Woman of God Read online

  I’m a plain-looking woman, but when Karl looked at me, I felt like a cover girl. When we weren’t having nights out in the city, we nestled down in the study, where both of us did our writing.

  I would read lines for Karl’s new play in progress, and sometimes my reading was so hilarious that Karl would say, “Terrible, Brigid. Terrible. Now I have to write that again. It will never sound good to me after that reading.”

  I laughed so hard, and so did he.

  While Karl struggled with his play, I wrote in my journal of human tragedy, one person at a time. When I put my writing into his hands, he read each word, never skimming, never patronizing. Once he said to me, “I tell you this, Brigid. Your writing is unflinching truth. You’re a better writer than I am.”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “Trust me.”

  Having never lived with a man before, I had to learn my way around Karl. He could get cranky when he was writing, either in his head or on his laptop. If I clashed pots in the kitchen or asked questions while he was “in the zone,” our happy flow could get interrupted. I was slow to apologize, but Karl was apologizer in chief and the best at hugging it out.

  Sometimes, in bed late at night, I would awake with a start, thinking that I was back at Kind Hands, that Jemilla and Aziza had crawled into bed with me and that Sabeena was waking me up because someone was dying in the O.R.

  But, no, thank God.

  I was lying with my arms around the big, snoring man I trusted and loved with my whole heart.

  Now, inside this lovely neighborhood church with the stained glass behind the altar throwing brilliant light on the stone floor, I had some things to say to God.

  I thanked Him for the baby I was carrying inside me and for the happiness that filled me up from the bottom of my soles to the ends of my incorrigible red hair, and every part of me in between.

  Pretty good joke on me, Lord. This is what I get for doubting You. I get everything good in the world. I am pretty sure You knew all of this, but I am more surprised than even You can imagine. How is it that I sit here, when six years ago I was full of bullet holes, stuck in a subterranean depression, barely alive at all?

  I sometimes can’t be sure if this life is real. Is this a peek at my future? Am I dreaming? Or, dear God, is this my actual life? Am I allowed to have all of this?

  I waited for an answer, and I heard nothing.

  But I didn’t need the voice of God to tell me what was self-evident. The pews were solid cherry. The altarpiece was bejeweled gold supported by columns of marble. And a stained-glass Jesus Christ spread his arms wide open to me.

  I am thankful, Lord. I will be the best wife, doctor, mother, friend, that I can possibly be. With Your help.

  Amen.

  I felt woozy when I got to my feet. I steadied myself with a hand on the back of the pew, thinking for a moment how nice it would be to go back to bed. If only. I flashed on my full day at BZFO, which would unfurl from the moment I stepped through the doorway.

  I had just promised God that I would be the best possible doctor, despite the risks to myself and the little one curled up inside me.

  I whispered out loud, “God, please watch over us.”

  I crossed myself. And then I went to work.

  Chapter 55

  I HAD brought hundreds of babies into the world, during floods and droughts and in the black of night, holding a flashlight between my jaws.

  However, because I might not be able to deliver my own child so easily, I was under the care of a superb ob-gyn at Charité, a world-class hospital.

  Karl had purchased an apartment next to ours and opened a doorway between the two units, and, using our combined talents, we made the sweetest of nests for the baby we were expecting.

  I continued to work the easy shift at BZFO, wearing loose clothing and shoes with good rubber soles.

  Karl cooked delicious dinners and doted on me. We spent long evenings in his study writing in matching lounge chairs under the windows. This was really the best of times. I began to read more, and my writing improved in the sanctuary of a writers’ room for two as I turned sketches written in the trenches of Magwi Clinic into tight prose.

  I wasn’t prepared for my water to break while I was on duty at BZFO, but, of course, that was how it happened. I said, “I can handle this.”

  But I was suddenly afraid to cross this threshold.

  Would my baby be all right? Would he or she be healthy and strong? What was I supposed to do now?

  Dr. Maillet had Karl on speed dial.

