We Shall be People of God by Meridian Payseno
Image by Marek Piwnicki for Pexels
The news on every channel was the same, had been for weeks, the girls of Immaculate Conception Preparatory School were bursting into flames and no one knew why. It was happening spontaneously and seemingly at random. One minute, a student would be walking to class or eating a baggy of trail mix, and the next minute she would explode into a screaming gulf of fire.
Of course, the parents were beside themselves. They demanded answers, they demanded action! An emergency meeting was called. The fathers, who usually couldn’t be bothered to attend school events, left their offices early to give the school a piece of their minds.
The school board came on stage to shouts and jeers from the parents. “Our girls are supposed to be safe here!” one father yelled. “We pay hundreds of thousands of dollars!” said another. “Who’s in charge of screening out these pyros?” said a third.
The dean of students fumbled with the microphone as the shouting continued. “Please…um if we could all just…um, settle down…we’ll get to all your questions. If we could all just, maybe, you know…calm ourselves for a moment.” The audience paid her no mind.
The chaos might have continued, had not Mrs. Drake taken matters into her own hands. As president of the PTA, she commanded respect and no small amount of fear. She stood up from her chair and gave the room one of her signature puckered smiles, today in an arresting shade of vermillion. Silence fell. She smoothed her perfectly pressed skirty and began to speak. “My sincerest condolences to the affected families,” she said. “Let us pause for a moment of silent remembrance.”
“Oh yes,” said the flustered dean. “That would be quite, um yes.”
Mrs. Drake placed her hand on her heart and bowed her head emphatically, the dean and the rest of the room followed suit. No one seemed to notice that none of the ‘affected families’ were present.
After 60 seconds exactly, Mrs. Drake lifted her gaze and spoke matter-of-factly, “yes, this is all very tragic, but we must think about what’s best for our girls, college applications are coming up, after all.” A buzz of agreement rose from the crowd.
She continued now flushed with conviction, “there are news trucks parked outside, everyone is talking. And Immaculate Conception is nothing without its reputation. We…I mean our girls have worked too hard to let that happen. The board has to take action! Decisive action! We cannot let a few wayward pupils derail our futures…I mean our daughters’ futures.”
The room erupted in shouts and applause. The dean swallowed nervously behind her microphone looking for words. A firm hand patted her on the shoulder, and she gratefully stepped back. A broad man in a shiny brown suit and intensely gelled hair took center stage.
“Thank you, Mrs. Drake,” the man said with a plastic smile. “I couldn’t agree more, and believe you me, swift action will be taken. But I guess you’re wondering who I am.” He let out a practiced laugh. “Well, I’m Captain Prevot – I’m taking over as Principal and I couldn’t be more honored to have your trust during this trying time.”
His face became grave, almost sorrowful as he continued. “I’m a military man myself, and every year I see it: a few recruits can’t hack basic training. Some people are just not cut out for it, but that’s no reason they should take down the whole unit. Am I right?” Murmurs of agreement rose from the crowd. The mothers clapped and the fathers stamped their feet. “We’ve got the best of the best here,” said Captain Prevot, building on the wave of energy. “And we’re going to keep it that way!” he cried in summation as the room cheered their approval.
The parents left exhilarated. They warmed the night with their steamy breath, sighs of relief, the weight of fear and impotence finally lifted. They wound down the road towards their gated communities and sleeping daughters: each couple in a black sedan, each sedan filled with the sweet air of certainty. “It’s all going to be ok, Frank,” said Mrs. Drake squeezing her husband’s knee and leaning her head on his shoulder. “Of course, Judy” he said touched by the uncharacteristic display of affection. “Yes,” she said leaning back in her seat and smiling up at him like a satisfied cat who’d had one too many chardonnays. “The combustions won’t count against our graduation rate.”
Immaculate Conception sat atop a high hill. No city buses went there, the residents had made sure of that. They didn’t want their homes to be accessible to just anyone. Yet, the nannies and the cleaners and the gardeners had to arrive somehow so one stop was allowed at the base of the hill with service twice a day at 7am and 7pm.
