I'll Never Tell

CW: Child sexual abuse, sexual assault, institutional abuse

 I’ll Never Tell   by Kryste Andrews

Kathy can’t control herself, so I can’t be mad at her. I just grit my teeth when the mattress grows warm – again. Lying next to her, I want nothing more than to sleep in a bed by myself, not toss and turn, feeling sad for Kathy, for us, waiting for the wetness to seep over to my side.

“Please don’t tell,” she pleads every morning, avoiding my gaze.

Every morning my stomach churns when I promise, “Don’t worry, I’ll never tell.” 

Sister Frances, always in a tizzy, takes no notice of urine-soaked sheets; she’s just happy the two silly sisters love doing laundry all of a sudden.  

Kathy started wetting the bed ten days ago, which didn’t make sense because she’d turned twelve in January and suddenly looked more grown up, definitely too old for bed-wetting. 

I understood, though. It started after her first fitting for the white dress she'd be wearing in the Easter parade. Father John chooses a different girl to ride on the lead float each year. It’s an honor every girl at the Home covets.

She ran to our room that day, out of breath, barely able to talk. 

“He held my hands! Oh, Teri, his hands are so soft.”

I’d never seen her act this way before. I tried not to let my jealousy show.

She flung herself onto the bed and lay still, gazing at the ceiling with a faraway look in her eyes.

“His smile is so dreamy. When he stood close and looked in my eyes, I almost fell over.” She rolled on her side and leaned her head on one arm. “You think it’s a sin to feel this way about a priest?”

I started to answer, but she jumped up, took my hands and, striking a pose, said, in a low, husky voice, “Dear girl, you will look so lovely. Like the Virgin Mary herself.”

I laughed. She sounded just like him. She laughed, too. We hugged. This was the best thing that had ever happened to her, to us, by far.

“Is it the same dress Sandy wore last year?”

“I don’t know yet. Father John says he’ll show it to me after dinner tonight. It has to be fitted, he says.”

We danced around the room, giddy. We even jumped up and down on the bed, squealing, but not too loud.

“Can I go with you?”

“Father John told me to come by myself, so you better not.” She noticed my disappointment. “I’ll ask him if you can come next time, though, if I have to go again.”

I couldn’t tell if my stomach felt funny because I was left out or because Kathy would be alone with Father John in his room.

I should be in on this.

I made a plan.

Kathy was too excited to eat much that evening. After dinner, she rushed out of the dining hall and across the quadrangle towards the path leading to Father John’s room, the end one in the low building where the priests live.

I helped clean up in the kitchen and checked the clock on the wall. Eighteen minutes had passed. Kathy would be with Father. I felt a stab of worry. Had I waited too long? Would the fitting be over?

“Goodnight,” I called to Sister Frances as I left the dining hall and turned right, as if going back to our room.

I looked around to see if anyone was watching and then cut behind to the path Kathy had taken. This wasn’t exactly against the rules, but it felt wrong, so I walked fast, relieved no one was in sight. The quiet was broken only by the sounds of insects.

I pressed my fingernails into my palms and listened to the crickets. Crickets make the same sound every night, no matter what. The thought calmed me. 

I walked until I saw Father John’s doorway. Why is there no porch light on?

Blood began pounding in my head. I have to find a window. I ran around the side of the one-story building, back where the street dead ends, and then stopped, fighting the urge to turn back. I hadn’t counted on the dense woods, dark and creepy at twilight. Goose bumps jumped out on every inch of my skin. Anything could be out there. I shouldn’t have come. I rubbed my arms and legs to take away the chill and turned my back on imagined creatures.

And there was a window, right there on the side of the building. I made the sign of the cross, though I didn’t believe in it one bit.

Narrow and tall, the lone window was so close to the ground I didn’t need to stand on tiptoe to see inside. I could hardly believe my luck. I crouched and sneaked up to the wall, holding my breath, trusting I was invisible in the early darkness. Slowly, cheered on by the crickets, I moved my face to the window. It took a minute for my eyes to focus.

In the middle of the room stood my sister, my only friend, my rock, the one who holds me close on our worst days and whispers, “Breathe, little sister, breathe. We’ll make it.” 

Kathy’s posture was all wrong, her head bowed, her arms crossed over her heaving chest, the shoulders trembling with sobbing I couldn’t hear, but felt in my bones. She never stands like that. She’s strong and proud and always stands straight and tall, like Dad taught us.

Father John knelt beside her. I’d seen seamstresses on their knees, pinning the hem of a dress, but Kathy had no dress on, no cover at all for her twelve-year-old body, slim and graceful. Then Father John stood up close to her and put his hands on her hips. He looked like he was rubbing against her. I turned away from the window and planted my hands on the brick wall. It was hard to breathe.

I took off running, a little lost in the dark. I couldn’t rescue Kathy by myself. Sister Frances would help. 

