BEAUDELAINE PIERRE

PARABLE OF THE CIRCUS

Consider the following: 

I forced my son to ride to church 

with me,

a fine Sunday morning of worship services, 

untouched, yet, 

waiting for rest in a viral show of hopelessness. Our COVID-19 

isolation was too much to bear. 

It reached its peak the time 

city churches with much noticed vacant seats were slowly opening up their door 

in the heat of summer 2021. 

My daughter used my credit card in 

ordinary unnoticed pleasures, 

and my son met his friends only in Fortnite wars,

We needed help.

Last time I was at a church service and shall I say, 

some American version of it, 

the worship service, a group discussion, 

was battling the question 

“Have you ever doubted God?” 

in the lit candles of the Sabbath 

I have I said loudly, 

from a bare and steadfast soul, 

and from a certain pride, 

the gray shadow covering my soul. 

A big mistake, a sin, 

I quickly realized. 

The churchgoers haven’t. 

Churching I sighed wasn’t my thing. 

Just so, 

to see myself too ambiguous and too impure to instantly clean up for God or 

make it on time to church or 

to understand the right language. 

The language touch and felt from naked hearts can reach its end.

That morning my son and I returned to church 

I was giving myself away to the duality of things, 

their double edges and yang and yin, 

and to the cohabitation of light and blackness. 

On our way I warned my son whose vigil oil runs down madness like: 

the church is outdoor. 

I don’t care he screams, 

Nothing I hush back. 

Our morning enterprise was a diktat, after all. 

An usher standing at the main entrance, 

the church’s ordinary cornerstone and in the moment untouched, ushers: 

Take the next right, 

that she accompanies with a cheerful okay sign. 

A scream of another sort I returned with beatitude. 

I was burning out the pride, 

greeting the church’s boundless ark, vault, and scents. 

I finally packed the car in a corner of the church’s parking lot, 

asked my son, wait a minute, and

towards the usher I walked: 

where’s the worship service? 

We just have to walk straight from the parking lot and, 

she added in flux, 

near the food distribution area. 

I didn’t know there was a party. 

As my son and I found our way to the church service, 

I noticed a not so strange play of circumstances: 

jumping castles, inflatable trampolines standing up 

and performers rolling one-wheeled cycles, 

all of that lightening the outdoor. 

Like a lit candle of its own, 

my son suddenly voiced something I was painfully trying to contain inside my chest: 

isn’t this a circus show?

Equally unexpected

from the bright and jovial atmosphere, 

the worship team raises their voice, 

pure and humble and un-circuited above the fake castles, 

“Here I am to worship, Here I am to bow down,” 

a viral reminder 

no matter the circus show, we were at church.

We landed on our seat my son and I six feet apart and 

in between us, 

the notice of a young man as dark as dark charcoal standing tall and shoulders up in the middle

of the assembly. 

He is calmly pacing and lightning up the space like 

he was le maître des lieux. 

My son in his corner cloaked his face in his hoody on this bright summer day. 

May the young man shine on him! 

Truth be told, halfway through the worship service

my son stood up to walk his way, 

head down though, 

towards the party stand for a bottle of water, 

something out of his ordinary. 

The bright young man, 

tall as a castle and as dark as my son, 

was by this time dragging his feet here and there for all to see 

and holding in his fingers a screaming bag of hot Takis. 

The young lord lost his grace from being le maître des lieux 

to a light that has gone turbulent and too bright and very quickly flailing. 

I looked at my son, 

a sort of splendid torch, 

a clear and placid light I got hold of and, 

for the moment, my soul to rest. 

This is the irony of loss, of search, 

of hopelessness: a brief candle can disclose our end very quickly, 

and darkness, 

the shortness of our light.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Beaudelaine Pierre, journalist, scholar, and novelist, writes about her native Haiti and her adopted Youwès. She is the author of You May Have the Suitcase Now (New Rivers Press, 2021); and also, previously, of Testaman (Bon Nouvèl, 2002), La Négresse de Saint-Domingue (Harmattan, 2010), and L’enfant qui voulait devenir président (Harmattan, 2012). She is the co-editor, with Nataša Ďurovičová, of the trilingual anthology How to Write an Earthquake / Comment écrire et quoi écrire / Mou pou 12 Janvye (AHB, 2011). Her essay “I Live Under TPS” is featured in Unbound: Composing Home edited by Nayt Rundquist (New Rivers Press, 2022). Pierre is the 2022-2024 College Arts and Humanities Institute Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University Bloomington.