It was on this bus that one student traveled daily: Adrienne Jelnynk – a small girl with cropped hair that belied her 17 years. Her slight stature had always made her powerful voice more surprising. She like how people were caught off guard when she took the stage, expecting a breathless whisper and then blown away by a massive wall of sound. It was this voice, this thing she had – but didn’t know how or why – that had ‘earned’ her a spot amongst the daughters of the city’s elite.
As she made her way up the hill, she murmured her new solo under her breath. Trying to memorize the words:
Send down the fire of your justice.
Send down the rains of your love.
Come, send down the Spirit, breath life in your people,
And we shall be people of God.
On a morning like this, with the sun shining and the fresh breeze on her back, she didn’t mind the steep hike. It gave her time to be with her thoughts, even if they weren’t so pleasant lately. Like these little purple flowers covering her path. Beautiful as they were, they just made her wonder why she knew so much about things she couldn’t touch – math, grammar, the holy spirit – but she didn’t know the name of this flower she was smelling right now. She ran her hand along the bark of the trees beside her; she would probably never know what kind of trees they were or what kind of birds sang in them. What she did know, seemed silly in comparison – which fork to use for salad, how to format a paper in both Chicago and MLA, the meaning of transubstantiation.
She whipped the grass with a stick as she walked, beheading flowers and staining her knee-high socks with droplets of dew. Why were the trees not important? Why were girls bursting into flames? And why did no one care? It used to be easy to push down the questions, but without Leila to talk to it was getting harder.
In the days after Leila passed, she felt like she was moving through water: slow, distorted, weightless. The dean called her to her office, “I wanted to um…check in on you, dear,” she’d said. Adrienne’s eyes filled with tears. Just being seen was difficult at the moment. “Oh dear, no um…I didn’t mean to make you…do that” said the dean moving from behind her desk to the seat beside her.
“There, there,” she said with a nervous pat on Adrienne's knee. “It must be such a...you know, challenging time, but dear, look at me. It’s um not the time to lose focus. Leila wouldn’t want that. Some girls use this whole thing as an excuse. But you, you were given a gift. I know you won’t let that go to waste.”
She tried to take the dean's advice, but everything frustrated her now. Even these lyrics, ‘send down the fire of your justice’ – what was the school trying to say by making her sing this? Just one more question that she knew better than to ask. Charity students were supposed to smile, perform, and say nice things about the school (and be grateful for it).
When the combustions first started, Sophie was the only girl who dared to ask any real questions, She papered the walls with signs that said ‘we didn’t start the fire.’ That got her called to Captain Prevot's office, if it weren’t for her mother she’d probably have been expelled.
From the outside, it seemed that Sophie Drake had nothing but contempt for her school and her classmates. She made any discernible attempt to be liked, preferring to spend lunch alone reading tabloids with no educational value – anathema to everything Immaculate Conception stood for. She had the same severe manor as her mother, people tended to cower in her presence, and like her mother, she was good at noticing people – picking out what made them tick. But unlike Mrs. Drake, Sophie was sincere. She didn’t use her power to bend people to her will; she could have a whole group of girls under her sway. Instead, she chose to be alone, afraid to use something she didn’t understand.
The girls found her aloof and awkward. They gave her a wide berth, not knowing that Sophie probably knew more about them than they did themselves. She could see when someone was nervous about a test or hiding trouble at home. She could pick out the blush of a secret love or the pallor of loss. She didn’t know how she knew, but it had something to do with how the light hit them: It would throw off a slight color, just a murmur and it would tell her everything.
That’s why she had the idea something bad was going to happen before the combustions started. She’d seen it in the colors glinting from some of her classmates, a dour purple that frightened Sophie to her core. It was the color of suffering and sorrow but also success and distinction. She didn’t know how to read it yet – she just knew it was bad.
The first time she saw it in concentrated force was with her lab partner, Leila. That girl was always smiling. She even made a joke of dissecting the fetal pig, pulling out the intestines, and saying “yum, ramen!”
