Tea is my typewriter

An advent of microstories: day 2

I watch the gargoyles. I study them for any traces of movement, any change in their demonic expressions or aggressive postures. There are four of them on the church and I know them very well. I have been a gargoyle watcher for six months now. When I watch them I am vigilant and alert. I am doing an Important Job, because one day they will come to life again and I do not know what will happen but it will be Bad and I will have to Warn People.

Today I have been watching the gargoyles for a few hours and the metal bench I’m sitting on feels cold. When I notice it is cold, I realise my attention has strayed from their weatherworn little evil faces, their protruding claws and pointy teeth, so I snap back to vigilance again. They stare back at me with eyes made of holes, simultaneously expressionless and menacing.

A woman dressed in black walks towards me and I feel a lurch of dread in my stomach. Making smalltalk or answering a stranger’s questions gives me nearly as much fear as the prospect of the animation of the gargoyles.

She holds out a mug of tea and smiles at me. 

“I brought you this because you must be cold,” she says. 

She has a soft American accent and a page-boy haircut; she is in her fifties with no makeup and a kind, warm smile. I realise she’s wearing a dog collar and her motivation falls into place. The gargoyles are resident on her church. I wonder if she knows about them. 

I cannot resist the warmth of the tea or of her smile. I feel myself soften and I take the tea. She sits beside me and sips her own drink.

She sits there in silence for a long time. I keep my vigil, my eyes moving back and forth between the four stone monsters. I do not feel uncomfortable.

My tea is almost finished when she eventually speaks.

“If you’d like to tell me what happened to you”, she says, “I would like to listen.”

Without taking my eyes from the gargoyles, I tell her. My guard is up because I’m watching the gargoyles, and this gives me freedom to let my guard down with my words. My story comes out with an ease that surprises me, in sentences that I didn’t know my brain had formed. 

I can easily tell her about the day the gargoyles sprang to life as I walked past. I recount how scared I was as their evil little bodies danced around me and pulled at my coat. I tell her how I was stuck to the spot with shock as they laughed with grating, vicious cackles. I explain how I looked around for help but I was all alone, so I ran and ran until they stopped following me. 

I tell her that some nights, my dreams are still interrupted by the sensation of their tiny, sharp, stone claws scratching at my legs and how I try to scream to tell everyone but no sound comes out.

She is quiet, but I know she has heard me. She has a reassuring presence and I feel calm. I keep my eyes on the creatures. 

“How long ago did it happen?” she asks.

“It was the tenth of July this year”, I tell her, “I remember because I was on my way home from my dad’s house. We’d been to the consultant and they confirmed his cancer was back, and this time it was inoperable.”

I realise I can’t see the gargoyles any longer because my eyes are flooded and I’m helpless to stop the tears running down my face.

She puts an arm around me and we sit in the cold while I cry.

“Can I show you something?” she says after a while.

She takes me by the hand and we walk towards the church. The gargoyles are high above my head, beyond my reach, but just above me on the wall is another face peering from the stone. It’s smaller and I couldn’t have seen it from the bench. It’s a newer sculpture. It has the same holes for eyes, but also a smile, and two tiny hands holding a third hole beneath it’s head.

“This is a sheela na gig.” she tells me.

“Is that -”, I sniff, “Is that it’s vulva?”

She smiles. “It is. I had her and her sisters carved and installed on the church when I was inducted here. I’ve never trusted the gargoyles. Too much anger and menace. But a sheela na gig wards evil demons away. It’s a feminine power, you see.”

I am transfixed. Sheela na gig has no grimace, no fangs, no coiled aggression ready to pounce. She is instead showing me her most vulnerable parts, fingers prising open her vulva, which she is using to fend off evil.

“What we have is enough”, says the minister. “We can all use whatever powers we have to help keep balance in the world. For some, it’s claws and creating fear. For others, our vulnerability is our superpower. Like sheela. It can change the world.”

I smile.

She gives me a hug, takes my empty mug, and goes back inside the church, telling me to call by any time I like, and that she’s usually here in the mornings. 

I stop worrying about the gargoyles. I go back to my dad and I help my family look after him and prepare. It hurts much more than the gargoyles did when they attacked. But this is how I change the world.