I can be persuaded to believe in miracles as long as God’s not asking. My miracles are the bus coming on time, the doctor picking up when I call, and eggs costing under $3. These days, I’m scraping miracle grease from under my nails and peeling miracle scraps from the soles of my shoes. Under the circumstances, it does feel a little demeaning to bundle up all my miraculous bits and bobs, drive to God’s house, and spend all night throwing pebbles at His window, begging Him to transform my meager collection of fish into a sumptuous feast—particularly when, the logic seems to go, He could do it at any time. He just won’t feel like doing it until you ask.
Here’s a miracle: I used to be Catholic. In elementary school, I was obsessed with becoming a saint. I poured over my grandma’s Novena, memorizing the stories of the girl saints with the most gruesome deaths: Maria Goretti, Agatha of Sicily, Rita of Cascia. I saved up my sins like shiny pennies to trade in for sainthood at confession. I had no doubt that God and I were in love, but I was a jealous lover. I was most covetous of St. Rita and her Stigmata, the spontaneously-bleeding wounds that appeared on her hands, feet, and forehead in the same places as Christ’s wounds on the cross. I checked my feet during every bath, continuously rubbed my forehead as if I had a headache, praying the flesh would peel open beneath my fingers. When the bleeding began between my legs instead, it felt like a betrayal.
When I was a teenager, there were no miracles. Or maybe this: that anything going right at all was a miracle, and anything going wrong was inevitable. My drift away from the church wasn’t triggered by anything in particular. My lover lost His shine like everything else: my teachers, my parents, my country. Catholicism kept happening as it always had, and I happened in a different direction.
My mom still believes in God. At least, I think she does, although she seems to like going to Mass even less than I do. Nonetheless, when we visit Santa Fe during the dusty, half-certain summer of 2022, we still go to the Loretto Chapel. It’s just one of the things you do.
*
We visit on a day of unrelenting heat, and it seems the entire city has the same idea. We trudge to the back of a winding line of pilgrims and tourists, the Old Santa Fe Trail shimmering beneath our feet. Above us, cottonwood branches slice the sky into kaleidoscopic shards. As I fan myself, Mom reads to me from the dog-eared pages of her guidebook, voice thin and dry.
The Loretto Chapel was built in the 1870s by the Sisters of Loretto for their girls’ school, Loretto Academy. Although the school is no longer in operation, their strange choir loft staircase attracts visitors from around the world. With two 360-degree turns and no visible supports, much of it appears to be floating in midair. Some say it was built by St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. A miracle you cannot deny, etched in wood, oil, and air. Others say it’s a hoax. I’d give it a fifty-fifty shot, I guess.
Inside, the air is refreshing and cool, the whitewashed walls bright and clean. The chapel looms large on the glossy pamphlet, but it feels strangely compressed in person—as if it’s a miniature of itself. The famous floating staircase is tucked away in a corner, easy to miss. Its appearance is such that you can say “That’s a staircase” about it, and little else. Internally, I scoff. Lazarus was raised from the dead, and all we get is a weird staircase?
Mom and I ease ourselves down on the end of a pew, cringing as it creaks. A swarm of silences elbow each other, overflowing the room in their attempts to be the loudest: the silence of museum awe, church boredom, prayer. We sit ramrod straight, just like we were taught, hands folded in our laps. Our lack of devotion marks us out of place and out of time. But I’m more likely to believe in miracles in some places than others. Nowadays, you could not get an “Our Father” out of me in the church where I grew up if you put a gun to my head—but sometimes, wandering through an art gallery, squatting in my grandma’s pepper garden, or driving down the highway at night, I think I hear the hiss of a prayer. I slide right up to the line of belief before washing away with the tide. Perhaps it’s an unfortunate consequence of attending Catholic school, but while the world feels sublime, God is a decidedly earthly chore.
In the chapel, I glance around, careful to turn only my head. Women prostrate themselves before the altar, men rocking back and forth as they pray the rosary. I instinctively stiffen, then unfurl in longing. I am reminded of my grandmother, who passed away only six months ago. She was a fierce Italian Catholic. She raised both me and Mom to pray every night to our guardian angel. Her funeral Mass was the first service I’d attended in almost four years. For her, it would have made complete sense that Jesus’s foster father came to Santa Fe for the purpose of building a semi-magical staircase. She was not miserly with her miracles. Her worldview was one of bounty, of wonder under every stone. The kind of wonder that you took for granted, that you did not realize was seeping into your worldview until the source was gone.
