by Sarah Shotland
The Patron Saint of Rust
I am searching for the Patron Saint of Rust. I don’t expect to find her here, with my legs spread at the gynecological oncologist, but since this is where I’ll be spending the next several hours, it’s my best option. And by best, I mean only.
I live in the big middle swath of the country that thank God isn’t Kansas, but too bad isn’t Manhattan.
I’ve been searching for the Patron Saint of Rust because this is the place I sleep, and I want to be looked after, or at least know who’s been assigned to look after me, and if they’re slacking off. If the news reports are right and we did lose our futures when we lost the factories and foundries, then we certainly shouldn’t lose our divine intercessor too. Seems like we deserve her more than ever.
To find her, I tried the usual routes. That is to say, I Googled it. Patron Saint of Rust didn’t pull up any search results, but once I slid down the rabbit hole of low-sky, factory-snow, rust-related words, I started to find some contenders. If this county had a mascot, it might be a salt truck, and what do you know, Patron Saint of Salt came right up. Go figure. Saint Gianna Beretta Molla. Not only is she the Patron Saint of Salt, she’s a new saint. Relatively speaking. A contemporary saint. She was only born in 1922. An Italian.
The Patron Saint of Salt sounds so romantic to me. So lofty. The internet tells me her full title is the Patron Saint of Salt and Light, which is so much like a prayer and a poem that I thought there’s a reason those Catholics keep roping me back in.
This is my fifth trip to this particular specialist. Dr. Flinn. He’s fine. In the past several months, I have been told many things about my cervix. It is deep. It is shaped in a way that would make it difficult to dilate. It is definitely abnormal, everyone agrees on that much. Thus far, Dr. Flinn has electrocuted my cervix, frozen my cervix, and spliced my cervix, and yet it remains obstinately abnormal. On the ceiling above the exam table, Dr. Flinn has a poster of a Florida beach. Miami-Vice style, palm trees and speed boats, crystal clear water, hot pink script that assures the viewer: wish you were here. No shit. Me too.
“You’ll feel a cold pressure,” Dr. Flinn says. He narrates as he performs his inspections and interventions. Cold. Pressure. Pinch. Pain. Those are the only directives he gives me as instruction.
When I investigated the patronage of Salt and Light, I found a website that is actually an ad. The Salt and Light Foundation. It’s a Catholic propaganda organization. They make short films about the lives of contemporary saints. Focus on making them palatable to a modern audience.
Saint Gianna Beretta Molla was a physician, which seems rare for a woman of her time. Especially a woman from the Italian countryside, where I’m guessing they subscribed to some fairly rigid gender norms. Smart. She was a smart woman. The bit about salt and light, those seem to be the work of the propaganda foundation, not the Vatican. Gianna is officially the saint of Motherhood and Unborn Children.
I want to write a letter of complaint to the Vatican. You aren’t allowed to give someone both Motherhood and Unborn Children. It’s one or the other, because there’s no way to bridge the space between both. That’s not what even grace makes possible. You are one. You are the other. In the black and white certainty of the catechism, all of us Catholic children learned things–we learned there are lines that are uncrossable. And yet: saints. Miracles. Mysteries of Faith. Incorruptible bodies. But this. This double-patronage is just too much. There are choices you have to make in this world, and this is one of them.
“Pinch,” Dr. Flinn says. “A few more pinches.”
Gianna had four children, but the last one killed her, and that is why she is a saint. The fourth one, whose name is also Gianna, was complicating things inside original-Gianna’s body. Doctors told her that she was going to die in childbirth, and that for the sake of her survival, she should have an abortion. She had a c-section instead and died. “If it comes to a choice,” she’s reported to have said, “let the baby live and not me.”
***
After my last abortion, a vivacious, kind Nigerian doctor put me on a medication for high blood pressure. She worked at the community clinic where I went because I had the shittiest Bronze plan ever. If the abortion at 36 wasn’t bad enough, the whole thing ended up giving me high blood pressure and a newly minted sense of perpetual anxiety. Of course, the blood pressure was just the start of it. Eventually, it also led to the referral for Dr. Flinn and the Cervical Cancer Care Unit at the Pittsburgh Women’s Center.
The most recent abortion was on 9/11. Nine months ago. Not 9/11/01, which would be a real mind-fuck. Coincidentally, I did have an abortion in 2001, but that’s what I think of as my normal-abortion. The you’re-a-20-year-old-twit-abortion. The one that most people get.
Nine months ago, I was not the 20-year-old bag of mess that I was the year the Twin Towers came crashing down in a fire of airplane parts and high heels. I was who I am today. A full-grown professional lady who should know better. Who should, by this point, finally have gotten her shit together.
