Dark Confession

Audrey’s second grade class had been practicing their confession ritual for three months, and, finally, the day came for their first confession.  Audrey smoothed the pleats of her green and white plaid, wool skirt over her knees.  The fabric scratched her bare thighs.

Sister Magdalene was listening to Tommy.

“I don’t know,” Tommy said.

“You must know.  How many sins do you have to confess?  You’ll be going to confession today and you have to be ready.”

“I can’t think of any,” Tommy whined, cupping his already large hands at the sides of his dipped head. 

Sister Magdalene picked up the math book from her desk, raised it like a whip over a slave’s back, and banged it down on Tommy’s crew cut.

Tommy cowered over his desk, protecting his head with his hands laced over his skull and his elbows tucked in across his face.  A moan escaped from the cave of his elbows, a sound like a deer shot in the forest, trapped in the eye piece of a hunter’s gun.  Audrey winced when the book hit Tommy’s interlaced fingers again.

“You’re lazy, Tommy!  Tell that to the priest when you go to confession.”

Tommy’s desk was the first in Audrey’s row.  He had to sit in front because Sister Magdalene wanted to watch him.  He got hit over the head with lots of books: math, history, hardbacks, large paperbacks with big words on their covers, but he never got hit with the little paperback books from the top shelf behind Sister Magdalene’s desk.  Never.  And Audrey was glad that she sat close to the back row.

Jane’s turn.  “I hit my sister yesterday.”

Darlene tells Sister Magdalene that she stole two marshmallows from the cupboard when her mother wasn’t looking.  Colleen used Darlene’s bicycle without asking her.

Soon would be Audrey’s turn.  What was she going to say?  When mommy asked her to set the table, she did it.  When she told Audrey to fold the clothes, she folded them.  She didn’t talk back.  She knew better than to say no.  Instead, she knew that if she folded the clothes, she’d be alone in the laundry room where it was quiet.  The dryer warmed the room, and its tumbling sounded like distant drumming.

Sometimes, Audrey sang songs, pretending that the dryer was background music.  When the washer was on, she sang livelier songs.  She sang, yes, but she didn’t sin while she was folding the clothes.  The laundry room wasn’t a place for sinning; it was a place for peace.

What was she going to do?  If she didn’t come up with a sin, Sister Magdalene would hit her over the head with one of those books.  Colleen was only two seats ahead of her.

As Sister Magdalene asked each student, she stepped down the row, closer and closer to Audrey, like a huge bat in her black gown.  A white band on her forehead held in place a black veil that flowed down her back.  Her folded arms were pleated bat wings.  Closer and closer she inched until her shadow crossed over Audrey’s desk and engulfed her in gloom.  Audrey couldn’t see the sunlight shining through the windows anymore.

“Tell me your sins.”

Audrey squeezed her hands tightly in the crotch of her skirt.  She could feel her heart beating up a batter of a lie that was thick and sticky.  Maybe Sister would sense the lie. Then, Sister would hold a book over her head, and when it clunked down on Audrey’s headband, she would groan like Tommy.  Die like a beetle under a shoe.

“I lied, Sister.”

“Good.  You’re ready then.”  Sister Magdalene took a step behind Audrey and the sunlight from the window splashed over her face and shoulders like warm bathwater, the heat from toast, the breath from the dryer in the laundry room.  She was safe.  She had survived the inquisition and had something to tell the priest in confession.

After lunch, the class marched in two lines from the classroom to the church on the hill.  Audrey held hands with Maureen, who sat right behind her.  Sister Magdalene held Tommy’s hand, pulling him behind her like a walking doll whose battery was running down; his legs dragged on the sidewalk and he tripped on the stairs.

Inside the church, the class filed in twos down the center aisle and filled the two front pews, girls to the left, boys to the right. 

“Hands in your laps!”  Sister Magdalene whispered harshly with disdain and disapproval.  Audrey tucked her chin into her blouse and looked at Sister through furtive eyes, folding her hands over her plaid skirt and stretching her toes to reach the floor.  The tips of her shoes could barely reach the linoleum. 

One by one, her classmates disappeared into dark hallways on either side of the altar.  She waited on her square of the pew, tapping at the floor, trying to remember the words to the Act of Contrition prayer that she was supposed to say in the confessional: “Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I . . . “  What’s next?  Her head was filled with white, fluffy nothing, like those cotton balls mommy had in her bathroom.  No words to the prayer came to mind, only filling that blackened and furled into fear.  What will the priest say if I can’t remember?  Will he tell Sister Magdalene?  Audrey thought of the math book lying on the corner of Sister’s desk with its big, black letters.

Her turn.

She walked from the pew with her arms at her sides, and hastily clasped her hands together as she reached the dark hallway.  She couldn’t see the confessional.  The hall was so black and deep, she couldn’t see even the walls of the tunnel stretched before her.  Only a hollow shaft of light illuminated the floor for several feet ahead of her.

Beyond the shaft was blackness.  A black as deep as the space above her bed at night.  Dense, complete darkness.  Somewhere in that cave of blindness was the confessional, controlled by a priest in black clothes with a cross around his neck.  A priest who would judge her for her sins, even if they were fabricated at the last minute to avoid corporal punishment.

She stepped gingerly into the obscurity, holding her breath so tightly that pins jabbed at the cells in her chest like tiny swords.  Walking on her tiptoes, her arms lagging at her sides.  She clenched her jaw, ready to defend herself against the demons of the dimness, but not sure where or what they were.

Step by step, the walls appeared like the slabs of a tomb as her eyes adjusted.  The lines of the linoleum transported her gaze down the chamber to a kneeler set under a dark window.  Beside the window was a notice, stuck to the wood with a silver tack, pierced like the heart of Jesus.

She couldn’t read it.  Maybe it was a notice that the confessional was out of order.  For a flicker of a second, she breathed easier, absolved of the responsibility to implicate herself in a sacrificial crime.  Liberated from the punishment of a priest’s sentencing, free of the humiliation of having to lie to follow the rules.

No.  It wasn’t that.  She heard a shuffling behind the dark window.  Saw a silhouette wobbling behind the screen—the shadow of a fat head on the pedestal of rounded shoulders.  The priest was there, waiting for her, grinning at her guilt, anticipating the litany of her sins, prescribing her sentence.

Audrey knelt on the wool cushion, one knee and then the other.  Her knees itched.  She pressed her hands to each other, fingers pointing to the dark ceiling, and one thumb crossed over the other. 

In this cavity of shame, she read the words on the sign—The Act of Contrition.  Sucked the dank air into her lungs like filling a vacuum, and its clamminess wallowed around the tight walls of her organs like the squall of a storm.

“Bless me Father for I have sinned.  This is my first confession . . . I lied, Father.”