Gordy laughs and says, ‘What is this, Eve? You want to go swimming?’
Luanne shushes her with her finger to Gordy’s lips. Luanne has not had a seizure that lasted more than a few seconds since Eve placed her thumb to the nape of her neck.
Abigail says, ‘What shall we do then?’
Eve says, ‘Then God will show us what She wants of us.’
And this ‘She’ is a new teaching, and very shocking. But they understand it, each of them. They have been waiting to hear this good news.
The girls wade out into the water, their nightgowns and pyjamas sticking to their legs, wincing as their feet find sharp rocks, giggling a little, but with a holy feeling that they can see on one another’s faces. Something is going to happen out here. The dawn is breaking.
They stand in a circle. They are all up to their waists, hands trailing in the cold, clear brine.
Eve says, ‘Holy Mother, show us what you want of us. Baptize us with your love and teach us how to live.’
And each of the girls around the circle suddenly feels their knees buckle under them. As if a great hand were pressing on their backs, pushing them down, ducking their heads into the ocean to rise up, water fountaining from their hair, gasping and knowing that God has touched them and that this day they are born anew. They all fall to their knees in the water. They all feel the hand pressing them down. They all know for a moment that they will die here under the water, they cannot breathe and then when they are lifted up they are reborn.
They stand in the circle, wet-headed and amazed. Only Eve remained standing, dry in the water.
They felt the presence of God around them and among them, and She was glad. And the birds flew above them, calling out in glory for a new dawn.
There were around ten girls in the ocean that morning to witness the miracle. They had not been, before that moment, leaders in the group of five dozen young women dwelling with the nuns. They were not the charismatic ones, not the most popular, or the funniest, or the prettiest, or the cleverest girls. They were, if anything drew them together, the girls who had suffered the most, their stories being particularly terrible, their knowledge of what one might fear from others and oneself particularly acute. Nonetheless, after that morning, they were changed.
Eve swears those girls to secrecy about what they have seen; nonetheless, the girls cannot but pass it on. Savannah tells Kayla, and Kayla tells Megan, and Megan tells Danielle that Eve has been speaking with the Creator of all things, that she has secret messages.
They come to ask for her teachings.
They say, ‘Why do you call God “She”?’
Eve says, ‘God is neither woman nor man but both these things. But now She has come to show us a new side to Her face, one we have ignored for too long.’
They say, ‘But what about Jesus?’
Eve says, ‘Jesus is the son. But the son comes from the mother. Consider this: which is greater, God or the world?’
They say, for they have learned this already from the nuns, ‘God is greater, because God created the world.’
Eve says, ‘So the one who creates is greater than the thing created?’
They say, ‘It must be so.’
Then Eve says, ‘So which must be greater, the Mother or the Son?’
They pause, because they think her words may be blasphemy.
Eve says, ‘It has already been hinted in Scripture. It has already been told to us that God came to the world in a human body. We have already learned to call God “Father”. Jesus taught that.’
They admit that this is so.
Eve says, ‘So I teach a new thing. This power has been given to us to lay straight our crooked thinking. It is the Mother not the Son who is the emissary of Heaven. We are to call God “Mother”. God the Mother came to earth in the body of Mary, who gave up her child that we could live free from sin. God always said She would return to earth. And She has come back now to instruct us in her ways.’
They say, ‘Who are you?’
And Eve says, ‘Who do you say that I am?’
Allie says in her heart: How am I doing?
The voice says: You’re doing just fine.
Allie says: Is this your will?
The voice says: Do you think a single thing could happen without the will of God?
There’s going to be more than this, sweetheart, believe me.
In those days there was a great fever in the land, and a thirst for truth and a hunger to understand what the Almighty meant by making this change in the fortunes of mankind. In those days, in the South, there were many preachers who explained it: this is a punishment for sin, this is Satan walking amongst us, this is the sign of the end of days. But all these were not the true religion. For the true religion is love, not fear. The strong mother cradling her child: that is love and that is truth. The girls pass this news from one, to the next, to the next. God has returned, and Her message is for us, only us.
In the early morning of a day a few weeks later, there are more baptisms. It is the spring, near to Easter, the festival of eggs and fertility and the opening of the womb. Mary’s festival. When they come from the water, they do not care to hide what has happened to them, nor could they if they tried. By breakfast, all the girls know, and all of the nuns.
Eve sits under a tree in the garden and the other girls come to talk to her.
They say, ‘What shall we call you?’
And Eve says, ‘I am only the messenger of the Mother.’
They say, ‘But is the Mother in you?’
And Eve says, ‘She is in all of us.’
But even still the girls begin to call her Mother Eve.
That night there is a great debate between the nuns of the Sisters of Mercy. Sister Maria Ignacia – who, the others note, is a particular friend of that girl Eve – speaks in favour of the new organization of beliefs. It is just the same as it’s always been, she says. The Mother and the Son, it’s just the same. Mary is the Mother of the Church. Mary is the Queen of Heaven. It is she who prays for us now, and at the hour of our death. Some of these girls had never been baptized. They have taken it into their heads to baptize themselves. Can this be wrong?
Sister Katherine speaks of the Marian heresies, and the need to wait for guidance.
Sister Veronica hauls herself to her feet and stands, straight as the true cross, in the centre of the room. ‘The Devil is in this house,’ she says. ‘We have allowed the Devil to take root in our breasts and make his nest in our hearts. If we do not cut the canker out now, we shall all be damned.’
She says it again, more loudly, casting her glance from woman to woman in the room: ‘Damned. If we do not burn them as they burned these girls in Decatur and in Shreveport, the Devil will take us all. It shall be utterly consumed.’ She pauses. She is a powerful speaker. She says, ‘I shall pray on it this night, I shall pray for you all. We will lock the girls in their rooms until dawn. We should burn them all.’
The girl who has been listening at the window brings this message to Mother Eve.
And they wait to hear what she will say.