The first abortion, the one in 2001, I’m not sure whose it was, except that it was mine. And that seemed like all the fact I needed: this was going to be all mine, and only mine.
My English professor at the time, a real hot-shot writer-in-residence type from New York who’d come to New Orleans for the jazz (barf), was the first person I saw after the towers went up in flames or down in history, whichever cliché you want to use. Classes weren’t cancelled at my Catholic university. I had creative writing that night, and when the class met, the hot-shot writer-in-residence asked us all to reflect on the day’s events before letting us out early “to have a beer in a place where you feel loved.” He was one of the choices for who the abortion would belong to. Of all the people who could have been the collaborator in question, he was the one who would have made it the most all-mine.
That one was easy.
The class and the abortion.
No one wants you to have a kid at 20. Not when the choices for who it belongs to include a temporary professor, your roommate’s cousin, the bartender at Butler’s, or the guy who makes the burritos at Juan’s extra spicy.
No one wants you to fuck it up like that. Not when you have potential. Which is what I’ve always had.
***
“You’re doing great,” Dr. Flinn says, though who the fuck knows what that means. Wish you were here. Wish you were here. “A few more pinches, and then we’ll move to pressure.”
Saint Gianna Beretta Mola is not a saint that I particularly care to take on as my patron. I would much prefer if there were someone tasked with taking care of the oxidation process, of the lingering and deleterious effects of weather, someone who transforms neglect into the gorgeous color on the bottom of a long-loved pickup truck. It seems like a real oversight of the church that there is not a patron saint of rust. And while I’m at it, demanding saints, I’d like to demand that there be a patron saint of women who have abortions, rather than women who die in childbirth because they’ve refused one. I want the saints to start representing the untouchables again, if they ever did.
***
I never took the blood pressure medication.
I knew that it was bullshit.
I was fat, and I was a smoker, and I ate nothing but salted meats and salted chocolate. I was wearing a lot of caftans and trying to offset the growing roundness in my face with giant earrings. They hurt my head because they were heavy, in addition to all the heaviness I was walking around with.
The doctor also put me on the DASH diet. It was hell. You’re only allowed to have a tiny bit of sodium a day. Something like a teaspoon of salt. Which basically means you can’t eat anything that you buy from a store except oranges and spinach and a special kind of yogurt. Who knew that even yogurt had added salt. Apparently, this Dr. Dash guy who made up the diet. Maybe he is the real patron saint of salt. And it’s super-low-fat, so you have to do things like eat fat-free cheese, which actually isn’t even worth it. It’s like fucking a ghost.
But I did it, and I lost thirty pounds in five months, and I’m willing to say I look better now. I did it because I fucking hated myself. I hated myself for having gained 30 pounds after having that 36-year-old abortion, and I hated myself even more for caring about the 30 pounds. I hated myself for being the same mess at 36 that I was at 20, and I hated having to go to the community clinic with my shitty Bronze plan while the girlfriend who had driven me to that first abortion was posting photos of her beautiful, perfect seven year old twins on Instagram and texting me about whether or not the family vacation was Costa Rica or Belize that summer. Fuck you, bitch, I thought. Even if I could tell you the truth, I wouldn’t. Once people have kids, even the ones you think are going to be cool, they could turn on you. Motherhood does strange things to people.
***
If this intervention isn’t successful, Dr. Flinn says we’ll discuss oral chemo or a hysterectomy. He seems to think the chemo is the obvious choice. “If you choose the hysterectomy, you’ll need to complete a thorough counseling process. We don’t want anyone your age to live with regret.”
“A few more pinches,” he says. “Hang in there.”
I am hanging. I am not sure where in there means. Wish you were here.
The abortion nine months ago was a medication abortion. Screening and consult at the Planned Parenthood offices. I took the first pills at the office and was sent home with two more to take later in the day. I opened a bottle of champagne when I got back to my apartment and cued up a Project Runway marathon. I was expecting something similar to the first day of my period. Two weeks later, I was still bleeding. When I went back to Planned Parenthood, the nurse who took my routine vitals shook her head when she put the blood pressure cuff on. “This machine is broken,” she said. When she came back with another blood pressure machine, she took the reading three more times and called another nurse, who took yet another reading.
“How are you feeling?”
“I feel fine,” I said. “Aside from the bleeding.”
When I left the office that day, they gave me a laminated index card that read: “Please administer medical attention immediately. I am likely having a stroke,” along with my contact information and vitals. “If you feel dizzy at all, you need to go immediately to the emergency room and give them this,” the nurse said. “It’s remarkable you’re walking around right now.”
