Hunting Down The River Rue

            My mom didn’t think I was very religious from a young age. I didn’t worship like she did. I didn’t pray like she did. I didn’t treat others like she did. Speaking of her like that makes her sound like she was the Madonna. She probably thought she was. As I see it, the only two things she had in common with the Blessed Mother was her love for her son and the fact that she told everyone she was a virgin when she got married—though my brother was born four months later.

           Caleb was baptized before me. It was early on Sunday, a kind of morning where the dew soaked the grass and the river was cold but nirvana was found in the sun pockets that played hide and seek between bush leaves. My mom made me dress in cotton-ball white—all the way down to my shoes—like I would be joining Caleb in the river with Pastor Gabriel. She told me it was out of respect, but I don’t think the color of my clothes made Caleb like me any better.
           I don’t think it made anyone like me better.
           I look like my father. I have his small nose and splatter of freckles. His thin lips and his loud laugh. I have his dark brown eyes, like puddles of melted chocolate. I would spend hours at a time admiring myself in the mirror, knowing what a handsome young girl I was. The kind that looked like she’d wear black to baptisms. But I wouldn’t dare. I just liked to think that’s how I looked.
           Caleb and Mom hated how I looked. They thought because I resembled my father that I must carry his sins—as if the consequences of his actions fell on my shoulders when he left, as though each freckle was a wrongdoing, painted clear as day across the bridge of my nose. It made no difference how much I protested it, everyone in town thought the same thing. They all thought I carried my father’s sins in my bones and made sure I was punished for them— sins I didn’t commit, bones I didn’t make. Like I was original sin or something.