  He drove me to Charité himself, and he stayed with me while I labored and gave birth. Giving myself over to the greater wisdom of my doctor was one kind of miracle. Holding this child Karl and I had made was like a supernova of love that both humbled and expanded me.

  I hugged our baby daughter to my breast, the two of us enclosed in Karl’s embrace, and I thanked God for the beautiful gift of this precious new life.

  And Karl did take videos, priceless little movies of me flushed and worn out but giddy, nursing my bitty baby girl, who had red hair like mine.

  We named her after St. Teresa, and we called her Tre. We both stayed at home for a month with Tre, and then, while Karl worked in his at-home studio and I went back to BZFO, a visiting nurse took care of our daughter.

  I came home every night to my job as Tre’s personal stand-up comedienne, hoping to get our baby to smile. And then, at six weeks, while I wore a toy elephant on my head and made funny noises, she gave me a genuine non-gassy grin. My little girl laughed.

  That laugh triggered me to send a note and photo “home” to Cambridge. I felt obligated, and I wasn’t disappointed when I didn’t hear back.

  I started a new journal for Tre, Karl, and me.

  This book was devoid of horror stories, completely personal, and without any commercial merit at all. In other words, it was perfect. I noted the firsts. I pressed a fine, red curl between pages. I stuck in cards from friends and took photos of gifts and opened a Facebook page for Tre.

  I was having a perfect life.

  God was great. What could possibly go wrong?

  Chapter 56

  I WAS working in the peach-colored exam room at BZFO, giving an injection to someone else’s darling baby, when Dr. Maillet appeared at the doorway. Her expression was frozen, as if she was in shock.

  I excused myself and went to Dr. Maillet, who pulled me through the doorway and closed the door behind us.

  I said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry to tell you, Brigid. There’s been an accident,” she said. “It’s Karl. It’s Tre, too.”

  I stared at her for a long second; then my fear caught up with her words and exploded inside me like a bomb.

  I shouted, “NO! What happened? Both of them? That’s crazy.” Her mouth moved, but she didn’t speak.

  I pictured a car accident and immediately thought, Karl and Tre will be all right. The car was big. It had seat belts and air bags and a kiddie seat in back. I ducked into the exam room, grabbed my bag, and ran toward the exit, with Mary Maillet following me.

  “Wait. Brigid.”

  I stopped running and half-turned to face her.

  She had clasped her hands under her chin and looked absolutely stricken when she said, “Karl is dead. It may have been cardiac arrest. I’m so sorry. He had Tre with him in a Baby Björn when he fell down the stairs.”

  “What stairs? What are you talking about? Where are they?”

  “I’ll drive you to the hospital,” Maillet said.

  During that frantic, frustrating, stop-and-go drive to Charité, Maillet told me that Karl had been found at the foot of a long flight of stone stairs in Volkspark. The baby had been strapped across his chest and had hit her head on the treads when he fell on top of her.

  “She’s in the ICU,” Maillet told me.

  That, I remember.

  I was screaming inside my head, seeing ahead to the hospital, to the ICU, to shoving people aside to g
et to my child. I begged God, Please, please, let her be all right.

  I got out of the car before it stopped. I bulled my way through reception and onto the ICU floor, crashing into orderlies and gurneys, knocking chairs over. I entered the glass-enclosed ward, medical personnel staring at me as I shouted, “Lenz! Her name is Theresa Lenz! Where is she?”

  By the time I found her small pod, the vital-signs monitor was flatlining.

  I screamed out loud to God, “No, no, take me! Damn You, take me instead!”

  The only answer was the high-pitched squeal of the machine.

  God’s gift was gone.

  Chapter 57

  I FORCED my eyes open, hoping that Karl was still asleep. I would wake him and tell him that I’d had the most horrible dream. I would say, “Karl. See a cardiologist, today.”

  Tori was sitting by the side of my hospital bed.

  “I’m here, darling,” she said. “I’m here.”