“What about my cervix?” I asked. It seemed to me like the referral to the oncologist was much more serious than the blood pressure, but what do I know?
“The abnormalities on the cervical surface are concerning, but you’ll need to speak with a specialist,” she said. “I’m so glad you came in today.”
The abortion obviously hadn’t caused the cancer; that’s not what abortions do. The weeks of bleeding were actually a harmless and rare side effect of excess iron that sometimes happens in miscarriages and medication abortions. There was nothing wrong with that at all. Had that little freak show never happened, though, I wouldn’t have known to come here. I wouldn’t be listening to Dr. Flinn.
“We’ve got some pressure coming up,” he says. “Deep breath.” He’s fine, Dr. Flinn. He’s perfectly fine, and I hate him.
***
How about a patron saint of additional sleeplessness,
A patron saint of ectopic choices,
A patron saint of the rhythm method, of floating IUDs, of failed pills.
A patron saint of ripe plums,
A patron saint of the way a zygote looks like Jello,
A patron saint of stitches, sutures,
A patron saint of mouths full of copper,
A patron saint of women who fuck the bartender.
Where is the patron saint of diner waitresses?
Where is the patron saint of the women who give birth in prison?
Where is the patron saint of low-sodium diets, of fat-free cheese, of crackers made from air?
Where is the patron saint of cottage cheese lunches?
Goddamn it, rust should have been an easy one.
That should exist. These things should exist if they want me to keep coming and lighting candles.
***
The last time I went into a Catholic Church, it was a couple months after the abortion. I was cold on my walk home. I know that churches are usually kept unlocked, Catholic ones that is. Pray on your lunch break, light a candle on the way home; these things are encouraged. I was still on my low-sodium diet, and it was working. I’d lost 12 pounds since the Nigerian doctor gave me the medication that I was refusing to take. I wasn’t smoking anymore, which was the real miracle. I hadn’t had more than a wine spritzer in weeks. As I passed the Cathedral, I thought why not. Here’s a reason why not: it’s going to make you feel bad, lady. And you don’t even believe in this stuff. You’re here to look at the candles flickering in winter and the stained glass.
As soon as I genuflected, I started crying.
***
I do not regret my last abortion, but I regret the weight I gained because of it. I do not regret my last abortion, and that I am very glad I am not a mother. My friends were not supportive. I told too many people. Or not the right ones. Had I known about Saint Gianna Beretta Molla, I would not have prayed to her. She was not invented for me.
“You’re going to feel brief pain,” Dr. Flinn says. He’s right. My toes curl around the stirrups, clenching like fingers. “Little more,” Dr. Flinn says. “Hang on.” I am embarrassed that I can feel my thighs shaking, the way they might after an orgasm or a long run. He can see my involuntary body, the insides of me, places that no one else has seen since before the abortion, places I doubt I will ever show anyone again. If there is one thing I feel certain about it is never having sex again. I hit my lifetime supply. I’d like to move on to new things. I want my body to be all-mine, especially since I have chosen over and over again to claim it. “We’re almost there,” Dr. Flinn says. “Just a little more pain.”
***
When I was a child, my father took my sister and I to pro-life rallies. We were the children on the side of the road who held signs that read “Abortion Stops a Beating Heart” and “It’s a Child, Not a Choice.”
My father, who loves Bernie Sanders, also loved Ronald Regan, and for decades has been a one-issue, pro-life voter. My father believes Trump is an abomination, because my father is sincere in his beliefs. He didn’t vote in the 2016 election. Who the hell could he vote for? He forgives Bernie because of his compassion for the poor, which is as close to the unborn that any politician gets, my father says. I imagine my father has the Salt and Light Foundation bookmarked on his computer, that he watches the videos, makes donations. Gianna Beretta Mola is a saint invented for my father, not for his daughter.
***
During my last abortion, I had to do a pre-procedure interview with a social worker from Planned Parenthood. Maybe she was a nurse. An underpaid non-profit employee. Who the fuck knows what her actual job was. Abortion screener. She had an intern with her that morning: a young man, maybe 19 or 20, with a bright orange badge that proclaimed him a pre-med college student.
I didn’t mean to yell, and I certainly didn’t mean to cry, and when the words “I think I’m going to be lonely” came out of my mouth in answer to the question: “Do you have any concerns about the procedure?” I was surprised, but I was proud that I was a grown-ass woman who had at least learned to be honest.
The intern was required to ask me some questions, including “Are you currently satisfied with your birth control method?”
