The Second Coming of Christa

"What rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

-WB Yeats

***

It was spring when Cousin Abbra announced she was pregnant, and the baby was due December 24. Furthermore, she insisted that she was still a virgin, and that the pregnancy was a miracle.

And the father, she said, was Satan.

Aunt Ann believed her. So did the rest of the family, except maybe for Christabella. Months later, lying on her new dorm room bed and talking to Uncle Sidney about it, Christa picked her words carefully:

"Of course I'm happy for her, Uncle Sid," she said, peering around to make sure her roommate wasn't nearby. "Abbra will make a great mom. It's just, you know, what she says about the father. Are we sure she's...all there?"

"Don't be presumptuous, Christabella," Uncle Sid's voice said on the other end of the phone. "You know what is written as well as anybody:

'That he shall come up from Hell and beget a child of mortal woman—'"

"

'And he shall overthrow the mighty and lay waste their temples,'

right, I know," Christa said automatically.

And she did know, since Mom and Aunt Ann had taught her and Andrew and their cousins all of it since before they were old enough to even speak.

Uncle Sid continued: "Well if you know then why should you be surprised to learn that it's happened? Our Lord keeps his promises."

Rolling over on her mattress, Christa groped for words. "I'm not surprised, exactly. It's just...I guess I always thought of that stuff as, you know, abstract. Religion, not life. See what I mean?"

Uncle Sid made a disapproving sound. "Don't let Ann or your mother hear you talking like that. In fact, don't let me hear you talking like that again either: Religion is very much real life. Especially for people like us."

Christa sighed. "Yes Uncle Sid."

"An incredible thing has happened to your family, visited on us personally by Our Lord."

"Yes Uncle Sid."

"I know they're filling your head with all sorts of nonsense at that college now, but don't for a minute forget where you come from."

"Yes Uncle Sid," Christa said, resigning, and that was the last time she dared bring it up.

What could she say to make anybody understand? All of it was one thing when she was back home—Our Lord, the family, Cousin Abbra and her visions. All things Abbra had been raised on since the day she was Unbaptized.

But here at school, surrounded by people who'd led ordinary lives, never been to the Black Mass or sung the Hymn to Tchort, and who wouldn't have the first idea what Christa was talking about if she even brought it up—how to explain to someone like Mom or Uncle Sid or even Andrew how unreal everything about home seemed to her now?

This, of course, was why nobody in the family had wanted her to go to college in the first place.

"You can do whatever you like, of course," Mom had said a million times. "

Do as thou wilt

, like always. But you'll find that the outside world is not a place for people like you and me."

"I know, Mother," Christa had said at the time. "But just this once I want to see for myself."

And Mom had shaken her head and said, "If you believe me, why do you want to see it?"

Her tone told Christa that her mother already considered it a lost cause and believed that Christa would have to try and fail before giving in, and thus Christa had won the argument by default.

Try as she might, Christa had always been the white sheep of the family.

The worst part was discovering that Mom and Uncle Sid and everyone else who tried to warn her had been right, or at least partially so: The people she was meeting her first semester were from a different world. Even when they were friendly, Christa felt like she was talking to everyone from the other side of a thick pane of glass.

One night she found herself confessing some of this to her roommate, Terry.

"So you're family's really religious huh?" Terry said, the faint whiff of alcohol punctuating her syllables. They were lying side by side on the picnic table on the lawn and stargazing, Christa doing it for her Introduction to Astronomy Class and Terry because she'd decided to try her hand at Zodiac reading, although actually it was all really just because they were both pretty drunk and the night sky and each other's company seemed the best thing right now.

"Yeah, they're really uptight about church stuff," Christa said, leaning up to take a drink of her mimosa. "To be honest it gets super cringy."

"Oh I know. My mom raised me Catholic, wants me to have a church wedding with a white dress one day and everything. I mostly just play along with it."

"I'm kind of the same way," said Christa. She rushed to add, "I mean, I have faith, totally. Just like they taught me. It's just that..."

She lingered over her next words, aware that she was drunk and that Terry, as much a Christa liked her, just shouldn't know certain things.

