Alpha Incorporated

IV - iv INJURIOUS WORLD

Isabella learned about love when she was thirteen. Sister Mary-Ellen Murphy, her teacher in the eighth grade, sat down with her one fall morning during recess, and talked to her about love. And, following that meeting in the empty classroom, just the two of them, Isabella believed she was, by definition, in love.

Sister Mary-Ellen could have been a romance novelist. With her tender voice and soft touch, she put into words the exact feelings that Isabella was experiencing. She sat close to her and in a whisper that connected the two of them like sisters, she told Isabella that it is natural to have those thoughts. Mary-Ellen was, for a nun, pretty cool. She used her last name, didn't wear the habit that the older sisters did, had a teaching job, taught private music lessons after school, and directed the award-winning show choir at the high school. And, in Sister Mary-Ellen's words, she was married to her lover and her best friend, Jesus.

It was years later, after Isabella had matured and had experienced the struggle of coming to understand what it meant to become a woman, after she had seen, first hand, the pressure of a boy's desire, felt fear from a man's stare, felt anxiety when walking home from school, that she came to understand how Mary-Ellen could believe that she had found the perfect man.

The way that her teacher had described Jesus, how her eyes glistened as she told Isabella of his tenderness, of his mercy. Faith, certainly, for this woman had immense faith in her Jesus, but there was more to it. For her, Jesus represented a romantic lover. Isabella could tell this from the way she described his eyes and his voice; her dreamy poetry was as lyrical as a sonnet. When Isabella asked her if Jesus spoke to her, Sister Mary-Ellen seemed surprised by the question, and told her, plainly, that of course he does. They would talk all night, sometimes. She would lay in bed each night and tell her lover, Jesus, about her day, about her struggles. She would feel consoled. She would feel respected. She would feel his love.

It almost made sense to Isabella. The depiction of Jesus around the school, the iconography of the Catholic Church, was all about humanizing God through Jesus, and Jesus was turned into cover art for a romance novel or a movie poster: peaceful eyes, long hair, firm chest, tight muscles bulging as he hung there from the cross, loin cloth slung seductively low. It was no wonder girls used to become nuns. There was a print of a drawing in their classroom, the one Isabella stared at when she was writing and wrestling to come up with the right word. The picture was called "Jesus Smiling," and that image just made her want to throw her arms around this hunk, give him a juicy smooch on the cheek and tell him how she wanted to be his girlfriend, take him to meet her friends, sit around a campfire on a summer evening at the lake. She could say to the other boys, the ones eyeing her up from across the campfire, that she was here with her boyfriend, so you better leave her alone, or he'll tell his dad. Then they'd be damn sorry.

Mary-Ellen had married her boyfriend, Jesus. Her life was devoted to her man. In everything she did, she sang the praises of her lover. She bragged about him, endlessly; she tried to emulate his values and when she fell short, she would receive his unconditional forgiveness. There was no fall too deep for him to forgive. Mary-Ellen had found the perfect man, and wanted Isabella to find him too.

But at thirteen, Isabella was already wondering about her feelings for another of Jesus's friends, the new priest working at the school, young Father Luke.

Fryer lets out a laugh. Up to now he has been silent, listening to Isabella tell her story of her childhood. "You fell in love with a priest? How did that turn out?"

Isabella, with an embarrassed giggle, reaches across the front seat of the taxi and gives Fryer a playful punch on the arm. "Nothing happened, silly. I was thirteen and thought I had a crush on the man, that's all."