Meany in the swaddling clothes; but however tightly or loosely she bound him in the broad, cotton swathes, Owen complained.
'IT'S TOO TIGHT, I CAN'T BREATHE!' he would say, coughing. Or else he would cry out, 'I FEEL A DRAFT!'
Barb Wiggin worked over him with such a grim, humorless sense of purpose that you would have thought she was embalming him; perhaps that's what she thought of as she swaddled him-to calm herself. The combination of being so roughly handled by Barb Wiggin and discovering that my grandmother had been free to attend the pageant-but had chosen not to attend-was deleterious to Owen's mood; he grew cranky and petulant. He insisted that he be unswaddled, and then reswaddled, in my mother's LUCKY scarf; when this was accomplished, the white cotton swathes could be wrapped over the scarf to conceal it. The point being, he wanted the scarf next to his skin.
'FOR WARMTH AND FOR LUCK,' he said.
'The Baby Jesus doesn't need 'luck,' Owen,' Barb Wiggin told him.
'ARE YOU TELLING ME CHRIST WAS LUCKY?' Owen asked her. 'I WOULD SAY HE COULD HAVE USED A LITTLE MORE LUCK THAN HE HAD. I WOULD SAY HE RAN OUT OF LUCK, AT THE END.'
'But Owen,' Rector Wiggin said. 'He was crucified, yet he rose from the dead-he was resurrected. Isn't the point that he was saved?'
'HE WAS USED,' said Owen Meany, who was in a contrary mood. The rector appeared to consider whether the time was right for ecclesiastical debate; Barb Wiggin appeared to consider throttling Owen with my mother's scarf. That Christ was lucky or unlucky, that he was saved or used, seemed rather serious points of difference-even in the hurried-up atmosphere of the parish-house vestibule, drafty from the opening and closing of the outside door and at the same time smelling of steam from the wet woolen clothes that dripped melting snow into the heat registers. Yet who was a mere rector of Christ Church to argue with the babe in swaddling clothes about to lie in a manger?
'Wrap him up the way he likes it,' Mr. Wiggin instructed his wife; but there was menace in his tone, as if the rector were weighing the possibilities of Owen Meany being the Christ or the Antichrist. With the fury of the strokes with which she unwrapped him, and rewrapped him, Barb Wiggin demonstrated that Owen was no Prince of Peace to her. The cows-the former turtledoves-were staggering around the crowded vestibule, as if made restless by the absence of hay. Mary Beth Baird looked quite lush-like a slightly plump starlet-in her white raiment; but both the Holy Mother effect, and the Holy Virgin effect, were undermined by her long, rakish pigtail. As a typical Joseph, I was attired in a dull brown robe, the biblical equivalent of a three-piece suit. Harold Crosby, delaying his ascension in the often-faulty angel-apparatus, had twice requested a 'last' visit to the men's room. Swaddled as he was, it was a good thing, I thought, that Owen didn't have to pee. He couldn't stand; and even if he'd been propped up on his feet, he couldn't have walked-Barb Wiggin had wrapped his legs too tightly together. That was the first problem: how to get him to the creche. So that our creative assembly could gather out of sight of the congregation, a tripartite screen had been placed in front of the rude manger-a gold-brocade cross adorned each purple panel of the triptych. We were supposed to take our places behind this altarpiece-to freeze there, in photographic stillness. And as the Announcing Angel began his harrowing descent to the shepherds, thus distracting the congregation from us, the purple screen would be removed. The 'pillar of light,' following the shepherds and kings, would lead the congregation's rapt attention to our assembly in the stable. Naturally, Mary Beth Baird wanted to carry Owen to the creche. 'I can do it!' the Virgin Mother proclaimed. 'I've lifted him up before!'
'NO, JOSEPH CARRIES THE BABY JESUS!' Owen cried, beseeching me; but Barb Wiggin wished to undertake the task herself. Observing that the Christ Child's nose was running, she deftly wiped it; then she held the handkerchief in place, while instructing him to 'blow.' He blew an inhuman little honk. Mary Beth Baird was provided with a clean handkerchief, in case the Baby Jesus's nose became offensive while he lay in view in the manger; the Virgin Mother was delighted to have been given a physical responsibility for Owen.
Before she lifted the little Prince of Peace in her arms, Barb Wiggin bent over him and massaged his cheeks. There was a curious combination of the perfunctory and the erotic in her attentions to Owen Meany. Naturally, I saw something so stewardesslike in her performance of these duties-as if she were dispatching with Owen in the manner that she might have changed a diaper; while at the same time there was something salacious in how close she put her face to his, as if she were intent on seducing him. 'You're too pale,' she told him, actually pinching color into Owen's face.
'OW!' he said.
'The Baby Jesus should be apple-cheeked,' she told him. She bent even closer to him and touched the tip of her nose to his nose; quite unexpectedly, she kissed him on the mouth. It was not a tender, affectionate kiss; it was a cruel, teasing kiss that startled Owen-he flushed, he turned the rosy complexion Barb Wiggin had desired; tears sprang to his eyes.
'I know you don't like to be kissed, Owen,' Barb Wiggin told him flirtatiously, 'but that's for good luck-that's all that's for.'
