BLESSED BE

TRIGGER WARNING: Religious abuse of a child, physical violence, mentions of substance use

BLESSED BE

My dearest Moses,

The time has come to tell you the truth, for lying was my only sin. But it was a sin consecrated in love, a sin committed to protect you. To protect us. God is an understanding master, and I die peacefully, knowing that He will absolve me of my wrongdoing, and accept me into his kingdom of heaven.

In a little Virginia town, far east from here, there is a lone headstone with no body beneath it. A carved lamb rests atop the stone where your name, the one they knew you by, is inscribed.

Baby Matthew

Born and died July 7, 1972

Blessed be the child, taken too soon.

Even now, over 30 years later, flowers appear in spring, bears and toy cars on your birthday. Crosses and coins at Christmas. The town mourns for little Matthew, a tragedy without a body. A beautiful baby murdered by his mother.

A stolen life.

But you didn’t die that night, of course. No.

You were delivered from the womb of evil, and from Satan’s dark and bloody placenta, I cut you. I washed away the devil’s blood and the foul black meconium, and there you were. Moses, a perfect little baby. A prophet. I had to take you.

It was hot and dark in that single wide trailer. I sat with your birth mother, Shay, and held her hand as the contractions began.

Pale eyes beset by dark circles, hair stringy and unwashed. She was a painful sight to behold. Her whole body, 100 pounds altogether, trembled with the might of God as her fingernails marked bloody crescents in my palm.

She was 17, alone, and utterly unfit to mother a child of God. The father was gone, but the evidence of him was there. A burnt spoon. Cigarette butts. Flies buzzing in the sink, flies buzzing everywhere, like the plague of locusts God sent upon the sinners. The sound of it filled my ears and my eyes, I could hardly see or think, the incessant hum, the black little bodies…

But her scream sliced through the air. It cut the flies in half and split my ears open.

That scream. It wasn’t human.

Her water had broken and the power of Satan was unleashed in the flow of amniotic fluid, Satan who had made his roost in her womb. The screaming, it wouldn’t stop, she wailed and I looked into her eyes, they were black, two little flies, black and shiny and empty, Satan had made his place inside her and I could see him, I could see the devil, he was a darkness, an entity, buzzing like the flies in the far corner of the trailer.

And from that dark chamber of evil inside of her, you, a fruit as pure and perfect as Jesus Christ, were delivered to my hands. Your angel’s cry forced the Devil to retreat back into your mother’s wickedness.

She was blinded by her pain, crumpled on the bed, screaming and moaning in a pool of her own blood.

I thought she might die, the Devil had her soul and God could not reach her. It hurt my heart, Moses, to leave her there like that, but I didn’t have to think twice. The holy mother’s instinct took over, it was God speaking to me, God begging me to keep his son safe from the Devil in his mother. You were the babe in the Nile, Moses.

God told me to make the mark of the cross in your skin, I listened to him, it was agony to mar your perfection, but I traced the knife across your back and drew the symbol of our savior on your milky skin, to protect you from the Devil surrounding us.

I dropped the knife, grabbed my birthing bag, bundled you in a blanket, and drove us home.

As God chose Mary, He chose me.

Now Moses, believe me. I did not want your mother to go to jail, but it was the only way. Someone had called the police, probably after hearing those horrible screams, and they came a few hours later.

The scene they saw- I can only imagine the horror. A teenage mother, possessed by the devil, covered in blood and decidua. Drug paraphernalia left behind by her boyfriend. Damp clothes littering the molding floor of the trailer, the smell of rotting garbage filling the air. A bloody knife.

No baby.

They arrested her while she was still bleeding.

The case was open and shut.

The court case was televised. We watched it together at home, you were nursing (another one of God’s miracles; he had given you to me, and the warm milk rushed from my bosom. Together, we nourished you). It was maybe three months after the birth. Shay had no witnesses, no family, no-one to defend her character.

She wept at the stand, sobbing and pleading on the television. My name was repeated over and over. “Magnolia Drayvor, the midwife, the midwife stole my baby, she cut him, she hurt him, please, find my baby.”

I shook my head and stroked your blonde curls. Sorrow trickled down my cheek. That poor child, refusing to repent and turn to God.

I had been cleared by the police long ago with little investigation. To them, it was clear.

The jury found her guilty. I was sent flowers.

“How could that murdering little whore do that to you, a mother who just lost her baby? Shame on her,” one of my good friends had told me, summing up the general sentiment of the people.

I brought candles to your memorial and wept with the rest of them. I led prayers for the dead baby and the imprisoned mother. I told the other nurses and midwives at the hospital that it had all become too much for me to bear, and that I was leaving town. It was believable to them and a relief to me.

Out west in Colorado, I could finally become your mother, and you, my son.

I became Maria Patrick. I was a young woman, a widow and a nurse, starting a better life for my child. Nobody questioned it.

I missed my old friends, I missed the town I grew up in, and most dearly, I missed my husband. He was a foolish man. He did not believe in the power of God and he left me, for he thought I was barren. But in his absence, God delivered you to me and I became the mother of the great prophet Moses.

Life as Maria Patrick was not easy, but God had sent you unto me, and it was my duty to protect and nourish your holy spirit.

I knew you were the prophet reborn when you slipped into my hands that July evening, but I doubted, Moses. It is all too painful to admit, but I doubted your power many times and I doubted my decision to take you. I thought of Shay, in a women’s prison and my heart ached for her pain. God could have struck me down for my wavering belief and for my sympathizing with the Devil, but He is good and he blessed me with visions and miracles.

