Chapter 11
Unless you expect the unexpected, you will never find truth…
Joseph ran to church before the rest of his family woke. Thank God it was Saturday, so Father McEncroe was expecting Confessions. Joseph waited on his knees, praying and sweating, till at last the Priest entered the confessional.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” Joseph pleaded. “I mean, I think I have sinned. It can’t have been pleasing to God. I didn’t like it; I thought I was dying and—”
“Slow down, son.” Father McEncroe stifled a yawn. “Take a deep breath. Then tell me what happened.”
“I was asleep, but it woke me up. It felt like I had wet the bed. But I’m too old for that; I’m thirteen! When I looked, it was thicker, and whitish…” Joseph lapsed into humiliated silence.
Father McEncroe released a breath that sounded like a chuckle. “You’re growing up, son; that’s all. You haven’t committed a sin.”
“But—isn’t that what happens when…” Priests did know about that, didn’t they, even if—
“You said you were asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Then you couldn’t give your consent. If there’s no volition, there’s no sin. Do you understand?”
“I think so.”
“Nocturnal pollutions are beyond our control. We can guard our waking thoughts, but we can’t guard our dreams. Now, did you abuse yourself in any way last night?”
Joseph caught his breath. He knew that was a mortal sin. “No, Father.”
“When you woke, were you touching yourself then?”
“I—I don’t think so.” The thought was horrible: his hand wandering on its own, violating him against his will.
“Calm down, son. You have your own rosary?”
“Yes.”
“Try wrapping it around your hand before you go to sleep, with the crucifix in your palm. That should help. Do you say your prayers every night?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Good. Now you have something else to pray for, that you will be spared this. But I must warn you: it will probably happen again. It’s the nature of our flesh. It is weak.”
Joseph frowned. “W-What did you call it?”
“A ‘nocturnal pollution.’ As I said, I don’t need to absolve you. But I’ll bless you—how’s that?”
“Thank you, Father,” Joseph murmured. He didn’t want to be polluted. He wanted to be pure like his patron saint.
After that, Joseph did go to bed with a rosary wrapped around his hand.
Hour after hour, he would lie awake in the dark, his weariness battling with his fear.
His flesh might rebel as soon as he lost consciousness.
He could never be a Priest if he couldn’t master his own body.
He longed for the distraction of a hair shirt.
His cotton night-shirt and drawers were far too comfortable.
The more Joseph tried to concentrate on his prayers, the more his thoughts would stray—the more his body would respond.
So he would imagine the consequences of surrendering to impurity: the bottomless lake of fire.
This was not difficult to do as summer stalked Charleston. But in Hell, there would be no winter—no end to the heat, the agony, the gnashing of teeth. Hell would go on and on and on, forever and ever—and he could earn that eternity of torment with a single moment of weakness.
One hot night, as he lay counting his beads, a strange odor drifted into the room. Joseph frowned. It smelled like…smoke. As if his fantasy of Hell were coming to terrifying life. He sat up, eyes wide. It could be another slave uprising. Negroes were setting fire to the city!
Joseph threw aside his mosquito netting, sprang to the floor, and peered out his window.
The acrid smell of smoke grew stronger on the breeze.
From his bedchamber, he could see only the upper piazza, and beyond it, the dark wall of Grandmama’s house.
At least she was safe: away in the mountains, taking the waters for her health.
Still carrying his rosary and still barefoot, Joseph tucked himself through his open window. He climbed onto the piazza and hurried to the back end. There, he could peer down into the work yard. It was their kitchen on fire!
“Papa!” He wheeled across the piazza toward his parents’ open window. Within, a lamp was already lit. The thin white curtains swayed in the slight wind, shifting for just a moment so that Joseph could see inside.
The rosary dropped from his hand. The cord must have snapped: the beads clattered on the piazza, bounced over his bare feet, and careened in a dozen directions. Thoughts of the fire fled just as quickly. He was mistaken; the mosquito netting had distorted things; he couldn’t have seen—
But he heard, too: Mama, so careful never to make sounds, was moaning.
The curtains swayed aside once more, and Joseph glimpsed it again, the hideous tableau.
His mother’s delicate, expressive hands reduced to bloodless fists, gripping vainly at whatever bound them to the bedposts.
