Nonfiction / Angela Sucich

:: Private Veneration ::

I’m eight or nine when I enter the tiny hall­way bath­room in my child­hood home and try to ignore her—the silent, unashamed watch­er inside. I pre­tend not to notice her life­like por­trait pat­terned on the door, a daguerreo­type of wood­grain. There, hood­ed with veil, a Vir­gin of Guadalupe, a ghost­ly Mary, appear­ing in the pressed wood as rea­son­ably here as on a piece of toast. As I get on with my busi­ness, one part of my mind tells anoth­er part that it must be that most gen­tle Moth­er, and no sin­is­ter shape. A spir­i­tu­al world view, for all the good it may have offered me, also tend­ed to raise spir­its, and a child must learn what to do with them.

Decades lat­er, it comes to me what the priests would repeat on Sun­days, that holy day of guilt and guilt removed, how Mary was lift­ed full-bod­ied into heav­en. Did I ever wor­ry what the angels, most renowned of wings, haloed func­tionar­ies, and God, the mighty unseen, must think about bod­ies, if only Mary’s immac­u­late one was saved? I can’t recall if it had crossed my young mind dur­ing the dai­ly vis­i­ta­tions when my blad­der would twinge its insis­tence, to won­der whether a full-bod­ied Mary must relieve her­self in heav­en. But by then I’d already learned not to ask such ques­tions, at least not in cat­e­chism class, that incu­ba­tor of analy­sis and ortho­doxy. My own moth­er, mis­tress of the prac­ti­cal, grudge­less cit­i­zen, had once laughed as she told me no, Adam and Eve weren’t apes, which I had pro­posed as a solu­tion to that whole cre­ation-evo­lu­tion divide. I recall her telling me not to men­tion that at church, and it sunk in how some things must be left unsaid, pos­si­bly also unthought. But per­haps not every­thing. I dis­tinct­ly remem­ber the moment my broth­er showed me the pat­tern on the bath­room door, a boy’s hand trac­ing the man­tled head, the shad­owed face, and my con­clu­sion arriv­ing in a flash of halo­gen that she must be Mary, her appear­ance a sign.

“Sign” is a Mid­dle Eng­lish word derived from Old French signe and Latin signum. Some of its ear­li­est clas­si­cal mean­ings, accord­ing to the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, include “omen, por­tent, vis­i­ble sign or trace, ges­ture,” and in post-clas­si­cal Latin “mirac­u­lous sign, mir­a­cle.” Mir­a­cles of the kind that Mary and the saints, with their inter­ces­so­ry pow­ers, were believed to per­form, such as spon­ta­neous heal­ing of the sick. The word’s ref­er­ence to the sign of the cross is also record­ed quite ear­ly: 4^th cen­tu­ry. The signum cru­cis. A ges­ture my hand still instinc­tive­ly knows how to make, decades after I ceased mak­ing it. Not unlike the way my fin­gers type on my com­put­er or mod­u­late the brakes on my moun­tain bike, as if inde­pen­dent of me. Or how my hus­band, with­out look­ing, always finds the right frets on his gui­tar. Mus­cle mem­o­ry. The brain find­ing max­i­mum effi­cien­cy, body per­form­ing with­out direc­tion or the full­ness of con­scious atten­tion. Not quite as auto­mat­ic as breath­ing, but almost. What a mar­vel, hav­ing bod­ies that know how to do things with­out effort. At least, until all that’s left is effort.

Of the two bath­room doors in my child­hood home, of course the Vir­gin Mary would appear on the one in the hall bath­room. Always immac­u­late and guest-ready, it had bright white cab­i­netry and seashell pic­tures hang­ing on the walls. A pris­tine space. The oth­er bath­room, accessed through my par­ents’ bed­room, was the last room cleaned, and even then, its cave-green tile always seemed in need of grout­ing. Years of my dad’s after­shave were bond­ed to the walls. It was a clois­tered, for­got­ten grot­to, wait­ing for a saint to come puri­fy it. Eight years ago, I walked into that clan­des­tine bath­room car­ry­ing a half-liter bot­tle filled with flu­id that my moth­er had drawn from the ports in my father’s sides with a syringe. It was a del­i­cate busi­ness: if she pulled too fast with the plunger, his yip would car­ry through the house. She’d joked that she had him at her mer­cy, and he’d pursed his lips, feign­ing, teas­ing: See what I have to put up with? But I recall think­ing at the time how he could final­ly breathe again. And that she knew how to care for him, for his own liv­ing walls. The bot­tle I bore to the far bath­room was dis­col­ored but most­ly clear. Filled with his can­cer, it still radi­at­ed the warmth of his body. I held it care­ful­ly like a pre­cious thing, a rel­ic on a holy day pro­ces­sion, life and death in my hands. It shouldn’t have mat­tered which bath­room I used to dis­pose of it, but my moth­er was clear about where to pour it down. As I passed by the hall bath­room with Mary’s like­ness on the door and con­tin­ued into my par­ents’ bath­room, I became a mys­tic hold­ing the abject part hal­lowed, ask­ing angels for help in bear­ing up the walls.