"I guess I don't believe it all the way everyone else does," she finally said. "Miracles and prayers and all that. It doesn't seem really real to me. Never did."

"Me too," said Terry. "You know the whole communion thing, blood into wine? When I was a kid I wondered why it never tasted different after they said it transubstantiated. Just didn't make sense. Hey, what about your brother, what's his name, Adrian?"

"Andrew. What about him?"

Terry had finished her drink and so reached across Christa to steal hers. "You said you two are pretty close, right? How's he feel about all this?"

Christa worked to keep her voice neutral when talking about Andrew. "He was a good kid, very devout, going to go right into the family business like everyone wants."

"So you don't get along?"

Blinking, Christa sat up a little herself. "Oh no, me and Andrew are great. I miss him like crazy. We're twins you know. He handles all the church stuff way better than I do, but he's also kinda different with me than he is with everyone else. It's...complicated."

"Are you blushing?"

"I'm drunk," Christa said, and of course she was. The stars overhead were spinning, but it wasn't planetary motion; the mimosas were gone and a voice in her head told her it was time to stop this conversation before it went to place she'd regret.

Christa liked Terry; even loved her sometimes. But she had no illusions that they actually knew each other.

"I know the whole complicated families thing," Terry continued, still talking. "My mom says she's thinking about becoming a Hare Krishna next. Isn't that weird?"

"Sure," Christa said. "Weird."

***

The only other time Christa considered talking about it—not just about her family and the church but also about Cousin Abbra specifically—was after a Halloween party that first semester, where she'd met a guy named Tony and decided to go back to his room with him.

He was older, a junior instead of a freshman, and she was a little drunk that night too, and maybe even a little more than a little drunk, and she hung onto his left arm tightly as they walked in comfortable near-silence to his place.

He was dressed as Max from

Where the Wild Things Are

, explaining that his friends had suggested the costume on a dare and assumed it would embarrass him, but that the joke was on them because really he liked it.

"I loved that book," he explained. "Everybody loved that book as a kid. Why would that be embarrassing?"

"I always like the part where the Wild Things say they love Max so much they'll eat him," Christa said. And then, upon seeing his slightly surprised reaction, she plowed on: "Anyway, you should wear whatever kind of costume you want.

Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law

."

"I think I've heard that before. What does it mean?"

"Just something my mom says. Come here."

It was a cold night, and their breath fogged the air as their mouths got closer. She had to pull up her cat mask for the kiss; her costume was actually her ceremonial attire from the Presentation of the Beasts. Aunt Ann had made it for her and would have been scandalized to see her wearing it out in the open now.

Later that night, Tony lay mostly asleep on his narrow dorm room bed while Christa curled up next to him, wearing his Wild Things costume as pajamas and deciding she liked him a lot.

Of course, dating would be hard; if it got serious they'd be expected to meet each other's families some day. It would take a lot of explanations.

But maybe Tony would understand; maybe if he turned out to really like her as much as she liked him he'd be okay with it; maybe he'd even want to join. It wasn't unheard of for outsiders to do that sometimes, if they were the right people...

But before she allowed herself to set even one foot across that threshold she slammed the door shut instead.

A drunk after-party hook up one night was one thing. What she was imagining now was another thing entirely. It was so unlikely that she would even call it a miracle; and Christa was the one in the family who didn't believe in miracles.

She and Tony talked a few more times that semester, but she never really saw him again.

After that she stopped going to parties as much, and even her talks with Terry were not as frequent or as fun loving as they'd once been.

Christa began to dread the winter break at the end of the semester, knowing that it would mean she'd be going home again for the holidays. And that the day of Cousin Abbra's foretold delivery was fast approaching...

She began to have dreams, almost the same one every night, of coming home and finding Abbra holding a shape in swaddling clothes that turned out to be a tremendous snake, black and green, with probing eyes that froze Christa on the spot.

Even when the serpent roiled forward and wrapped its coils around Christa's body and begin to squeeze, crushing her bones and pulping her insides, she couldn't move or even scream until she woke up breathless and panting.

A few times she woke violently enough to wake Terry in the next bed too, who always asked what was wrong.

But Christa just dismissed it as a normal nightmare, not daring to confess to Terry what she really thought dreams like that might actually mean.

