Sarie’s words came back to me then.
Did your friend find you, by the way?
What friend?
The one who came here just over a month ago looking for you. I told him you hadn’t lived here since you were a girl and that the family was all long gone. He was very disappointed.
Sister Marguerite was still talking. “I told him you wouldn’t be there, that your last-known address was in Zaire, but he insisted on checking for himself. I think he was hoping to find some family even if he didn’t find you.”
He knew about me. Daniel knew about me before he died. I wasn’t the stranger that I’d imagined I was as I’d stood there outside the ICU staring in. If he’d woken and seen me, he would have recognized me for who I was. The thought makes me want to both laugh and weep.
“Wait,” I ask, needing her to slow down so that I can properly process everything she’s saying. “How did he find out? About me, I mean.”
“I told him.”
“You?”
“Yes. I’d kept the secret all those years, but you know what children are like. They overhear things, don’t they? So he knew a lot more than I gave him credit for. When we finally spoke about it, he said he’d suspected that the nun who’d been sent away the year he was born was his mother, though he didn’t know any of your details beyond the name you’d chosen for yourself, Sister Mary Teresa. He asked me to fill in the blanks and so I did.”
My skull throbbed from the pressure of all my unshed tears and as I winced at the pain of the tension headache, all at once I couldn’t hold them back anymore.
He knew who I was. My boy knew.
“Oh, my dear heart. Oh, you poor, poor thing.” Sister Marguerite held out her arms and swept me into them.
“Daniel, Daniel, Daniel.” I had no words except my son’s name. It was a prayer and an invocation, a confession and a lament; it was please and thank you; it was forgive me and amen.
Sister Marguerite held on tight, riding out the storm with me until the worst had passed. When she sensed that I was able to stand on my own again, she released me and then led me to the couch, where she instructed me to sit down while she hunted for some tissues.
“There you go. Are you feeling a bit better?”
I nodded as I dabbed at my eyes. “Yes, thank you. I’m so sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“I’m fine now,” I said. “Please continue. You were telling me about his finding out.”
“I was just going to add that he didn’t suspect who his father was until Father Thomas’s trial. That’s when Daniel worked it out for himself.”
“I’m sorry? Father Thomas’s trial? What trial?”
“You didn’t know?”
“No.”
“They wrote to you to see if you would come and be a witness but they never heard back, so I just assumed you wanted to put all that behind you.”
“They? Who’s they?”
“I just thought . . . well, that makes sense now, doesn’t it?” She saw my look of frustration and shook her head. “Sorry. Let me start at the beginning. Three years ago, two young women from Father Thomas’s congregation went to the police charging him with sexual assault. A case was opened and it went to trial a year ago. None of the nuns wanted to testify against him, even though some of them went through what you’d been through, but you were an ex-novice, you see, and had nothing to lose, so I thought you might consider it. I gave them your address but they never heard back.”
“I never got their letter. The postal service wasn’t very reliable.” I had so many questions but the one that came out was one that had been niggling from before: “How did you know that I was in Zaire? How did you have my address there?”
“I’ve been keeping tabs on your whereabouts. I’m the one who’s been sending you the photos of Daniel throughout the years.”
“That was you?”
She nodded. “I couldn’t imagine what it was like, having to give up your child like that, especially under those circumstances. I wanted you to know that he was fine and that he was cared for even though you couldn’t be with him.”
“I’d always thought it was Father Thomas sending them but he denied it at the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
“Yes, I saw him there when I went to try and visit Daniel.”
“You were there? I kept hoping you’d come but I never saw you.”
“I saw you,” I said. “Twice. Once in May and then on . . . on the day Daniel died.”
“But, Delilah . . . I don’t understand . . . Why didn’t you come in to see him or at least try to speak with me?”
“Father Thomas told me that my being there would upset you, that you were Daniel’s real mother and that I had no right to see him.”
