Fire
I sat in Mrs. Mcintosh’s first-grade class, a gap-toothed five-year-old. Mrs. Mcintosh wore her white hair pulled back in a bun as big as an apple. She assigned each of us a number according to the alphabetical order of our last names. My number was thirteen and I was secretly pleased with it.
We were drawing mountains. All the children in class except me drew mountains with beautiful white snowcaps. Mrs. Mcintosh picked up each child’s drawing as she talked about what we would see and feel and hear if we climbed the mountains. First the leaves on the trees would get smaller and smaller as we climbed up and up. Then there would be only pine trees, with their still, green needles. Slowly, the gray rocks would appear, only a few at first, then they would outnumber the tall pines. We would begin to notice the sound of the wind. When the trees all fell away we would continue our cold climbing and thank our mothers silently for giving us warm coats. Suddenly there would be snow and ice, and we would be standing on a glacier at the very top of the mountain.
When she got to the top of the mountain, Mrs. Mcintosh was standing in front of me looking at my snowless drawing. I had been following her, climbing that mountain with her. But when I got to the top, it was warm. My mother never gave me a coat. I could not understand why the top of the mountain would be cold. I asked Mrs. Mcintosh, “Why is there snow on top of the mountain? If I climb to the top I get closer and closer to the sun.” Mrs. Mcintosh paused and looked at me oddly. “Well, it’s just not that much closer to the sun, is it?” she said. And she would not answer any more of my questions that day.
Air
I started the religious training of catechism. One day we were learning about praying. The teacher read to us and showed us how to fold our hands together. At one point, she stopped reading and said, “Of course, you don’t have to pray with your hands folded. You can hold your hands far apart, opening your arms as if you wanted to give God a hug. Or you can hold them any way you want.” I was particularly taken with this idea about hands.
The very next Sunday in church, I folded my hands and prayed like everyone else for a while. But, when I thought no one was looking, I spread my hands apart just a bit, still keeping my elbows glued to my sides. My hands softened and started tingling and it felt as though I were holding a ball of electric air. I thought, “That’s God talking to me!” Then my mother looked down and slapped my hands. She knew how to pray and I was her daughter.
Water
One summer, I decided that I needed to talk to God. I was old enough to know I should tell no one. Every morning I got on my bicycle and drove a mile to the church for 7 o’clock mass. I knelt and stood and recited all the words, one by one. I knew that if I went every day, God would come down and speak to me. I did this for three months, the whole summer.
At mass, during the week, it was always only I and an odd gray-haired woman dressed in black. The priest always said the mass at lightning speed but one morning, when the gray-haired woman leaned over and dozed, the priest stopped in the middle of the mass and did something just for me. He never said he was doing it for me, but I knew. He sat down on a step, tilted his head to one side, and told me a real story. Jonah and the Whale. I liked it that God was there and listened, even in the middle of the ocean, even inside the belly of the whale. I was glad that God heard Jonah crying out. That night I dreamed I lived inside a whale. In the dream, I stayed up all night and all day praying in the belly of that whale until God commanded the whale to spill me out onto dry land. Like Jonah.
The end of the summer came and God was still silent. He had not heard me talking in that church day after day, so I stopped going. I prayed to God in my dreams.
Earth
It was spring and I was eight years old. I wanted more than anything to see a butterfly come out of a cocoon. I spent hours searching for cocoons. It seemed that every neighborhood kid but me could find them. Then, one afternoon I was walking alone and I saw one on the ground. It was so rough looking I almost mistook it for a piece of wood. It fit perfectly between my hands.
I took this cocoon home and put it on my dresser. Each day, I would hold it in my hands and make my body very still, trying to feel the butterfly moving inside. Then I would hold it up to my ear and listen carefully. Sometimes I spoke to it like a friend.
One day the cocoon hatched. But there was no butterfly. Instead, hundreds and hundreds of baby praying mantes spread across my dresser top and marched down the side. I looked around desperately. Scooping them up with pieces of paper, I layered them carefully in the box that my new shoes had come in. Then I took them out to the garden where I scattered them like blessings onto all the trees and plants. After I finished I stood for a long time, watching. They really do pray.
These stories originally appeared in the Washington Review.
