angelic, invisible presence of her mother. She thought of her mother daily and tried to emulate what she remembered of her. She projected the love she had for her mother onto her younger brother.  He was a source of comfort and solace and helped to sometimes fill the void left by the absence of mother. 

She sang to Jean Phillip. These were the songs her mother once sang to her. It was hard to remember all the words. So, she either hummed in place of the ones she had forgotten or made up new ones. This was the same with the stories. Marie, however, had a vivid imagination and could fill in any gaps quite effectively. New stories emerged from her everyday. The singing and stories helped her cope. On the rare occasions that she tired of reciting them, her young brother would beg for more.

Suddenly without warning Jean-Phillipe was taken ill. He had tossed and turned, waking in the middle of the night, asking Marie for water. They had always slept together on a small straw mat in the corner of the room. Marie found him to be burning with fever. Three days passed as Marie tried to comfort him. She was young and didn't know what to do. Her father had left, going to the village to get help. By the time he had arrived back with the same lady who had once acted as the wet nurse for her brother, it was too late. The woman examined the small limp body and said it was just a matter of time and that only a miracle could save him. It was not to be. Jean-Phillipe died just before what would have been his fifth birthday. Papa once again got into the wagon, to return the woman to the village. On his return, a priest sat by his side. He would say some words over Jean Phillipe lifeless body, making the sign of the cross, as he lay in our make do bed. He then said more words over the small wooden coffin which lay in a hole in the ground which had been dug by the men who usually worked the fields. This small coffin lay close to the mound of grass marked with a stone etched with a cross which was her mother's grave. This was the same priest who also said words over the bigger coffin holding the body of her mother. He read from the book that mother once read to her from. Marie could only read a few words. She had been inquisitive, and her mother had tried to teach her some important ones before she died. She recognized the word God and holy and Bible. She saw the words Holy Bible on the book the priest read from. She had picked up her mother's Bible and pretended to read from it to Jean-Phillipe. She took comfort now as the priest read from this same book, although different in appearance from that of her mother's. The priest had been helpful. It was this same priest who also arranged for the wet nurse to come when Mama died. After awhile the priest had come back to retrieve her as her services had been needed for another family.

Marie, now with the death of her brother, was totally thrust into a world of solitude. Any proper childhood had been brief for her. She had been thrust into substitute motherhood in caring for Jean-Phillipe; and now she would continue to carry out the responsibilities of a grown woman – those of cooking, cleaning, and caring for a father who offered no affection and only spoke to her concerning household duties. She grew used to her life, and once again reverted to making up songs and stories, and fantasizing that her mother was still with her. She thought of her mother and Jean Phillipe in heaven and how happy they both must be together.

At age eleven, Marie was growing out of her scrawniness and into the emerging body of a woman.  This was a time of confusion and fear for her.  The little dark eyed brother who once followed her around had seemed like a far away dream to her.  Also the memory of mother faded, yet her grief grew stronger.  She had no one to guide her. Her mother had been the only maternal presence she had ever known, and with a great intensity she now more than ever longed for some renewal of this presence.

Just when she had resigned herself to a disengagement from any hope of affection coming from her father, things changed, quite dramatically. He had begun to make odd remarks and reached out to her in an unfamiliar way.  The absence of affection for so many years now turned into a type of evilness she had no words for.  Unbeknown to her, in her developing years she had taken on the looks and mannerisms of her mother.   These attributes brought out long suppressed tendencies in her father.  It was during this time that she became his substitute wife.

Now, at age twelve, in southern France in the year of our Lord 1858, after too many nights of what she deemed as horrid encounters between she and her father, she sat alone in her silence and shame contemplating what she could do. As she sat, she formulated a plan.  She had never been beyond the boundaries of their small farm but tomorrow she would quietly get up as she did so many mornings to bring in water from the well; however, she would keep going.  She would leave, going in the direction of the village, in the direction from whence the wet nurse woman and priest had come. In her mind it was either run away hoping for a better world beyond this small farm or do what was unthinkable and which would forever condemn her in the eyes of the church whose edicts her mother lived by.

It was now growing dark.  Her legs had grown numb and could carry her no more.  She did not know how long her father had chased after her. Possibly it was just in her imagination that he had followed her for very long at all.   She found herself along a stream and stopped to clean herself as best she could, from the dirt of the fields, from her own sweat, and from the stickiness caked down her legs left by her father from the night before. 

A huge, glorious building stood over the hill.   She had heard of castles and thought that this must be one.   As she approached she noted the huge stones were a reddish brown color and looked so perfect stacked in such a uniform manner that she had never seen before.    Her stomach growled, and she stood weak and nervous before not one but two tall doors of shiny, gleaming wood.   While hesitating before the doors, a woman appeared to her left.  She was covered from head to toe in flowing scarlet with a hat made of wings.  Marie was greeted in such a kindly manner, making her think she surely must have died from exhaustion from the run, and this was indeed heaven.

The scarlet woman with the angelic face placed the palm of her hand beneath the girl's chin, raising it up slightly to look into the young girl's dark brown eyes,  "Child, do you have a name?"

The girl very hesitantly responded, "Marie."

"Marie, what a beautiful name. I am Mother Anne", said the lady in red.  Marie immediately felt a respect. Mother Anne called out the name, Sister Josephine.  A girl of perhaps twenty, in drabber colors of black and white ran over to them.  Marie listened to the instructions given to Josephine by Mother Anne, and knew that she was to be given food and a bed. Her fate would be decided in the morning. She was way too tired to worry about it now. She knew that these were the nuns whom her mother had often spoke about when her mother had talked about God and the church. Her mother surely was acting as her angel and leading her here. Marie imagined being safe within these magnificent walls. She knew now this was one of the wonderful churches about which her mother had spoken.