I sat in the pew of the unfamiliar church, waiting my turn in the confessional. I knew all the priests at St. Leo’s. Worse, they knew me. And of course they knew Vincent. I couldn’t possibly tell one of them what I had done. I was having a hard enough time admitting it to myself. So I’d taken the bus to a church on the other side of Baltimore where I knew no one and no one knew me. I’d thought of skipping confession altogether this week, since my shame over what happened in Washington was so great I couldn’t bear to speak about it out loud. But then I wouldn’t be able to receive communion at mass tomorrow and my mother would know something had happened. She would guess I was carrying a terrible sin inside me, and she would be right.
That night with Henry Kraft was all I could think about, and each time it filled my mind, I felt the same nausea I’d fought all that morning. Gina had thought I was simply hungover as I retched and cried in the bathroom of the tourist home. I’d been quiet on the train back to Baltimore, my head resting against the grimy window, my eyes shut but my mind on fire. Gina asked me point-blank if something had happened with Henry and I lied to her. “Of course not,” I said. So now I could add lying to my list of sins. One more thing to confess.
I was in desperate need of absolution as I sat there in the unfamiliar church. When it was my turn, I stepped inside the confessional and knelt down in the darkness. I could hear the muffled words of the priest as he spoke to the person on the other side of his cubicle, his voice nearly drowned out by the pounding of my heart.
The priest slid open the window between us and through the screen I saw his blurry features. Thin gray hair. Glasses. A hand on his chin as he leaned his head close to the screen.
“Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” I said. “My last confession was two weeks ago and these are my sins.” My voice quivered and I took in a breath. “I argued with my mother over some housework I didn’t want to do,” I began. “I told a lie to my best friend. And I had premarital sex with someone.”
The priest was momentarily silent. “Are you engaged to this someone?” he asked.
“No, father. I’m engaged to someone else.” I filled with self-disgust as the words left my mouth.
“This is a very serious sin,” the priest said. “To have relations outside of marriage is a mortal sin of the gravest degree. You’ve compounded that sin by betraying your fiancé.”
“Yes.” I swallowed. “I know.”
“How many times did this happen?”
“Just once.”
“Was it with a man or a woman?”
I was shocked by the question. “A man, father.” I suddenly remembered the way I’d allowed Henry to kiss me. I squeezed my eyes shut at the memory. “I drank too much and—”
“You drank too much?” His voice had grown loud, almost booming, and I shrank away from the screen. I was certain he could be heard outside the confessional. “That too is a sin,” he said. “You must confess all your sins. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, father. I wasn’t thinking about—”
“Did you engage in any acts with this man other than intercourse?”
I was confused. “We … I went out to dinner with him,” I stammered.
“During the sex act,” he snapped impatiently. “Did you engage in oral sex or other acts of depravity?”
“No, father.”
“You have ruined yourself for your future husband,” he said with a disappointed-sounding sigh. “He expected and deserved a pure and innocent bride and you have destroyed that for him.”
My eyes burned. “I know, father.” Please, I thought. Please stop telling me what I already know. Just give me my penance and let me go.
“For your penance, spend twenty minutes today at the altar of Our Lady,” he said. “Recite ten Hail Marys and six Our Fathers while you think about Our Lady’s purity and virtue. Pray the rosary daily for a week and attend mass three times this week. And finally, confess what you’ve done to your fiancé.”
My eyes widened in shock. “Father, I can’t do that,” I said. “I can do everything else, but not that. It will only hurt him and I don’t want to hurt him.”
“You should have thought of that before you had relations with another man,” he said with unmasked disgust. “You can’t go into a marriage with this grievous transgression between you. Your fiancé needs to know the sort of girl you really are before he marries you.”
I hung my head, humiliated. I knew that, for the first time in my life, I would not be able to carry out the penance I’d been given. I wouldn’t hurt Vincent with this. I knew how he felt about chastity. It would be the end of us. I wished then that I had gone to one of the priests at St. Leo’s. Someone who knew me well and knew I wasn’t the terrible person this priest was making me out to be.
“All right, father,” I said, and I wondered if that lie constituted yet another sin.