A Blur of Sins

One.

The soul is odd because it has no forward like body or back like mind, just always in the middle of right now.

It gets you to breathe because if it leaves you die. The shape of it is a milk bottle which gets spots from sins. Lucky Confession gets them off but still I wish I would never get any on.

Numbers made me sin.

I like learning most things, which is like making things but you can’t touch them but can use them. Sometimes they are fun at the dining room table to say. Like there’s a juice in your hands for your fingers to move and not hurt. Or Obet and Kara eat in Hawaii breadfruit. And learn all other people of foreign lands.

Especially I like English. Except not spelling with no sense. All the time I get words wrong on my test that should be right. Like people. Every time I spell the way it sounds she marks me wrong: pepole. Always I have to say pe-OP-le when I write it. Also answer. What’s that W doing there? I might when I grow up invent an easier spelling way. But I love The Alphabet. Like another parent who always helps me.

But I surely hate numbers. I’m sorry The Alphabet even makes the word. What good are they?

Letters and words are good as the sandbox. You can make anything—prayers, stories, shows, planets. And say what’s important, what you feel, like sorry or something.

But no matter how you put numbers together you only get numbers. No number’s better than another and you can never make a new one up because somebody already thought up every one up to infinity.

Numbers don’t care what you feel, only if you’re right. Like Skip. Worst, there’s only ever one right answer. Multiply or subtract or anything. They never care how hard you try. It never shows with numbers. Only are you right or wrong. If you’re wrong it’s horrible. If you’re right you’re just like everybody else.

And I never can get it right. I have to go to the blackboard and be stupid in front of everyone and the teacher gets mad. I hate arithmetic!

It made me sin. I get sick to think of it.

I had flu and missed a quiz of fractions which I hate so much because they are even littler than numbers. On Friday I came back. Sister was reading the answers out. I knew she’d make me take the test and I would never pass so I started to write the answers down on my desk by the ink hole.

She saw me and got so mad she threw a blackboard eraser at me. The class all opened their mouth. She said she was ashamed at me and made me go to the principal’s office.

My principal was ashamed at me too. She called my mom to say she was sending me home early but would not say why but that I would tell when I got there.

Then I had to go home and tell my mom and then my dad. This was the hardest thing to do I ever had in my life, because they were the most ashamed.

“When you cheat you only cheat yourself,” said Dad, but it was my sickest feeling ever.

Two.

Sometimes on my way home from school, after a difficult day, I take the long way home. Woods had their comforts, but I have to envision adulthood, my power. Where?

The Red Owl Grocery Store.

A vast, spacious, orderly, cool kingdom, lined with appealing, colorful packages. Soft music. No cart—I’m shopping for my future. I stroll the aisles like a bride in a lingerie shop, examining the comestibles, assessing their potential to give pleasure, delaying gratification until I allow myself the pinnacle of imaginary transport: the cookie aisle. There I stand in mouthwatering trance, fantasizing growing up and filling my cart with them—even the expensive ones: Mallowmars and Pinwheels—taking them home and devouring whole boxes and bags by myself. (An ambition I later repeatedly fulfill.)

One day, mid-reverie, I have to use a bathroom. Few stores had public restrooms in those days, because people didn’t spend hours shopping. When I asked the balding, pencil-behind-the-ear manager, he kindly sent me downstairs to the employee breakroom.

No one is there. Waiting on the lunch table, as if in spotlight: a glistening platter of Danish and a basket for honor contributions. I had no money, but filched a pastry anyway, stuffed it down, peed, scooted back upstairs, spinning with guilt and satiety.

I did this for a week. Then one afternoon in the cookie aisle as I behold my lovelies, I’m startled by a bark at my elbow.

“Did your parents send you to buy something?” The manager’s kindly face has twisted to a scowl.

I’m utterly flustered. I never buy anything. It isn’t even Mom’s regular store—she goes to Super Valu.

“No sir. I thought a store was like church—welcome anytime.”

He shakes his pencil at me.

“You’re no longer welcome here. What’s your parents’ phone number?”

I stand thoroughly humiliated as he calls my mother. Lying. Stealing. Real sins. And now denied my solace: fantasy and sweet rolls.

•••

Facing Mom and Dad again. Aw, honey, the worst inflection in their repertoire. More excruciate than brimstone.

Not that much love to go around, you know. If you don’t toe the line, love, like Oreos, might be snatched by someone smarter, more thoughtful, quicker to please, or downright holier than thou. Someone better at fulfilling Catholic expectations:

Make us proud (but don’t be proud, it’s a sin). Be good (something you must try to be, not something that you are). Ignore your body (it pulls you into sin and keeps you from sainthood). If you can’t feel good, feel guilty.

So voiced and unvoiced guilt juts throughout our landscape: Tom turns his back on baby Jim who then rolls off the bed. Though Jim is uninjured, Tom tortures himself with the thought that because of his carelessness, Jim may yet get ill, go blind, or become mentally retarded. I’m guilty because, according to Skip, my birth caused Dad’s heart attack. Bandage-handed Jim feels it’s all his fault: “If I’m really good they’ll let me keep my fingers.” Bedwetting cracked skull skin disease hernia ruptured spleen head cut open eating disorders drinking disease. Spikes and thorns and holy hell of guilt. Feeling bad as a way to feel good. Because then you might be forgiven.

“Pay them back for the sweet rolls from your allowance,” Dad concluded. “And don’t go back again.”

Three.

But sin is so confusing. One time there was a raffle at my school for pagan babies. You had to bring in books of green stamps to enter and Mom would only give me one, but I stole another. Then I won the prize. A rosary.

To pray for my horrible soul.

Four.

Later, I commit sins right in the middle of my confirmation, the sacrament of maturity in seventh grade.

When you are confirmed, you choose a saint’s name to add to yours. I select Teresa of the Little Flower, whom I most wish to imitate, and immediately do something she would never do. When the bishop anoints me, I sneak my hand up to the holy oil on my forehead and touch it. The very same Holy Chrism only consecrated, priestly, male fingers are sanctioned to touch. But if The Chrism touched my forehead, why not my fingers?

Then the bishop asks questions of each candidate. After answering, I asked one of my own. (Highly contrary to protocol, this infuriated Skip.)

“If God knows what we are going to do before we do it, why did He make us? Aren’t we all just puppets, then?”

Whatever Dad had said did not convince me. I’d asked every teacher, our principal, Father Dudley, and even Monsignor Colburn. Everyone always mumbled something fuzzy about Free Will, which made no sense. We didn’t seem free if He knew our future. The bishop had to have an answer.

He murmured the same vague generalities I’d already dismissed.

Wow. Even the most powerful, most religious people didn’t know. There was room to look for and find answers of my own.

The following Saturday, standing in line at the confessional, preparing my list of sins (touching Holy Chrism, greed, not honoring my mother and father, anger at my brother, and a host of others) I happened to look up at the line. There stood Mom, Dad, my brothers and sister, and neighbors and strangers. It struck me: Everybody sins. Even Mom and Dad. A comfort almost surpassing forgiveness itself.