by Maryjan Gay Munger
Donna Yeates, my mother's friend, was once Mary in the ward Christmas program. As herself, she had no children, couldn't even gain weight, which seemed to me part of the problem. She sighed to my mother that though she drank straight cream, her face never softened, her arms bony as bird legs never grew any rounder. The year she was Mary she wore midnight blue. Her skin was pure as milk, her hair looked blue-black. She carried herself with the swan look of pregnant women, their lovely, weary necks, their big buoyant bodies. I thought golden Gabriel must have streamed through her window in a white smock, yoked with two buckets of fresh cream, saying, "Take, drink, thou highly favored. Praised be thy name among women."
MaryJan Gay Munger, a graduate student in English, lives in Springville with her husband, Casey. They are expecting their first child.