It was a long time before she realized that the night after she hooked up with Tony on Halloween was the first time the dream began. But by then the holidays had almost begun and she had too many more things to worry about.

***

Nobody outside the family would understand Christa's situation. But there was nobody in the family she really trusted to talk to about it. Nobody except maybe for Andrew.

Even then the distance between them—an unfamiliar thing in a lifetime spent together since the womb—made it an awkward prospect. And, remembering the talk with Uncle Sid, when they did talk Christa was always afraid of bringing up the subject of Abbra directly. And Andrew, she noticed, never really seemed to want to talk about it either.

As the winter break began, and the due date approached, Christa believed she sensed a certain telltale tension in his voice when they glanced against the topic on the phone. I wonder if he's had dreams too, she wondered idly...

It was Andrew who volunteered to come retrieve her on Christmas Eve, making the long drive from home and back in the old two-seater truck he'd rebuilt with Dad years ago. It was the first time they'd seen each other in the flesh since school began, and Christa felt her heart race and her cheeks burn a little when they hugged in the parking lot.

The drive took longer back than it had coming down on account of it had begun to snow up in the mountains, but Christa didn't mind and she knew Andrew didn't either. It gave them longer to talk, the kind of serious talk they'd only ever been able to do when it was just the two of them alone together. Sometimes she wondered if they'd talked like this together before they'd even been born.

He covered all of the polite inquiries: her grades, her plans for next semester, friends she'd made, and even briefly touched on her love life while still tactfully pirouetting away from any awkwardness.

Eventually they came to the subject of Cousin Abbra and her pregnancy, and before she knew it Christa heard the words coming out of her own mouth:

"Be honest, do you think she's faking it?"

Andrew blinked and turned his windshield wipers on against the snow. "You mean Abbra? How could she? She's the size of a house now."

"I didn't mean about the baby," Christa said. "I just mean, you know, how it happened. The father..."

She searched for any sign of reaction or relief in her brother's face. He must have doubts too, she thought, he has to. Andrew had always been more devout than she was, always took easier to Mom and Aunt Ann's lessons, but she also knew that he was like her too, that he saw the world the same way she did. That he understood.

I can't be the only one, she thought. He's got to understand.

But Andrew just shook his head. The headlights of his truck turned the snowy landscape blinding white outside as they crept along the winding, pine-laden road to Aunt Ann's old house in the trees. "You don't think Abbra would lie about something like that?" he said.

"I don't know. I mean, I love Abbra, but she's always been very strange. And VERY religious. Aunt Ann too. I don't think they're lying. But maybe they both just want to believe it, you know?"

Again Andrew did not concede. "I see what you mean, but I don't think so."

Inside, Christa felt her heart break, like a fallen icicle. She struggled to keep her resolve. "So you believe her story?"

"Yeah, I do. But I know you never did really understood that stuff, even back when Dad was alive," he continued.

He didn't sound sad or angry or condemnatory, like anyone else in the family would have; he said it like it was just a true thing that needed to be understood.

"I could have," Christa countered. "It's just, you know, there's a whole world of people out there, and none of them believe. None of them have even heard of it."

"That's exactly why it's important that we believe. Hey Christa, don't do this."

"Do what?"

"Dwell on the hard things. It's Christmas, and I missed you and I'm happy to see you again. Aren't you happy to see me?"

The bitterness in Christa's heart melted into heartache immediately. She slipped her fingers over one of his hands on the steering wheel for a second; she could tell from how warm his hand felt that hers must be freezing cold.

"Of course I'm happy," she said. "Fucking Lord Below I missed you."

"I missed you too. So did everybody else. I know it probably doesn't seem like it, but you know how they all are."

"Oh I know."

"I can tell you're all freaked out about Cousin Abbra and the baby. No, no, don't deny it," he said, hurrying to talk over her reply. "It's fine. I get it. Just be careful what you say to Mom about it. You know how she gets around the holidays. Promise?'

Heaving a sigh that was mostly for show, Christa nodded, "Promise."

After a minute, Andrew added: "And anyway, what you said before about Abbra and the father, well, we'll know soon enough, right? When we finally see the baby we'll be able to tell if it's...usual. We'll have to, yeah?"

