The dilemma that is strictly a female dilemma: to be fearful, cautious, cunning, shrewd, and protective of yourself, if (sometimes) overprotective; or to behave as (you suppose) a man would do, not so much fearless as not requiring fear.

Yet, on the way to the parking lot, you are walking quickly. You are not afraid, yet—you are walking quickly.

In haste, you’ve left your coat unbuttoned. You are bareheaded, your eyes are wet with tears. You fight the childish instinct to run. For where would you run to?—your car is some distance away, you need to have your car key in your hand but don’t want to take time to pause, to rummage through your bag to find it …

And there on the path, as if out of nowhere, the tall figure waiting for you.

“Ma’am—hi! I’ll walk you to your car. I was thinking it might not be safe for you around here, a woman alone like you are.”

THE FLAGELLANT

Not guilty, he’d pleaded. For it was so. Not guilty in his soul.

In fact at the pretrial hearing he’d stood mute. His (young, inexperienced) lawyer had entered the plea for him in a sharp voice, like knives rattling in a drawer—My client pleads not guilty, Your Honor.

Kiss my ass, Your Honor—he’d have liked to say.

Later, the plea was changed to guilty. His lawyer explained the deal, he’d shrugged okay.

Not that he was guilty in his own eyes, for he knew what had transpired, as no one else did. But Jesus knew his heart and knew that as a man and a father, he’d been shamed.

At the crossing-over time, when daylight ends and dusk begins, they approach their Daddy and dare to touch his arm.

He shudders, the child-fingers hot coals against bare skin.

Hides his face from their terrible eyes. On their small shoulders angel’s wings have sprouted, sickle-shaped, and the feathers of these wings are coarse and of the hue of metal.

Holy Saturday is the day of penitence. Self-discipline is the strategy. He’d promised himself. On his knees he begins his discipline: rod, bare skin.

(Can’t see the welts on his back. Awkwardly twists his arm behind his back, tries to feel where the rod has struck. Fingering the shallow wounds. Feeling the blood. Fingers slick with blood.)

(Not so much pain. Numbness. He’s disappointed. It has been like this—almost a year. His tongue has become swollen and numb, his heart is shrunken like a wizened prune. What is left of his soul hangs in filthy strips, like a torn towel.)

Lifer. He has become a lifer.

But lifer does not mean life. He has learned.

Shaping the word to himself. Lifer!