FICTION
Mariamne Wept
A modern retelling of the hagiography of St. Mariamne, sister of the Apostle Philip.
Kali shoved Mariamne into the stall and then slid in herself. She closed the door and pressed her shoulder into it as if expecting some kind of outside challenge. Eye to the space between the partition and the door, she watched the last gaggle of girls leave the bathroom. Giggles and whispers and footsteps scattered down the hallway like blown away leaves, leaving a sterile quiet in the air.
Trapped, Mariamne surveyed the partition’s graffiti above Kali’s head and noted the red permanent marks of several different authors: KM is a scumbag; KM is a slut; Kali xxxxx. This last word was crossed out with black slashes so that it looked like a dirty wound.
Mariamne’s glance moved down to her captor and slowly followed the curves of two inked snakes clinging to Kali’s neck like a collar. To Mariamne, it looked like the snake closest to her was whispering in Kali’s ear, its little tongue forked and flicking.
Kali turned towards Mariamne and a razor-like telson of a newly tattooed scorpion came into view. She leaned in close, and her “what-are-you-looking-at” was humid on Mariamne’s face.
“I’m looking at your snakes.” Mariamne shifted her stance backward, squaring her back to the rear wall of the stall. “They seem to be moving.”
Kali relaxed a bit and laughed. “Ya, pretty awesome, eh? And this little guy”—she touched the raised and puffy scorpion with two fingers— “he’s coming along nicely.”
“He looks infected.”
“Ya, whatever.” Kali paused, licked her lips, then tapped her top and bottom front teeth together as if trying to bite something. “So, listen here, you need to tell your brother and his friend to shut up. Next time they’re gonna get it.” A ripple of energy ran through her torso and the snakes shifted position.
“Philip and Bart do what they do.”
“You don’t get it. I’m serious. If they don’t back off, people are gonna grab them. And then they’re gonna hang them from their feet. And then they’re gonna hurt them. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Mariamne didn’t answer. She glanced down at the porcelain toilet, at the white ceiling reflected in the water, at the unraveling roll of white toilet paper, at the white square tiles of the floor. Finally, her eyes rested on the intersections between the squares, all the gray lines of grout, all the little crosses at her feet. “Philip and Bart speak facts. They do what they’re called to do.”
Kali snorted. “Ya, and you’re just like them.” Kali paused and considered her prey. With her index finger on Mariamne’s chest, she jabbed as she punctuated each word. “You are full of crazy, wack talk.”
“Yes, crazy for those who are perishing,” Mariamne replied quietly as she traced an intersection of the tile with her right foot. She repeated the gesture two more times.
Without warning, Mariamne became as if a flame to Kali. The snakes on Kali’s neck writhed and hid their heads. They buried themselves beneath her shirt seeking relief from the heat. The scorpion—its stinger raised red with rage—twitched and flinched and fell to the floor. The snakes slid from Kali’s sleeves, dropped to the tiles, and slithered out of view.
Her gods dispersed, her skin flushed bare, Kali punched Mariamne in the stomach and fled.
Sinking to the tile, caught in the crosses, Mariamne wept.
Maura H. Harrison is a writer and photographer from Fredericksburg, Virginia. She is currently an MFA candidate at the University of St. Thomas, Houston.
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Photo: Mariamne the sister of the Apostle Philip, Wlbw68, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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