Paying penance
I thought I wasn’t Catholic. Even though I was raised that way, I was pretty certain I had escaped the damage. After all, I had never paid attention during mass, unless the priest happened to be sexy, as the dark, bearded one at St. Leo’s was. Then, I paid attention. Then, I made sure to stand in his line to take communion. He made my heart flutter. I stared at him, fascinated by his strong, brown forearms and sonorous voice.
For the most part though, none of us gave any credence whatever to church. We went for the donuts before I was of the age to notice sexy priests. My father, when he could be coaxed to go, brought a paperback to tuck into his psalm book. My mother gazed into the distance with a worried expression, occasionally raising her hand to pick or bite at her cuticles. The four of us kids romped in the pew, pinching, pushing, biting, and clawing at each other.
In eighth grade, I was signed up to attend confirmation classes. That was a riot. Except, there was a pretty cute boy there too. Matt, I think his name was, from McChesney High School. He had tawny skin and hair and an especially insouciant way of sitting half in and half out of his desk chair, long legs and big shoes stretching into the center of the room.
Somehow the topic of birth control came up in that class. I announced that of course I would use birth control. I made a point to scoff exaggeratedly as if the teachers (a nun or two) were the biggest idiots to walk the face of the earth. I got thrown out. I wasn’t allowed to come back to confirmation. I guess I wasn’t “ready.” But I don’t know. My mother never spoke to me about it. She just stopped taking me.
Also in eighth grade, I began wearing 501s with the entire butt torn out to church. That’s when my mom finally gave up trying to make me go.
How could I have absorbed any of that Catholic stuff, with such a determination to eschew the whole (or)deal?
Well, maybe from my mother, who was tainted by it and emitted its aura in our very home. I remember her shame around sexuality and the human body, and I guess my dad’s too. He didn’t do any better.
Once when we were little, my brother and I accidentally surprised our mom while getting dressed. She was naked before us, for a brief, fleeting moment, long enough for her dark bush to be seared in our memory. I said, “What’s that?” and pointed. She shrieked, “Never mind!” and pushed us out.
From that day forward, we called what we saw “Mommy’s nevermind.” True story.
A few years later, one sunny weekend morning, our parents bustled the four of us into the sunroom, an indeed sunny room closed off from the kitchen by a swinging wooden door. They closed the other door too, the sliding door that blocked the sun room from the dining room. But before they did this, they set a cassette player on the table and pressed play. Then, they scurried out as quickly as possible.
We were all mystified. Something weird was up. We were shy and embarrassed — ashamed — before we even knew why we should be. Simply because our parents were acting so weird. Tinny piano music emitted from the speakers, and then a man started droning on about the birds and the bees. I kid you not. This is how our parents attempted to teach us about sexuality.
Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your perspective, we didn’t hear a thing after the first few sentences because we were laughing uproariously (and maybe furiously? painfully? confusedly? horrifiedly?). We were deeply embarrassed at the time. I remember being hot with shame, but now I realized we should have been embarrassed for them rather than for ourselves.
When I was in elementary school, early on, maybe first or second grade, I had a friend named Mark Mecklenburg. He lived in what we called the Hippie House on Highland Avenue, two doors down from our house. In the late sixties and early seventies, a commune of a sort occupied the house. I remember the many ladies with scanty gypsy-inspired clothes lolling about on the front porch, lots of kids naked from the waist down running around on the lawn before them, and men with long hair and headbands. I remember loud, scary parties there, and empty bottles on the porch, and whispered recriminations about the property and its occupants.
But by the time Mark lived there, they were long gone. Mark’s family must have been the next owners. We became friends.
I actually don’t remember much at all about Mark. I was a funny child, rather alone. I had a great friend named Christi who moved away, and later a dear best friend named Jennifer. But for much of early elementary school, I basically lived in the library. I’d check out books and promptly lose them. After a while, I wasn’t allowed to check out books anymore. But, I went there every day at lunch to read. I was afraid of the kids on the playground, afraid of being teased for some reason. I don’t actually remember being teased much, but once the most “popular” girl (i.e., the meanest) came up to me and mocked a gold necklace I wore which spelled my name in Arabic, calling it “stupid.”
But all of that was long after my time with Mark. I must have been very young with Mark. Maybe kindergarten. He had white-blonde hair, thick and wavy, as I recall, and blue eyes. He was kind, and quiet. I used to spend the night with him. That seems surprising now. I remember sharing a bed with him. I remember feeling safe and protected, talking into the night. I remember a big bed that seemed to fill the room. I remember a very dark room and telling stories in the dark. I remember also, vaguely, sharing food in his kitchen. I have no memories of him being in my house.
