Caine
Fifteen years ago
What the hell is she doing?
I ducked behind a wide marble column to watch. I was later than usual because Liam had been screwing around at band practice, and we all lost track of time trying to learn a new song he’d written while drunk last night. Half of what he’d chicken-scratched down on a brown paper bag was smeared and unreadable. But the other half was pretty damn good. So we riffed and riffed, trying to get the jackass to remember the words he’d written.
I normally showed up at twelve-thirty and set myself up in the confessional to wait. My little friend generally wandered in sometime before one. But today I was late, and she was early. At least I thought she was early. I hadn’t really ever seen her clearly enough to be positive it was her. For all I knew, I could be hiding from some other random little girl who’d wandered into church on Saturday afternoon.
The old wooden confessional was dark to begin with, and the latticed grate that separated us made it even more difficult to make out any detail other than her ponytail. I knew she had dark hair and was tiny—just like the little girl currently peeking into the priest’s side of the confessional. I watched curiously from a distance as she looked around and then opened the door. She stepped inside for a half a second and then darted back out and into the parishioner’s side—the sinner’s side.
Five minutes passed, and she hadn’t opened the door back up, so when the coast was clear, I made my way over and slipped inside for my priestly duty. The booth looked as it normally did, except for two coins on the floor. I figured maybe she was trying to get a peek at the priest.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
It had to have been at least six weeks now we’d been doing this, yet every time she said those words, I felt an ache in my chest. She was carrying too much baggage for a kid. Lately, we didn’t even talk about the sins she thought she was committing. She just showed up and we shot the shit for a half hour or so. I got the feeling I was the only adult she trusted. Which was pretty fucking ironic considering I wasn’t even really an adult yet, and I’d been lying to her since the first minute she stepped into the booth.
“How was your week?”
“I got in trouble at school.”
I smiled to myself. “Oh yeah? What did you do?”
“It was also a sin.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Well, you know the boy who sits next to me that I told you about? Tommy?”
“The one who always has his hand down his pants?”
“That’s him. He made me say a bad word, and I got detention. We both got detention.”
“How did he make you say a bad word?”
“We were reviewing shapes in class for some state test. The teacher drew a diamond on the board and asked what shape it was. We’d learned rhombus a few years earlier, but when she called on me to answer, I forgot the word. The teacher gave me a hint to try and help me. She said it started with an R. I got excited because I thought I remembered, and I yelled out the wrong R word.”
“What did you yell?”
“I yelled rectum.”
I had to stifle my laugh. “Do you know what that means?”
“I do now. Tommy explained it to me by yelling that I was an A-hole.” She paused. “He said the whole word, too.”
I tried to provide some priestly guidance. “Your mistake was honest. It sounds more like Tommy is the one who sinned by using the bad word intentionally. Not you.”
“Well…I used it, too.”
“Oh?”
“At recess, some of the kids were still making fun of me, calling me an A-hole lover. So I told the kids I learned the word rectum from Tommy…because when he has his hands down his pants he sometimes sticks his thumb up his rectum during class. Only I didn’t use the word rectum when I said it.”
What I wanted to say was Atta girl, but instead I stuck to my priestly ways. “You’ll say three Hail Marys for using the bad word. But, between us, it sounds like Tommy’s a jerk and deserved it.”
My little lamb giggled.
“Anything else?”
Last week she hadn’t mentioned home, and I was anxious to find out how things were going. The only thing I’d been able to draw out of her, other than her own admission that she had bad thoughts about her stepfather, was that he drank too much and yelled.
“How are things at home?” I prompted. “Did anything happen to make you have bad thoughts?”
“I wore the headphones you gave me.” Two weeks ago, she’d told me she got scared when her stepfather yelled at night. She had trouble falling asleep sometimes. I’d suggested she put on headphones and listen to her favorite song to drown out the sound. But she didn’t own headphones. So last week I put my extra set in the booth before she arrived and told her to take them home. I explained how shutting her eyes and singing quietly along with the music would help ease her into sleep.
“Did it help?”
“Yes. I fell asleep after the fourth time.”
I was probably delusional, but I felt like I was helping this kid in some screwed-up way. “That’s good.”
“I told my sister to try it, but she said she couldn’t.”
“Does she not have headphones?”
She didn’t respond for a few minutes. I’d begun to learn that her silence often spoke louder than her voice did.
“She has headphones. She got them for Christmas the year before our mom died. They were in her stocking.”
That feeling of dread hit the pit of my stomach. “So why does your sister think she can’t wear them? Does she not like music?”
“She has to listen for Benny.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sometimes when he’s drinking and mad, he comes into her room at night.”