One day, Sophie saw the purple glinting across Leila’s jawline. Not thinking she reached out and touched Leila's neck where it appeared.
“Are you taking my pulse?” said Leila nervously.
Sophie realized what she was doing and removed her hand, embarrassed. “I’m sorry, it’s just… Leila, are you, you know, feeling ok?”
“Of course, I’m ok.” said Leila patting Sophie on the knee and smiling as if Sophie was the one that needed comforting.
“It’s just, I’m worried about you,” said Sophie, not able to meet Leila’s concerned eyes. “I mean, if you needed anything, you know, I’m here…sorry I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“It’s ok,” said Leila. “The test has me jumpy as well, let’s make flashcards and quiz each other.”
Leila was the first to combust. There had been so many since then. Sophie was somehow never there when it happened, but she kept thinking if she were, then there was a way to stop it – a way to help them.
She saw the dreaded purple everywhere now: in the stained glass of the chapel, in the last rays of sun, and the light behind her closed eyelids. It seemed to live and grow and breathe with them.
The school day now began with anti-combustion drills. Mr. Prevot stood at the front of the gym in another shiny suit. She took her place in the last of four rows spread across the basketball court. After a few moments, the principal blew three sharp bursts on his whistle to silence the room. “Ladies,” he began. “I’m happy to report it’s been three days since our last combustion.”
The dean led a hesitant round of applause. Adrienne was reminded of the chalkboard in the warehouse where her father worked that marked the days since the last accident. As if an accident was a decision a person made. As if anyone wanted to burst into flame.
“That’s right ladies, we should celebrate this streak. I’m proud of how far we’ve come together.”
More clapping and then the anti-combustion drills started. The P.E. teacher would throw one girl a basketball and everyone else would have to dive away from her as quickly as possible. The girl with the ball would kneel and cover the ball with her body. Then she would throw the ball to someone else and so on and so on for about ten minutes.
Kate G. caught the first throw and the girls dutifully dove to the ground while trying to keep decent in their uniform skirts. The rule was you could wear shorts but they couldn’t be visible, so they didn’t help much for this. Why was this the dress code? Another question Adrienne knew not to ask. Kate G passed to Kate L, then Kate L passed to Caitlyn, then Caitlyn passed to Katy, and so on and so on. Each up and down got a little slower. These ten minutes of the day always seemed to last forever. These were not the type of assemblies the girls were used to, in the before days successful alumnae would visit to read from their books or talk about their careers. Now they just got up and down, up and down.
Lost in her thoughts, Adrienne didn’t see the ball coming toward her. The impact on her solar plexus left her breathless. She staggered forward gasping. The room went fuzzy. She felt a wave of nausea so powerful it seemed to scream in her ears. A soft hand touched her back followed by a sharp whistle and a voice that seemed to come from very far away. “No touching!”
Someone grabbed the ball that had fallen to her feet and the drills continued.
That was the thing about Immaculate Conception, the wheels didn’t stop turning for anyone. Pass out or throw up or burn to the ground: that was no reason to not be on time to class or turn in your homework.
Adrienne waited in the bathroom for the gym to clear. Who’s ready for another day of differential equations and sentence diagrams and praying not to burst into flames? She asked herself in the mirror. Leila had always made jokes like that, ridiculous parallels often accompanied by finger guns.
With a deep breath, Adrienne swung open the door launching herself face first into an unknown cushy chest. She let out a yelp of surprise and looked up to see Sophie Drake staring at her.
Sophie didn’t seem startled nor did she attempt to move out of the way. She just stood there stone face. Adrienne didn’t know what to say.
“Sorry, I didn’t see you there,” Adrienne said at last.
Sophie shifted on her feet, suddenly looking a bit nervous, “I just wanted to ask, if you know...saw it?” she finally said.
“Saw you?” Adrienne responded, confused.
“Saw it,” she repeated, now looking her in the eye expectantly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I need to get to class.” Adrienne tried to step past her, but Sophie stopped her. “My mom says you were there when your friend combusted. Did you see it?”
