The birth day of a saint
Maggie was happy to name her baby after a Roman holy woman, but she wasn’t convinced it would make much difference
When Constance Connolly was born, her father Brian said, “Let’s name her for a saint. That way she’ll stay an angel forever.” “You don’t still go in for all that, do you?” asked his wife, Maggie, bringing the screeching newborn to her breast. Constance was their fifth child. Surely Brian could see that no matter what they named this one, she would turn out to be just as defiant as the other four.
Maggie loved babies. Their cotton duckling smell and peach faces, little starfish hands splayed out on her breast while they suckled. This was her divinity, not any church or temple or mosque.
When Maggie cradled a new babe in her arms, she felt all the love in the universe enter her body and radiate out through her skin. She felt goodness and mercy and courage in her belly and in her quiet mind she thought, this must be God.
Brian was indifferent to babies but devoted to the Good Lord. Faith reconciled him to the fact that if the Good Lord deemed contraception a sin then babies were going to come along.
“We’re naming her for a saint, Maggie. Please? We must try to have one good one,” Brian urged, clutching at the only straw he had left.
“Alright,” Maggie murmured, sliding the little girl gently off her breast and pulling her hospital gown shut. “But you’re putting a lot of pressure on the saints. What about Peter? Remember when you named him?” “No, I don’t.” “You said Peter was the rock upon which Jesus built his church.”
Peter was tall and freckled and good at everything that involved a fight.
Last week, he threw several rocks through the window of Rose’s Chip Shop. The irony of this wasn’t lost on Brian, but he wouldn’t give Maggie the satisfaction.
“He’s just bored. There’s nothing for kids to do here.”
“I don’t see any of the other boys smashing windows. He’s a menace, your rock of the church.”
“Well, we shouldn’t have chosen the apostle that denied Jesus three times…” muttered Brian, pulling his phone from his pocket and comforting himself with a sip of cold tea from the hospital trolley and a bite of Maggie’s egg salad sandwich. He shuffled in next to his wife on the bed, stretched out his legs and Googled saints’ names for girls.
Maggie looked at her husband. He was the kindest man she knew. She didn’t hold his devotion against him.
Her own parents were devoted crooks.
Her father was in prison for breaking and entering and her brother rode motorbikes in “high octane spectaculars”. Even her mother was known around town for lewd partying and dallying. They had poured lawlessness down her throat just as Catholicism had been poured down Brian’s. Brian gulped the tonic. Maggie learnt to keep her mouth shut.
Brian and Maggie’s four boys, all keen rock throwers, boxers and amateur stuntmen, took after her lot. Their lust for misadventure was painful, but when Maggie looked at them, she still saw the perfect babies they used to be.
“How about Constance?” Brian asked. He read, “Saint Constance was the daughter of Saint Constantine the Great, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. Despite her noble lineage, she chose to live a devout and virtuous life. She cared for the poor, visited prisoners and dedicated herself to the service of God.”
“Sounds like the life of the party,” Maggie said, swaddling up her new baby like a row of peas and easing herself off the bed to tuck her into the hospital cot.
She thought of her dear dumb dad in prison. She cared for the poor, visited prisoners. It might be nice if one of her children went to visit him. Despite her noble lineage, she chose to live a devout and virtuous life. Perhaps this girl would transcend the lineage of rogues she had come from? Stand up to her big brothers? Show them how to be better?
“Should we call you Constance, sweet pea?” Maggie whispered, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “Do you want that terrible, boring name forever?”
Constance squirmed and scrunched up her nose, a button between two pink apples. On the wall above her clear plastic cot was a framed and faded print of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. Maggie came face to face with it. The portrait touched her like a warm current, deep beneath her skin. She looked into Mary’s eyes, and at her hands holding her baby like a treasure, and she knew that on this minute of this hour of this day, before the world interfered, there was no difference between them at all. That she, Maggie Connolly, was as much a Madonna and her daughter as much a child of God as any mother and babe had ever been.
Maggie shifted her gaze to the tiny saint in the cot, no more than two hours old, and said, “Let’s see what you make of this world, Constance Connolly, and what it makes of you.”
Do you want that terrible, boring name forever?