On the foggy car window Christa traced the words "Help me," with the tip of a finger, then rubbed it out.

They talked about hockey for the rest of the drive.

Snow dusted the peaked roof of Aunt Ann's tall, crooked house when they arrived, and the warm yellow glow in every window made it look like a Christmas card from outside.

Not even Abbra's due date could convince Aunt Ann to cancel the family Christmas Eve feast. "We've done it this way for 3,000 years, and I'm not about to be the first generation to break tradition now," she'd said.

If Aunt Ann used any word more often than "faith," it was "tradition." Now when they knocked on the door it was Aunt Ann who answered, looking thin and sharp around the edges and holding a steaming cider mug that smelled like liquor.

"So you've come in from the cold," she said, opening the door wider. "Everyone else is already here. Sid is upstairs with your cousin. Wipe your feet."

"Merry Christmas," Andrew said, taking off his scarf and kissing her on the cheek. "It's my fault we're late, I took it slow on the country road because of the snow."

"Happy holidays," Christa said, hanging her coat and offering no hug after coming inside.

"Everything's about to be happy now that you're here and we can put on dinner in a minute," Aunt Ann replied. "The girls almost have everything ready in the kitchen."

"Sharon and Patty are cooking?"

"They took it up this summer." Aunt Ann swept a few intruding snowflakes out and shut the door. "They're actually quite good around the kitchen."

The sound of pots and pans rattling, banging, and (perhaps) sailing through the air came from around the corner.

"Although they do tend to get a bit competitive."

Black and white garlands decorated Aunt Ann's living room. The twinkling lights on the Christmas tree turned the house cozy, and the star (hung upside down) shined on the top bough with a ruddy glow. Even as anxious as she was, Christa felt some faint tug of happy nostalgia when she stood in the middle of it all.

Mom descended from upstairs, her cheeks bright and rosy as if she'd just been laughing, her ginger hair glowing like a halo as the light hitting it from behind. She kissed Andrew first. "You made it," she said. "I was so worried about you driving in the snow."

"We had to leave late because I was still doing classwork," Christa explained.

"I thought your semester was over?"

Mom handed Christa her cider and kissed her too. Her kiss and the cider both tasted like cinnamon and cloves and tannis.

"Yesterday was the last day," Christa said. "But I agreed to stay a little late and help my econ professor with something for extra credit."

"Oh?" said Aunt Ann, standing by the tree. "I've heard the kind of help professors like to get from pretty TA's."

she pantomimed with her hand and her mouth. Christa froze, but everyone else just laughed.

"She's doing wonderfully at that school," Mom added. "Aren't you dear?"

Christa's blood turned to ice remembering last Christmas Eve, when she and Mom had had their final big fight about college. But time there was no anger in her voice and not even any real tension, and Christa hastened to agree.

At that moment two tall figures stepped into the kitchen doorway. Christa and Andrew were the twins in the family, but it was Sharon and Patty who looked almost identical even though they were a year apart, both lean and sharp copies of each other.

Actually what they looked like most than anything was past versions of Aunt Ann that had somehow walked out of the frames of old photos of her and back into real, breathing life.

"Everything's almost ready," said Sharon.

"We're having lamb," Patty added. "It's tradition."

"Then why haven't we ever had it before?" said Christa, approaching the kitchen door as the smell of roasting flesh lured her closer.

Sharon stepped in her path. "It's a new tradition. Starting tonight," she said.

"And we never break tradition in this family," Patty added. "Right Mom?"

Help me, Christa thought again, and drank her cider so that nobody could catch her rolling her eyes.

Andrew hugged both of the cousins. They each lingered with their arms around him too long, but Andrew did it exactly right, remaining just long enough with each to be affectionate and then moving back with a graceful half a step.

"Then we should go up and see Abbra before dinner starts," he said. "Christa?"

Starting, Christa realized she had completely forgotten about Abbra for a moment. Grimacing, she kissed Mom hello one more time and brushed past Sharon and Patty on the way to the stairs. The tall, creaky spiral staircase took them all the way up to the attic bedroom that, as far as Christa knew, Abbra had used all her life.