Her own stockings? Between her spread arms, her head tilted unnaturally to one side.
Her beautiful face was screwed up in such pain that she had to bite down on her lip, and tears trickled from her closed eyes.
Her skin was flushed with shame, and every inch of it was bare, her pink nipples rising from the tangle of her golden hair.
And Papa—Joseph didn’t know what he was doing to her; he didn’t want to know—but he saw his father’s dark head moving between Mama’s white thighs.
Joseph clamped his eyes shut and stopped his ears with his palms. What kind of monster would— To a woman who could not even cry out for help in words anyone would understand! He had bound her hands—the only way she could beg him for mercy.
The men in that drawing room had known: “Can you imagine a more perfect wife?” “You could do anything you liked to her.”
His father had said it himself: he was a hypocrite. When he’d explained with his medical books how men and women joined together, hadn’t his father insisted that the woman’s happiness must be the man’s first priority?
When his father had lied without hesitation, practically stolen another man’s property, and bellowed at Joseph in the forest, that must have been the real René Lazare, not the kind man he pretended to be when everyone was watching.
His father hated nuns and flaunted a sacrilegious portrait of the Virgin.
How could Joseph have deceived himself for so many years that these were aberrations?
The truth had been screaming at him all along.
He’d known it all his life. He’d been born eight months after his parents’ wedding.
Eight months, not nine. How many times had his father told the story?
Joseph was born early; they were worried about him because he was so small; they’d kept him close to the hearth for warmth.
All that must have been an elaborate lie.
Joseph understood now: he’d been conceived before his parents married.
They had to marry, because his father had raped Mama and forced her to become his wife, when she wanted to become a nun.
It was Joseph’s fault. Mama was trapped with this monster for the rest of her life because she had been expecting Joseph against her will…
A profound, urgent clanging penetrated his thoughts then: the bells of St. Michael’s, sounding the alarm.
A deeper banging noise erupted somewhere much closer.
Gingerly Joseph relaxed his hands till he released their seal over his ears.
Between the peals of the fire bell, his father cursed and Mama whimpered.
Very slowly, Joseph opened his eyes. Mercifully, the still curtains concealed the inside of his parents’ bedchamber.
In the hall, Henry’s voice boomed: “Master René, sir? I’m sorry to disturb you, but it’s our kitchen on fire.”
“The fire’s here?” his father answered. “Is it spreading?” Joseph heard him moving around in the bedroom, heard cloth rustling.
“No, sir. I think we nearly got it out now.”
“Is anyone hurt?”
“My ma’s arm, some. Can you come see her?”
“Of course.” His father’s voice seemed to come from the hall now. Then Joseph heard quick, heavy steps on the staircase and soon on the lower story of the piazza.
Joseph supposed he must reappear. He must not add to Mama’s worries.
He hoped his father had had the decency not to leave her bound.
Joseph glanced down at the remains of his rosary, then snuck back to his window.
He crawled inside his bedchamber so he could come through its door and everyone would think he’d just woken.
In the lantern-lit hall, his sisters were trying to pry details of the catastrophe from May. Mama stood beside them in her frilly white wrapper, her tears dried. When she saw him, she turned. ‘Joseph! Everything is all right.’
It was not. He’d nearly convinced himself he’d imagined the hideous tableau.
But when Mama signed, her sleeves fell away from her wrists.
Pink still wreathed her skin in the pattern of her bonds.
She realized he’d seen the marks, blushed again, and yanked down the white frills to cover her wrists.
Then her attention returned to his sisters.
The fear vanished from her face. Mama did not suspect that Joseph knew why her wrists were pink.
As soon as his father returned, Joseph would confront him.
And then? What would that accomplish? His father would only laugh, because he knew Joseph was powerless to stop him.
He was nothing but a boy. If only Grandpapa were still alive!
He might have been able to free Mama, but no one else could.
The monster had married his victim: Mama belonged to him almost like a slave.
She was his wife, so he could do anything he liked to her.
The law did not protect her, and neither would the Church. She was his till one of them died.
This mockery of a marriage must, somehow, be part of God’s plan. For enduring such suffering on Earth, Mama would be spared even an hour in Purgatory.