  “How?”

  “Dr. Maillet called me. My number was in your wallet.”

  I saw it all in her face. I hadn’t been dreaming. My husband. My child. They were dead. And the future I’d imagined, of seeing Tre grow up, of becoming even closer to Karl—all of that was dead, too. Tori reached for me, and I let my hysteria have its way. When I pulled away, after I had dried my face on the sleeve of my gown, I said, “Tori. I want to see them.”

  Tori grabbed my hands. “Are you sure?”

  I nodded and sobbed again.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and soon, Tori returned with a nurse. The nurse put slippers on my feet, then brought us to the morgue, where a pathologist was waiting for us in the stainless-steel, ice-cold storage room.

  I stood in my cotton gown and leaned on Tori as the assistant slid out a drawer and folded the sheet down from my dear husband’s face.

  The tears streamed down my cheeks as I saw Karl lying there, gray faced and inanimate. The bridge of his nose had been sliced through where his glasses had cut into his flesh in the fall. His forehead and chin were abraded, but not the palms of his hands. He hadn’t tried to break his fall, which told me that he’d been dead before he dropped, crushing our three-month-old between his body and the hard stone treads of the staircase.

  Had he had heart problems before this attack?

  I thought not. He would have told me.

  Was his consciousness still alive somewhere, perhaps in the corner of the ceiling? I did not feel his presence at all.

  Where was God? I didn’t feel His presence, either.

  But I called to Him, silently speaking to Him through our private conduit in my mind.

  You’re a monster, I said to the Almighty God of Moses and Solomon, the Father of Christ and all of humanity.

  I’m taking this personally. You gave to me, only to take it all away, and You’ve done this to me before. I don’t care why. You’ve lost me. You can never make this up to me, and You can never get me back. You’re diabolical. Go to hell. Or go back to hell. And don’t give me any shit about millions of birds.

  A stool appeared beside me. I sat beside Karl’s body and told him that I didn’t hold Tre’s death against him.

  “I love you. I will always love you. You and Tre are part of me, now and forever.”

  I kissed his forehead. I straightened his hair.

  I apologized to the pathologist for any outbursts or rudeness and asked to see my baby. He didn’t want to show her to me, but, reluctantly, he opened her drawer.

  I folded down Tre’s thin cotton blanket, and I saw what had been done to her while surgeons had tried to save her life. I counted four incisions where tubes and drains had been inserted through her pale skin and into her organs. I saw the horrible violation of her skull, where it had been opened and bone plates removed.

  My poor, tiny girl. My little Tre.

  I took her out of the drawer and held her against my chest. I rocked my baby’s cold corpse, and I pictured every minute that I could remember of her three months of life.

  I tried, but I couldn’t envision her in a safe, warm place with her father, or anywhere with God.

  Chapter 58

  TORI WRAPPED her arms around me as Tre was taken away, and she walked me with me down the labyrinthine corridors and through glass doors to the street.

  A black car was waiting, and once we were inside the apartment, I stripped naked and got into the vast, empty bed where I had awoken this morning with my husband.

  I thought of our little one, who had been sleeping safely in her crib, just next door. My broken heart seized up again.

  I have known so many mothers who have wept over the bodies of their dead children. I had sympathized with them. I had tried to console them. I had prayed with them, and I had held them while they cried out from the depths of their souls.

  But there was no preparing for this.

  I awoke sometime later to hear Tori speaking in the outer room, on the phone with her husband, Marty. I heard her crying. Then she was in the doorway saying that Zach was on the line.

  Zach’s voice was in my ear, saying, “I’m so sorry, Brigid. I’m just so sorry.”

  I managed to thank him and say good-bye. There was nothing more I could say. Nothing.

  I went into the master bathroom that I had shared with Karl and cut off all my hair. I used his razor and shaved my head, after which I gulped down Valium and went back to bed.