She shook her head, clearly angry. “He wouldn’t leave at first. He insisted on being there even though he had no right and it’s not what Daniel would have wanted. I was too shocked and upset early on to put my foot down but when I’d finally had enough, and I threatened him . . . then he left.”
Her fury is what betrayed her. “He did the same thing to you, didn’t he?”
She bowed her head. “How do you know?”
“It was the way you looked at my bruises that day after he dropped me off at the convent. Like you knew what had caused them. And the way you were afterward when everyone found out. Like you understood.”
“I did. I was just lucky enough not to get pregnant.”
“So, you didn’t testify?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The church convinced me not to. They convinced all of us not to, as they like to handle their own affairs internally.”
“I assume he didn’t go to prison.”
“No.” She sighed. “He was acquitted.”
I snorted. “So where is he now?”
“He was forced to retire. He’s in a home not too far from here.”
“And you say Daniel knew? About the . . . that Father Thomas was his real father?”
“Yes, he figured it out after all the allegations. It shook him terribly,” she said. “They were close, he and Father Thomas. Daniel had even taken Father Thomas’s last name, but while he saw him as a father figure, he never suspected he was his real father. It changed everything he thought he knew about the world. That’s why I tried to help him find you. He was sitting up writing a letter to you on the night he was shot.”
“How do you know that?”
“I found it after the attack. The letter was in an envelope addressed to you.”
“But . . . why didn’t you send it to me?”
“I knew nothing about you, Delilah. What state of mind you were in, or what may have been going on in your life. I wasn’t even certain where in the world you were and I wasn’t just prepared to send that out without knowing it would reach you . . . or if you were emotionally equipped to deal with it. I wanted you to be ready for it and I knew you’d come when you were. I’ve been waiting for you. I was waiting for you at the hospital.”
“And Father Thomas was there standing guard, making sure we never spoke.”
With that, she walked around the desk and used another key to unlock a drawer. She withdrew an airmail envelope from it and handed it across. “Here you go. Now I can be certain it’s safely in your hands.”
I took it with trembling fingers. “Thank you.”
“You can read it later when you’re ready. For now, would you like to go visit his grave? I can tell you more about him if you like.”
“Yes, I’d like that very much.”
We spoke for hours, Sister Marguerite and I, and speaking to the closest person Daniel ever had to a mother was the closest I’d ever felt to him. It was a gift he bestowed me on his birthday, one I would cherish until
the day I died.
* * *
• • •
When I finally joined Ruth at the restaurant, I apologized for making her wait so long.
She brushed it off. “These things can’t be rushed. Are you hungry?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t eaten since a few nervous bites of toast at breakfast but I felt more satiated than I had in years. We set off for home and, perhaps because it was dark, or because Ruth had to face forward with her eyes on the road—I was too cowardly to look into my sister’s eyes—but I started talking. I needed to drain the poison from me and tell someone exactly what had happened.
Perhaps it was knowing that I wasn’t the only one it had happened to, but I felt compelled to share it then in a way I never had before.
“Ruth?”
“Yes?”
“Something happened to me that I want to tell you about.”
“Okay, you know you can tell me anything.”
And despite everything, how much I’d always resented her and how different we were—despite the fact that we’d never been close, and that she’d infuriated me with her self-absorption—I knew she was right.
And so I started telling her the truth about how Daniel was conceived and everything that followed. As I spoke, it all came back to me, everything that happened on that day, and afterward, when Father Thomas discovered my pregnancy. In my mind’s eye, I saw him enveloping me in a hug as I stood to go, and how his expression changed so swiftly when he realized what my swollen belly pressed against him signified. He’d stood frozen for a moment, horror written on his face.
“What have you done, Delilah? What have you done?” he whispered.
Gone was the novitiate name that he’d called me a mere half an hour before. I was no longer Sister Mary Teresa to him. I’d reverted to Delilah, “the destroyer of men’s powers.”
“I’m—I’m sorry, Father,” I stammered.
“Sorry?” He looked at me as though I was the embodiment of Satan, sent there by his enemies to annihilate him. “You’ve completely and utterly ruined me and yet all you can say is that you’re sorry?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Be still! I don’t want to hear another word out of your whorish mouth, do you hear me?”
