A Toronto Side Street (2022)
Margot was eight years old when she first saw God.
She was sitting in the Cathedral, her eyes heavy from the incense that burned from the thurible.
BY ANASTASIA KATSOUPA
IMAGE BY GREIG SANDERS
Margot was eight years old when she first saw God.
She was sitting in the Cathedral, her eyes heavy from the incense that burned from the thurible. Light refracted through purple stained windows, falling across archways that extended to the ceiling. The Priest spoke in a droning voice and the air took on an orange hue, its warm light like a lullaby. Margot’s attention drifted from the Priest and focused on the wooden bench in front of her, where a splinter had broken off. Eyelids drooping, she stared at it for a moment. When she looked up again, God was there.
The sides of God’s face dissipated into the air around His head. Margot squinted. He was only a hazy mirage, a face that looked as though it were being pulled apart at its edges, with two unfocused and ill-defined smudges for eyes. She closed her eyes tight, then widened them until tears began to form. She kept doing this, waiting for the image in front of her to disappear. God did not leave.
For weeks afterwards, each time she went to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, she waited for His face to appear in front of her through the myrrh smoke that the Priest released into the air.
“I know you,” she whispered.
She sensed that the blurry God in front of her was listening. Lines of smoke revealed His face, and Margot could see behind Him to the stained-glass depictions of crucified Christ on the windows of the Cathedral. The bright hues made God look as though He were bleeding colour.
“Nice to meet you,” she said.
God shifted and shimmered like the heat coming off a road in the summertime.
When the Cathedral emptied, Margot remained seated, looking at the images of Jesus that hung on the wall: paintings of him as a baby and his Holy Mother Mary holding him. Her vision was clear again. God had left her as soon as the doors opened and the smoke released into the mid-morning air. She closed her eyes and tried to picture God once more with a clear mind, but He was gone.
Margot’s father was waiting outside in his twenty-year-old Mercedes, a cup of coffee in one hand and a copy of The New York Times, open to the obituaries, in the other. Wrinkles lined the sides of her father’s mouth and temples. He smiled at her with ocean eyes, identical to her own. Margot turned away. She was still trying to picture the smoky and familiar God, but she couldn’t remember the details of what He looked like without seeing Him in front of her.
“What is it?” her father asked.
A knot formed in the middle of Margot’s stomach. “Why don’t you come to church?”
“I’m an atheist. I don’t believe in God,” he said.
Margot’s heartbeat accelerated. “But non-believers go to Hell.”
Her father’s eyes widened. “Who told you that?”
“Cindy did,” Margot said. “She told me that God only loves those who believe.”
Her father laughed. “I’m not going to Hell.”
“Why not?” she asked.
He tapped the steering wheel. “Your mother would be proud of how committed you are to all this, but you should always challenge absolutism.”
Margot stared at him, and he sighed, “Don’t believe everything they tell you.”
He started the car. Margot didn’t wear a safety belt, because it had broken two years ago, and no one had bothered to fix it. With one hand, she picked at the plastic lining that insulated the window.
“You’ll destroy your fingernails,” her father said.
She kept picking at it anyway.
Since she had first asked to go to church, her father had taken her on the same drive. The road was so familiar to her that when she closed her eyes, she could picture their exact location based on the way that the car was moving.
Her father took his right hand off the wheel and put it on her head. “Kiddo, take your hand off the window sill. It’s ruined enough as it is.”
“We need a new car,” she responded.
Margot didn’t understand why her father kept things until they were falling apart. The other day when she came home from school with a two-inch hole in her baby blue shirt, her father had taken out the sewing kit and patched it up. It didn’t matter that the hole was in the middle of her chest and that everyone would be able to see the stitches. Her father told her to be humble and wear it to school anyway.
He pulled his hand away from her and gestured to the space around them. “I like this car. It’s got character.”
Margot stared ahead, her cheek leaning against the window. The road danced with heat, and she focused on it, hoping that God’s face would present itself. Something moved on the road. She inhaled, ready to greet God.
That’s when her dad yelled, “Christ!” Margot’s head hit the glass hard, and she heard a loud thud. The car came to a stop.
“Did you see that?” he asked her, and immediately opened the car door.
She nodded, even though he wasn’t looking at her. He walked towards the middle of the road. She stared at him through the car window. Was it God? Could her father see Him, too? After a moment, her father crouched down.
Margot opened the car door and made her way to the mound by her father’s feet. It was a turtle, eyes half-closed and head crushed. Her father’s face was red. Margot put her hand on his head.
Her father stood up and went to the car. Margot crouched over the turtle. Its ash-coloured eyes looked out at her. She wrapped her arms tightly around her body.
Once he had parked, her father returned with his coffee. He emptied it onto the gravel and then used the cup to dig a hole in the dirt by the side of the road. Margot pushed her hands into the hole, widening the grave. Her father placed the turtle’s broken body inside and then stood, taking Margot’s dirt-covered hand in his. She began to cry and kept her eyes turned downwards, fixated on her Velcro pink Powerpuff Girls shoes.
In the car, Margot started to pick at the plastic by the window and then stopped. She thought of the dead turtle and remembered her father telling her to not touch the window, his hand on her head, and the wheel momentarily empty as he looked towards her. She knew that the turtle dying was her fault.