Next to me, Mom reflexively reopens her guidebook, tracing her finger across pages already wrinkled white from use. I remember the many times when I would get bored during Mass and read the hymnals, hungry for any stimulus other than the pastor’s drone. I lean over her shoulder, following along. The Loretto Chapel was deconsecrated in 1968 after Loretto Academy closed. Today, the chapel is privately owned.
I frown. Although I’m not Catholic anymore, something about this bothers me. How can a miracle be privately owned? I try and fail to imagine Jesus charging money for His miracles, selling His healing to the highest bidder. Aren’t miracles supposed to be for the people? Like the story of the loaves and fish, when He fed a crowd of five thousand with only five loaves of bread and two fish supplied by a boy. The story of how giving until it hurts will return you abundant rewards.
I haven’t been a fan of all of God’s work, but I feel like He and I would be on the same page about this. I may not worship God, but I pity Him. Yes, I pity Him the deconsecration of His house. It feels like once a place has been holy, it must always be so. The ghosts of sermons, penitents, and prayers can’t be dissipated by a diocesan decree. They still hang in the air, an alien bell tolling just beyond the edge of my hearing.
If there is a miracle, let me see it for myself. Let me breathe it in.
*
A group of tourists takes selfies by the staircase, flash on. We aren’t allowed to climb it, so there’s constant crowding around the bottom. I hover awkwardly nearby, then elbow my way in front of the staircase as they leave.
“Well, here we are,” I whisper to nobody in particular. Or perhaps I’m saying it to my grandmother, wherever she is; I want her here to witness the miracle. Or I’m saying it to Jesus. Here we are together, in spite of everything: in spite of grief and the trials of girlhood and the price of eggs. Or I’m saying it to St. Joseph. To my guardian angel. To the staircase itself.
The staircase hums in the afternoon light. Mahogany spirals gleaming gold-brown, contorted in the shape of God thinking out loud. Wood, oil, and air. A miracle you cannot deny—or so they say. I suppose it depends on what counts as a miracle. Lazarus was a miracle. The loaves and fish were a miracle. Is good public transit a miracle? Home-fried peppers and potatoes? Strangers at the visitation who slip you a pack of Kleenex when you run out? Moms who buy pads and ibuprofen right before your first period, because they just know?
My atheism does not say God is not here. My atheism says God is here because we make God. God is omnipresent, and sometimes, that is a problem. God is behind the ruler you’re smacked with. God is between your face and the pavement. But God is my grandmother, God is the peppers she’s buried with, and God is the snow on her grave.
Somebody, somebody who might or might not have been named Joseph, built these steps. Somebody laid this building, stone by stone. Somebody sculpted the altar, poured glass in the color of prayer made solid, and envisioned they could build something that would lead somewhere, and that work was sacred. Yes—even a miracle.
At the top of the stairs, something weaves in and out of my vision. I stand on tiptoes, craning my neck. A flash of silver; movement and shadow. The staircase ignites that childlike urge I never lost to sneak away from the tour guide and run wildly through the museum on my own. I feel the heat of God behind me, watching, and I hear something. Bell-like. Alien. A tingling, scratching sensation begins in my palms, spreading to my soles, then my forehead.
I look down. Blood bubbles from my palms.
*
I remember falling down the stairs when I was six or seven. It’s a short memory; it was over and done in an instant. I tripped, and suddenly I was in a heap at the bottom of the steps, croaking and wheezing. My dad was right there. He scooped me up, stroking my hair. I remember my mom packing my lunch in the kitchen, and her hands did not even skip a beat in slicing apples or spreading peanut butter when she heard the noise. This was not because she didn’t love me. She just knew, with the peculiar knowledge of Gods and mothers, that I would survive.
*
I step over the rope :: & someone shouts :: dismay, disbelief :: blood runs down my palms :: step :: turn round :: towards a lapis sky :: step :: sprinkled with silver :: heady with hope & prayer :: turn :: heady with sin :: blood spills down my forehead :: step :: wood creaks, splintering into glimmering sands :: silver horns :: screaming praise :: like wolves on the hunt :: for sinful deer :: wading through rotted figs :: feet splitting open :: suspend, step :: blood mixes with fruit pulp :: with wine :: with howling angels and peeling bells :: so unbearable as to be holy :: & my mother’s hands & her tongue :: & my grandmother’s :: un-bodied :: puppeted by God :: & the holy of all holies to hold them :: hands bleeding, faces fruit-sticky, mouths open :: for a miracle.
The art that appears alongside this piece is “KING?” by JONATHAN KENT ADAMS.