Selected Excerpts

Galatea

Karen Brown
Crazyhorse

I married William in upstate before he turned out to be the Collegetown Creeper. I took his last name and became Margaret Mary Bell. I was named after my father’s aunt, who was a novice with the Benedictine sisters of Regina Laudis, in Bethlehem, Connecticut, when she died on the turnpike with three other sisters, all on their way back to the convent after a retreat. I often imagined them driving in a sky-blue sedan with the windows down and the bright sun on the hood. The air on their faces is cool and smells of cut grass. It catches in their wimples, invades the seams, and soothes their scalps. Their habits flap. They have the radio on, and the Searchers sing “Love Potion Number Nine,” and they laugh. They are young women, wedded to God. Their mouths open and drink in the sun and the wind. Under the black fabric their bodies surge in secret, betraying their vows. Sometimes I wanted to be pinioned in that faith, in the rules of their love. I felt my heart drawn out in wild longing with the words: devotion, ecstasy, rapture, and bethrothal.