Mother's milk
Innocence theologizes desire
Mother Myrtle was her name. M.M. some would call her. Mother’s Milk. Some would tease. None of us ever believed that was her real name but she’d insist — even to us children, she’d insist. Fold her palms into a fist and pound on her thighs as she cried, “it is, it is. My name’s Myrtle. Mother Myrtle.”
One of the older kids told me that she was once a nun. That she had submitted to Christ but, after years in the nunnery, felt that the sacrifice was more than she could bear. And thus, she took down her veil and ran, liberated, from that solemn place in the mountains and returned to us mortal men and our mortal ways.
“That’s why they call her Mother. She’s got no kids. Everyone knows she’s got no kids but all the grown ups — your mom, your dad and everyone else — knows that she used to be a nun up there in the nunnery. Married to God, she was. God and no one else.”
She was kind — kind and feckless. Seemingly naive and ignorant to the marauding trickery of boys locked up in a boarding school. Whenever a fight broke out or some kid threw a rock through a window, Mother Myrtle would appear out of some corner or bush with a gentle word of dissuasion from further misbehavior. She never punished anybody and would even protect us from the callused hands and sharp tongue of the proctor.
To this day I recall her face — full with a slender nose and emerald eyes that pierced through the heart of even the most rebellious child. Her dress, ever modest, kept her close to her forgotten days.
“No man would marry a former nun,” I heard one of the older boys say. I wondered why. “If I had a wife,” I thought, “I would want her to be just like Mother Myrtle.”
I bet that when the lights went off and we were all tucked under the sheets, every single one of us dreamt of nothing but Mother Myrtle. Emerald eyes, full face, long skirts and the secret paradise that lay hidden underneath. If not them, then me. If not them, then me.
Oftentimes I wondered if she had similar thoughts — unholy thoughts of the children under her care acting out unholy deeds. Those same thoughts drove me out of my bed and into a bathroom stall where I’d close my eyes and peek into Mother Myrtle’s mind in search of sweet release. May God forgive that young child.
But that was back then. Back when I knew no better.
There were no sirens. There were no uniforms. There were no guns or clubs or handcuffs. Instead, we got two men in black suits driving up to the school in a black car. Behind them was a sedan driven by the parents of one Roger Jules.
“They’re here! They’re here!” One boy screamed as history class was proceeding. With his face pressed against the windows, he brought our attention to the drama unraveling before the pines. Seats were shoved, as were desks and bodies. Despite his attempts, even the teacher couldn’t keep us away.
Roger was a senior. The biggest kid in school. Big and strong and manly in all ways that boys dream of one day being. What we had not known until then was that Roger was man in all the ways that boys would have killed to be. Mother Myrtle knew — rumor was that she helped. But why? Why would his parents…? And the black-suited men…? Why did they come in so hastily to stop a boy from being a man?
Mother Myrtle walked between the two men with Roger’s parents hanging their heads in a confused shame. She turned back — Mother Myrtle. She turned back and for a moment her gaze met mine and I saw. No. I knew that whatever had happened was not her intention. She was sorry. She didn’t mean to have strayed so far from the nunnery. So far from Christ.
I knew it. I knew it.