Adrienne shook her head in confusion.
“I’m always in the wrong place.” She continued.
“The wrong place?” said Adrienne getting angry. “It’s not a show for your entertainment.” She pushed Sophie aside and began walking down the hall.
Sophie followed her. “Hey, sorry. That’s not what I meant. I just want to, I don’t know – understand all this.” She gestured around. “No one knows what’s happening, they just give us these stupid drills. They don’t care to actually find out. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“A lot of things bother me…” Adrienne couldn’t decide how to finish. “I’m just lucky to be here,” she said at last.
Sophie eyed her up and down. “Is this luck?” she said, gesturing at the dirty splotch on Adrienne’s polo from where the ball hit her.
Adrienne was ready to be offended, but all she could do was laugh. “Ok, maybe not lately.”
They both laughed. Real laughs.
“C’mon,” Sophie said, putting her gangly arm over Adrienne's shoulder. “I want to show you something.”
“We have class though.”
“If you combust tomorrow do you want to spend your last day getting spit on by Sister Davis?”
Adrienne couldn’t decide if Sophie was brave or spoiled but she followed anyway.
At Immaculate Conception, there was only one type of acceptable joy – though could it be called joy? It was more the satisfaction of a job well well done or the relief of a task completed.
On the first day of freshman year, each girl was given a customized checklist with all the classes, extracurriculars, and volunteer hours she needed in order to be a superlative university applicant in her chosen field. Adrienne had more copies of this checklist than she had underwear. She posted them everywhere: above her desk at home, in the front jacket of her day planner, friends exchanged them – Adrienne had a copy of Leila’s hanging on the door of her locker.
Once a quarter, and with great ceremony, the girls gathered in the cafeteria to check off their accomplishments. The dean always brought a plethora of pens and markers in every color of the rainbow. Everyone would dive in to find their favorites like a ravenous pack of hyenas, squealing with anticipation. Then they would take their thick stack of checklists to a quiet spot and fill them in with great care and precision.
When Adrienne sat behind the bleachers with Sophie and wiggled her bare toes in the grass, she experienced something different. The tightness around her neck loosened and she didn’t look at her phone or her checklist. She felt an excitement – not for something distant – but for the very moment she was in.
“I feel drunk!” laughed Adrienne.
“Have you ever been drunk?” said Sophie incredulously.
“No!” she said, and they laughed even harder.
The fact that the Donoghues still lived next door was a constant source of irritation to Mrs. Drake. They should have had the tact to move once their daughter went up in flames. All the other families had enough sense to know they were not wanted after such a spectacle. Some people had no shame, no feeling for others!
No, Mrs. Donoghue had to subject the whole neighborhood to her sad eyes and long face. She was impossible to avoid. Anywhere you went, there she was – the grocery store, the coffee shop, even Mrs. Drake’s favorite restaurant. The nerve of that woman to wave and even stop by the table to chat. It was practically unbearable.
Mrs. Drake did her best to make life uncomfortable for them, having their car towed and reporting their unkempt garden to the homeowner’s association, but all to no avail.
So when Mrs. Drake flipped on the TV and saw Mrs. Donoghue crying her baggy eyes out, instead of being angry, she thought – this is my chance!
Of course, the insufferable talk show host egged on the theatrics with leading questions like “the school cut you off completely?” and “no one came to your daughter’s funeral? They didn’t even send a card?” But Mrs. Drake knew that with each answer that besmirched Immaculate Conception this stupid woman was just digging her own grave. She and the whole family would be out of her neighborhood in no time.
Mrs. Drake spent the day calling every mother at the school to have some version of the same chat, “hello dear, how’s the family?” she’d say casually. “Oh by the way did you see that interview? Yes, I know. What shocks me is how the press takes advantage of the mentally unwell…of course, Leila’s death really put her over the edge but she was always struggling somehow…yes, so sad…anyways, we decided to put together a little fundraiser to protect ourselves from stories like these…”
Call after call, until everyone was confirmed.
