Chapter 3: Grace's Story
Ororo met him on the stairs with a box of stuff she had packed, and he slipped a couple of items into it as he took it. "Feminine needs," she told him when he gave her an enquiring look, and didn't say more. He risked a quick peek in and saw women's underthings and also some hygiene products for 'that time of month'. He blushed and quickly put the box beside the other one by the back door.
Now he had another problem. How was he supposed to take this out to her?
Remy came in the back door at just that moment and raised an eyebrow. "You not goin' be able to teleport all dat to wherever you goin, are you?" he said. Kurt shook his head.
Remy tossed him the bunch of keys in his hand. "Here. Put it all in de back of my truck. Should be enough room for you to fit all dat in dere."
With Jean's telekinetic help, Kurt got all of the things into the back of the truck, and drove off. He took the left turn out of the driveway when he saw they were still watching, then made a u-turn. When he passed the gates again, they had gone inside. Satisfied, he went on driving.
He parked the truck by the side of the road just before the sharp bend. Now that he knew what lay beyond that thick hedge of trees, he could understand why that bend was there. The road had originally gone straight into the cemetery here, but weeds and tall grass had grown up and occluded all signs of the existing road. He got out of the truck, taking the box of foodstuffs with him, and went slogging through the tall grass. Better not to teleport directly into the little clearing in front of the shed and scare her.
He soon reached the shorter grass of the path she'd cleared, and from there the going was easier. He rounded the last bend in the path and saw her sitting there on the grass beside he stream. He was about to call her name to let her know he was there, but the words died on his lips.
She was sitting there, with her back to him, and he rather absently noted that she had washed the grubby sackcloth 'dress' she wore and spread it out on the grass to dry. His attention, however, had been caught by the sight of the roadmap of scar tissue that covered her back, from the nape of her neck to her shoulders, back, and down past her waistline to the curve of her backside where it pressed against the grass. And she was so thin! The skin was stretched so tightly over her bones that every bone stood out on her back in sharp relief, and that just accentuated the scars.
She sensed someone there, and she turned, saw him, and screamed in shock, her hands coming up to cover herself as she turned. Kurt sucked in a breath as he saw the scars extended over her entire front, too; from her collarbones to the front of her thighs. She screamed in fury at him as he stood there, struck dumb, and snatched up the still-wet dress to press it against her chest.
"Please…I didn't mean to startle you, I just… I came by to drop off some things," Kurt said, his blue cheeks turning a dusky indigo as he hastily turned to giver her some privacy. She ducked into her shed to pull the still-wet dress over her head, and when she stuck her head out again, Kurt was standing with his back to the door, with his hands covering his face. His obvious embarrassment calmed her a little, and she walked up to touch his arm. "It's okay, I'm dressed now," she said.
Kurt peeked over his shoulder. Yes, she was covered. He turned now, his face still a deep indigo, and held out the box to her without looking at her. "Here, this is for you. And I have some other things in the truck I parked by the road…" As soon as she took the box he teleported himself back to the road and picked up the second box.
When he rematerialized in front of her she was standing exactly where he'd left her, looking somewhat startled. "What…how do you do that?" she said to him, round-eyed.
He grinned. At least she hadn't snapped at him. And she wasn't screaming either. That was good. "I'm a teleporter," he said. "I can transport myself from place to place in the blink of an eye." He put the box of clothes on the ground and opened it. Inside were the three pairs of jeans, three sweaters, and two jackets Ororo and Jean had picked out for her. "Here. They should fit; they looked like they would, anyway."
She gasped as she took the clothes out. There was longing in her eyes but reluctance in her voice as she said. "But these…they must belong to somebody. I can't take clothes that belong to someone else…"
Kurt put his hand over hers to stop her words. "Look over there," he said, pointing off toward the east, when he could see Xavier's mansion. "See that big house over there? The one with the two wings?"
Grace squinted at it. "Yes, I do," she said. "It's kind of a white dot from here; I can't see that good, but that's where you live?"
Kurt nodded as he filed that bit of information away. Her vision wasn't as good as it should be; she needed glasses, apparently. "I live there with my friends," he said. "There are a lot of people, and we all have a lot of stuff. We actually have a lot of junk. I'd been planning to pack up some of the old clothes and things to take to the church in town; I do a lot of charity work for Father Jerome." He turned to her and said, "I have a couple more things to bring; wait here." And he was gone again.
It took two more trips, but he did get everything there. When he came back the last time he saw her just coming out of the shed, and she was wearing a pair of the jeans and one of the sweaters. It was big on her, due to her extreme thinness, but at least it would be warm.
He vanished into the shed and opened out the air mattress, touching the switch that would inflate the thing. Grace watched it all looking surprised, and her eyes got even wider when she saw the caulk gun and tube in his hands. "Wow," she said as he started to fill in the cracks in the walls.
When he finished he came back outside and sat down beside her. "We had plenty of food left after lunch," he said. "I helped myself to some." He handed her the container of soup and the two sandwiches, and watched as she tore ravenously into the food. He stayed silent until she finished, then took the container and pushed the other box at her. "This has a lot of girl stuff in it. Ororo…my friend…packed it for you when I told her I didn't know what girls needed." At her alarmed look, he said to her. "I didn't tell her who you were. I just said a friend needed it. I guess she assumed you were one of the charity cases that I work on with Father Jerome."
