Chapter 10
Iwas supposed to be polishing the brass candlesticks.
That was the task the mean old secretary Gloria had given me, and it was simple, though repetitive, and ultimately felt safe, as this was my first day as an acolyte. Gloria said it was something appropriate for a new acolyte.
The church felt so suffocating, despite the high ceilings. I couldn’t stand the woodsy smell of the wood around me, or the old feeling of tempered spirits swarming this place and the stained glass windows.
It had been a few hours of scrubbing these stupid knobs that were covered in candle wax, yet I still walked too carefully through the church halls anytime Gloria fussed at me to do a new task. It was as if the walls might remember what I’d done the last time they saw me here with Father Franklin.
“Child, you call that polishing? What kind of acolyte are you? My toddler Decan can do more than this.”
I forced a smile and pushed harder onto the brass with the cloth and cleaning solution.
“Of course, Sister Gloria, my apologies. Rome wasn’t built in a day after all.”
The old bat grumbled and walked back to her desk in the room by the front. I swear, ever since I’d walked through those doors, she’d been up my ass.
She asked too many questions, and it wasn’t just the typical job questions. This lady wanted to know where I was from, what I was doing here, and how long I intended to stay. Do I know the father, and on and on. Her little boy, reading a book under her desk, was the only pleasant thing about her.
Decan hardly fussed and was content to flip through his little busy book for hours. He flung the toy toward me when I was cleaning the windows by the front entrance, and I smiled, crawling over to hand him his treasure.
“Here you go, ii ko.”
Calling her son a sweet boy in my native tongue was enough to make Gloria fire off the questions to make my head spin. I didn’t know she was lurking by the Father’s office, or I would have let the kid cry for his deranged mother.
“So interesting you are in America. I barely hear a difference in your accent. It is magical.”
“I have lived in America since my teenage years, and was quick to adapt to the American slang. I haven’t had a reason to speak Japanese in a long time.”
The cloth stilled in my hands the moment I heard a gruff man’s voice booming from the other side of the door in Jedidiah’s office. When I glanced at his schedule on Gloria’s desk, it said he was in marital counseling today with ‘Jack and Miranda St. Clare.’
I could only assume that the booming voice belonged to the husband on the agenda. Jed didn’t seem like the yelling type, but then again, I reminded myself…You didn’t know him.
The voice was loud even when he tried not to be. It was the kind of man who filled space by existing in it. Thick boots echoed down the corridor outside Father Jedidiah’s office. The sound of them sharp against the old tile was impatient and predatory.
I angled myself closer to the door without meaning to, drifting toward the sounds and running the cloth along the candelabras there.
It wasn’t eavesdropping. It was recon.
The walls were thin, and the rectory breathed its own sound. Anyone who entered the church could hear the raised voices through that door. I was simply here doing the task assigned.
I leaned in.
A female voice came first, soft, and tremulous, almost reverent in the way fear sometimes masquerades as devotion.
“I just want to be better for my family and my God,” she said. “I want to do what’s right for everyone, but I keep messing up somehow. Maybe I am just tired. Jack becomes angered when I sleep too long.”
Jedidiah answered her gently, too gently, as if he were coaxing an abused Mortiferal out of a corner. His voice was low and steady, the way it was in the TV ads I’d watched. It was when he was trying to calm someone without offering false comfort. He didn’t lie…at least not anymore.
“You’re not failing because you’re tired,” he said. “And you don’t need to earn love by enduring pain, Miranda. That is not God’s will. That is a choice you are making when staying.”
I closed my eyes.
There it was. The man I heard before was the man with the whip, training his dog to obey like them all.
Fucking white men.
The truth spoken plainly and dangerously by Jedidiah felt weird to hear. Divorce to these people was a sin in itself. You were meant to stay with the man you married under God, so for Jed to tell her there was another way…
It was strange.
The kind of truth men like that hated.
Was Jedidiah different?
I shifted my weight, the hem of my acolyte skirt whispering against my calves as the fabric felt heavier in moments like this. The modest cut was suddenly conspicuous. This felt like a costume of obedience, and my skin burned.
Miranda sniffled. “I just…I don’t want to disappoint God and be cast out of Heaven. I want my son to know the light. He deserves that. He deserves a good life, but I disappoint everyone around me. I’m no good.”
