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26 The Visitation Light touches the girl’s uncovered breast like a hand. She feels a stirring in her womb. I am among you now. She thought she’d find god there,in the church gilt with ritual, the altar overflowing with yellow, white, red gladiolus, Christ serene on the cross. She brings one hand to a breast. She hadn’t wanted to grow them. She didn’t mean to meet him like this, in her own bedroom, her white confirmation dress still hanging in the closet. Her mother tried to tell her, sat with her in the dark school gym while the film projector rolled and clicked. Her mother’s words sounded funny, over-pronounced. She would have liked to keep the words in that dark room, or rolled up in a canister with the undeveloped film. And where is her god now? Has he written anything in that red ink? He has not stamped the whorls of a new fingerprint, pink of a baby’s squinched face. Why did he wake her that morning, like a lover slipped in through the window of her parents’ house? Was there a message for her in the strange inkblot, finger of her womb starting to write on the still-white page? ...

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