My cousin, Maria, she's the one who always wanted to be a saint. They're Catholics, her family. Well, the rest of them just pretend to be. My aunt Natalie, Maria's mother and my mother's sister, she married an Italian guy so she converted, but she hasn't been to church since. Even her husband only goes a few times a year, for the big days like Christmas and Easter. But somehow Maria got it into her head that was going to be this big Catholic and become a saint. She's twenty-five now, and it's getting pretty tired. I mean, her father's a contractor and they do really well, they live in this big townhouse on Ovington Street, a lot bigger than ours. They even have a housekeeper who comes in three times a week. But Maria makes it like she's this big martyr around the house. Every time I come over she gets down on her hands and knees and starts scrubbing the floor, which of course is clean anyway, because the housekeeper is always there. And it's pretty obvious that just a few minutes ago she was sitting on her ass watching soaps -- I mean the TV is still warm and there's a bag of chips on the table with crumbs all around it.

She has this cheap rose perfume she sprays around when she thinks no one's looking so we'll think she smells like roses. Like no one can tell the difference between real roses and Scentzational Rose Emotion Cologne Spray. The last time I came over she dragged me into her bedroom to show me these wounds on her back that supposedly came from whipping herself. I ran my finger through one of them. It was lipstick. I didn't say anything. I just nodded while she went on and on about her self-flagellation.

So what happened to me -- I don't know why it didn't happen to her instead.

It started at work. I worked at an office in Manhattan. I was an administrative assistant, junior grade, which meant that mostly I typed up reports about computer software -- that's the business they were in, software -- and updated spreadsheets on customer service surveys.

I was at my desk checking my email when I felt a pain in my hand. This isn't so strange when you use a computer -- sometimes you get pains in your hands and wrists. But then I felt this sort of gush, like my hand was sweating, except it was all of a sudden instead of a little bit at time. It was like my hand leaking, almost as if it was peeing. I didn't know what to think -- it happened so quick and it felt so strange. I lifted my right hand off the mouse and looked.

It was blood. My hand and the mouse were both covered with it.

I kind of panicked. For some reason I felt embarrassed, like I really was peeing right there at my desk. The first thing I did was grab some napkins off my desk, leftovers from lunch, and clean up the mess. Then I pushed some more napkins into my hand and rushed to the bathroom to wash up.

It wasn't until I had my hands in the sink and was washing them with that pink soap that I saw it was both hands. In the middle of each palm was a small hole. That was where the blood was coming from. The holes were perfectly round and about the same size as if they had been made by knitting needles. My mother knit and needles were all over the house, which was why that came to mind. But of course, I hadn't accidentally stabbed myself with a knitting needle at my desk at work.

I had cut my hands somewhere. I went up to reception area, where there was a first aid kit, and got some bandages. Back at my desk I covered the little holes up and went on with my work. They didn't hurt. Not really. It was like when the doctor says "there won't be any pain, but there will be some discomfort." There was some discomfort, but not any real pain.

But they wouldn't stop bleeding. Within ten minutes I had to change the bandages, and then again in another ten minutes and then again and again.

Finally I went to my supervisor, Ileana, and told her I didn't feel well and wanted to go home. When she asked what was wrong I told her I was getting my period. Which was kind of true.

At home I just went to my room and shut the door. I was hungry but I didn't go upstairs to eat until my parents were in bed. The bleeding finally stopped at around midnight, after I went through like five boxes of bandages I had bought on the way home. The whole thing was strange, but when the bleeding finally stopped I thought that was the end of it. Until two days later, when it began all over again.

I didn't want anyone to know, which wasn't so easy. I lived with my parents in their house in Brooklyn. I had had my own place in the city for a few years but then the rents got too expensive and last year, when I was twenty-six, I moved back home to save some money. I figured if I was going to have roommates, I might as well know them, and not pay any rent. My parents have a big limestone house in Bay Ridge, just the two of them, and they pretty much gave me the whole bottom floor to myself. Their bedroom was on the top floor, and in the middle was the kitchen and dining room.

It was fine, except occasionally I would have liked a little more privacy. Like when I was bleeding uncontrollably from my palms and didn't want anyone to know.

After a few days, I figured some things out. For example, cut-up squares of gauze and surgical tape worked much better than store-bought bandages. I only had to change the dressing once an hour or so this way. And long sleeves, of course, really long sleeves. It was fall, so that was easy. I bought some sweaters that went down to my fingertips, and no one ever noticed. Actually, a funny thing happened, which was soon enough I noticed some other girls around the office wearing the same type of sweater, so I guess they looked good.