Thus the LDF or ‘Legacy Daughters Fund’ was born. The school would go after every penny and possession the Donoghues had, down to the tacky sunflowers they grew in the front yard. Mrs. Drake was nothing if not thorough.
The next week (post-Mrs. Donoghue’s interview and pre-LDF fundraiser), was the worst to date. Three girls combusted in as many days. Kate G went in the middle of a tennis match and now Immaculate Conception was banned from future tournaments. The athletes nervously fingered their checklists where their wins should’ve been recorded and Captain Prevot’s morning lectures became increasingly unhinged.
“Every girl here needs to realize that we sink or swim together and I have to be honest with you – right now we aren’t just sinking, we’re drowning! Drowning! Gasping for air! Is that what you want? To drown?”
Those words were the last Caitlyn would ever hear. She combusted right there in the gym. The girls dove to the ground as they’d been taught and crawled toward the exit.
“Stop!” bellowed the principal. “Stop right there!”
The girls froze where they were as the flames danced defiantly against the sprinklers. They felt Caitlyn's shrieks in their own throats until they weren’t sure where the screams were coming from, her or them.
Captain Prevot stood with his arms crossed, silently and made them all watch until there was nothing left of their friend except a scorch mark on the gym floor. And once all the noise and all the flames died down and all the sprinklers turned off, he said quietly, “is this what you want girls?”
Wet and shivering, they were dismissed to class.
Kate L ran out and threw up in the water fountain. By Friday she would be gone too.
Adrienne went through all this on autopilot. She was no longer shocked or angry – those weren’t feelings she deserved to have.
After her afternoon with Sophie, she’d arrived home to her parents sitting grimly at the kitchen table. Her stomach contracted; her parents were rarely home at the same time. They knew she skipped class. They were quietly furious. Where had she been? What was she thinking? Did she know how lucky she was?
Her mother seemed on the verge of tears. Her father had never gone this long without smiling. Adrienne tore her cuticles under the table as they fired question after question.
She weakly tried to explain how it had been without Leila, how there was nothing to look forward to.
“Nothing to look forward to?” cried her mother. “You have your whole life to look forward to!”
“It’s that damn Drake girl,” said her father, exasperated. “Adrienne, be smart. Don’t take advice from someone who can’t lose. Some people have the luxury of hating their lives, you don’t.”
“It’s not that I’m not grateful,” Adrienne tried to explain. “It’s just…it isn’t easy sometimes.”
“Not easy?” her mother repeated. “Listen to your daughter.”
Her father just shook his head.
She’d never felt such shame. It was itchy and unfamiliar, it crawled up her legs and wrapped itself around her throat. She couldn’t leave it alone, she itched it raw and then picked the scabs. The memory of joy became painful. She hated the grass, she hated the sun, and she hated Sophie most of all.
Adrienne tried to keep to herself. She made checklists for each day and each hour and mindlessly worked her way down. The only thing she allowed herself to care about was the little checkmark that came at the end of the task. Everything else was on autopilot.
After a couple of days, Sophie confronted her. “So you’re just not going to talk to me now?”
“I just need to focus,” said Adrienne.
Sophie grabbed the checklist from her and shook it in her face.
“You think if you work hard enough, someone’s going to notice and pat you on the head? It’s not going to happen. They will just tell you to do more and more and more until you burn just like the rest of them.”
“You know what!” said Adrienne, grabbing her list back. “No one else thinks it’s that bad, my parents say it’s nothing. Maybe you just need some perspective. Maybe you’re just spoiled!”
Sophie crumpled up the checklist and dropped it at her feet. She left and Adrienne felt as she had after Leila left, only now she wasn’t weightless – like Captain Prevot said – she was drowning.
Mrs. Drake stood in the school’s gym surveying the fruits of her labor. It was no banquet hall at the yacht club but she’d managed to transform the place into a passable auction venue. The ceiling drapes and fairy lights alone had taken a team of five all day to hang, but the lighting was everything. No one wrote big checks when they could see each other’s pores.
