First communion: 3

The young woman enters puberty in a foreign context, in which the Virgin Mary is the perfect contradiction of innocence, obedience, and fertility, perfectly lovely in spite of inhuman demands. Curious about the human body, she’s embarrassed for Adam and Eve, protected only by fig leaves, and Jesus’s nakedness, covered by only a thin strip of linen. Gilded illuminations of monsters and angels magnify her fears. She’s in pain but can’t complain, diminished to imperfection. She tries to deceive and hide her distress. She shrinks into the shadows that haunt her trying to disappear so that nobody notices her hysterics. In spite of the church’s teaching, she becomes a woman too soon, stirring alone in sensuous sheets, opening to the cool night air her flushed cheeks, her belly, and her burning breasts.