Out of everyone I especially didn't want my cousin Maria to know about my hands. I blew the whole family off as long as I could and then finally it was Thanksgiving and I had to go to dinner with them. Christmas Eve at our house, Thanksgiving at Natalie's house -- it had always been that way. I wore an extra-long sweater with two pairs of bandages so I wouldn't bleed through. I didn't bleed all day, every day, but after a few days off it had just started again when we were getting ready to walk over to my aunt and uncle's.

We all sat down to dinner -- my parents, my aunt and uncle, Maria and me -- and at first it was nice, but then everyone started arguing about the new stadium they're building downtown. My mother and my uncle were against it, Maria and her mother were for it. I didn't know much about it, and my father said the city was a bunch of criminals and either way we would be screwed, so it didn't matter. It got pretty heated and by the end of the meal my mother and her sister weren't speaking to each other. It was one of those situations where it was obvious they weren't really fighting over the stadium, but no on knew what they were really arguing over. At least I didn't.

The good thing about it was that no one noticed that my bandages were starting to leak. Until later. Somehow I got roped into helping Maria with the dishes. Of course she jumped up after dinner and volunteered to clean -- always the martyr -- and then when I go in the kitchen to get some coffee she asks would I mind drying just one or two? And then the next thing I know I've got my hands in the sink with rubber gloves on, scrubbing away, and Maria's sitting on the kitchen counter smoking a cigarette and talking about Jesus.

"I really think he likes me better than that cunt Libby. I really feel it."

"Who's Libby?"

"This bitch at church who thinks she's such hot shit because she volunteers with these orphans. and the orphans have AIDS. Like somehow that makes it count more." "Well, why don't you volunteer somewhere?"

Maria rolled her eyes and snubbed out her cigarette in a coffee cup. "Like I have time! I mean with my burdens here and at the church --"

Just then she happened to glance over to the sink. The water was pink.

"Ew," she said, craning her neck over to look. "What's that?"

"Cranberry sauce," I said quickly. But it was too late. She noticed the little streams of red coming out from the rubber gloves, spreading out into the water.

"Ew GROSS! You're bleeding all over the dishes."

"Oh my God!" I said. "GROSS!" With my back to her I took off my right glove and wrapped a dishtowel around my hand. "I must have cut myself on a knife in the sink. Or maybe there's a broken dish."

Maria looked at me strangely. "It was both hands," she said.

"No it wasn't," I said quickly. "Just this one."

"Let me see that." She reached for my hand. I jumped back.

"No! I need to keep pressure on it."

"Come on! Lemme see." Maria lunged for me. I side-stepped her but she was quick. She threw herself at me and the next thing I knew we were rolling around on the floor, just like we used to do when we were kids. She used to say, "Jesus HATES you!" and pin me to the floor and pull my hair.

Maria had been bigger then me then, but now it was a fair fight, and every time she thought she had me I managed to flip her over. Soon we were both panting and running out of energy but Maria wouldn't give up. And of course, I was still bleeding, so little patches of blood were getting smeared all over both of us, ruining our clothes. Then Maria got on top of me and got a big chunk of my hair in her hand and was screaming "Show me! Show me!" when our mothers heard her yelling and came in.

"Oh for Christ's sake," Natalie said, scowling. "Maria! Get off your cousin. Off! Now!" She clapped her hands. Maria didn't budge. She looked at me like she hated me. "Maria!" Natalie finally said. "Do you think Theresa of Avalon assaulted her cousin on the kitchen floor!"

That made her give up. She rolled off me and leaned up against the wall, but she wouldn't take her eyes off me. She looked furious.

"Honey, you hurt yourself," my mother said, seeing my hands.

"Mom," I said, panting, "I want to go home."

In the car on the way back my mother sat in the back seat and wrapped her arm around me. I leaned my head against her shoulder.

"Maria's always been a bitchy girl," she said.

"I know."

"What set her off, anyway?"

"I don't know. I guess Jesus doesn't love me."

We both laughed.

"Mom, what were you and Natalie fighting about over dinner?"

"The stadium."

"No you weren't. I could tell."

My mother sighed. "You're right. It wasn't really that. But I don't want to talk about it now."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry you didn't have fun tonight, sweetie."

"No, it's okay. I did, until the thing started with Maria. I love you, Mom."

"I love you too, sweetie. With all my heart."

"You too, Dad," I yelled up front.

"Me too, hon," he said. "You won't know how much until you have kids of your own."

I got used to the bleeding. It never fell into a regular schedule, but something close, with a few days on and a few days off, until a few months later it stopped all together.

