Conversations with Mary

Outside my family’s house, at the centre of a little square, a shrine is placed, where Mary shows the inside of her forearms. She has been doing that – and that only – for decades now. Standing like she’s offering her veins to a blood test, or preparing for the Mountain pose (aka Tadasana.) She always wears the same Monna Lisa-like expression. 

In the old days, the ladies from the neighbourhood would gather around the shrine with the rosaries in their hands, in the evenings in May. They pulled each bead of their Catholic jewels like the strings that held together their lives. Mary watched those murmuring sitting ladies with dry resignation. Sometimes she would whisper: 

   “Go home ladies, don’t waste your time. Cheat on your husbands. Have a glass of wine. You have feet, use them. You weren’t made to be shrines; why the hell would you want to behave as such?” 

None of the ladies could ever hear Mary’s voice, which was too faint under the monotonous buzz of their invocations.

As a child, I could hear Mary’s voice, as well as disappear into the walls. I was thin and uninteresting; so different from my siblings, who pierced the photographs with their blue eyes and blonde locks, like gorgeous characters from a Japanese Anime. They were active children, out and about with the Scouts, or busy playing volleyball and tennis. They could step on a stage and sing for fun. In front of everyone else.

Instead, I was always busy taming my Dread. When I was in the company of strangers, it was a sure thing, a done deal. But Dread would find me in any moment, anywhere, at school, friends’ parties or family gatherings. It was a fat, sweaty thing that jumped on me, demanding to piggyback. It made my hands sticky, my head empty, my mouth cardboard-like and my vision blurred. 

People – teachers, relatives, family friends – laughed. I would choke with the words I tried to say. When prompted, I coudn’t remember my home address, or tell on which floor my class was located. I could not tie my shoes. I could not buy panini from the school janitors – I always got my friends to buy them for me. Children around me talked and moved around, seemingly without any effort; whilst the only place where I could exist effortlessly was my bedroom, where Dread would not show up. I was certain that one day it would be gone.

Not quite. By the time I was twelve, Dread had grown with me, and wanted to be with me every day. It clutched my hand and walked with me, wearing a long bridal dress – it got furious whenever I stumbled upon the veil.

From the outside, I just looked like a “slow” child, too prone to daydreaming and easily overwhelmed. “Wake up!” my mother would shout at me – or the teacher or the PE instructor. They were at loss with me. Almost nobody could see my Dread.

  “You’re not doing very well, are you?” Mary asked me one day.

 To a child visiting a shrine, that was a rather rhetorical question. I raised a hand in response, to show how my fingers were whitened by the Dread’s tight grasp. But Mary ignored it. She kept flashing her painted smile at me.

   “Don’t you have guts, for Christ’s sake?” She hissed.

    “Pardon me?”

    “Child, you must kick its ass,” Mary went on, “or bite it, spit in its face, do whatever you can.” 

I could feel the core of her ceramic body shaking. 

   “If you don’t do anything, Dread will turn you into a statue. You’ll never move. You’ll      become a fucking shrine. Why the hell would you want that?” 

I’d heard her swearing before, but this time the disdain in her voice concerned me, more than I already was.

In the following days, weeks and months, something happened. I started refusing to take my Dread’s hand. I firmly avoided looking at it, causing Dread to run in a corner to sulk. I forced myself to talk to one stranger, and then two or three, everyday. I decided to pretend that I was normal, and  learnt to chit chat, to use filler sentences like magic words. 

My weirdness was still there, but I had finally pocket-sized it. I became more self confident, and pretty, with that odd alien beauty that conflicted teenagers carry around. Dread became smaller and smaller. It didn’t know what to do with its hands any more, so it started to bite them, making them bleed. It came back every now and then, and it comes back even today. But I’ve learnt not to look into its face.

This is a little story of how I defeated – or better, learnt to manage – my personal Dread.  Of all the real people who surrounded me during my childhood, only a figurine made of chalk and ceramic understood my predicament, and she didn’t tell anyone. Mary can keep a secret – the Mary I know, at least. I cannot guarantee for the one in your local shrine, but I believe it’s always worth having a go.

(Disclaimer: the conversations with Mary only happened in my head – no need to bother the Vatican.)