Page 18 of Pieces of Ash
Chapter 5
Ashley
Iclose the journal with a smack, then stand up from my chair, staring at it like a coiled snake.
I remember those days right after my thirteenth birthday, right before my mother met Mosier. It was just a handful of weeks, but Tig was off the rails, drinking and smoking every night, barely alive when I left for school, barely awake when I came home, only to start the cycle all over again at nine or ten that evening.
It was a messy, desperate, chaotic time. While she was spiraling, I was just trying to get through seventh grade without a mom, without a dad, without anyone.
She loved you.
I remember Anders’s words from this morning and lift my chin in defiance of them.Lovedme? She doesn’t even use my name in her journal. If anything, I was an inconvenience to her suicide plans. Love? I don’t see it. I don’t see a hint of it. Only some grudging responsibility toward my not getting raped.
Wow, I think, shaking from the crassness of her thoughts about me.What a mother!
She can hate me all she wants.
“Good,” I sob, turning away from my desk and Marilyn’s gaudy, come-hither smile, “because Idohate you!”
My classmates hug me as I take my assigned seat at midday prayer, and later Sister Agnes sits beside me at dinner. Mother Superior says a special prayer for Tig’s soul, and my spirit and my heartbeat slowly return to normal as I allow the sweet peace of school to envelop me.
But what I really long for is time alone with Father Joseph.
Father Joseph is one of two priests who work at the Blessed Virgin Academy and the only one who works there full time, living in a small rectory adjacent to the chapel. He is in his sixties, with white hair and wrinkles, but after Gus, I love him most in the world. Though our relationship is mostly confined to the confessional, we occasionally have long talks about life and faith with that metal screen between us. I once clocked our longest talk at almost two hours. The way he listens to me, stopping me now and then to clarify a point or offer feedback, tells me that I am heard. And I place a premium on being heard, since so few people in my life have cared to listen.
He doesn’t smile at me any more or less than the other girls at my school. He doesn’t favor me or go out of his way to make me feel special. But hegetsme, and he is more of a parent to me than Tig ever was.
He loves me like Jesus loves all of us—in an otherworldly, fatherly way that has no beginning and no end, given freely not because we deserve it or have earned it, but because something in his heart is called to love us no matter what. Sometimes I wonder if Father Joseph’s unconditional love is what stands between my life and a life like Tig’s. Because of him, I believe that God loves us. Because of him, I want to be good.
And I desperately hope he can help me.
Confession is offered six times a week, but Father Joseph is in the confessional only on Wednesday and Saturday mornings, so I have to wait a day until I can speak to him.
I am up by five o’clock to shower and dress.
I have avoided Tig’s journal over the past two days, though it feels like Marilyn’s face taunts me with her sexy grin whenever I glance over at my desk. I tried turning it over, but the back of the journal has her rump in the air, and Lord forbid one of the nuns sees that! Part of me wants to put the diary in the back of my desk drawer and forget about it, but a larger part of me is gathering the courage to go back and read.
I need to understand her. Tig. Teagan. My fake sister. My secret mother. I want to know how she died.
At six o’clock on Wednesday morning, I walk across the quiet campus and enter the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin, relieved to see that the green light over Father Joseph’s side of the confessional box is lit, which means he’s available. Because not many teenage girls relish the idea of getting up at dawn to chitchat with a priest, I know that we’re not likely to be interrupted.
I open the heavy wooden door to the right of his and step inside the small, dark, quiet space. I kneel down on the velvet-covered hassock and cross myself. When I open my eyes to Father Joseph’s dimly lit profile behind the metal screen that separates us, my tired soul lifts.
Surely here I will find my way.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“How long has it been since your last confession, my child?”
“One week,” I whisper, the words strange in my ears.
How in the world could my life have changed so materially in one short week?
“Continue.”
“My sister passed from this world,” I say, “and I don’t know how to feel. My mind wandered at her funeral. And…and my feelings have been very mixed, very confused, since she died.” I pause, as I often do during confession, to let Father Joseph speak.
He clears his throat. “It is normal to feel confused after the passing of a loved one. There are things we wish we’d said, questions we wish we’d asked. Did you have a chance to say goodbye to her?”
