True Faith

We were sitting at the dinner table and my brother begins talking about him. “I never trusted him”, my brother said. “There was just always something about him…”

I remember when I was a little girl, going to church and there was this priest who would always be friendly to me. He would talk to me, put me on his shoulders, play around with me. He would sit me on his lap, and sing to me, or hold my hand. Every Sunday I went to church, and every Sunday he would be there, and after the services, we would talk, and it would always be the same.

As I got older, I remember it no longer being fun. Feeling uncomfortable near him. That something wasn’t right. I don’t know if it was my slow discovery of who he was, or how he was with me, or the result of just coming from an abusive household, and just not trusting people. I don’t know what it was. All I know, is that I began treating him horribly. He would get near me, and I would push him away from me. Sometimes, this would make him try harder. And this would make me angry, and sick, and I would yell at him to stay away from me.

One day, I found out he had gotten cancer and had been undergoing chemo, and I saw him less and less. I felt more relieved, though in the pit of my stomach, there was always this constant fear that he would return and I would have to see his face again. One day, I walked inside the rectory to put back the wine from that days mass, and there he was; that priest, crestfallen, taking a swig from his own personal collection. I stopped, and nearly dropped the glass bottle. 

Everything stopped.

“Come here”, he said to me.

I stood still. He got up, and put his flask aside. He walked towards me. He took the glass bottle from me, and smiled. I looked down at my hands, realizing his fingers were gently grazing mine. He smelled of alcohol and sadness. I didn’t know the scent then, but I know it very well now. “Thank you”, he said. I quickly put down my hands, and put them behind my back, and began to scratch my left hand with my right, roughly.  “You’re welcome”, I said, “I have to go now.”

As I turned, he gently grabbed me by the shoulders. I felt the hairs stand behind my neck and the nausea start. I felt like I was going to faint. “Sue… I wanted to show you something.” I stayed frozen. At that point, I didn’t know what to do, or say. I just listened. “Will you come with me?”, he said. I nodded. I don’t know why I did. But I nodded. 

He removed his hands from my shoulders and went in front of me and began to walk out of the rectory. “Are you coming?”, he asked.

I did. I began to walk behind him, planning a million ways to run away from him. The church was void of people. It was empty and quiet. I followed him out of the church, and into his home that was directly up the hill behind it. I had many chances to leave. I had many ways of running, of getting out… I even thought of grabbing the loose brick near the statue of St. John and hitting him with it, and running away. But couldn’t. My fingers kept plucking against my skin, my cheeks burning like a furnace, as I said to myself “you could kill someone doing a thing like that”…  then plucking harder because I knew deep down that maybe I wanted to.

He took me into the greenhouse. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. My hands dropped slowly from my back to my sides, revealing that they were peeled at the cuticles and knuckles from my scratching and blood had begun too peer around the edges and the creases. My mouth fell open. The smells were intoxicating. All these different colors; these purples, these whites, pinks, blues, reds. All the beautiful flowers. I had only seen this many at a cemetery. 

So much beauty, and there he was, this dying priest, that I had, for many years, mistreated. Mistreated because of something that was done to me…something I wasn’t yet prepared to understand or explain to myself. Mistreated because of my gradual loss of faith, and mistrust in everyone and everything around me. 

He grabbed a pair of garden shears and cut me a flower. “This is for you. It’s a Jasmine.” He smiled as I took it from him. I examined it, and twirled it between my cracked fingers. “Thank you”, I said. I smiled as I dipped my nose in its soft, fragrant petals. “Did you know that every flower has a symbol?”. I shook my head as I nuzzled my nose further into it. He started to walk closer to me, closing the gap between us. “The Jasmine is the symbol of love. I won’t be here for very long. And before I go, I wanted to tell you that… I love you, Susanita. Ever since you were a little girl… I wished you were mine.”

I stopped smelling the flower. I looked up at the dying mans face. His eyes were filled with tears. My shoulders dropped, and my head tilted as I looked for something in those eyes. There was nothing there, but a man with little time left; a man who in this time chose to love me, and I had rejected his love. The love of a father to a daughter.