But I do remember my mother on the phone with his mother using a tone of voice that made me feel ashamed and saying we should not be sleeping in the same bed. And then I really didn’t see Mark any more after that.
When I was in seventh grade, I got my period. We were living in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. I went to the school nurse, who gave me a sanitary napkin to stick onto my underwear and sent me home. I told my mother. She emitted a little shriek and hurried down the hall to her bedroom. She shut the door and locked it. And she didn’t come out for several days. I heard her crying behind the closed door.
Was my mother crazy? Perhaps. It’s only beginning to dawn on me in recent years that she may have had mental health issues in addition to her superlative alcoholism.
When my father came home from work to find my mother still weeping behind the locked bedroom door, I told him I’d gotten my period at school. He helped me get the “feminine products” I needed. Just as years later, he brought me back home after my mother threw me out for being a “slut” after finding me kissing a date good night on our front porch.
Actually, those were her descriptive words of choice for me. Slut and whore. She called me these things long before she found my journal detailing how I’d given my virginity to my boyfriend Merrick. At that time, she asked me, “Was this a fantasy, or is it true?” I must have been temporarily insane because I told her it was true (it was).
She really went to town then. Not only did I have to hear the common moniker of whore and slut regularly applied to me, but I also had to withstand detailed accounts of how and why “no man wants a used-up woman” and all kinds of other great soliloquies on how throughly trashed my life was and how shameful and rotten I was, to the core.
Then, there was the Challenger disaster. When the Challenger space shuttle blew to smithereens in mid-air, my mother saw it live. It had been years since she’d been able to work. She was a professional stay-at-home lush by then and very good at her job. She was probably well into a bender when the accident occurred. All I know is that when we got home from school that day, our rag-tag tribe of four that eventually made it home to eat and sleep most days, we found our mother sobbing and railing in front of the TV, watching the tragedy over and over again.
She did that for at least a week.
My father said disgustedly (maybe with a dash of humor), “Oh, that’s your mother. She thinks she caused the space shuttle disaster.”
When she died of cirrhosis a few years later, my father thoroughly shocked me and probably everyone else at the table when he looked up from the meal at The Pewter House on Grand Avenue in Oakland (or what used to be the Pewter House — this was 1995) and intoned, “The Catholic Church killed your mother” to no one in particular and yet to everyone. And my father is not someone who says things for dramatic effect.
When I asked him about that years later, he claimed to not remember and to not know what he might have meant. But, he also had dementia by then.
He did say it though. I will never forget it, or the strong realization that it was important.
So, this is a very long way of saying, maybe the Catholic Church did affect me.
All I know is that I feel like I’m atoning. I’m atoning for turning down a good man, the man I always said I wanted. That’s the incredible thing. I told the universe what I wanted, and guess what? God actually sent him to me. He was “a real prince” as my dad described him. And he hung in there for four years while I barely gave him the time of day.
I left him for an impoverished, arrogant, narcissistic, vaguely criminal cad.
He was a man who was good for my kids, whom my kids liked, a man who loved and cared actively and attentively for his mother, who had loving relationships with three great brothers. He was a provider who took pride in creating a safe haven for his family. He was exceptionally kind, offering to pay for my sister’s expensive dental work and to care for my father while I was gallivanting around South America with the aforesaid rogue.
I can’t forgive myself for this.
I feel I was crazy. That I don’t know myself. That I can’t trust my judgement. If I have so little self regard and self respect, I can’t possibly try again. I don’t trust myself. I simply cannot make this mistake again, but how do I know I won’t?
And I’m incredibly tired of dating. I feel I just can’t be bothered. But it’s not just that. I’ve written about this before on Medium: I feel I’m at a very precious time in my life with my kids. I don’t want to invest time in something that may not pan out at the expense of enjoying these last few years with my teenagers. One day not too far off, they’ll be gone, and I will miss these years acutely.
I don’t like living alone, I don’t plan on living alone, I can’t eat alone. I get very thin when living alone. I’m not looking forward to this time. I will join the peace corps or a co-housing community or turn my home into a B&B and make scones and scrambled eggs for my guests every morning.
But, most of all, I think I’m atoning. It’s a very Catholic thing to do, isn’t it? I haven’t forgiven myself for acting like a fool. I am punishing myself. It’s self-castigation.
But when will I be done? It’s been over two years. I wonder how long it will take to be absolved? And how will I know?