But then the other thing happened. We were having a staff meeting at work. We were all in the conference room and someone from human resources was talking. I was eating a bagel, and not really listening, when all of a sudden I felt sick to my stomach. I stood up and ran down the empty halls to the bathroom, where I threw up. I had assumed no one else was in the bathroom but when I was done vomiting I heard someone else, down at the end of the long row of stalls, doing the same thing.

We got to the sinks at the same time, sweaty and pale. It was Kate from product development.

"You too, huh?" she said.

I nodded. I was about to ask, did she think it was something in the bagels, when she said: "How many months are you?"

I mumbled something about not being sure and cleaned up and left. I didn't go back to the conference room. Instead I went to my desk, called my gynecologist. and made an appointment for later that week.

Maria called on Saturday and asked me to come over. We had made up from what happened on Thanksgiving in the way family always seemed to make up, at least in my family: we just pretended it had never happened. When I got to her house her parents were watching TV in the living room. I talked with them for a few minutes about the show they were watching, some kind of a nature show about pandas -- they eat like a hundred pounds of bamboo a day, Natalie said -- and then I went up to Maria's room. Maria was sitting on her bed, and her eyes were bright and wide like she was excited about something.

"Look!" She pointed at the wall next to her bed, where there was a pattern of cracks in the plaster like a spider web.

"What?"

She looked at me like I was an idiot.

"No, look closer!"

I looked again. We went through the routine of pointing and looking a few more times before she finally gave up.

"It's JESUS, you moron. Look at the cracks. See here? That's his beard." I looked. I didn't see Jesus.

"I don't know, Maria."

"YOU'RE NOT LOOKING! Come ON. Here's the beard, the eyes, the long hair. Come ON."

"Does anyone else see it?"

She frowned. "Of course they do. Everyone except you." She looked at me. "Jesus, you're getting fat."

She was right, I was gaining weight.

I was going to have a baby.

I hadn't told anyone yet -- it was a difficult topic to bring up. For one thing, I hadn't had sex in over a year, since I broke up with Bobby Schwartz, and pretty much everyone knew it. For another, I had decided, right away, that I was going to keep the baby, which probably meant living with my parents forever, or until I won the lottery. I knew it seemed like a stupid decision, having a baby with no husband, actually no father at all, when I couldn't even afford my own apartment. But I loved it. As soon as I knew it was there, I loved it, whatever it was. Maria was smarter then I gave her credit for. She looked closer at my stomach

and my breasts. "You're pregnant!" She shrieked. "You fucking sinner! You're having a baby out of wedlock! Jesus HATES that!"

I got angry. I told her she didn't know anything about it.

Then she started adding it all up. My not having a boyfriend and everything. And of course, her mind was always on that type of stuff anyway -- seeing Jesus on the wall or hearing Mary talk to her, stigmata and immaculate conceptions.

She didn't say anything for a long time, just looked at me with her eyes narrow like she hated me. And then she got down on her knees and from there threw herself on the carpet in front of me, face down, and started babbling about Our Savior.

I begged her not to tell anyone. But I should have known better. Now there's people outside the house every day, waiting -- I'm not sure what they want. Some of them are obviously sick, with crutches and wheelchairs and awful things like tumors on their faces, and I guess they want to be healed. But I don't know how to do that. I feel bad for them, and I wish I could help. But I don't know how. Some of them have personal problems. I tried to give advice to a few of them, like the lady whose son was on trial for a robbery he didn't commit. Get a good lawyer, I told her. But that wasn't what she wanted. She expected a different kind of help. It was always like that, so I stopped talking to them at all. They leave little notes on the door though, detailing their problems. Some are simple, like they need money or a new car, and some are really complicated, disputes with landlords and the welfare system that have been going on for decades.

I stopped going to work because the same kind of thing was happening there -- instead of working, some of the staff were lining up at my desk expecting me to touch them or pray for them or something. So I stopped going, and with the people outside I hardly go out at all anymore. My parents think it's pretty funny. Every time they leave the house people start genuflecting in front of them and throwing their little notes at them. My parents, they're convinced I screwed some guy I'm too embarrassed to tell anyone about.

Maria comes over every day and pretends to wait on me. Like she's my servant or something. Of course, she doesn't really do much, and mostly I end up fixing meals for both of us and cleaning up after two people instead of one. I don't mind, though. It's better then being home alone all day.

I've thought about moving, going somewhere where no one knows who I am and they think I'm just a regular pregnant lady without a husband. But I don't want to be all alone. My mother promised to help me out when the baby comes, and I need that -- I don't know anything about taking care of a baby.

I don't know what's going to happen.

I do know one thing, though. It's growing fast, and I love it already.