Madee by Ron Morin

When I think of Madee, I hear the words Octavio Paz once wrote: "Through love we catch a glimpse, in this life, of the other life."

Madee is vulnerable, like love. She understands in some deep, pre-verbal way that love goes against our experience. She, more than most of us, has been abused - profoundly so - and to turn sex into love, Madee knows imagination and faith are needed. For her, love requires some kind of self-transcendence; she finds it in her identification with Tekakwitha, and with that comes certainty. She no longer second guesses her motivations. She no longer fears a world she cannot grasp intellectually. She has organized her life around the simple but deeply felt principle that God loves her. All truth, now, flows from the simple assumption, and Madee, now, can glimpse, in this life, that other life.

Madee possesses the elemental features one would find in a Greek tragedy - she is willing to murder to protect those she loves and she is capable of saying what she believes to a world she dimly understands. A spiritual warrior of the old school, Madee's grace is her transformation of suffering into personal strength - a struggle that redefines the possible.

Madee's story is an old explanation of a new history - an unusual history to be sure - as if one could merge, miraculously, Fear and Trembling with Being There. But, is there ever an explanation of history? Is Madee a saint or murderer? Do we really know what evil is, or good? Take our moment now. Are we not living through a moral catastrophe, a violent revelation of the hypocrisies behind the great American economy that for years redefined the possible?

Is Madee the only person in America to know there's no love in money? The real, as it turns out, is a quality of soul, and Madee has imagined a world equal to her heart.

Madee Excerpt

MADEE
I want to stay here - with Jeremiah - I've been waiting a long time to be with him - fourteen years.

FATHER
That's not a good idea.

MADEE
Please. Don't do this! I love Jeremiah!

FATHER
You're too crazy.

MADEE
Why do you say that?

FATHER
You think you're an Indian, and you don't know what you're talking about, and you're not nice to me anymore!

MADEE
I know what God wants.

FATHER
My mind is made up. You're not living here with Jeremiah!

MADEE
No! Please! I'll do anything you want. I will. (Crying) Anything!

FATHER
Too late, Madee - when your father makes up his mind, it stays made up. You're going - tomorrow.

Madee runs out of kitchen. Father eats his breakfast and reads the paper. A minute or so goes by and Madee re-enters the kitchen.

FATHER
Are you over your crap?

MADEE
I am.

FATHER
What were you doing in your bedroom?

MADEE
Talking to God.

FATHER
And what did god tell you?