written by Charllotte Anderson

The name I was christened with at birth was Parakletos Parker. My mother chose the name. When I was very little, I would always ask why she chose it, and she would tell me, "You are very special to me, and so I picked a very special name for you that no one else can take." "Okay Mom." I would then proceed to wait a few days, or weeks, or months, depending on when I would remember, and ask again in a sneaky way, in hopes that she would forget what she told me and tell me more. But no. "You are very special to me, and so I picked a very special name for you that no one else can take."

I always told everyone to call me Mary.

As I got older, I got clever too; she won't ever tell me why. I found out what my name meant when I was twelve. Pastor had just finished a sermon about Jacob and how he got his name changed to Israel, and why names are important to who we are. While Mom and Dad mingled with everybody else afterward, I murmured about going to the bathroom and slipped away into the lawn of bodies. I always think of nicely-trimmed lawns when I go to church; for some reason, everyone smells different when they walk out of a church, just like how grass always smells different after you trim it down nice and pretty with a lawn-mower.

After some wandering and hastily sputtering in intervals, "Oh, yes, good morning! Yeah, I'm okay, thanks", I found Pastor.

"Hi there Mary. What's the big hurry about?" He looked down from atop the impenatrable tower of his suit and tie and shiny shoes, and gave me a fluffy smile that shall forever remind me of marshmallows.

"Well, I have a question, and I think you might know the answer."

"And what is it?"

A sighing hiss follows the warm, whirring rumble of the stopping bus. The doors open to receive me as if this machine full of people had been chasing me all over the city, and now wants to embrace me in its cold metal walls and worn upholstry. I pay the driver his due and sit in the back of the bus. I don't like being near people when I'm thinking. I have this hanging fear that the thoughts in my head ooze onto my skin and into my clothes and hair, like sweat, musty-smelling and glistening all over me, betraying me in whispers to those nearby. By sitting behind and away from people, their eyes can never hear my unfaithful thoughts.

My thoughts have left my name, an out-dated slip, for quite some years now, and lately it has become fashionable again. Right now I am quite lucky, because anything and everything that does not meet the status quo is quite chic with my friends. "Wow, your real name is Parakletos? That's so exotic! What does it mean Mary?" I proudly sport those ten letters like an elegant corsage, and explain that it is Greek for “helper.” It means a person that comes to the side of somebody else, to defend them, to nurture them, to laugh with them, to cry with them, to yell with them, to die with them. I embellished the meaning a little bit to make it sound poetic, but its still true. And that's what made my thoughts mildly finger the silky piece of my identity, a piece that had been given to me by my mother, her invisible hands filling it with dignity and beauty and truth.

When have I worn my name? When has anyone called me "Parakletos", or "Perry", or something? When has anyone written a letter, a report card, an invitation to "Parakletos Parker"? Even Mom calls me Mary; it is a capital letter, a comma, a period in her sentences. It is placed there because that is the rule, and she does not pay any mind to it. When have I worn my name? When has anyone smiled at me and said, "Thank you, I needed that" or "I'm so grateful that you were here for me" or "I don't know what I would have done without you"? My mother is either a false prophet or she is a highly disappointed apostle. It makes me think of what ugly, heavy thoughts Peter might have had the moment in which he yelled angrily, "I do not know that man!" All after he had believed for so long that his revered teacher was God among men. Afterwards: whips, blood, and spit. A jutting, bony frame covered by a dripping dishtowel of a rag. I always pray that Mom does not think that much of me. I'm not good enough to use Jesus as a metaphor for myself. He always wore his name.

This morning she looked very old. I never knew that before. Her neat, clean appearance has always been a veil over her deep, creasing wrinkles, over the long, sinking blue lobes under her eyes. I can see all the bones in her hands move as she wraps them around a mug of green tea. She doesn't drink coffee. "I'm short enough as it is," she will snap playfully, her face puckering out and looking like a skinny peach badger.

"G'mornin'. You okay today, Mom?"

"Sure. Why? There must be something with you." She eyes me with her badger face as she takes a sip of her tea. I really hate it when she does this. I act casually, watching her with a detached eye, trying to learn more; instead, she finds a crack to pry me open with.

Aw crap. I missed my stop.

"You look old. That's all." That's my save.

"I was older when I was pregnant with you." The real trap.

"Why?"

"Your father isn't your real father."

My father, Mr. Stan Parker, is not my biological father. This fact runs over my brain, ice water out of a cool glass pitcher onto the back of a fat, naked mole rat. It sticks its tongue out to taste the atmosphere – crisp and keen, like an orange peel. It shudders and retracts its head into the protective folds of skin. Why?

My mother was raped during the period she was dating my father. She was very lucky that evening, as my father, in a fit of an admirer's passion, decided he would visit after work. As she put it, he roared with an unknown ferocity and was upon the perpetrator like fire and brimstone on sandpaper. He soon married her, to protect that moment in which she was so exposed. She was positive.

Mother looked at me with her dark, milky eyes. She does look younger! Oh, does she look younger. I never knew that before.

She told me quietly that I was supposed to be dead. I was a miscarriage. Mom carried me within her womb, believing she was carrying a limp carcass. And still, she refused to have it removed. It scared her to have anything put inside her anymore. That terrifies her. "At the same time," she whispered, "it killed me to hold so much death inside." My father tried to convince her that Jesus could take away her terrified feelings, and take away everything she said was killing her, and make her alive again.

"If God can take away the things that kill me inside, then he can take this corpse from me. That's if he's God, right?"

Dad said that was true, but she didn't think so; the next day, she went into labor and delivered me a month prematurely.

"So that's why you are Parakletos. You are very special to me, and so I picked a very special name for you that no one else can take."

The buildings and trees and souls zoom in and out of my vision like a slideshow behind water stains. I wonder what their names are? I wonder why they got them. Do they matter at all? I've decided why Mom chose my name. She doesn't know how to say "holy crap", "I don't know what to say", and "thank you" all in one word.