It was all a beautiful symphony and she was the conductor – slowing the hors-d'oeuvres, speeding up the champagne, adjusting the seating arrangement – making sure each instrument played its part and played it perfectly. Tonight was too important to leave to chance. She’d called in every favor, every threat, every connection to pull this off. That woman could cry on national television about her deranged daughter all she wanted, but Mrs. Drake wasn’t going to let any of those combusted duds besmirch the good name of Immaculate Conception. What had the school done wrong? Nothing! Some people just couldn’t take responsibility for their own mistakes.
It was almost time to announce the winners of the silent auction. She did one last loop of the room, pairing lonely couples into conversations and drawing attention to the items up for bid as she went. “Carol, this spa weekend has your name written all over it!” and “Paul, you know you deserve these clubs after the quarter you’ve had.”
She made her way to where her daughter was slouching in the corner. “Sophie, please. You look like a vagrant.”
“You mean like the ones Jesus hung out with?”
Mrs. Drake ignored her snide comment and handed her the clipboard.
“Chin up dear, we’ve almost reached our goal.”
Sophie waited in the wings of the makeshift stage with the choir for Captain Prevot to finish speaking. Adrienne stood opposite her with her eyes on the ground, mumbling lyrics under her breath.
The purple glinted off her chewed fingertips.
Sophie wanted to shake her friend. She was killing herself, and for what? A solo in a gym? A university acceptance where she would be just as miserable? That’s what these girls didn’t get, there was no prize. There was no finish line.
But you can’t tell someone that they didn’t want what they wanted. That was as useless as the numbers scribbled on her clipboard – $3000, $5000, $8000 – it could be a million and the girls would keep combusting.
Captain Prevot was back to his normal coiffed state, with no sign of the untucked lunatic who had forced the school to watch their classmate burn in the exact same spot only three days before.
“Ladies and gentlemen, what a pleasure to be here tonight among friends,” he said and the audience applauded. “We’re having this meeting to be transparent with you, really shoot from the hip. It hasn’t been an easy couple of days. We haven’t hit our targets and the media attention hasn’t helped.”
Grave whispers of agreement ran through the crowd.
“But the good news is that we believe the girls we have today are the very best and there’s a lot to look forward to. This fund will ensure their legacy. To the girls!”
He lifted his glass and the parents shouted “here, here!”
Sophie’s insides boiled. Why had this man come to their school? He didn’t care about the harm he did, it was all opportunity to him. Look at all of them: Adrienne was biting her already raw cuticles and the other girls stood wide-eyed and vacant. They were all fragile husks now, anything strong inside them had been crushed to dust.
Captain Prevot introduced the choir. Sophie saw the purple run up Adrienne’s arms and across her face – she walked on stage like she was walking the plank. Sophie caught her eye and mouthed the words, “I’m with you” and a glimmer of a smile played over her friend’s face.
Sophie watched Captain Prevot and her mother in disgust as they laughed and chatted at the front of the crowd. With a single lunge, she could wrap her hands around both of their throats. The choir sang the opening chord and Adrienne lifted her head to begin her solo. She was bathed in the purple light now. Sophie could feel it coming: the fire, the screaming.
Adrienne’s voice rang out.
Send down the fire of your justice.
Send down the rains of your love.
Tomorrow the principal and her mother would say, “that girl was lucky to be here, but she didn’t have what it takes.” The rest of the parents would agree because everyone agreed until it was their daughter.
Come, send down the Spirit, breathe life in your people.
And we shall be people of God.
Sophie felt a heat in her chest, she looked down and her hands were glowing with purple light. Adrienne caught her eye as she sang the final notes and they nodded, somehow in agreement. They didn’t have to go alone.
Meridian Payseno (she/her) is an American writer based in Berlin where she explores her love of fiction, visual art, and theatre. See her latest work in Whitewall Magazine, Defunkt Magazine, and Hash Journal. For more from Meridian, follow her on Instagram @meridian.payseno.