She came, uninvited, into my room and sat on my bed. She wouldn't make eye-contact; she looked at her feet.
"I don't know if you two have got what is called an 'active sex life.'"
My heart began a sickly pounding and my tongue seemed twice its usual size. I opened my mouth to speak. But she was faster. Talking swiftly, without stumbling, she spoke of 'protection'. I explained, quietly, that this information was a little late in arriving.
I pleaded. I begged. I appealed to her maternal protection. It didn't hear me.
"PLEASE don't tell Daddy."
"Your father and I have no secrets."
She always said that: "Your father and I". Like they were the important ones, the ones that mattered. We, their offspring, were secondary appendages.
When he returned home later that evening, I was summoned to my father's study. From behind his desk, he motioned for me to sit. In no uncertain terms he made it clear that I was an abomination. My behaviour would not be tolerated. I would desist. Not only that, but I would not be permitted to receive Communion until I had been to confession and put a stop to my sinning.
I would also not pervert my brother or sisters. I would not speak of my actions, far less perform them under their roof.
On Sunday, I was woken as usual and herded into the car with my younger siblings. As the time for Communion arrived, my family filed one by one to the front of the church and left me, the fornicator, alone in the pew. Head bowed. Mortified.
And so it went on. Sunday after Sunday. Shame, humiliation, ritual stripping of my soul.
And I did not desist.
--- --- ---
One Sunday, months later, in Moscow, I found an American church for my visiting parents. Fresh from observing a mountain of letters, sent to reinforce his love and keep my spirits chirpy, they sat either side of me. The congregation rose, one by one, to take Communion and my mother stood. She turned to me. Graciously forgiving, she held out her hand to me. Permission to return to the fold. I stood and followed, sobbing tears of gratitude, humility, repentance.
Should I call her God?
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2 comments:
I found this very moving.
A mother whose adolescent daughter makes her feel uncomfortable. She wheedles her way into her daughter's confidence, suggesting intimacy, setting a trap, appearing to be offering a guiding hand but when she hears the information she set out to get, betrays her child in a second.
And a father who bullies and threatens, humiliates and abuses. Parents refusing to understand their own strange repressions and instead torturing their child. Which God would approve of their behaviour?
It literally made me shiver.
I sit here trying to find the words to convey how that made me feel and they fail me. It was very moving and from the soul.
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