by Natalie Martusciello
Opal worried that she had killed her brother.
No, she hadn’t. She couldn’t have. She remembered looking at the electrical outlet in the bathroom and mentally acknowledging that she had unplugged her curling iron. She even traced her finger along the white plastic of the outlet to make sure that the plug was physically absent and that she wasn’t just imagining it. What if she hadn’t unplugged it, though? Everyday her brother woke up an hour after her bus picked her up; he didn’t need to wake up as early as she did because he attended the local public school, and he rode his bike every morning. What if she left it plugged into the wall, left it turned on, and it caught fire while he was still asleep? The bathroom was downstairs and his bedroom was upstairs; by the time the fire reached him he wouldn’t have time to escape. He would have either burned to death or died from smoke inhalation. Maybe, Opal reasoned with herself, he could have survived if he had jumped out of the window—no, his bedroom faced the backyard, and the lawn was almost entirely covered by cement. He wouldn’t have been able to jump far enough to reach the grass. What if when the bus turned around her corner later that day, she came home to find that her family’s beautiful house had been reduced to ash, nothing more than black debris charred beyond recognition? What if she saw her brother’s lifeless body being carried into an ambulance, dead, killed by his own sister at fourteen years old? What if she had to attend his funeral knowing that he had died because of her carelessness, that his life could have been saved if she had only unplugged her stupid—
The organ bellowed sonorously, snapping Opal out of her morbid daydream. She hadn’t realized that everyone around her was standing.
It was Ash Wednesday, and she sat shivering in the back of her high school’s lavish chapel—whether it was because of the temperature or her anxiety, she couldn’t tell. February on Long Island was as sluggish and dreary as the oppressive heat of an Alabama summer; the bitter cold drained the life out of everybody and everything. Behind the prismatic kaleidoscope of each stained glass window, glowing deep indigo and emerald and radiant crimson, the winter sky was colorless and bleak. Leftover snow from last week’s blizzard had mixed with road salt and dirt and still remained stubbornly on the ground, an ugly pile of brown mush outlining the perimeter of the parking lot.
“You may be seated,” Father Seamus’ raspy voice ricocheted off of each marble wall. Opal sat down again. Next to her was the old statue of the Virgin Mary that hovered watchfully in the corner of the chapel, her paint severely faded and chipped. She held her ceramic hand over her heart and gazed up at the ceiling, her face heavy with grief over the loss of her only son. The tall window behind her illuminated her back with brilliantly colored light, and she shined magnificently, as though she had just descended from Heaven. Father Seamus, the ninety-two-year-old priest who had been celebrating mass at their school since the ‘50s, stood before the altar. He had immigrated from Ireland when he was merely sixteen, and he spoke in an extremely thick, practically unintelligible Irish accent, harsh and choppy. His once milky white skin and bright orange hair had both turned gray, and his wrinkled face resembled the rough grooves of bark. The hump of his back curled ungracefully into the shape of an s that resembled the bishop’s crosier.
Sarah Werner—president of the National Honor Society, the projected salutatorian of their class, and an altar server at her local parish over the weekend—was passing out choral sheet music to everybody. She stumbled awkwardly over legs and feet as she handed each person a piece of paper and maneuvered toward the end of the pew, where Opal was sitting. Her cornsilk hair was wound tightly into one braid that swung against her petite back.
Sarah constantly fawned over Brother Patrick, the blue-eyed twenty-four-year-old theology teacher. Opal could never understand what she liked about him. He was off-putting and intense, cold and callous. His skin was as pale as the Eucharist, his ebony hair the same rough texture as the buckram cover of the pocket Bible that he carried with him everywhere. His pale turquoise eyes were two glassy marbles, icy and devoid of emotion. He looked fake, like an antique china doll, as if his body were attempting to match his inhuman nature. He had the earnest demeanor and intense austerity of an old man despite his young age. Sarah spent an unusual amount of time in his classroom during lunch, though, and obsequiously volunteered to help out at every mass to impress him.
Sarah finally squeezed into the empty space next to Opal and handed her a piece of paper, glancing over her shoulder to where Brother Patrick was seated with the rest of the faculty and smiling brightly.
By now the Thought had completely consumed Opal, spread throughout her entire being like venom. She sat rigidly, her back straightened uncomfortably against the hard surface of the pew, the mahogany wood cold against her skin. Her throat clenched and her eyes brimmed with warm tears, blurring the image of Father Seamus sitting in that cartoonishly large chair next to the tabernacle. She thoroughly analyzed and logically assessed the likelihood of her brother dying in order to determine whether or not it could in fact be true, over and over again. Without even realizing it, she began to nervously fiddle with the corner of her sheet music, her fingers trembling.
