When Will it Pass?

CW: Discusses the struggle for self-acceptance in a strict religious environment.

“I spoke to Albie today.”

Four pairs of eyes looked up at me in surprise at the dinner table.

“I thought you and Albie were forbade to speak to each other anymore,” Mother Grace-Mary said to me.

“He came over asking for flour and I answered the door,” I said, feeling half-lipped and wooden.

“That was all you said?” Father Grace-Peter asked with his deep, accusing baritone.

“That was all Father. I swear.”

Mandy and Spade remained silent at the table, staring at me. Mandy was only six months new to the home. She was strong-willed and stubborn, but she had learned quick to never speak at the table, unless spoken to. Spade, on the other hand, had been here for quite some time.

“I’m of the opinion to believe you, this time,” Father Grace-Peter said to me before returning to his meal, “Be careful with that neighbor child. He is surely wicked, and consumed by sin.”

“Yes Father.”

I nodded my head in submission before finishing my dinner.

There was a shed attached to the back of Albie’s family home, painted a peeling white. It had but a single window that was boarded shut.

There’d always been something off about that shed. It reeked of sulphur. It promised darkness. I’d always felt drawn to it, curious to explore it, but always too afraid of what was inside.

The summer’s heat burned with an intensity I was not accustomed to. At that time I liked to keep my hair slicked back, almost coiffed, despite the heat. I kept my white shirt crisp and clean. I’d gotten a part-time job at Bill’s Barbershop downtown and I’d set my sights on making a good impression there amongst the men, figuring I’d need a stable job if I planned to leave the home early.

On my way back from work, usually around 7pm, without fail I would see Albie in his bedroom window on the second floor, waiting for me. He would smile at me under a mop of curly hair, his lips genuine but mischievous, as our eyes met. At the sight of him I found myself filled with a peculiar joy which I did not understand.

He made me want to work harder.

“Why do you like that boy so much?” Mandy asked me.

We were sitting alone along the creek bed behind our neighborhood’s tangle of broken streets. Far and away was downtown, but here it was quiet, with only the river and the cicadas to keep us company.

“What’s it to you?” I asked, my voice stilted as I swung a stick at the running water, breaking its surface.

“Nothing. I’m just asking.”

She picked at the blades of grass which ran up along her legs. I wanted to trust Mandy. I wanted to like her. But she was too new.

“Why do you like to smoke cigarettes behind the school so much?” I asked, looking down at the creek as I spoke.

She snorted at me with indifference.

“God didn’t say nothing about not being allowed to have a smoke, now did he?”

Her voice had turned, and I realized too late that I’d offended her.

“He did not,” I answered, almost obediently. Why? Why was I so enslaved to him?

I looked over at her and felt my eyes well with tears. I fought against the notion.

“You shouldn’t think you’re better than me, because you’re not,” she said, without hate in her eyes, without anger in her voice, but there was disdain.

“At the last home I was at you woulda been whooped like crazy,” she said to me as if she were stating a simple fact.

The men down at the barbershop started to take a liking to me. I showed up on time. I stayed late. I had hopes one of them would see me being a hard worker and offer me a real job, something that could support me.

Hell, I would’ve even worked for Bill, though I wasn’t certain if being a barber was my kind of thing.

Not like I had an education.

Not like I had any other kind of future.

I could only take what I was given.

With the summer’s humidity came the thunderstorms. Violent and unyielding. They consumed the sky and drowned us with rain.

There was a leak in the foster home’s roof. I slept in the attic. I’d learned to leave a bowl out to collect the water, otherwise the floor would eventually leak downstairs and then Father Grace-Peter would come stomping upstairs, each footstep heavy as a stone tablet.

“Mandy’s been talking a lot lately,” Spade said to me as we worked on the yard one evening.

Mother Grace-Mary was inside preparing dinner with Mandy.

Father Grace-Peter had yet to return home from work.

“What’s she been saying?” I asked.

I wiped the sweat off my brow. I was exhausted. I glanced over at Albie’s house, at the shed, at the second floor where he and his parents slept. I wanted him to look out and see me.

“I’m not one to talk,” Spade said, slow and loyal, “But she’s been saying certain things about you … and your nature.”

“What’d you think about what she was saying?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t care about it none.”

He looked at me. I held his eyes in mine. Spade didn’t have a future either. But he should’ve. He was a good man, a kind man; he deserved one.

“Regardless of the truth of the matter, she shouldn’t be saying that kinda thing,” he said, “Town’s too small for that sort of gossip.”

It certainly was. Not a lot of people believed Mandy, but enough of them did. I’d expected that.

One day Bill took me aside and gave me a talk, and he asked me earnestly if what he was hearing was true, and I lied to him and I told him what he wanted to hear.

“She’s just angry at me is all,” I explained.

Bill nodded as he considered that.

“Women can be like that sometimes,” he said, “Spiteful when they don't get what they want.”

He shook my hand and we went back to work, and that was the end of that, at least for work. Bill squashed any rumors he chanced upon. He quelled any rebellions against the nature of my character. He said he never would’ve let that kind of person into his barbershop.

It was so painful, how stoically he defended me.

Such loyalty, at such a steep price.

I appreciated all he did for me that summer, but at every denouncement of Mandy’s gossip I felt a part of me chip away into the darkness which lay at the bottom of my heart.

It was just like when I was young sitting in church and hearing the word of god spoken to us all out there on the wooden pew, and I found myself wondering if I was safe amongst that flock.

That pain, that fear, that paranoia, never truly went away.

One early morning I caught a glimpse of Albie in his backyard, stepping out from the shed into the morning mist. He wore a white button-up shirt which had a splotch of blood across his breast. He looked happy but tried, as if he hadn’t slept. He looked beautiful.

I wanted to call out to him. I wanted to feel his smile on mine.

I kept my button-up crisped for work; my hair clean-cut. I kept my prayers, desires, short and pure. I tried to keep from looking at Albie.

I had to, if I wanted a future in this town. But I didn’t want to.