His Adam’s apple lurches and crashes rhythmically against the collar God uses to keep all his servants tied to the pulpit. Marie-Ange wishes it would grow and grow like a water-logged sponge until he chokes and squashes the congregation. But no, grace does not come, and still it bounces up and down and up and down, like Frédéric and his merdique basketball.
Mon Dieu. Marie-Ange snatches a quick glance at Maman, frightened she might have heard her wicked words. You see, Maman was blessed by God with the power to read people’s minds. Maman says this gift was granted to her because God wanted proof that one of his servants was breaking the Ten Commandments.
So, Maman listened to all the dirty, sinful thoughts inside her own Papa’s head and whispered the truth in her own Maman’s ears who then whispered the truth into the ears of her brothers. Marie-Ange’s Maman may have a holy gift, but Marie-Ange can’t help feeling jealous that her friends don’t have grandpas sleeping on the floor of the Canal du Midi. But then, God works in mysterious ways.
Notre Père qui es aux cieux, que ton nom soit sanctifié
If Père Guiziou were a radio, Marie-Ange is sinfully certain she would have turned him down by now. Rivulets of sweat are staining her Sunday best, with dark patches under her arms, prickles on her scalp, and a hot wetness in the place Maman says is a woman’s private Enfer.
Never, ever go near it, says Maman, never let you nor anyone else touch it. God will give your future husband the compass with which to navigate it. Only in the darkest crevices of her deepest, drowning dreams has Marie-Ange slid a finger into what she imagines is a gaping abyss, or perhaps a monster’s maw, or perhaps something like the slippery, stinky, salty caves near her house.
Et pardonne-nous nos offenses
Marie-Ange really very much preferred the other priest because he didn’t talk like a dying bumble bee. She’s forgotten his name because Maman says God wiped it from the minds of all his servants. Maman really didn’t like the other priest. Well, she did, at first, when the priest told Marie-Ange’s cousin, Gabriel, that he was the most perfect image of God he’d ever seen. Only two weeks later, Marie-Ange heard in the playground that the priest had abandoned his pulpit.
When Marie-Ange asked Maman, Maman’s face went all red and screwed up and said the priest was revealed to be Le Diable lui-même, who stained men like Gabriel with a great sin.
Greater than saying only two Hail Marys instead of three?
Greater, far greater than that. Perhaps the worst of all sins.
For the priest’s great sin, Cousin Gabriel was sent to live with a great-grandparent in Aix-en-Provenance and was never spoken of again.
Et ne nous induis point en tentation
Marie-Ange glances up at Maman again, hoping she didn’t hear her censored thoughts about Gabriel and the priest. Mais non, Maman’s eyes are fixed on Jesus hanging above Père Guiziou’s head, open mouthed, eyes rolling, head thrown back, in what Maman calls an ecstasy of pain. Maman never cries, not even when Marie-Ange’s baby brother never left her tummy because, she says, every sad or bad thing is God’s will.
Yet when Maman stares at Jesus so much water spills from her eyes Marie-Ange wonders whether her face will dry up like the plums Tatie Jeanne bakes in the sun for market day. Marie-Ange hopes Maman never cries like that for something she has done because then, if it is not God’s will, what is it?
Marie-Ange is sure she will never do something that will make her Maman cry, as sure as she is that Papa will bring home pain quotidien every morning, or that Tonton Ernest will ask her if she’s wearing a bra yet. Sometimes, she can’t remember all the sins she could commit, the list is so long. But Maman says that Marie-Ange will never sin because, at birth, God blessed her with an even more powerful gift than Maman’s.
For Marie-Ange is touched by angels.
***
“Mmh, I fuckin love the way you kiss me, Marie-Ange. You a dirty bitch, you know that?”
Not a single beignets in the Quarter has come close to tasting as delicious as Cleo’s skin. Marie-Ange, if she could, would nibble at it with her teeth until she worried a nick in the velvety fabric and then she’d tear and tear until she had moreish strips of sugar that she’d fold into her pocket and snack on all day long. Marie-Ange, if she could, would force Cleo still so she could lap away with her tongue until her jaw muscles ached and her vision went blurry and she starved from eating nothing but Cleo’s honeyed juices. But mon Dieu it would be the most blissful, heavenly way to die.
Sin number one thousand eight hundred and one: tasting a woman’s skin.
Sin number one thousand eight hundred and two: tasting a woman’s skin and wanting more.
“Marie-Ange, c’mon, close that thing. I mean it, seriously, how has anyone put up with that before?”
Marie-Ange thought Cleo hadn’t noticed because Cleo has been too busy with her eyes closed, panting away at the wilful distraction of Marie-Ange’s fingers. But Cleo is a sly one, the slyest woman Marie-Ange knows apart from her own mother.
Sin number one thousand eight hundred and three: thinking about her mother.
Sin number one thousand eight hundred and four: thinking about her mother during sex.
Sin number one thousand eight hundred and five: thinking about her mother during sex with a woman.
Marie-Ange slips the black notebook back under the bed, puffed with scraps of paper, a hairband wrapped around the cover to dam the tide of years and years of sin.
“That’s better. Now, come closer, baby, I need somethin rubbed against me. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, that’s it, baby, keep goin.”
Open mouthed and eyes rolling and head thrown back and then then then then then
they fall apart in an ecstasy of pleasure. Marie-Ange has abandoned movement, abandoned words, abandoned thoughts, to the tingling warmth spreading from her crotch through her helpless body. After a few minutes in limbo between reality and dreaming, Cleo rolls over and runs her fingers through Marie-Ange’s hair. Her full lips stretch into a slow smile, her heavy lids droop. Cleo sighs, and tears run down her face, in much the same way her mother used to when she stared into the face of Jesus.
“Marie-Ange, my love, you have a fuckin angel’s touch.”
Florianne Humphrey is a Durham University graduate who, after falling in love with the North East, decided to stay on as a journalist. She's written two Young Adult novels and a play and also runs creative writing workshops.
Follow Florianne on Twitter at: @flohumphrey3 to see more of her work!