The first tears broke through without sound. They ran onto the cotton skirt I wore. I bent forward in an effort to stop the sobs. When the force I held back became painful, I sat up and let the grief-bellow loose against the walls of the stone chapel.
This grief wasn’t mine, I was sure, and so I felt little shame in the way it poured from me, through my mouth and eyes. I’d asked the Madonna to give me something and it made sense she would off-load a fraction of the suffering she was forced to absorb day after day. The two backpackers moved up and sat on either side of me. The long-plaited one took my hand. I had the sense she was used to crying women—in public toilets, on the steps of monuments, in town squares after midnight. Over the next quarter hour, my sobs slowed and I could see, between bouts, how almost no one in the chapel paid me any mind. Except Dawn, whose blazing fury lit her body from within. She sat in a front pew, glaring.
I patted the backpacker’s hand and said, “Thank you,” to which she replied, “No problem,” and left with her companion. When I stood, Dawn did too. We moved toward the door at the same time, but I let her pass before me and followed her to the wall of votives where she lit her candle. “Do you want to go down and see the cave?” I asked, as we stepped back into the sunshine. The Black Madonna had been found there sometime during the Middle Ages.
“I think I’ve had enough for one day. I know you have,” Dawn said.
“Dawn. I’m sorry,” I said. “I couldn’t help it.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you could help it. But you had to show everybody how much she touched you.”
“No one here knows us. Who would I be showing?”
“It’s like those women who cry over police beatings and shootings at schools a thousand miles from them. You’re so moved, good for you.”
“I’m not.”
“God, at least have the decency to be awed.”
Here, Dawn walked ahead, clutching her elbows. Her back was soaked in sweat and I could see the outline of thong underwear and dimpled fat through her shorts. She charged toward the funicular that would take us further up the mountain, to see the monastery from above.