When Mama Bodies Billow
What Santa Clara of Assisi taught me about bottles we forget and bodies we remember
It was the season of mama bodies billowing in the spirit realm—Sistah Sonia (my mama), Aunt Pam, Aunt Sybil, my friend Eva who had mama-ed several nieces and nephews in her 40 years. Mama’s bible was torn and peeling. I was thought she looked like an African goddess anyway. I stopped wearing bindis long before.
I arrived in Umbria almost two decades after I visited Kancheepuram. I went there for the same reason I went to those magnificent goddess temples. I needed a boost, a sign. Where do daughters go when their mamas return to the infinite womb? I was sure Santa Clara of Assisi had the answer.
That trip to Italy was a hustle. I convinced my graduate adviser to replace this-or-that class with this philosophy class I was taking in Fiuggi (which was an hour outside of Rome). There I was—a communications arts student and food and wine writer with several doctoral students in theology (two were in their late 40s and had never left The United States). There was also a young undergraduate with dreams of becoming a priest, and a nun-to-be.
Mama was two years dead, and I had not really allowed myself to grieve. It was like I had been holding my breath for two years afraid if I exhaled I, too, would be billowing in the spirit realm. When I found out we were visiting Santa Clara—a woman (a saint) I knew nothing about, I could feel an excitement I hadn’t felt in a while. It was the kind of excitement that crawls from underneath abject desperation like a lizard that has survived a collapsed roof.
Santa Clara or Clare of Assisi was born one day after me at the end of the 12th century. Just as the images of Santa Clara vary—blue-eyed, translucent skin, smiley and sweet-faced to pensive and stern, her face drawn and tired, so does her story.
I gravitated to the one about the young woman from an affluent family who was inspired by a preacher man from Assisi. At 18, she had been promised to marry a rich man, but she left her parents’ home in the middle of the night to pursue what she believed was her calling—a life of Christ-centered poverty.
She was taking a risk in a culture where women didn’t take these types of risks. I understood that. I imagined Clara walking out of the “death door” in the dense darkness, a full moon hanging above her, heart pounding, the joy and fear of knowing’s unknowing leading her (I’m not saying these things happened. I’m just letting the ink lead). But I did read that she exited her family’s “death door” which is a separate exit that was built in houses “to remove the bodies of deceased family members after their wakes were held, since it was considered bad luck to carry a casket through the home’s main entrance.”
I remember being exhausted the morning my two classmates and I left for Umbria. These were the two women who had never left The United States. One was a grandmother, the other hoped to be a wife and mother some day. Entering this culture of long, multicourse lunches and unrushed movement was an adjustment for them—a dying of the familiar.
They complained about the food and longed for McDonald’s, but during the train ride, we passed a field of sunflowers. They were spectacularly infinite as you could not see where the field began or ended. Sun-spirits growing from the ground. In this moment, there were no complaints just the comfort of life so beautiful, we were all just grateful to be there.
At 10 a.m. we arrived at a wine tasting in Assisi. The wines were red and chilled, and I remember not liking them. They were too light, too stoic, too unwilling to please.
When I arrived at Santa Clara’s tomb, there were several visitors, many devout Catholics kneeling, rosaries in hand. I covered my head with a fuchsia silk scarf I picked up from a thrift store my mother and I often frequented. I began collecting them after my visit to a silk weaving factory in Kancheepuram.
There was a mask over Santa Clara’s face. I’m not sure why that surprised me. Her head was covered with a black fabric. As she lay there, it occurred to me that she was on display. She was part of an experience purposefully designed to nurture faith. The reserved expression of the mask, the performative stillness, the Christian romance of the fully covered woman whose body belongs to the church. Like many stories of historical women, her story had been told for her. What remained was what gave believers the most satisfaction and validation.
A few days before I visited Santa Clara, I was on a tour of a museum in Rome that featured Michelangelo’s paintings. Everybody was anticipating seeing the Sistine Chapel. Even if you know nothing about art, absolutely nothing, you’ve heard of Michelangelo and the famed Sistine Chapel.
Just before we entered the space where this painting was said to be potentially life-changing for the viewer, the Italian professor who spoke pristine English explained that in one of the paintings, Michelangelo painted Africans in the lowest level of hell. I didn’t look at the painting, but the moment was indeed, the beginning of a change.
I remained silent and shocked and in exquisite politeness as I did not want to shatter the moment for the nun-to-be, the hopeful undergrad-priest, and the theology students who left the familiar to make direct contact with the symbols of their faith—two women who happened to be black.
While my classmates journeyed on to Milan and Florence, I remained in the small town of Fiuggi. At noon, I wandered around eating dark chocolate and cherry amaretto gelato. I drank Cesanese wine and ate charcuterie made at the local grocery.
My mother loved Italian charcuterie and so I often thought of her while I was eating. I found out that one of the professors on the trip who was from Tuscany was also grieving her mother. She was a vegan and called me “decadent” as I ate.
She arranged for a host at the hotel to bring wine from his cellar especially for me. It was such a kind gesture. I’d have to go rummaging through my old diary to find out what bottles we shared, but as I sipped wine on Santa Clara’s birthday with all the other professors and students on that July summer evening (She would have been 770 years old), I considered my own journey through the spirit realm, my thirst for strength and a kind of insight that is challenging to find among people.
Before Santa Clara, I found Kali in India—thousands of years old, breasts exposed, tongue out, awesome, black. Both their stories—Clara and Kali celebrated and criticized. Michelangelo’s black hell, adored. What is faith if its truth fails to comfort? Whom or what does it accommodate? I’m wearing bhindis again.
Amazing Read! Thank you 😊