One afternoon, my mother was beginning her daily ritual—preparing the altar in the living room for the night’s prayers. She had become obsessed with this ceremony ever since the Jesus Via Crucis had appeared on the walls of my bedroom.
It was as if the plaster itself had begun to ache, the images forced out of the very pain of the wall. These were not marks on the surface; they were a part of the house, a holy suffering that had matured inside the stone until it finally pushed through. My bedroom had become a sacred compartment of a cathedral, a place where I slept among the stations of the cross.
The ritual was no longer a private family matter. The neighbors and the people from church were calling her “The Miracle Worker.” She could feel their expectations pressing against our front door, and it fueled her every move.
She was wearing her favorite stay-at-home dress that day—a yellow-turquoise terrycloth dress she wore whenever she wanted to feel comfortable and at ease.
“Ginny, the white cloth,” she said.
I handed it to her first. She spread it across the table with slow, reverent movements, smoothing every wrinkle until the wood was completely hidden. Only then did she lift the statue of the Virgin Mary, positioning it perfectly at the center of the white fabric.
Around her, two of my sisters moved like stagehands. Patty was fixing the prayer candles, her movements efficient and mechanical. Lisa was arranging the flowers—white lilies and orange birds-of-paradise—moving stems back and forth with restless hands. Isa stood in the corner, quiet, watching the performance without a word.
“Mama, can I light the candles this time? You never let me. I know how to do it—”
“Lisa, quiet,” my mother said, though her voice remained gentle. Lisa had that effect on her—hyperactive, curious, impossible to ignore.
Once the altar was set, my mother turned to us.
“Sit on the couch,” she commanded. “I need to talk to all of you.”
She waited until we were lined up, then made the announcement that made my stomach drop.
“You’re not going to school tomorrow,” she said, her face glowing with an excitement like she’d been crowned queen. “Tomorrow morning, the news anchor is coming to our house. We’re going to be on TV.”
She was so proud. So certain. I felt my face go hot.
“Why do we have to be in the interview?” I asked.
“Because you’re my daughters,” she said simply.
“Mom, the kids at school are going to laugh at us! They won’t believe this. They’ll think we’re crazy!” Patty protested.
My mother stood up. This tall, gorgeous woman looked at us with a face transformed by anger.
“Patty,” she said, her voice sharp and certain. “We are special. We are from another planet. Jesus told me. There is nothing to feel embarrassed about. We should be proud. That’s why Jesus chose us—among billions of people on this Earth—he chose us.”
She looked at us with the intensity of a prophet addressing her followers.
“Listen, my daughters,” she began. “You need to know why I am the way I am. I have had so many callings from God since I was a child.”
I looked into her eyes. They were full of the absolute certainty that she had been touched by the divine.
“Before I was even born,” she said, her voice dropping into a hush, “my mother had a dream. An angel appeared and asked her to choose among five different souls waiting to be born. My mother chose one. And when she first saw me, I looked exactly like the angel from her dream.”
“When I was five years old,” she continued, her voice gaining momentum, “I woke up because a light was shining in my eyes. I opened my eyes, and there, hovering above my bed, was the Virgin Mary. She smiled at me with so much love. So. Much. Love.”
A single tear slipped down her cheek.
“And you were five,” Patty said, her voice flat. “How did you know what the Virgin Mary looked like?”
My mother’s face hardened. The softness of the memory evaporated.
“I didn’t decide anything,” she said, her voice sharpening. “I knew. I told you—my mother said no one had visited. But I knew.”
Patty said nothing more. We had seen the flash of anger in her eyes, and the air in the room felt thin, like we were all holding our breath, waiting for the floor to steady. Isa stayed still, quiet, unmoving. Lisa’s face went blank.
My mother stepped back, surveying the altar and us with a satisfied, chilling calm.
“See? We have been blessed,” she said. “God has chosen us. All of you, my daughters, have been chosen because I delivered each of you. You all came from my womb. You’re an extension of myself.”
Part of me wanted to believe her. I wanted the turmoil of our lives to have a divine purpose. But another part of me—the part learning to survive—whispered:
“Chosen” felt like being the bird in a golden cage that someone takes out just to love. It was my mother’s hand holding me, but she was squeezing too tight. She was petting my feathers while I was losing my breath, trapped in a grip that was supposed to be a hug.
If we were just extensions of her, I wondered if my heart beat for me, or if it was just a second heart for her. If we were her extra hands, we had to be perfect. We had to make sure we didn’t drop anything. Because if we failed, it wasn’t just us failing—it was her.
I looked at my sisters. They sat quietly, absorbing it all. None of them dared to question again. Because questioning my mother’s divine connection wasn’t just disagreement.
It was blasphemy.