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It’s not religious (it would be ungodly) but it is a sacrament nevertheless. She smiles at the woman at her arm. They advance, one step at a time.
For how long has she known?
Ages ago, since the dawn of time, genesis — since they weren’t even suggested in the cells of Adam and Eve’s bloodstreams (if she still believed in that shite). Since always, that’s how long she’s known. Bibi Garvey has carried it as a guilty conscience, as the burning pain of a missing rib in her side, torn out by God, her own but not hers, herself but someone else.
She had never dreamt of walking down the aisle like this. No priest would do it, anyway, so some solemniser would do just fine. There are flowers and there is music and all the people she would die for, kill for, standing right there with her. Did they know? Do they see it as the couple goes to where the rings will be invariably exchanged, the union made irrevocable? You’d think these things would be obvious at a wedding, the ties between bride and bride.
Then again, Bibi has never told. She has always acted more than talked, although keen observation would have sufficed just as she observes her surroundings now — Becka who is never in only one spot or with one companion only; Grace who beams and cries and shines despite the heavy hand eternally at her shoulder clasping her down, John Paul’s own golden band shining eerily from where God had sadistically allowed it to be placed; Urs who juggles her husband, her newborn child, her sister’s ceremony, Urs who might have seen something if only she weren’t distracted by everyone else, the only one who might still recall a certain drunken conversation from years ago, the closest Bibi had ever come to confessing… And then there’s Eva.
There had always been Eva, Eva all alone in that strange Eden, four girls at her skirts and each chomping away at her own dangerous fruit, accosted each by her own serpent wrapping around their limbs.
So near the vow now, Bibi feels that same squeeze at her arm. Odd, considering she is the one holding venom in her mouth.
Never to be spilled, true; there’s no antidote to falling. You might break only a bone or two (Becka did, once, and she still got a medal afterwards) or you might break your neck. It’s a long way down to Hell (not that she believes any of that) and she’s not spitting out her poison to condemn the person she so loves. Some truths imprison instead of setting people free.
Because the truth is, in all this time, it has always been her — it has always been Eva. Before Bibi could name it, before she had a name of her own, it was Eva. As a girl, as a woman, when she becomes a crone — which she never thinks about, not with fourteen years between them — it will always be Eva and her goofy laughter like an engine revving, Eva and how needy she is even when she won’t admit it, Eva and how staunchly she stands in the face of adversity, how tightly she holds to any of them in detriment to herself, more willing to be swallowed by the flood than to see them submerge for as much as a second. How could it be anyone else? She had always been their breath of life, the spark of light that made sense of all the darkness, the pain in the arse when any of them deserved a good kicking around for a bad attitude, the only one who would let herself get pinned on a cross to spare them of the same destiny and come to enjoy it in the end.
Bibi’s heart races. They reach the end of their path, the start of their journey, standing before one another to build their oaths, weld their souls together forever.
Grace bites her lip, Becka contains a laugh, Ursula holds her breath.
Bibi looks at Eva. Eva looks at her.
Eternity.
Such is the deal being struck for all those witnesses to bear, ‘til death does them part, as if that contract hadn’t already been signed five times over.
What would ever authorise her to speak? It should be evident, right then if never before, if never again. Is it? By how Eva smiles, how Eva nods in support… Bibi had hated all of Eva’s boyfriends, no exception. She would have maimed them all if she could, eye for a meddling eye that dared look upon Eva without deserving to, a hand for every touch Bibi should have been responsible for instead of them. Bibi loved her, more than any of those trespassers ever could; they hadn’t been born for her like she was.
It should be obvious, revelation, because she will never speak. Not unless Eva speaks first, as she so wishes she will, now, now, before it’s too late.
But of course Eva doesn’t. She doesn’t know, can’t know. How could she? Bibi never said it. Or perhaps she knows and it stays locked in her chest…
So Bibi looks back upon Nora — Nora, whose hands she holds in her own, whose name is engraved in the golden ring set to adorn her own finger for the rest of her life.
She smiles, somehow. Somehow, she’s happy — not as happy as she would have been with the woman she has dreamt of beside her every night (only a few steps away from her, in the next room), closer still than they are already. Bibi knows. She’s always known how wrong a world that denies her this is, when nothing feels as natural. She’s always known she could never tell Eva because it would be wrong for her. She doesn’t have it in her, not that, not to that degree, yet something in Bibi Garvey has always told her that Eva would have borne that cross — for her. She would have forced herself to love Bibi back, touch her in all the ways she has imagined since adolescence, face the disdain, the derision, the disgust… Sacrificing herself all over again, never gaining what she, Eva, might want, to the benefit of her sisters, for whom she would do anything without thinking, without regretting.
There has been enough of that. There's been enough of that whole Bible written over Eva’s aptitude to offer herself up to cosmic whim for them, tossed this way and that, five Isaacs in one and which no angel wanted to save from a faceless Abraham. Bibi is old enough to recognise it, to reverse the roles for once.
She resolved to learn another form of love, one which, though not as everlasting, was also not a lie; one which would allow Eva some peace of mind as well, someone she could believe in.
“God, Bibi, where d’you find her?”
“She’s all affectionate like Eva likes to be, just without the baggage and the booze.”
“Oi!”
So had Urs and Becka first reacted to Nora, reading in between the lines, perfect, irrefutable exegesis.
So Bibi turns towards Nora now, wanting this — perhaps just not as much as she wants Eva to read her, cut in, be the one to kiss her and claim her in front of everyone no matter how much Bibi knows she won’t, can’t.
The pact is sealed. They all celebrate, sincerely.
But if God is real He knows as well as Bibi what the true marriage is, in her soul — there is no real apostasy, no abandoning one’s original faith, forged in the primordial magma of their mother’s womb.
It’s not religious (Bibi catches herself praying in thanks when she sees Eva even as she takes Nora to bed) because it would be greater, stronger than God Himself.