The Morfis, copyright 1992 by Michelle M. Welch

The Morfis

i watch the rain falling and it is gray. the statue of mary is all gray and her robes are flowing dusty gray and mother is reciting ave marias to her like she does every night. the woman in gray robes is standing over me when i sleep and chanting my name like thousands of dead monks chanting their voices low and hollow and echoing and so loud though they are very quiet almost whispering. chanting and chanting to drive the dreams from my head and the spirits from my dreams.

it is raining inside my head and the grayness fills me inside and i shiver with cold. mary's voice is still echoing in the gray mist chanting and i run deeper inside because the voice makes me colder. then i see the spirits and they are gold and red and brilliant and warm me in the cold gray. i hear an echo of mary's voice and mother's chanting prayers saying you'll burn boy you'll burn but the spirits let me come closer and they do not burn me at all. i reach farther to touch them but i cannot. they move away but say follow us come with us and i try to walk but i cannot see where they are going they are too deep and the cold gray is seeping in again and pulling at me and dragging me back outside to wake up.

* * * When I was younger Jacob would wake us up at night, shouting father is drunk father is drunk! James would whisper harshly at him to shut up as Anna peeked her head timidly out of her door. Father staggered in and tried to walk straight, tears running down his nose as he begged us not to tell mother. He fell asleep in the chair closest to the basement door so he could run downstairs and wash as soon as he woke, so mother would not smell the whiskey on his breath, and he was reciting his lines to explain himself even as his eyes closed.

James and Jacob are going to college to become lawyers. Mother is so proud. She's told everyone in the town I'm sure, and if she has her way the news will travel from the seaport where father works to the whole country and the continent and the Holy Land beyond that. Poor Brian McCoy is only a shipbuilder, but his wife is a holy woman and God has bestowed great gifts on her eldest sons. The daughter will be married next year, after she finishes school. Maybe when the eldest are rich and Anna has given mother grandchildren, mother will make plans for the life of her youngest son.

When we read the Old Testament mother told me to skip the Song of Solomon. Only Jewish boys read that, she said, as if I should know that makes them inherently sinful. But why don't we like the Jews? Mother, wasn't Jesus Christ a Jew? She slapped me across the face.

Ned Ronan's house burned to the ground last week. He was running through the streets with a crowbar rapping on every door, and everyone was out with bare feet and buckets, drawing water from off the pier and soaking themselves as they ran back to put out the fire. They were too slow; they could only keep it from spreading to other houses. I could hear the terrible screaming of Ned's dogs, locked up in kennels in the kitchen to keep them away from Joe Marny's bitch. When the fire was out only one wall stood. I watched from my window, thinking it was the wrong day. This happened last night. I knew father would have a cut on the bottom of his right foot. I knew why the fire trucks were not there, that there had been an accident and a car was burning, blocking up our street farther down. I knew Ned's fire started at the base of the stairs, but I couldn't have told anyone. They'd have thought I started it. And the dream would not tell me who did.

* * * they are red and gold dragons and then great burning swords and taloned eagles spreading their wings over me as if to protect me but when i look up i am frightened by their claws. finally they discard their shapes and are spirits again only red and gold light surrounding me saying come with us do not be afraid we will not hurt you but somehow i do not trust them. i can not remember how long they have been with me or if they came to me or if i created them or who was in control when i knew them first. but like a child again i feel the cold and the rain and the gray outside and i do not want to leave them.

again i dream and my aunt catherine my father's sister who came to live with us when her husband passed away is dead. she has no children and she does not like my mother does not know my brothers because they are at school and i am not often at home. she lies in a box in a house i do not know and coins cover her eyes and everyone's faces are shrouded in black. the painting of jesus which is aunt catherine's only possession is on the wall and i know now that this must be anna's house because the face of jesus is gentle and compassionate and mother does not like that picture.

I was sleeping on the floor at someone's house when I woke; I don't think I ever learned their names. I ran home through rain and mud and my ankles drowned in the clogged sewers, and when mother opened the door she looked at me through tears painted theatrically on her face and told me to dress for the funeral. At the wake she had the audacity to suggest that Aunt Catherine might have left the picture of Jesus to her. No mother, I said, she left it to Anna. That Saturday the will was read and the painting was given over to my sister and her husband.

Mother told me demons had possessed my sleep. I must pray and plead for release. She cried over her failure to bring me up free from evil. When I told her I still had the dreams, that her prayers weren't working, she stopped speaking to me. When I turned eighteen father conveyed the message from her that I was to move out of the house.

i dream again and another person dies a skeleton in a box under a stone that says delaney. the next day i find out that's the name of someone i see sometimes but barely know, and people around me whisper that his kind deserve to die, and i watch for six months while he slowly wastes away and his eyes grow deep and heavy with pain. and i cannot do anything, cannot even weep because i hardly know this poor man. i ask the spirits, i cry out as a man and as the small boy who was comforted by them, why? why must i bring the news of death why must i be the messenger with this cruel task and they do not answer me they do not answer me. i am alone inside myself with the rain falling on my face.

