Circles

The body was promptly identified as Mary McDonald upon its arrival at XXX Medical in 1984. Sister XXX had picked out the name months in advance. A good common name was needed--the other foster children had been named after saints of a more esoteric pitch: Agnes, Benedict, etc. She had grudgingly allowed that her newborn charge would take the surname of her disgraced unwed mother. She really would have preferred that the honor go to the almost-as-guilty father, but, well, he was nowhere to be found and several embarrassing paternity test results later, it was determined that it would be best for all parties involved that the inquiries be dropped as the financial and emotional funds necessary to test the entire fertile male population of the state were far too costly. Besides, it too was a common enough name. No one would notice.

Twenty years later, doctors at a secret military base stationed outside of Juarez performed a similarly swift identification of the now fully grown female figure. Their nurses, like the nurses of XXX Medical, happily rinsed the desert sand from her skin like superfluous amniotic fluid, dried her gently and coaxed her into consciousness.

***

Like all the children, Mary loved the dark man in the long brown robe, who pretended to visit the school to chat quietly with the teachers, but who really just wanted to play with the children. He was no sooner sighted in the schoolyard than he was covered in the bodies of children in an ecstatic pigpile. But Brother Mark was not all fun and games. He could be very serious--but not in the way that the principal was serious when they were caught copying each other's homework or sticking wet gum underneath a desk. No, Brother Mark was serious in the way your best friend is after she promises to keep your secret. Like a dog or Jesus. Mary never forgot the advice he gave her that one time she spoke privately with him over a particularly gnawing problem.

"Remember," he told her, "as you get older, you will realize that life is composed of many hopelessly complicated dilemmas and that you are right to remain forever in curious humility before them. Interestingly, it is these questions that the fools who run things try to make appear quite simple. And yet, occasionally you will come across an issue that could not be more black and white in its moral implications. People will try to tell you otherwise, but never allow simple matters of right and wrong to be obfuscated."

It was the last time she ever saw Brother Mark. In June of that year he was transferred to the capitol where he took over as head of a Franciscan monastery.