A pang slammed into my heart, and I sighed.
“You are a good mother, Miranda, and a good wife,” Jed said. “You don’t disappoint your son. And you don’t disappoint me. I am proud of you and your tenacity in seeing the good in dark times. It’s my job to protect my flock. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
The woman gasped, and I pressed my ear closer to the door.
“Are you saying Jack is wicked, Father?”
Jedidiah cleared his throat. “ I am not speaking ill of your husband. I am making sure you are aware of the good word. I implore you to think of this passage here.”
A rustle of papers, and then Miranda spoke as if reading the lines directly. “Stay away from the fool, for you will not find knowledge on their lips. I…I never thought…”
There was a pause.
A long one that had me glancing down the halls and ensuring that Gloria wasn’t sniffing around for me like a bloodhound again.
I imagined the scene inside. Jedidiah’s face was solemn, trying to lead this idiot away from her abuser, but unable to tell her to get the fuck away from him.
In my mind, the woman, Miranda, was looking at him the way women did when they were desperate, searching for absolution they thought only a man could give, or maybe for permission.
Rescue?
I knew that look.
I’d worn it once. Long ago. In the eight years I was tortured, and the two years I ran from my past, back when I thought submission was the same thing as survival because all I wanted was a chance to live.
Even if it wasn’t living for myself.
“How did I ever choose the man with the tongue of a blade when there was a man with a tongue of gold? Why weren’t you around, Father, when a poor soul was needing a warm bed?”
Jed cleared his throat, and now my curiosity ramped up. This battered wife was seeking comfort, and it was my chance to see what the darling priest would do with such a fragile situation behind closed doors.
Do I want him to fail?
“You have to understand,” Jed continued, carefully now.
“That I can’t replace what your marriage lacks, Miranda.
I made vows, promises. I can walk with you, guide you on your own path you choose—but I’m a priest, and I will not break my vows.
Please understand, temptation from a kind hand will not negate the pain of the wicked one. ”
I heard it then—the boundary that was steel beneath the softness.
He was not taking advantage of her. He was trying to get her to choose to leave her stupid husband and save herself.
Miranda’s voice wavered. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“I know what you meant,” he said. “And I forgive it. Forgive yourself and seek God’s guidance in your path moving forward. I will have Gloria create a schedule that allows you safety in your own space whenever you need.”
My fingers curled around the polishing cloth.
Forgiveness.
Safety.
He forgave her for lusting after a man she saw as good. He forgave her when she wanted to be taken, not absolved.
He didn’t work for God. He thought he was God.
Footsteps shifted on the other side of the door, and a chair scraped. Miranda murmured something too quiet to hear, and I shuffled closer to the door, trying to catch the parting words.
“Your manners take after your ‘boss daddy.’ ”
The man laughed, that same vibrating cackle I had heard before. It was too loud in the quiet of the church. It was sudden, sharp, and cut through the space like a blade.
I pulled back instinctively just as the office door opened, hitting me in the head.
The man was waiting for his wife, who was clearly the asshole they spoke about, and when I turned my body and started to walk away, he stopped me with his arm.
I lowered my eyes immediately, my hands folding demurely in front of me, the picture of respect for the meathead. I had practiced this posture in the hotel, perfected it.
“I was interested in a recap, little pew pet,” he snarled.
“I was cleaning,” I replied softly only to him, trying to avoid the gaze of the woman and Jedidiah. “As is my duty.”
Not a lie, but my body being molded to the door was clearly not in the job description.
His gaze dragged over me, slow and invasive, lingering in a way that made my skin tighten beneath my clothes. It wasn’t hunger. I knew that look all too well. This was something else.
Ownership.
Appraisal.
Challenge.
“M’kay, candle sniffer,” he said. “You foreign? You don’t look right.”
“Yes,” I said curtly, not giving any more information to his racist questions. “I’m an acolyte of this church.”
He smiled at that, and not kindly. “Figures. I’ll be seein’ you.”
I felt the test. The familiar pull of what men like Jack always tested. It was the edges, looking for the seam where obedience might tear open and reveal the string to unravel it all.
Good luck, bitch. I severed my own ties, and I don’t have any more to pull.