Page 4 of The Black Table
BE NORMAL, my mind screams at me.
Be normal,my memory screams at me. In my mother’s voice.
For Christ’s sake, Gwenna, do you realize what it’s been like dealing with you? With all this? You’re not special, you’re sick. You’re a sick, sick girl who lashes out for attention and leaves everyone else to sweep up thefuckingashes.
Another inhale. My visions of a cozy mother-daughter Target run, where we laugh and riff on stupid things like shower shoes and minifridges, puffs away like the fog that’s now burning off the campus.
Exhale.
“I must be misremembering,” I mumble. “Never mind.”
My mom says something about that’s what she thought and good luck on my placement exams, but I only half-hear it as I slide off my phone.
The air around me is ringing like I’ve just left a rock concert. The atmosphere feels at once cold and thick, hard to breathe. The student worker girl at the desk is back at her book, but I can tell she’s only fake reading, her ears almost visibly pricked for whatever the weird girl on the emotional phone call is going to do next.
So I do the only thing I can think of.
I run.
I only makeit halfway across the quads before I need to stop and catch my breath.
Crying while running isn’t easy.
Caliburn’s campus is broodingly beautiful, even now with some sunlight fighting through the late-fall humidity and just-turned leaves. Flagstone paths lead to thick-buttressed buildings crowned with crenellated towers; long golden windows that arch at the top reveal glimpses of lecture halls, seminar rooms, bowed heads and gripped pencils. It smells like woodsmoke and dampforest, with a waft of strong black coffee coming from somewhere to my left—Stuart Hall, the Divinity School building, home to Holy Grounds, the coffee shop. That much I remember from the campus tour. Hard to forget, really—I’m a sucker for a pun.
I’d loved Caliburn since I learned of its existence. I tacked brochures to my bedroom walls like pin-up posters, enamored of how it was at once so austere and yet so ludicrous (because surely, it’s impractical to maintain a fully Gothic architecture style when steel and fiberglass and certified green building materials exist).
And now…now I am here. Against all odds, against what my mother would argue is sound judgment.
I am here, and I am amess.
I take a few, slow steps, steadying my breathing, tugging down my sleeves out of habit, scrubbing at my face even as the tears keep flowing. We must be during an instruction block, because there are only a few people scattered outside—a chatting couple on a bench, a lone figure sprinting down a path, messenger bag flying from its shoulder in the scramble for class. I have a map—somewhere, I have it, the registrar tucked it in one of these godforsaken packets—but I don’t want to use it. I want to be a little bit lost right now, to find my way without instruction for once. To settle somewhere and gather my thoughts.
So my feet move of their own volition, my chunky loafers clumping one step after another as I rearrange the papers and folders in my arms lest I drop anything into the mud, and then I see it.
Caliburn Memorial Chapel.
And oh, but it’s breathtaking.
A high-peaked wooden door three times as tall as I am, set inside a carved arch of stone saints and animals frozen in tableaux of good and evil—St. George and his dragon, St. Catherine and her wheel, St. Lucy with her eyes on a platter, like the architect chose only the grimmest and goriest stories to carve into granite.Soaring above it, the steeple, gilded in the pale stream of sunlight with a rose window darkly colored in versicolored glass.
My limbs start to hum as my heart ticks up to a rabbit-quick pulse of excitement. The tears stop, the last few trickling down my cheeks as I stare up in wonder.
No. Gwenna,no.It’s a bad idea. It’s theworstidea, to go in there and plunge myself right into the heart of what could trigger me all the way back to a void of delusions, but it’s the only idea that makes sense right now. The only thing I need: to be in the church and let its calm infuse and overcome me.
And for once, I just want to trust my own judgment.
I push through the doors like I’m claiming sanctuary.
Inside, it’s cold and quiet. Arched windows let in sharp slices of light—some pure blue, some dappled with the candy colors of stained glass—and the air is so still you can see dust motes dancing and spinning like tiny sparks.
And instantly, my whole being settles.
Materially, logically, I know that the air inside this chapel—thiscathedral,really—is no different than the hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen swirling just outside the giant wood doors and massive stone blocks. But somewhere deeper, truer, I know, Ifeel, even if I can’t prove, that there is something charged and different in here. Something vital. Something holy.
My breathing slows, easing the ache in my chest. I sink into a pew, my eyes fluttering shut, and I welcome the reprieve.
I always struggled to believe in God growing up—a less than ideal condition for a Catholic schoolgirl from a nice family, and deeply ironic considering the way the past few months of my life have transpired. I had too many questions, too many edge cases I wanted to stress-test before I committed. Yet I never struggled to be in a church—maybe because they’re the closest you can get to a castle in most of North America.