  The next day, Tori brought me coffee and told me that she’d been in touch with Karl’s lawyer. She made arrangements with a funeral home, and I’ll never be able to thank her enough for keeping me safe in a dark room during the most terrible days of my life.

  Three days after Karl and Tre died, I got out of bed. I dressed in black. I covered my head with a scarf, and I buried my husband and my child in the Lenz family plot, in a Lutheran cemetery in Zehlendorf, just outside the city. I shook hands and hugged Karl’s weeping friends and family. I had depleted my reservoir of tears, and I had nothing to say to God.

  Back in our apartment, Karl’s lawyer let me know that Karl had left everything to me. I didn’t care about the money, and I couldn’t live in our place anymore. It would be unbearable to walk through the rooms where I had been happier than at any time in my life.

  I told the lawyer to sell our apartment and everything in it, to provide for the actors in Der Zug, and to put the rest into BZFO and other charities of Karl’s.

  He said, “Karl wanted you to have money, and, like it or not, you have a bank account and a credit card. The bills will come to me. I’ll make suitable donations to his charities, and I’ll make arrangements as you wish for the bulk of his estate.”

  I signed documents, and I booked a flight. I changed into pants and a sweater. I packed a bag and tucked in my journal, my laptop, and a framed photo of myself with my husband and child. Then I buttoned myself into a hooded black alpaca coat.

  Tori and I went to the airport together, and when her flight to Rome was open to board, I hugged her for a long time. We both wept at the gate. And as soon as her plane was rolling down the tarmac, I called Sabeena.

  “I wish you had let me be there for you,” she said.

  “I was happy to think of you at home with Albert and the girls. You can’t imagine, Sabeena, how much that meant to me. Kiss everyone for me.”

  My voice broke, and Sabeena murmured soothing words that couldn’t soothe.

  “You deserve happiness,” she said, her voice flooded with tears. “Have faith.”

  “I’m out of faith,” I said. “I need proof of His love, of His existence, or I’ll turn my back on Him as He has turned His back on me.”

  What could anyone say to that?

  After I said good-bye to Sabeena, I went to the flight lounge and pulled up the hood of my coat so that no one would dare talk to me.

  The last time I had worn this coat, I had dropped one of Tre’s rattles in the pocket. It was pink plastic, shaped like a little barbe
ll, hand-painted with blue forget-me-nots.

  I clasped the rattle in my fist and shook it incessantly, as if she might hear it and cry out for me. I shook the rattle and jiggled my feet and waited for my flight to board.

  Chapter 59

  I ARRIVED in Cairo at night and hired a car to take me to Mt. Sinai. My destination was the Orthodox Chapel of the Holy Trinity, built in the 1930s over the ruins of a fourth-century Byzantine church.

  Legend has it that beneath the church is the very rock from which God had taken the stone tablets that He inscribed with the Ten Commandments and handed off to Moses. You could say that the tablets were the bedrock of Judeo-Christian teachings.

  It was a good place to look for God.

  As the car cut through Sinai in the dark, I thought about the beginning of my own beliefs.

  I hadn’t been captivated by the power and the love of God from the first time I stepped into St. Paul’s Church in Cambridge. But the barrel-vaulted ceilings, the biblical stories told in stained glass, the large crucifix behind the altar, and the homilies of our kind priest, Father Callahan, moved me. The more I learned, the more I trusted in God.

  I acted on that belief in the real world, but, having lived through the ungodly horrors in South Sudan, having entertained death in my own house, my trust in God was gone.

  Was God real?

  Or was He all gilded myth tricked out in ceremony, illuminated by fear and stories and blind faith?

  I had to know.

  When my driver parked at the foot of the mountain, the sun was just rising. He said, “This is the best time to make the climb, miss. You’ll see.”

  I felt very light as I began my slow journey up the 3,750 Steps of Penitence through the morning mist. I’d lost weight. I’d lost love. I’d lost faith. I was hardly there at all. Other, more substantial pilgrims mounted the steps with love for God shining on their faces and cameras in their hands.