“But won’t God punish me more if I get rid of it?” I asked.
Most of the time I tried to be cool and scoff at all the Catholic stuff, but twelve years of religious education and a lifetime of being surrounded by religious paintings, statues, and lectures—well, you can take the girl out of the Church, but you can’t take the Church out of the girl, you know? I started to cry.
Theresa rolled her eyes. “Just get it taken care of, Chey.” It wasn’t exactly mean, but it wasn’t really helpful, either. She put her headphones back on, letting me know that the conversation was over. I guess, on some level, it felt good to get it off my chest, but really, talking to my sister was pretty much useless.
HARBINGER JONES
Once Johnny and I had reconnected, it was like an incredible weight had been lifted. Whatever Johnny’s foibles and whatever my foibles, real friendships, I guess, run deep, and our friendship was real. But it wasn’t perfect. Nothing ever is.
Even though Johnny wasn’t mad at me anymore, I still felt responsible for him getting into the accident. I had driven him away from the band. I had pushed him to leave Georgia and go home to New York. And I was in love with his girlfriend. I may as well have held him down while that car rammed into his leg.
My shrink, Dr. Kenny, and I worked on the guilt, but I’m not sure it helped. The only thing that ever really seems to help me is playing music, so that’s what I did.
CHEYENNE BELLE
Believe it or not, I went to confession.
I went to an all-girls Catholic high school where they force students to go to confession once a week. Most of the girls just made stuff up. “Forgive me, Father, for I had impure thoughts about this boy or that boy.” Never “Forgive me, Father, for I went down on this boy and that boy,” which was true a lot of the time.
Anyway, I hadn’t been since I’d graduated a couple of months before, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to turn.
If you’ve never gone to confession, it’s kind of weird. You sit in this dark little room that’s like two phone booths smushed together; there’s a wall dividing them down the middle and there’s this little hole you talk into. The priest sits on the other side so he can’t see you. I guess the idea is that he isn’t supposed to know who’s giving confession. But don’t you think he peeks when people are coming and going? I know I would.
One time, in the tenth grade, I brought a flashlight with me and shone it through the hole so I could get a good look at the priest. He didn’t appreciate it.
They called my mom down to the school. She didn’t appreciate it either.
Anyway, I told the priest a friend of mine was pregnant. (No way was I going to tell him the truth).
He said exactly what you’d expect a priest to say. “This is very serious. Has your friend told her parents?”
“No,” I answered. “She doesn’t have parents.”
“Everyone has parents, my child.” I never liked that, priests saying things like my child. I can’t possibly be his child because he can’t possibly have children, right? Though I suppose if I really believed that I wouldn’t have been calling him Father, which I was.
“I mean, they’re dead, Father.”
“I see. Does she go to school here?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“I understand that you want to protect your friend, but she needs help. She needs counseling.”
I was quiet for a moment. I knew what I wanted to say but was having trouble working up the nerve. I have to give the man credit because he broke the silence with the question I needed to ask.
“Is this friend of yours considering having an abortion?”
“Yes, Father.” I whispered my answer and wasn’t even sure if he’d heard me.
“Abortion seems like an easy way out,” he said, “but in life there are no easy ways out, my child.”
I was surprised at how gentle he was being. I went in expecting him to shove a photo of a fetus or something through that little hole, but instead he was sort of comforting.
“But isn’t she too young to have children?” I asked.
There was a long pause before he answered. I don’t know if I was lucky or cursed to get the most thoughtful priest in the whole tristate area.
“Yes, yes, she is.”
“Then shouldn’t she end her pregnancy?”
“I think you know that abortion is a sin.”
“Why?”
I could almost hear him wringing his hands. I felt sorry for the guy. He showed up at work expecting to hear the inane gossip of little girls and instead wound up with a real whopper of a problem dumped in his lap.
“It’s murder.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“I do.”
“But I know girls who’ve had abortions, and they didn’t burst into flames or anything. They seemed happier.”
“A short-term reward in this life is no reward in the next.” Priests were always saying stuff like that, and that’s usually where they lost me.