Becoming Leidah

by Michelle Grierson

You remind them of what they used to believe in. Before Christians decided that everything is full of sin. That the devil invented anything pleasurable.” He sneered. “Guilt is just desire. Dressed up in a wolf suit.”

“The eldest Sister spun the red thread of what had come before. The middle Sister held that thread, weaving what was becoming with every passing second. The third Sister—the veiled one, the one without eyes—wielded the sharpest scissors, unravelling and cutting what needed to come to an end. All of this happened simultaneously, time overlapping itself.”

They are all one and the same. It is the folly of men to believe one is different from the other, or more right.” She reached for the stale bun, ripping it in half. She held a piece out, offering it to the woman. Maeva refused, then slid down the wall to sit beside her. “The question is not which god. God is God. Male, female, spirit, animal—all of it, part of God. The more pressing questions are: What man is in front of me? What story must I tell in order to appease the ignorant?”

He addressed the women. “I trust that you have sent blessings and well wishes to Maeva, with sengemat, fløtegrøt, kjæring suppe?” It was a perk of new motherhood—a basic expectation—to be fed by the neighbourhood women in the first week of a baby’s birth.

“Not knowing how it will turn out—whether our lives might actually change for the better—this keeps us going. To begin again, to have another chance. That is the glimmer of hope inside all the chaos and knots.”

As much as I can I imagine. I am more. My mother’s hair and skin sleep inside me. Her strength, woven and stitched into my eyes, my arms, my legs, my heart, my toes, my fingers, my belly, my blood. My web. Mamma is the thread between all of the shapes that make up me.