           “Maggie!” My mom called and I followed aimlessly, staring up at the green canopy above. “Maggie!” She hissed, yanking at my arm. I felt my feet slide.
           I had walked into the mud of the river bed. But I could have sworn I heard someone calling me from up ahead, where the water was. I thought that my mother’s voice was out in the river somewhere. My shoes were a mess and sinking even deeper into the muddy grime. She sighed and watched, without helping, as I struggled to wipe my shoes in the solace of the grass. She gave the other mothers an exaggerated shrug and rolling of her eyes—telling them, without words, what a bother I was. How difficult I was. How stupid I was. Some of the girls on the other side of the river snickered at my appearance. Some boys too. Not Caleb. Caleb glared. His nose scrunching up the way my mother’s does when she looked at me.
           “Sorry.” I mumbled.
           “Embarrassing, Maggie. Truly.”
           “Sorry.” I repeated, trying to toss some leaves over my shoes to hide the mess.
           “Pay attention.” She snapped in front of my face as Pastor Gabriel waded into the river.
           He tried to hide the way he hissed at the freezing water with a smile he offered to all those gathered. He kept his arms hovering above the water until he centered himself in the river. Like trained dogs, the baptismal candidates shuffled into their practiced line. Pastor Gabriel stretched his arms out on either side, looking like the man on the cross. His voice boomed, as he began a seemingly semi-rehearsed speech.
           Though the trees rustled to listen, my young ears had been trained to find my mother’s voice, no matter how quiet she made it.
           Mom liked to whisper. She whispered on the phone with Mrs. Jacobs all the time about Ms. Nevil and married Mr. Habbin; about how Carolanne’s “family secret” casserole recipe actually came from a box; about how Pastor Gabriel practiced only for the adoration of it all, not the purity.
There were rumors, as I heard my mom say in a hushed tone behind closed pantry doors, of a lady for Pastor Gabriel (which was strictly forbidden within the church). Fran, the church’s treasurer, had seen a gold necklace with a locket in Pastor Gabriel’s office. I don’t know how, but Mom always found herself neck deep in the business of others before she knew what was happening in her own house.
           I knew that locket Pastor Gabriel bought.
           The locket held a pedal of my favorite flower, a daisy from the church’s garden. I didn’t like it. The necklace, that is. And I certainly didn’t want it, but I thought if I wore it people would put the pieces together, forgetting that as much as people look at me, they don’t see me. And deep down, they didn’t care.
Pastor Gabriel saw it. He smiled every time it shimmered in the light. He looked to me every time he baptized another young boy. No one noticed.
           My mother tugged me along when the ceremony was over and we waited on the grass for Caleb. There was a reception in the church basement that Fran and Pastor Gabriel had thrown together. I was told I had to go and that I’d be able to track the mud around the basement since I didn’t have any respect and that I would be such a burden for the church janitor, Mr. Tom, who had waxed the floors for the event. But when I offered to walk home from the river my mother gave me such a withering look that the greenery around me started to wilt and die. Caleb kicked up the dead plants when he stepped to our mother’s side, not knowing why I was being silently scolded but joining in all the same.
           The church basement was cold and the conversations even colder; with comments made sharp with passive aggression to hammer into heads later when they laid in bed. It made you rethink every aspect of your being when you were alone. My mom dealt those comments like cards, and she, the croupier. I was an unwilling gambler, down on her luck. But there was safety in numbers in the church basement, everyone else was losing my mother’s black jack as well.
           She let me eavesdrop on the conversation, as long as I stayed quiet. Pastor Gabriel might’ve held mass upstairs, but my mother was the one who preached among the churchgoers. People hung off her sentences like commas. Sometimes I didn’t mind the way she spoke about me because I was so wrapped up in the way she held court among them all. She told them all about my woes, which were nothing more than her problems, and how little I did to help her, to help Caleb, to help anyone but myself. ‘Just like my father,’ that’s what she said, ‘just like my father.’ And the words pricked goosebumps in my skin, made heat rise in my chest and ears. I didn’t open my mouth until she brought up my father. Before I could get too much out, she was shushing me and shoving me out.
           She didn’t pause the conversation before I was suddenly cut out of it with the close of the red church doors. I walked along the side of the building until I saw the girls of the church gathered around the flower garden. I walked over, not really wanting to join the pastel dressed girls, but to be thought of as one. I wanted my mother to walk out of the church and see me with the flowers.
           Before I could even see which they were picking,  dandelions or  daisies, Emmalyn Green turned to me. All the girls copied her actions like puppets on a string. They all stared at me with eyes warning me not to take another step. Thorns protecting the flowers from bugs. They were ever so good at playing the part of the thorns.
           I did as I saw Caleb do many times before, and I spoke first.
           “Hey, Emmalyn.”
           “Hey, Maggie.” And the girls snickered though nothing funny was said.
           “What are you doing?” I asked stupidly.
           “Nothing.”
           “Can I play?”
           “No, Maggie.” Emmalyn tilted her head to the side, the way I had seen Mrs. Green do when Emmalyn’s little sister didn’t understand something obvious.
           “Why not?”
           “I don’t like talking to shit.” It was the first time I had heard a child say that word.
           “Shit?” How empty I must have sounded, standing there, asking question after question to a riddle they’d never let me in on.
           “Your daddy is a piece of shit,” She looked over her shoulder at the other church girls, “Everyone thinks so. Everyone says so. A no good, runaway piece of shit. Even Pastor Gabriel thinks so. If your daddy’s a piece of shit, that means you’re one too.”
           I hit her. Hard enough to knock her over. I hit her again and again until our childlike uncomfortable laughter became panicked cries. I hit her until someone sobered from the moment long enough to get an adult. I kept swinging at her as my fists landed punches in the air between us as someone tugged me off her. Everyone cradled her and wiped her tears away. Everyone made a fuss about how her dress got sullied with her blood but not how mine had. Muffled voices had to shout to be heard over my heartbeat pounding in my ears. It was my mother’s voice.
           “She-she said something bad.” I heard myself saying and I was suddenly so aware of the trembling in my body and my voice, “She said…”
           And I knew I had hit her because she was right. Everything she said about my father being a nobody who didn’t care about his kids was true, and I knew I defended the honor of a man who didn’t have any. His freckles felt heavy.
           “I’ll speak to her in my office.” Pastor Gabriel’s voice came slithering into my ears, “She ought to be spoken to.” And our eyes met and I wailed, sobbing into my mother, who coiled away from me, peeling me off like dead skin.
           “Mama!” But I was looking at the sky.
           Hands were all over me, yanking me to the large red doors and Pastor Gabriel’s voice. And no one cared about my crying or the blood on my dress or the weight of my freckles. I broke free, too small to be held tight enough by their hot hands burning my skin. They called after me, but not so to make me want to return.
           I acted too much like a child when I was one. They gave me titles like “problem” or “trouble,” something that even time would not let me out grow. They deemed themselves prophets and my future forfeit. I wanted to wash it all off—all the hands that built me, gave me fragile foundation, and cursed me.
           With their words.
           With their hands.
           With their nose.
           My feet took off. I thought it would be perfect to flyin that moment and disappeared in the clouds. But I didn’t fly. I found myself in the river with water washing over me. And I laythere—waiting for the mistakes to wash off. Instead, a different feeling cleansed my bones. It washed me cleaner than any bath. It made me feel new.

           And by the time the water settled, I saw my reflection.

           My freckles.