One night I was unable to sleep, and the agony of indecision had settled in my stomach. You were in the crib next to my bed, crying for a new diaper and a feeding. I questioned God, would his son, our savior, wail and cry like a normal babe? Would he soil his diaper and act like any other child? I had been considering it, seriously, turning myself in. Then you floated from your crib. Your skin glowed with golden light and the sign of the cross on your back emanated the warmth of the sun. I threw myself to the ground and wept at the sight of God’s beautiful miracle.

I never questioned Him again. But he sent more miracles, more than I can recall.

When you were three, the dead squirrel you had picked up from the side of the road. I tried to take it from you, but you held on with the strength of God. You cried and your tears brought the creature back to life. I learned to trust your holy judgment.

Your burning fever when you were eight. The spirit of the Virgin Mary visited me and promised your safety. Your fever broke the next morning.

The Belmont girl next door who claimed to love you. She had been sent by the Devil, pure evil rot wrapped in cherry lip gloss and satin ribbon, to take you from me and God. It was only through her manicured hand that the Devil could reach your innocent soul and you began to turn from me and from God. He struck her down to save you from ruin.

And you yourself, Moses. You were a special child.

You spoke to me many times before you were even a month old, without moving your mouth. Your first words, just like your father’s, were ‘let there be light.’ When you were older you read from your little bible to the birds and the insects, you saved even the most wretched creature. You needed no schooling so you received none. I kept you home and dressed you in white.

You begged to go to school, you wanted to preach to the other children and spread the word of God. But I could not let you go, for school is the playground of the Devil. I hope you can forgive me. I had to protect your divine spirit.

There was only one time I thought I might lose you. The girl. Since your inception, the Devil had been adamant in his hunt for your soul, but with God, I kept you safe.

Like Jesus, washing the feet of the prostitute, you had always been drawn to healing things of wickedness. Perhaps it reminded you of the infernal womb of your fetal existence. It had never polluted your innocent nature.

Then there was the girl.

I had let my guard down and Satan found his way into your heart through the kiss of a girl.

When you brought her to dinner that evening I saw your mother. She was trying to trap you once again in the womb of darkness. Her red painted lips formed a mockery of a prayer at dinner and I smelt hot brimstone on her breath, you brushed fly-black hair from her face with the same hands you blessed my forehead with, I saw her darkness corrupting you in that very moment, the flies began to buzz again like at your birth- in panic-stricken horror, I cast her, the demon from our house of God, and forbade you from ever speaking to her again. I thought that things would be the same.

Yet you prayed less and argued more. You refused to bless me in the morning. The light in your blue eyes went dull. You would disappear for hours and come back, stinking of sulfur and crawling with flies.

I had to lock you away, it was the only way to protect your soul. I had no other choice. And believe me Moses, it hurt me like nothing else to hear your wails when I cut the symbol of the cross onto your chest, and your silent agony was even more painful, when you learned my prayers had been answered.

I know you were in pain. Even the child of God can not save a creation of the Devil. You were crafted by the hands of God, and she was in opposition to you wholly. Her doe’s eyes and temptress’ body were carefully shaped by Satan to reach you. God had only touched her once, when He crushed her Satanic body like the foulest of insects.

You were ours again.

God gave us many crosses to bear. You, a holy being, were more than capable of carrying the weight. But they crushed me, your poor mother. I thank you, Moses, for staying by me as sickness took hold of my mortal being.

God has called me to heaven, for my work is complete. So Moses, go on. Go on and heal the aching soul of your father’s world.

…

Handwriting was never my mother’s strong suit.

Or who I thought was my mother, I suppose. But I always knew something was wrong.

Her looping, chaotic words formed spirals on the pages but I read them all and I read them closely.

I never brought animals back from the dead. I hated reading the bible and I hated when the women from her church would touch my forehead. I was confused and afraid whenever she hurt me or told me about memories I didn’t have. But with time, I learned to believe it. Then I learned not to.

I told her I was going on a mission. She cried and begged me not to leave her, but I did, for quite some time. I think I even believed that lie myself, that somehow, by taking mushrooms and following The Grateful Dead, I was fulfilling a divine prophecy. I even had a small following of young women, but it was under the guise of god that I justified using their bodies to try and find the loving touch I had been deprived of. I tried to find love in the curve of a woman's breast or the wet stickiness of her mouth, but it was never what I needed, what she stole from me, from the hands of my mother and the hands of my first love.

Love is not worship. Love is not fear.

I came back home when she was diagnosed with cancer. I played the part she needed me to as she lay dying in her bed at home, refusing treatment. She told me I was the only treatment she needed.

It all makes much more sense now. The lies and the delusion that formed my childhood is what made me less human. I was never able to relate to other children- I thought it was due to my being Jesus, but it was really a product of schizophrenic parenting.

Yet still, I was afraid to meet my real mother. I recognize the insanity of the woman that raised me, yet she has left an indelible mark on my psyche and my body. I still jump at the sight of congregating flies, which my mother told me was a sure sign of the devil.

Television companies offered us thousands of dollars to record our first meeting, but I declined.

I was sitting by the headstone, listening to the river, when I heard feet crunching in the leaves. She was running towards me, her long, silver-blonde hair a streak behind her small form. I grabbed her in my arms and lifted her up, burying my nose in the nape of her neck. I inhaled her scent. I did not smell sulfur or brimstone or hell itself; I smelled warm honey and home. We cried for eternity before exchanging any words.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I knew you were out there.”

“I love you too. I’m sorry.”

We spent the entire night there, at the grave site. We shared a six-pack of light beer and told each other about our lives, so wrongly separated. We laughed and shed tears at the absurdity of the deranged woman who thought I was Jesus Christ himself.

If this is the devil reaching me, I thought, let him.