“Can you not do that?” an unnaturally high voice perked with feigned kindness.
Opal was suddenly ripped away from her inescapable thought pattern and transported back into reality, as if she had been drowning and someone reached down and pulled her up out of the water. She realized that the voice belonged to Sarah Werner.
Sarah chuckled politely. “It’s just that I have to collect these papers again after mass and give them back to the choir director. I just don’t want them to get wrecked or anything, you know?” Opal could feel Sarah glance down at her hand, her eyes lingering scornfully on the tattered skin and dried blood of her stubby fingertips, chewed raw. Opal’s face turned pink as embarrassment settled within her.
“Sorry, I’m just so OCD, you know?” Sarah rolled her eyes, shook her head, and flicked her hand dismissively, smiling with an unusual sense of pride. “It’s so annoying.” Opal turned to pinching her earlobe, restlessly twisting the cartilage between her thumb and pointer finger until it reddened. She stroked the tiny smooth bow of her opal earring with her thumb to try to calm herself down, remembering when her mother had given the pair to her on her seventh birthday. She had said to Opal with deep admiration, This is what you’re named after. Beautiful, isn’t it? Her mother’s face had glowed almost as brightly as the strange, unique rock that Opal held in her small palm, scintillating and iridescent. This is your birthstone. As Opal inspected the earrings, she marveled at how something with such non uniform coloration could be so beautiful and appealing. It twinkled chaotically, random and unrestrained, like an unworldly and magical substance that her painfully regimented mind could not grasp. Hues of pink and blue and green blended to create something electric and mystifying. She gazed at the stone with both awe and envy.
Opal returned to ruminating. She sat there and thought and thought and thought again until she worried that her heart was beating so quickly it would leap out of her chest. Slowly she felt her control slip away. She choked on her own breath, and her whole body began to shake. She needed to imagine exactly what had happened that morning, play it over and over again in her mind until she was certain that she had in fact unplugged her curling iron, or else her brother would die. If she did not do this, then God would think that she didn’t care enough about her brother’s life, and He would surely take him away from her.
And so the scene played out in her mind repeatedly, like a broken record:
She turned the doorknob and opened the door. She stepped into the bathroom. She plugged in her curling iron and brushed her teeth as she waited for it to heat up. She began curling her hair, accidentally scorching the skin right below her hairline. When she was done, she unplugged the curling iron and stared at it, traced her finger along the warm plastic of the outlet. Left the bathroom, returned to the bathroom, and stared at it some more, traced her finger along the outlet again. Left the bathroom, almost made it to the front door, then returned to the bathroom, stared at it some more, and traced her finger along the outlet again. As she was staring at the outlet, though, the rumbling engine of her bus sounded from down the street, interrupting her ritual, and so she couldn’t be completely sure if she had actually unplugged the curling iron.
She hadn’t even realized that Father Seamus had already begun the homily. She decided to pay close attention to what he was saying to distract herself.
“…wanted to share with you one quote in particular that is of utmost importance to us on this day, one that expresses the symbolic significance of—” he coughed an exasperated cough and breathed heavily, “—the ashes.” He ended the sentence with laborious and strained finality. Although he struggled to speak physically, he faced no mental limitation; he was still sharp as a tack and quite well-spoken for his age, and he usually preached with eloquence and persuasion.
He pulled the Bible out from the interior of the podium and opened it with gnarled arthritic fingers. Although his voice quivered weakly into the microphone, his signature accent remained strong and unwavering.
He paused for dramatic emphasis.
“By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return—Genesis 3:19.” An awful, dull twinge of pain struck Opal like lightning.
This was an unmistakable sign from God, clear as day. It had to be. There was simply no other explanation.
God was trying to tell her that she had killed her brother.
Her brother was dead.
At that moment, an all-consuming guilt fell over her like rain, so powerful that she physically ached. She could feel the guilt twist inside of her stomach and spread throughout the rest of body like an untamable beast that had just burst out of its cage, dangerous and wild.
She wished that she could melt away into nothing, cease to exist. Return to ash.
Father Seamus continued, though Opal did not think she could stand to hear any more. His voice turned sour as cabbage, rotten as sulfur, and he spoke with the startling conviction of some dictator rallying the support of his naive nation. He narrowed his eyes at the audience of children that listened to him intently.
“Let this quote remind each and every one of you that the burning fires of Hell are real. They are real, and they threaten to consume your soul if you stray from the path of Christ during your lifetime. The threat they pose to you is real. Their truth is undeniable, inescapable. Let this quote remind you of the fragility of human life, the fragility of your fate, the uncertainty of your future.
