Abigail Tulenko

Short Fiction

At some point, I came into possession of a prayer card bearing the image of Saint Francis. It’s one of those objects I don’t remember getting; it seems to have appeared out of nowhere, or else I’ve always had it, since I was born, since the womb. It’s gorgeous and glossy, like it’s perpetually covered in a thin layer of dew. Saint Francis smiles a bone-white smile- clean as death. It has his prayer on it, or at least one attributed to him. 

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

courage to change the things I can, 

and the wisdom to know the difference.

The first two requests I think I could manage if only I could get the third part right. I never seem to know how to tell the difference.

The front side of the card cuts off at the bottom, so you have to flip it over to read “courage to change the things I can.” I’ve taken to confiding in Francis. I place it behind my back and flip it randomly, before revealing one side to myself.  I tell myself this is Francis giving me a directive: ACCEPT THE THINGS YOU CANNOT CHANGE or CHANGE THE THINGS YOU CAN. I don’t know yet if this method brings me wisdom.

Me: I feel frightened and tired.

FRANCIS: ACCEPT THE THINGS YOU CANNOT CHANGE.

Me: I don’t have the right to feel so frightened and tired.

FRANCIS: ACCEPT THE THINGS YOU CANNOT CHANGE.

Me: I think I would feel better if I could write something good.

FRANCIS: CHANGE THE THINGS YOU CAN.

Me: But I hate my writing.

FRANCIS: CHANGE THE THINGS YOU CAN. 

Me: I don’t know how to change it, though.

FRANCIS: ACCEPT THE THINGS YOU CANNOT CHANGE.

Me: I have to accept that I can’t know how to change my writing in order to change it? 

Francis smiles at me. I think he might be full of shit.

II. 

 I loved looking at prayer cards when I was a kid; I had a whole collection. They always made the saints so beautiful. Could ugly people be saints? Did being beautiful make you saintly? Or did being saintly make you beautiful? 

 It was when the Word became Flesh that the problem started. The two have nothing in common.

III. 

A crazy-eyed woman stopped me once and asked if I believed in Jesus. She basically threw me a card with a long-haired Jesus who looked like a shampoo ad. I paused and said “maybe” rather thoughtfully and more honestly than I meant to. But I didn’t have time for her to pray over me because I was running late for a hair appointment. I said Jesus would forgive me because, if the prayer card was any indication, the man appreciated hair care. She didn’t think this was funny at all. I walked away sort of shamefully, like I’d disappointed her, and for some reason that mattered to me. Then, I thought about when Mary Magdalene anointed Jesus’s hair and he told Judas to shut up about heaven and let her use up the expensive oils on him. I got kind of incensed. I felt like turning around and telling the woman my dumb joke was actually not a joke at all, and rather proved some biblical point. But I didn’t- because I really was late for my hair appointment and the biblical point simply wasn’t as important to me as avoiding the cancellation fee.

IV. 

The whole family went to go visit my Great-Grandmother in the old home a couple months before she died. It was discussed as a very nice thing we all had to do, and the unspoken reason was that she would probably die soon. She wasn’t sick or anything, just old. When we all showed up in our nice clothes- the type that are so nice they have to be a little uncomfortable out of respect- she looked exasperated with us. Our skin was gilded with tanlines; it betrayed how ready we were to exit into the summer world that awaited us, while she would stay behind in the loud air-conditioning. “What is this, my funeral?” Suddenly the visit felt silly; our motives made transparent, we all felt stupid somehow. 

As we left, an old man handed me a prayer card. I don’t know why he gave it to me. It said “Jesus Loves Me!” in big letters. I didn’t know what to do with it. It was pretty ugly; the font was comic sans and the graphic of Christ was blurry. I had no use for such a thing. But I couldn’t just throw it away. That felt somehow evil. So I carried it around in my wallet impotently for months, and every time I remembered it, I got the same silly feeling I had at the home. 

Months later, I went to a coffee shop in Southern California. Autumn had come and gone and my Great-Grandmother had died, but you’d never know it in the purgatorial heat. When I went to pay for my drink, the barista looked at me like I was crazy. “You don’t take card?” I said. 

She just stared. I looked down to see I’d accidentally held out the prayer card. I’d tried to pay with a little piece of paper that insisted that “Jesus Loves Me!”

V. 

At the beginning of college, I wore a miraculous medal and a scapular. I felt a sense of security in the idea that if I suddenly dropped dead no one with even an ounce of observational skills could doubt I wanted last rites. I had to make it very obvious to these airy liberal arts students. I wasn’t going to church anymore, but there was no way I’d die without the proper ecclesiastical admin. I still wanted soul insurance.

I could tell how fitfully I slept by how tangled the two necklaces were when I woke up. When I was calm they were two parallel streams of gold, morning light sparkling on still water. When I was anxious, they gnarled like the branches of a tree curling around my neck. One night in a hot basement, a boy reached out to untangle it, but his fingers were clumsy and sweating. Instead, his hands on the chain yanked my neck forward. I didn’t like the look in his eyes after that. I told him with a certain bravado that I preferred them tangled, that I’d done it intentionally. I left the party soon after, but I didn’t forget that look.

VI. 

When I was in Florence, I bought my boyfriend a prayer card of Saint Augustine. He’s not a Christian, but he loves that guy. I feel neutral, but I’ve grown to like how Augustine sits on the table and watches us. He’s easy company, quiet yet solid. Sometimes we prop him up to watch a sports game, hoping he’ll pull some strings.

Augustine was there the night we watched shadow puppets on the ceiling. It was a night of friendly shapes and smooth motions. I ice skated on the linoleum floor. I went night swimming in the viscous dark air. The light from the candles fell over us like warm rain. Sometimes its reflection on the glossy card made it seem like Augustine himself was emitting light. I’m still not sure he wasn’t.

VII. 

In my childhood bedroom, I found a prayer card I left in a book to mark a page. The book was the type of frivolously rebellious thing I liked to read at 16. On the back of the card, I’d scrawled “I don’t believe in God.” It was unconvincing. I’d capitalized the G. 

VIII. 

My grandmother has a wall of photos in her house. Two walls actually. A Catholic family can’t fit on just one. There’s a photo of every single one of her thirty two grandchildren and her growing mass of great grandchildren. She has a separate wall for her eight children’s wedding photos- sixteen children now. 

She’s covered one of the wedding photos with a prayer card bearing the image of the Blessed Mother, overlaying the two thin slips of paper in the frame. You can’t see the photo of my uncle and his wife anymore, because she’s covered them with a Mother, veiled them in Motherhood. My first impulse when I saw this was to think of it as an act of erasure. The story is complicated. There are things one might want to erase. Is this love that covers to hide or covers to blanket, to comfort, to shield? Is it both or neither? 

I think about the two papers sometimes, nestled against each other, a son behind the Mother. Both are prayer cards

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Abigail Tulenko is a writer and photographer based in Cambridge MA. She is currently completing her PhD in Philosophy at Harvard.