"Am I?" she said quietly, studying him intently.
"Are you what?" Kurt looked at her.
"A charity case."
Kurt sat down beside hr and sighed. "No. You're a friend who needs some help. That is all. I would never be able to forgive myself, nor would God, if I let someone who needed my help go without offering it."
"God doesn't care about me," Grace said. The bitterness in her voice startled him.
"God loves everyone, including you,' Kurt said. "Why would you think that He doesn't?"
"If He cared He wouldn't have made me like this," she said softly. " And He would have let me die when I wanted to."
Kurt regarded her quietly. 'Is that where you got those scars?" he asked.
Slowly, she nodded. "Father Borden ran the compound that the Chosen Of God lived in," she said. "When I hit puberty just after my sixteenth birthday my eyes changed color and turned yellow. Father Borden told the community that I had been possessed by the devil and he had to drive Satan out of me. He called everyone into the church and prayed, and God came to us in the flames of the Altar fire and told Father Borden I had to be cleansed. He told Father Borden that I had been chosen because my form was pleasing to the devil and that in order to cleanse me they had to make sure my body wasn't pleasing anymore. He told Father Borden to take a whip and hit me with it, all over, until I was so scarred the Devil wouldn't want me anymore. It hurt horribly. I begged, cried, pleaded with them to let me go, to leave me alone, that I hadn't seen the devil and I hadn't invited him into my body, but they didn't stop. They chanted the prayers for exorcisms while they whipped me. When they were done they asked me if I still heard the voices. I tried to lie and say I didn't, but my eyes were still yellow and they said I was lying. Father Borden said they had to drive the devil out of me, and they put me in the Pit."
Tears were trickling down her scarred cheeks now, and she didn't notice that Kurt was frozen in shock. "The Pit was a hole dug in the ground in the middle of the compound. They tied my hands above my head and lowered me in it, and it was so narrow I had to stand, I couldn't sit, and there was no room to lower my arms." She wiped the tears away, but her eyes still stared at nothing. "They left me in there for a week. I wasn't given anything to eat, and I only got one cup of water a day. My feet and legs hurt so bad, and I begged them to let me out, that I wasn't responsible for how God made me, but they ignored me. Father Borden had me pulled out at the end of the week, and asked me if I still heard the voices, but I was almost insane with hunger and thirst, and I cursed God in front of them. He had me scourged again, and lowered back in."
"At the end of another week he had me pulled out. And this time when he asked me, I told him no, I didn't hear the voices anymore, and he said I was cleansed because my eyes had gone back to being brown. The Elders took me out, gave me water and food, and then Father Borden told me that God had given me a penance to do and afterward I could be accepted back into the community. They crucified me the next day in front of the church. I stayed there a whole day until my strength gave out and I passed out.
"While I was unconscious I saw a really bright light. I tried to head for it, I knew it was Heaven and I could find peace beyond that light, but a gate came down between me and it and I heard a voice say 'Not yet'. It was His voice, I knew it. And then I woke up, and I hurt so much, and I cried because He didn't let me die. But everything was all right after that, and they let me return to my life.
"Then on my eighteenth birthday my eyes changed color again. The elders got together with Father Borden, but no one could figure out why because I had been cleansed. I wasn't even having my monthlies anymore; I hadn't had them since the crucifixion. They took that as a sign that I had been cleansed even of original sin, since Eve didn't have monthlies until she ate the apple. Finally they decided that my eyes changed because they had been tainted by Satan, and they tied me down and scourged my face. I remember screaming and crying, begging them to stop while they whipped my eyelids, but they didn't stop. I passed out. And again I saw that light, and again I was told 'not yet' and again I woke up. But they must have thought I was dead because they had dumped my body in the pile of trash outside the compound gate. I got up and just started running away. I didn't want to stay, I'd had enough. They tried to come after me, but I kept running, and eventually the stopped coming. I was afraid to stop in a place that had people, so I just kept going until I found this place. It's an old cemetery. No one comes here anymore except a couple of kids now and then who think it's fun desecrating graves."
Kurt became aware that his mouth was hanging open, and quickly shut it. She hadn't noticed; she was staring at the ground. He thought quickly. Some of those 'feminine toiletries' Ororo had packed wouldn't be needed…but why? Women were supposed to have 'monthlies', as she called it, until they were past childbearing age; so why had hers stopped? Had she been permanently damaged when they tortured her? The thought made him shudder.
He reached into the box next to him and retrieved the two items he'd gone to his room for, and pressed a Bible and a rosary into her hand. "Here," he said. "Maybe if you read this, it'll show you what God is really like. God is Love, Grace; he would never tell anyone to hurt you like that. Whatever you saw in the church, it wasn't God. Maybe when you read this you'll realize that." He pressed her hands closed around the slim little volume and the rosary, and said, "Hang onto them. When you're ready I'll teach you how to pray with the rosary. But for now, it's getting dark, and colder. Go on inside. I'll see you tomorrow." He slipped off into the darkness.
She looked after him for a long time, and at the book in her hand, then went inside the shed looking at the book and thinking.