I laughed. I know it is important to keep a sense of humor when losing things. Another regional lesson.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“Come again,” he said, softly.
“I’m having an abortion this morning,” I said. “Do you think I’m happy with my current birth control method?”
“Can you answer the question,” the real employee said.
“It’s a stupid question,” I said.
“That’s true,” she said. “It’s true and I need you to answer it or we can’t continue with the procedure.”
“I assume that’s something that our fucking Republican legislature has demanded I answer?”
“I promise you that it will be easier if we do this part quickly,” she said.
I didn’t want to cry in the waiting room, so I went to the bathroom. It was one of those with the metal window for depositing your urine samples. I wanted to push my throat through that window. Find a way to pee my throat out into a plastic cup and push it through that tiny slot with paper towels. Here, I would offer, I don’t need this anymore. I don’t need to say anything to anyone ever again.
***
I keep returning to the lives of the Saints. I want the world to hold me, too. I make the Saints warriors and unicorns, kitsch beauties and manic pixie dream girls caught in a world where the nunnery was perhaps better than the farm. Joan of Arc. Dorothy Day. Anti-capitalists. Misfits. The unstoppable queers.
But they aren’t. Those are the ways I rewrite the Little Book of Prayers in my memory so that I can stay connected to the world I loved to have loved. They are the ways I recite the prayers I do not have to remember, because I know them quietly in my fingernails. I keep wanting the church to have a home for my body and my hands.
***
It’s finished. Dr. Flinn says I can get dressed. At the check-out desk, the nurse gives me a bag of the diapers I wear after each session. “The bleeding will last a few more weeks,” she says. “We’ll call you about the results. If you don’t hear from us in forty-eight hours, feel free to call the office.”
All my friends suggested I go to therapy when I got the news about the cervical cancer, but I had been to therapy before, for so many years, and I had learned enough to know that there are times when the talking is the opposite of the point. The point is the place without language, the point is this is the meatsuit I have to find a home in.
The world is full of innumerable objects, countless causes. I could find my patronage anywhere.
I started walking for rocks instead. On the walks, I look for stones and pebbles everywhere, especially where they aren’t supposed to be. When you look for red cars, you’ll never see a blue one again. When you hunt for stray playing cards, suddenly the city is full of Aces and Queens. The cliche is true. You always find what you’re looking for. Or you only find what you’re looking for. The point of the walks isn’t finding the rocks, it’s looking for them. But occasionally, I put one in my pocket. Rub it like an absence. I have an apartment full of rocks, none of them remarkable or especially smooth or aesthetically brilliant, but little proofs that the world is full of things older than the alphabet. I come from people who pray silently.
Dr. Flinn calls before the 48 hours is up.
“I wish I was calling to tell you we never have to speak again,” he says. “Unfortunately, you’re not done with me quite yet.” He thinks he’s breaking news, but I already knew I would be hearing from him again, that he’d lay out my choices, the ways in which I would keep losing and finding my body.
He’ll see more of my shaking thighs, more of my clenched toes, more of the human way my belly slopes into my hips. He’s talking about the recovery time from the partial hysterectomy, then explaining the side effects from the chemotherapy and as he adds more detail, I keep searching for The Patron Saint of Light. Of Salt. Of Abortions. I am searching for the Patron Saint of Blood. Of Tampons. Of Wanting to Call Your Mother and Remembering She Is Never Coming Back. I am searching for the Patron Saint of Doughnuts. I am searching for the Patron Saint of Machine Guns, and Red-Eye Flights and Losing Your Friends. I am searching for the Patron Saint of Unmapped Places and Unmarked Doors, of Poppies, of the DMZ, of knowing that there is a place inside you so unreachable that dark matter will become your higher power. I am searching for those saints. I am searching for the ones who comfort the saintless, who themselves are the miracle they seek intercession for. I am searching for the saints who do not yet know themselves to be miracles. And maybe it’s me. Me. Maybe I’m the Patron Saint of Rust.
Author Sarah Shotland (she/her) is the author of the novel Junkette (2014) and Abolition is Everything (2021). Her short fiction and creative nonfiction has been published in Ploughshares, Creative Nonfiction, North American Review, and The Iowa Review. She is Chair of the Art, Communications, and English department at Carlow University where she also directs the Madwomen in the Attic program. Find out more about her work at www.sarahshotland.com.
Artist Emma Sywyj is an award winning artist and photographer that has been creating art for 20 years. 5 of those years were based in London studying photography at the Camberwell College of Arts at the UAL. She has exhibited artwork internationally and nationally in the UK. She has been published in several art magazines and journals and exhibited her video artwork in galleries & film festivals around the world.
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