I knocked hard on her door. “Sister Frances, please open the door.” 

“What are you doing here, young lady?” Sister stood in the doorway, her gray robe hanging partly open, a blob of toothpaste on her upper lip.

“You have to come quickly, Sister. Kathy is in trouble. She needs you.”

Her eyes squinted in the light from the street lamp. I noticed the deep line above her thin nose. “What kind of trouble? Where is she?”

“I’ll show you, Sister. Please come with me.”

Sister folded her arms. “I’m in for the night, Teresa. I can’t help you.”

“Kathy’s in Father John’s room and something terrible is happening to her.” The words tumbled out. “You’ve gotta come now! Please!” 

I had never touched a nun or a priest before, but I reached for the sleeve of Sister’s robe and tugged with all my strength. I would drag her, if I had to.

Sister Frances slapped me so hard I lost my balance. I let go of the robe and hit the sidewalk, vaguely aware of the door slamming. I lay there for what felt like hours, hearing crickets. At some point I rolled into a ball before the shivers became uncontrollable and I had to move, pull myself up and find our room.

Who would help us? My brain felt fuzzy. I would figure it out in the morning.

But, when morning came and Kathy had wet the bed sometime during the night, I was confused. I didn’t remember her coming home. Had I dreamed the whole thing? 

___________________________________________

I’m screaming loud, long screams that come from somewhere outside me. My head throbs from the volume of hatred I fling at the window, but I don’t stop screaming. I strike the glass and it shatters and my blood spurts, but I keep screaming.

“Teri! Teresa! Wake up!”

Kathy shakes me hard. My eyes open, but several seconds tick by before I remember where I am. The wet warmth is there under my left leg and I recoil and jerk straight up, afraid I’ve alarmed the others, asleep in their rooms.

“What are you dreaming about? We’re gonna be in so much trouble if you keep screaming like this every night.” 

Kathy’s whispers sound like hissing tonight. She had gotten really good at loud whispers at that first home where the two other foster kids yelled all the time. 

We were known as the quiet sisters there. We were always together, so it didn’t matter to us if we stayed in the shadows. We kept out of punching range of the boys we lived with and stayed away from adults who loved us when the social workers came around, but then couldn’t remember our names.

Being quiet worked at the next house and the one after that before we decided the orphanage had to be better than the noise and chaos we hated. We’re the only kids who ever ran away to an orphanage.

I flop back on the pillow and stare at my sister, my big sister with her fine, patrician skin and wavy brown hair, who always protects me. Under her bloodshot eyes, the dark circles make her look sad and unhappy and so much older than twelve.

She plumps her pillow and leans back against it, knees bent, arms folded, waiting. Her green eyes grow narrow, the signal she is about to get her way. Then, for a moment, Dad’s eyes, green like Kathy’s, stare out at me, full of compassion. His message is clear. I cover my face and start to cry.

No, Dad, I can’t tell her what I saw. She doesn’t know I was there. I can’t say it.

I sob, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no!” 

Kathy is still, watching me, listening. She hasn’t looked at me, really looked, for ten days. Abruptly, she leans forward, pulls my hands off my face and grips them.

“You've seen me there, haven't you?" Her face is pale. She scoots close and wraps my arms around her waist. She holds me and rocks back and forward.

“Little Teresa. You should never have gone there. Darling, darling.” Her tears drop on my forehead and run down to my mouth where they mingle with mine. I taste them – salty.

We rock side to side. We hold on.

I wish I had screamed that night instead of only in my nightmares. The thought came for the hundredth time. If I had screamed instead of running, he would have stopped. It’s gone on way too long.

“We have to do something.” 

Kathy stiffens. The silence stretches long. She drops her head on my shoulder.

“I know,” she whispers.

“Today,” I say, firmly.

Kathy raises her head. She stares at me, questioning. I look at the clock. Five a.m.

“We have to pack.”

We jump off the bed and pull out our suitcases.

“Wait!” I lean on the bed, struck with a thought. “We don’t have to leave. He does.” The words hang in the air. “You haven’t done anything wrong. He's the one. He has to go.” 

Kathy stares at me, blue jeans in her hand, hovering over the suitcase. “You haven’t done anything wrong, either.” She tosses the jeans. ‘He has to go, the bastard.” She claps her hand over her mouth. She never curses.

I giggle. Kathy giggles. I slide down to the floor, carried away by the kind of laughter that won’t stop once it starts, the frenzied type that comes when you’re on your “last nerve,” like Mom used to say.

It lasts a while, the hysteria, but we keep it quiet. We’re good at smothering our laughter.

“Shall we tell Sister Frances?” We’re flat on the floor now, worn out from giddiness.

I sit up and fold my legs under me. “I told her.”

The last bit of color disappears from Kathy’s pale face, leaving her high cheekbones more prominent than ever.