At home, her dad iced the small bump that had formed on her head. He kissed her forehead.
Margot looked at the ground. “Why does God allow bad things to happen?”
She had asked same question to her teacher at the Holy Mary Catholic Elementary School, the same school Margot’s mom had attended when she was a kid.
Margot couldn’t remember her mom anymore, but her father said that she always asked lots of questions too, and this made Margot feel like they would have been good friends. Margot’s actual friends never asked about God or religion. They told Margot to talk less in class, since they couldn’t go to recess until no one raised their hand when the teacher asked if anyone had a question.
Margot’s teacher hadn’t seemed frustrated by her curiosity. He had told her that God gave all people free will. If someone used that free will to do something evil, it was part of God’s design. But Margot didn’t like that explanation. God should protect all living creatures from pain and suffering.
“Remember that documentary we watched?” her father asked.
Margot nodded. “About the lions.”
“Yes,” he said. “Almost like God, the filmmakers were in a position from which they could watch everything that was happening, even stop it. But that would be wrong, because the lion eating the gazelle is part of nature. So, if you were to believe in God, you could say that God watches and that God is good, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that God wants to intervene.”
“What about Mr. Turtle?” Margot asked. “Why did God let him die?”
“It was the turtle’s time,” her father said. “I imagine that God, if he existed, had a reason for needing the turtle to die. Maybe the turtle wanted to die. Or maybe if the turtle didn’t die, something far worse would have happened.”
Margot nodded, tears filling her eyes. She focused on her father, and his head seemed to float in front of her. His blue eyes filled her vision.
She couldn’t sleep that night. The turtle kept appearing in her dreams. Could they have just driven past it? Her father’s words echoed in her ears. “Something far worse would have happened,” he had said. How did he know that? Had he purposefully hit the turtle? Maybe he could have swerved the car to avoid the turtle. But he didn’t, because if he had, their car would have tipped over, spun on its head. Margot saw her body crushed under the door, the plastic lining of the window dangling in her eyes, and the turtle walking past her. Something far worse. So, it wasn’t an accident.
She got out of bed and went to the kitchen. Standing with a glass of water in her hand, Margot heard her father speaking. She moved towards the sound until she was standing outside of his bedroom door. With one ear placed to the door, she listened.
“She might be too young to understand,” he said.
Margot held her breath. What wouldn’t she understand? The image of God came to her again. Did her father know something about God that Margot didn’t?
Her father’s feet shuffled toward the door. “Maybe one day.”
Margot ran back to her room, water spilling over the glass and onto her nightdress. She placed the glass on the floor beside her bed and settled into the covers. Her father was hiding something from her. Something that would hurt her. She looked at the ceiling, illuminated from the nightlight by her door. He had said that God chose not to intervene in the course of nature, because He gives all creatures free will. Her father’s footsteps creaked from the other room, and Margot held her breath. If he had let the turtle die because he knew that something worse would happen, and because he didn’t want to interfere in the course of the turtle’s life...then her father was acting like God. But he was an atheist.
Then again, maybe God didn’t exactly know who He was either. And this made a lot of sense, because to a little ant, Margot might seem like an all-knowing and powerful being. Maybe the ant would even wonder why Margot let other people step on it. Or the ant might pray to Margot for protection and interpret its good luck as Margot being happy with it, its misfortunes as Margot expressing displeasure. She had power over the ant, the same way that God had power over humans. The noise from the other room stopped. Margot swallowed. Maybe, like her, God was just confused, watching from above, wondering what to do, and thinking, “Why do I exist in the first place?” In fact, God might even be an atheist, just like her father was.
Margot closed her eyes, an idea forming in her mind. Her father had a secret. He had chosen to hit the turtle as it crossed the road, because the turtle had free will. And he knew that something worse would happen if he swerved. He was an atheist, not because he didn’t believe in God, but because he was God, and God would know more than anyone that there is no such thing as an all-knowing and all-powerful being. Even God had His insecurities.
If anyone were to find out, her father wouldn’t be able to live with Margot anymore. Worshippers would take Him, and He would be asked to act as a judge for the entire world’s problems. Margot had to keep the truth a secret.
That Sunday, at the Cathedral, when the Priest brought out the thurible and smoke filled the air, Margot no longer hoped to see the blurry God before her. She felt more awake than she had in a long time, and no amount of smoke could lull her into a trance.
She sat on the edge of the wooden bench, her back straight. Her eyes moved across the Cathedral, away from the Priest. She watched the sides of the church, where images of Jesus hung on the walls. There, worshippers walked with slow steps, gazing at paintings, sometimes pausing for a moment. A woman kissed Christ’s image. Margot smiled. One day, people would kiss her painting too.
The floating God did not appear again, but now Margot had something much better. At home, she listened to the instructions of God, and each night, God tucked her into bed.
Anastasia Katsoupa is a creative writer and researcher who graduated from the University of Toronto with high distinction. When not writing, Anastasia is often out in nature, reading, sketching, and documenting the world around her. She is currently working on her second novel, Sugar Bread, through Humber’s Creative Writing program.
Image: A Toronto Side Street
Edited for publication by Irene Spiridanov, as part of the Professional Writing and Communications Program.
HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.