Miranda Lynn Carter received a good-willed gift. It was a thick red sweater from a home catalog. Thank God! She thought. It was a sinister season after all. The winds would howl and sneer, and the snow engulfed the terrains. The poor girl was prone to colds and chills, sensitive to noise and touch. Her environment had always been unforgiving.
Miranda Lynn was spotted at St. Peter’s Church in red. She sat in the second row, left of the gospel choir thirty minutes before Mass. From a distance, she looked thick and stocky. She kneeled and lowered her head, praying with all the conviction and valor she had. Miranda Lynn prayed the same way she confessed: repeated words she’d memorized as a child, and listed the things afterward. A chilling silence followed her Amen! She began to feel a cool scratch on her throat.
When people trickled into the parish, Miranda Lynn froze! She looked at the tall man, the fat woman, the young babe, and wanted to cry. She felt their stares against her skin. A chill trickled down her spine. She looked up at the Crucifix for confirmation, for signal, for warmth, but alas, Miranda Lynn simply clutched her sweater. Her eyes darted away. She glanced to the right and to the left, upwards and downwards, until they landed on the cruel pillars blocking the altar. A truly gruesome sight! Just then, the gospel choir sang a hideous noise. They beckoned and screeched, signaling the congregation to stand for the procession. When Miranda Lynn stood up with them, she felt a certain dizziness and an unyielding chill. Her hands were totally blue!
From the lonesome pew bench, Miranda Lynn endured the Pastor’s dry voice, who read the Gospel hauntingly. How guilty she felt thinking this (God was forgiving). The Pastor’s tongue delivered a frost throughout the room. It reached between the knits of her sweater and gnawed at her bones. Miranda Lynn felt absolutely immobile. Her head throbbed, and panged, and hammered. Her eyes were dry from the wind. Her ears were mute. Nothing could halt this icy hail! Miranda Lynn could not move her arms nor crane her neck. She could not shrink into her sweater. There would be no absolution for her today. While she kneeled in irritation, the only thing Miranda Lynn could hope to do was clutch her fists together and wait. They never told Miranda Lynn how suffocating it was to wait a whole life.
The Pastor rose and presented the unleavened bread. Miranda Lynn could not look at the Pastor in the face. She averted her eyes once more to the tall man, the fat woman, and the young babe. She felt most sorry for this young babe–a truly poor lamb! Miranda Lynn found it all unfair: the child would spend its entire life looking up. The howl of a million winds blew through the chapel. The lamb wept.
When Miranda Lynn was released, she noticed an ooze dripping from her palm. How good it felt, she thought, to unshackle her spirit. Next Sunday and thereafter, Miranda Lynn Carter returned to St. Peter’s and rinsed her stained nailbeds under hot water and waited.