* * * When my mother first told me not to read the Song of Solomon I of course read it immediately, after she had gone to bed, in my room with only a little candle so she could not see the light under my door. I was eight years old and it meant little to me. I read it again when I was older and could hardly believe that the ancient author and the bad singers crooning love songs in dark smoky clubs were writing about the same thing. I was inclined to believe neither source. I would drink to drown out the sounds of housemates and neighbors, muffled erotic voices and endless songs on the radio, flirtations of naīve girls and cunning ones, noise from all sides saying we are not lonely but you are. I would not remember bending under their voices, I would only have images of bodies under me, hair tangled in my fingers. A girl faced me once in daylight and screamed at me through her tears, and the young man who stood beside her struck me. I did not remember the violation she accused me of; I did not even recognize her face. I was on the floor with blood running down my face. I thought of Ned Ronan's dogs locked up in cages, of my mother who would say their lust would damn them to perish in fire.

I began seeing a girl in the tiny park in the square. It was a business district and I was free from the younger people, the irrational and passionate, in this quadrangle surrounded by the cynics who have traded life for money, calculators inside leathery bodies. The girl wore long skirts and bare legs, her fresh heart beat in warm eyes, she smiled at the birds and the leaves drifting down from the trees and her smile could have kept them green forever. Her name was Victoria. She sat alone.

Please take me from here, love whom I hardly know. Take me to a place of warmth and peace, where I can look on the light in your eyes without lowering mine for shame. Lay your hands around my heart and hide it from the shadows that wound it and tear it until no blood is left to run out anymore. Thunder shook the glass of her little window and in the sanctuary from the storm I laid my head in her arms and cried. Late in the afternoon the clouds drifted and we made love in the violet-blue dusk.

Evenings in cool purple light and warm candles and songs without words, her soft arms and scent of flowers at her throat and a gentle voice when she speaks, holding me and there is nothing that can harm me. God is in heaven and in his gardens on earth and I am calm. And one morning I am apart from her and it rains, and the shadows knock at my heart. I am evil, I am cruel. I have done harm in a past whose pages are tainted and smeared by my own hand. I carry the mark of my crimes in the scar on my face. These hands are unfit to touch her, the love of my feeble heart. The night comes black and cold.

I told her I must leave. She sat at my feet and wept, the flood of her tears equal to the maelstrom in my soul whose winds she will not feel, for she pled to know why and I would not answer her. I could not let her see the thing which she had poured her gentle heart upon. In my mind an echo of mocking voices whispered: you are lonely. I crawled within myself to hide from the voices and shadows as I used to hide from chants and gray robes looming over me. There I could barely feel the sobbing of the poor beautiful girl at my feet. When she had cried herself to sleep I left her. I would have left with her my wishes for happiness, but no such thing could be drawn from my dark heart.

i am standing on a bridge and the river runs red and carrion birds nest in the muddy banks as the blood flows under my feet. in the water i see scraps of bloodied fabric that i knew once was violet but the color is washed away and after these the river brings me a bracelet and a lock of hair and i look from the other side of the bridge and caught in a mire of weeds is the body of my love. the dreams have returned. i had this same one the night before i left victoria but blocked it from my mind.

* * * Gray birds perched in nooks at the top of the pillars that supported the domed roof of the church, the flapping of wings echoing in the almost empty building. A saint with a sword watched me where I sat, followed me as I stood and entered the little closet vacated by a hat and rosary beads. Bless me Father for I have sinned. How can I tell the silhouette behind its screen what I have done? It would be easier to cut my black heart out of my chest and show it to him. The morning paper printed a sentence about a body found in a pool of blood on the floor of a tenement. I killed a woman. But how? It was no action that I took. In actuality the paper named the suspect, a burglar who had been taken in for this crime before. I could not explain how I was connected to her death. I took no action. Outside the miniature walls I heard the sound of the gray birds' wings, reminding me of the gray robes of my mother's madonna. Then my mother was in my eyes, calling me possessed because of my dreams.

The dreams. I knew now why I had them. I had finally discovered why the spirits sent these dreams to me. Hold on, boy, hold tightly to the things that you have, to the dear friends you are blind to, to the love you cast off too easily. Unto dust they shall return.

* * * i have sat for days consuming nothing but the smoke of this small fire. i have walked in the sand, on the burning rocks. i have cauterized my wounds. i have danced in flame, i have lain under the lightning of the sky. i tear into my flesh searching for the spirits, in the deepest of dreams i descend and search the farthest corners of myself. i sing to them, i move for them, every breath i dedicate to them. i shed my own blood for them. my fires burn bright gold and crimson in their name. and one night i find that i am sleeping in the rain and the fires have burned themselves out and still there are no spirits.

sunlight dries my eyes open without heat, a pale yellow light almost colorless, no brightness, no temperature. rain fell upon my skin again last night and my eyes blindly observed the water i could not feel. a form without sensation, the lights would soon go out and leave me a shell, with a single muscle inside my ribs pumping fluid to withering cells. but inside the last living crevice of that emptying heart is the sound of a small boy's tears.

hold on, man, hold on to that small boy who does not understand and only knows how to hide. do not let him vanish from your sight. i grasp the small hand and hold it as tightly as i can. the rain has started falling again and i feel the tingling of it on my nerves before they go dead. shadows pass around our faces like mist and when they clear we open our eyes to the shining of red and gold, huge and bright and infinitely strong before us, the poor and weak. come, they say, and they do not elude us. they open their arms and i am brought home.