“We often tend to be careless,” he continued, his tone slightly softening, yet remaining stern.
Opal shuddered. Careless. The word echoed in her mind.
“We forget the seriousness of life. We ignore the idea of our mortality. We disregard the impact, the sheer magnitude of every action and every decision that we make, regardless of how insignificant it may seem at the moment.”
Like curling your hair in the morning, something deep inside of her hissed accusingly.
“We forget that everything we do throughout the course of our lives will inevitably determine whether or not God will allow us into His kingdom at the Last Judgement. Especially all of you. At this stage of your life, you may feel invincible. You feel as though you’ll live forever.” He paused. “Well, this is not so. Because—” he breathed another arduous breath, as if the great emotion and vigor with which he preached was tiring him, “—for dust you are and to dust you shall return.”
Opal felt nothing because she was empty now, had hurt to the point of emotional numbness.
“You may be experiencing the world from within your physical body right now, but eventually your body will die, return to dust, and your soul will live on, and…” Opal could not take it anymore. She sucked in an unsteady, quivering breath. Her legs turned to jelly as she attempted to gather the strength to rise from her seat. She felt the way that she did in her recurrent nightmare, the one in which she would want to run, need to run from some unknown, shadowy figure, and she could not move, felt paralyzed. She pushed herself forward and struggled down the marble aisle of the chapel. She could feel the confused glares and judgemental whispers of her peers like the rogue sparks of an enormous wildfire jumping onto her skin, scorching and sharp. She burst through the back door without blessing herself with the holy water—God will probably be mad, piped that thing deep inside of her—and collapsed onto the floor of the hallway.
Earlier that month, Father Seamus had come into their theology class on the Feast Day of St. Blaise to perform the Blessing of the Throats. Everyone in their class had shuffled awkwardly against the chalkboard toward Father Seamus as they waited in line to receive the blessing. He crossed two white taper candles tied with red ribbon in the shape of an x before each person’s throat and said ritualistically, monotone:
“Through the intercession of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat and from every other illness: In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
After blessing Opal, he continued to stare at her contemptuously, his eyebrows furrowed and his lips curled with something that vaguely resembled either slight disapproval or plain disgust. He seemed to be focusing particularly on her ears.
“Opal, is it?” he asked.
Opal deduced that he was referring to her jewelry, not her name. “Yes. It’s my birthstone,” she answered shyly.
“Quite an unfortunate birthstone, I’d say.”
Seamus MacDermott—who grew up in rural Ireland in the 1930s, whose mother used to tell him eerie stories of Irish folklore every night before bed—was an incredibly superstitious man. Later that day, as Opal was walking to lunch, he pulled her into his office and sat her down. He warned her about the evil associated with the opal, the bad luck that it had historically brought upon those who wore it. He said that in Walter Scott’s Anne of Geierstein, Lady Hermione wore an opal clasp. When it was touched by holy water, the stone became dull, and she turned to ash.
“Should consider doing away with ‘em, yeah?” he asked, nodding pointedly at her ears. Now she found herself facing the crucifix that hung on the wall opposite of her, wishing that she had taken his advice.
Opal, who craved symmetry compulsively, practically required it to survive, had once felt alienated from her birthstone, from its irregular pattern and asymmetrical beauty. She now, however, realized that it was part of her and that it always had been, that it defined her existence. Perhaps she was destined to inflict harm upon the people in her life, her loved ones. Perhaps she had been cursed since birth to wreak havoc on the world, to cause death and destruction. Perhapsshe was innately and unavoidably dangerous and evil because of the month in which she was born.
The door creaked open slowly, revealing Brother Patrick. He came and stood beside her awkwardly with his hands clasped, carefully avoiding eye contact.
“Opal? Are…you okay?” he asked, although in his flat, emotionless voice, this sounded more like an unsure statement than an inquiry.
“Yes.”
“Um…okay, then.” There was an awkward silence that lasted at least one minute. He pulled nervously at his clerical collar and brushed something off of the front of his cassock that might or might not have actually been there. Opal bit her bottom lip out of fear that he would notice it quivering.
“Would you like to—” he cleared his throat, “—rejoin us, then?”
Opal stood and followed him back into the chapel with silent acquiescence. She scurried back to her pew, her eyes downcast. She wanted nothing more than to return to her seat, blend in with the sea of gray and navy blue uniforms, unnoticeable.
As soon as she sat down, though, she had to stand back up again to receive ashes. She approached the altar. Father Seamus laid his thumb on her forehead and drew the cross with the ashes, saying aloud:
Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.
Natalie Martusciello is an English major and creative writing concentrator at the College of Charleston. She began writing short stories and poetry at an early age, and her dream is to one day become an author and English professor.