Parei­do­lia is a visu­al form of apophe­nia, which refers to the ten­den­cy to make mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions out of ran­dom infor­ma­tion, beyond the brain’s nor­mal cog­ni­tive func­tion­ing of pat­tern recog­ni­tion. My octo­ge­nar­i­an moth­er, who still lives in my child­hood home, prob­a­bly nev­er notices the image on the bath­room door, much less thinks of it as a Mar­i­an appari­tion. Last time I vis­it­ed, I not­ed the grain­i­ness of the face, decid­ed the fig­ure looked more crone-like. An aged Mary, not the demure yet glo­ri­ous Annun­ci­a­tion fig­ure I grew up look­ing at in church, unstained in stained glass, her soft blue clothes draped about her, head bowed before a descend­ing Gabriel, lis­ten­ing to words let­tered in gold­en shards: Be it done unto me. A moment of assent, of faith, with­out know­ing all of what that life would hold for her. Per­haps it’s just anoth­er type of apophe­nia, but those words now seem more uni­ver­sal than reli­gious to me, point­ing to what feels like truth and sal­va­tion in the here and now. The idea of us assent­ing to our lives, inhab­it­ing their won­drous order and messi­ness, even to our deaths. Of being awed by our bod­ies’ silent know­ing. Of look­ing intent­ly at it all, our gaze as unbro­ken as a star­ing apparition’s, reflect­ing our own see­ing. A sign read­ing itself.

From the writer

:: Account ::

The inspi­ra­tion for my cre­ative non­fic­tion piece came from a poet­ry work­shop I took sev­er­al years ago. Taught by Mark Doty, the class began with ref­er­ence to Gas­ton Bachelard’s book, The Poet­ics of Space, specif­i­cal­ly its focus on inti­mate spaces of the child­hood home as a way to recov­er mem­o­ry and expe­ri­ence child­hood inte­ri­or­i­ty. In our work­shop, we did a “first house” exer­cise in which we drew a floor plan of our home and tried to recall objects or images that bore emo­tion­al res­o­nance for us. Mark encour­aged us to let our writ­ing about those spaces and objects unfold in a kind of “grop­ing way” rather than know­ing where we were going. Doing so let us thread back through time, our trig­gered mem­o­ries fur­ther inform­ing us about our cur­rent emo­tion­al state.  

“Pri­vate Ven­er­a­tion” start­ed as a short poem in Mark’s class. Focused on the mem­o­ry of a wood­grain pat­tern on the bath­room door, the image remind­ed me of the Vir­gin Mary in a haunt­ing way. Look­ing back, it clear­ly rep­re­sent­ed the influ­ence of my Catholic upbring­ing, per­haps also the fear of being seen or watched, and judged. But as I con­tin­ued to write in that “grop­ing way,” even­tu­al­ly turn­ing the piece from poet­ry into prose, that rep­re­sen­ta­tion moved deep­er into oth­er mem­o­ries and expe­ri­ences, par­tic­u­lar­ly the time I spent with my sick father. Writ­ing from a per­spec­tive that piv­ot­ed between being immersed in mem­o­ries and at a dis­tance from them, I revis­it­ed ideas and emo­tions sur­round­ing pri­va­cy and inti­ma­cy, fear and shame. I observed how time allows for dif­fi­cult, hum­bling emo­tions to be reframed, which can lead to feel­ings of accep­tance and con­nect­ed­ness. In the work­shop, Mark had told us to trust our impuls­es, trust the dis­rup­tions. Fol­low­ing where the sto­ry led unveiled the beau­ty of the human expe­ri­ence in the most unex­pect­ed places. 

Angela Suci­ch’s poet­ry and prose appear in RHINO, Nim­rod, Half Mys­tic, SWWIM, Whale Road Review, and else­where. Her cre­ative non­fic­tion was short­list­ed for the Ori­son Chap­book Prize (2023) and long-list­ed for the Jeanne Lib­by Memo­r­i­al Chap­book Award (2025). She was hon­or­ably men­tioned for the Pablo Neru­da Prize in Poet­ry (2021). A poet with a PhD in Medieval Lit­er­a­ture, Suci­ch pub­lished a chap­book,  Illu­mi­nat­ed Crea­tures (Fin­ish­ing Line, 2023), which won the New Women’s Voic­es Chap­book Com­pe­ti­tion and a Cut­bank Chap­book Con­test hon­or­able men­tion. She lives in Leav­en­worth, Wash­ing­ton, with her hus­band and daugh­ter.