I wrapped my arms around him, then. I could feel the jolt in his body, from the shock. The unexpected warmth from this young girl. He then, let his arms slowly wrap around me. For a moment in that embrace, we both were cleansed of all the guiltiness we had felt. Of all the things we had thought. As I held his waist his hands wrapped around me tighter as his left hand lowered to the small of my back. I felt him push me against him more as his head slowly fell against the nook of my neck. His nose pushed away all the hairs that were covering it, until only our skins were touching. He inhaled deeply. His head moved upward and his mouth slightly opened.

I felt the slight wet of his spit. Not a daughter.

At that moment, I could have sworn every plant in that room had died, and the room had become most unholy. He breathed deeper, as I felt something rising pressing against my stomach and his right hand tighten the back of my neck. The creepy feeling came back. The dark feeling. The angry feeling. It was real. I needed to move. I needed to move. I needed to open my eyes and move.

I opened my eyes. I saw her. La Virgen. The judgement. I couldn’t let her. I couldn’t let her judge me.

I pushed him away. He looked at me, startled. “I have to go.” 

I don’t remember much after that moment, except running. I remember running out of that house. Running out and screaming internally. I could feel him watching me…standing there, watching me, as I made my way farther, and farther away. It felt like he was burning me with his eyes. If I turned back, I felt I would see him behind me. I wanted to make it home. Make it back to a place that was safe. When I got to my house, my mother saw the Jasmine crumpled in my hand. “I was with the priest, he gave me this”, I said as I let go of the flower lump and walked upstairs to the bathroom. I closed the door. I closed my eyes... Everything was black...

He had disappeared for months, only to reappear during a service one Sunday. By this time, he was in a wheelchair, and completely weakened. He looked like a skeleton, and had no hair left on his head or face. I was singing in the choir, when the current priest had announced to the church he had come for a visit. I hid behind the taller girls, and sat, as everyone went up to say hello to him. When the taller girls left I was the only one sitting in the choir area. I could feel something crawling on my skin, as I looked up. I could see him staring back at me. Everyone talking to him. Everyone saying goodbye and wishing him well. He only stared at me. I felt violated, I felt that his eyes would stay with me forever. I ran out of the opposite entrance way, and threw up in the garden he used to tend to at the front of the church. The garden I used to play in. Those flowers died.

So did he the next week.

A few months later, I attended church with my mother, and a new priest came up to me right before service began. 

“Sue”, he said “can I talk to you?”. I nodded, got up, and walked with him. He said, with a very pale face, “I was cleaning out some of the Fathers things from the house….and I found this”, and he handed me an envelope, with his hand  slightly trembling. “I think it belongs to you.” I took the envelope in my hand. I opened it.

It didn’t belong to me. Not anymore. It belonged to him. It was a picture of me. From my first communion. I remember he took group pictures, but since I was the one to place the crown on the Mary statue, I had taken one alone. I was posing with Mary’s crown of flowers. I turned it over to the back. “My love”, it said.

I suddenly felt the urge to vomit over the row to the left of me. My head was spinning. I could feel my body sweat, as I could hear him speaking to me in my head...

“I loved you… I wished you were mine”. I felt his face against my neck once more. He was there. In the pews. In altar. In Christ. I felt it. It was disgusting me.“Wh-wh-wh-ere, did you find this picture?”, I asked the priest. “He kept it in a drawer…”, He said, with a face that spoke much louder than my eyes were ready to receive.“What was in it?”, I asked. My eyes began to water. The priest looked down and walked away from me. “I have to start the service”. I stopped breathing for an instant. I feel the muscles in my stomach tightening as my hands crumpled up the picture and envelope. My teeth clenched. I slowly closed my eyes. It had dawned on me, that in his cleaning, he had too seen, something he couldn’t un-see. The same things that I could never un-see, un-feel, un-recognize... things that he would never tell, to anyone.

I put down my coffee mug, and looked outside the window of my 10th floor apartment, and sighed.

“Yeah,” I said to my brother, “I never trusted him, either.”