I’d been thinking that no one at the orphanage is going to help us. I know what we have to do. I grab Kathy’s arm and pull her onto the bed.

“I’ve got a plan.”

We can’t go back to sleep, anyway, too wound up, so we settle in and begin to lay out the plan.

“We have to go to the police, agreed?”

Kathy wrinkles her nose, but nods her head.

“We need back up, though. We’ll ask Sandy if Father John did ‘a fitting’ with her.”

Last year’s Easter parade leader, Sandy, lives in our building. There would be other girls, too.

“I’ll ask. She’s more likely to tell me.” Kathy is suddenly animated. Seeing a glimmer of her normal self makes me so happy I almost cry. The last ten days had been the worst of my life, well, the second worst. Nothing would ever be as horrible as Mom and Dad’s accident. I push that picture aside. No room for it now. It will wait; it’s never going away.

“And she’ll know who got the ‘honor’ the year before her.” Mom’s gift for sarcasm surfaces in me.

“And if she’s still here, Sandy and I can talk to her together.” Kathy looks thoughtful.  “There could be a dozen girls . . . or more. How long has Father John been here?”

I think for a minute. “Wasn’t there an anniversary celebration for him in March?” 

“Yes! Twenty years!”

The look of horror on Kathy’s face matches the creepy feeling running up and down my spine. I always thought I’d make a great private investigator, but I’m not so sure anymore. All those years, all those victims . . .

“Didn’t anybody ever report him . . . complain? Somebody should have said something.”

Kathy’s shoulders droop and she looks down. “I wouldn’t be saying anything if it weren’t for you.” Her tears start. “Nobody else has a sister like you - a brave little sister.” She looks up at me and chokes out a laugh. “Sneaky, too.”

I laugh and then I cry because I know for sure my sister isn’t mad at me for looking through the window. I don’t know how many more ‘fittings’ she had to do. She stopped telling me where she went in the evenings and I didn’t ask.

We hug so hard it hurts my ribs.

At six-thirty a.m., we wash our faces and brush our teeth. By six-fifty we’re dressed and knocking on Sandy’s door.

“Hi, Sandy, can we talk?”

Her round face framed by bouncing blond curls, Sandy gestures towards her bed in the room, a bit smaller than ours, tidy and clean. We sit and listen while she describes her ‘fitting.’ An exact match.

“How did he get away with it all these years?”

“I told Sister Frances what he did and she looked at me like I was dirt and slammed the door in my face.” Sandy sighs. “I was afraid, so after that, I shut up. I can’t go back to the streets.” There’s panic in her voice. “Will we get kicked out?”

“Maybe, if only one girl speaks up, but we figure if we band together, it’ll be hard to kick us all out. So many empty rooms - the church would lose too much money.” 

Sandy wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Ok, let’s get as many girls as we can find.”

She jots down names from past years, including Melissa, who lives next door. 

Melissa’s face crumples upon seeing us at her door. Delicate Melissa with her long, black hair and big, brown eyes, holed up in her room a lot the last two years, especially during Easter season, sick with blinding headaches and chronic stomach ailments from keeping the secret. Now the story spills out like a dam bursting – another match. 

Melissa knows three girls from past years who were “chosen” by Father John. We call and leave messages, asking if they will meet us at the police station. Maybe they know of others.

The four of us set out for the station, nine blocks away. The weather is perfect. I wonder if Kathy is remembering spring outings with Mom and Dad on warm, breezy days like today.

A plump matron greets us from her desk behind the glass protector. Sergeant Marion Connors. I had practiced my statement over and over.

“We’re from the orphanage and we’re here to make a complaint about sexual molestation by one of the priests.”

Sergeant Connors’ eyebrows raise an inch, I swear. 

“All of you?”

“Oh, we’re just the first.”

The station door opens and five girls walk in.  

Kathy was right; no one else had a sneaky little sister. I am the only eye witness. I make my statement, feeling jittery but important. Each of us gets a copy of our statement along with an explanation of procedures.

“Accusations like these are taken seriously, so I trust you are all aware of the gravity of your decision to speak up. This can take years to go through the court system, but your Father John will be removed from his position immediately, pending review.” Sergeant Connors’ gaze sweeps the group of us. I detect a tear hovering in one eye. “You’re brave young women. You have a right to speak your truth.”

She was molested, too, when she was an innocent girl.

On the way home, I link arms with my sister, my hero. We walk tall and proud like Dad taught us. Sandy and Melissa join in, along with two older girls and we head down the middle of the road, arms linked, stopping traffic, skipping and calling to passersby. We ignore the honking.   

Above the noise, I yell to the others, “Father John better start packing!” They take up the rhythmic cry: “Father John, ya’ better start packin’! Father John, ya’ better start packin’!”  

No more quiet sisters.