I nodded, trying to check the terrified tears that were falling, but failing miserably.
His hands rose to his face and he began pacing, muttering to himself all the while. When he finally stilled, I could see that his expression had cleared like the sky after a storm. The shift was as sudden as the one I remembered from that day all those months ago and I marveled at how he could so swiftly move from one persona to the next like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
He turned to me and pinned me to the spot by the force of his stare. “You will never speak of what you did to me in that room. You will never tell a soul of how you were my undoing, do you understand?”
“Yes, Father.”
“No one can know. When they ask you, you will refuse to answer because in boasting of your sin, you will taint that child with it.” He nodded at my belly. “Is that what you want? To ruin your child’s soul before it’s even born?”
“No, Father. No, please, I—”
“If you keep our secret, I will save your child. Do you understand, Delilah? Do you agree?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Promise to leave straight after his birth, never to return and never to speak of this, and I promise to always take care of him. Vow it now.”
I hesitated for a moment, trying to think through the implications of what he’d said, and then his hands were upon my shoulders, shaking me. “Vow it in God’s name!”
And I did.
By then, my sobbing had attracted the attention of the Reverend Mother, who knocked on the door and flew in before she’d been beckoned inside. “My goodness. What is going on in here? Sister Mary Teresa, what—”
That’s when Father Thomas told her of my condition and everything was cast into turmoil. No matter how many times they asked me who the father was, I refused to answer. And with each refusal, Father Thomas grew stronger and more outspoken in defense of my child even as he condemned me.
As I spoke, Ruth listened without once interrupting me or saying a word, lighting cigarette after cigarette with trembling fingers. When I was finally done, she spoke through clenched teeth. “I’ll kill the fucking bastard. Where is he? Tell me he’s still alive so I can find him and beat the living shit out of him.”
“But don’t you see? You were right all that time. I was madly in love with him and I was attracted to him. When he was kissing me, I responded to him. I let him kiss me because it felt good.” It cost me everything to admit to that and yet I had to own up to my part in what happened.
“What the hell has that got to do with anything? You said no when he took it further. You asked him to stop.”
“But I’d already seduced him by then, by sending him all those signals that I—”
“What signals? Making sure your whole body was covered by your bathrobe? Not licking his finger? Telling him you didn’t want a massage and that you didn’t want to take your robe off? Is that your idea of seduction?”
“No, of course not, but . . .” I trailed off. “But he said I’d tempted him—”
“Of course he did. What better way to avoid blame for your own behavior than to blame it on someone else?”
“But I responded to his kiss.”
“Only for a moment before you told him to stop. Jesus, you’re human, Dee! Human! We all have weaknesses and that son of a bitch was the most good-looking man I’d ever seen. It would have been impossible not to respond to him in some way. Our bodies betray us all the time, all the time. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you wanted him to stop and you told him so.”
“I did.”
“He raped you. Please tell me you know that?”
And suddenly, for the very first time, I thought I did.
When we pulled up outside the farmhouse, Ruth unclipped her seat belt and turned to me. I saw then that she’d been crying steadily; her makeup was ruined and mascara trailed down her cheeks in inky rivulets. She leaned forward and clasped me toward her. We both cried until there were no tears left, and nothing to do but go inside, where Zodwa waited for us in the open doorway.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
Ruth
10 October 1995
Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa
It’s been more than a week since Dee confided in me and I still can’t shake the rage I feel on her behalf. It boils my blood to think that bastard priest not only raped her but then told her that she’d seduced him and, naïve girl that she was, she believed him. It shouldn’t surprise me; I’ve seen the same thing play out in dozens of different scenarios over the years.
As women, we’re told our worth and our value, and the many ways in which we fall short of others’ expectations; we’re told why we’re whores and why society can’t tolerate whores. We’re reminded of the ways we dishonor the unwritten contract we didn’t know we signed on the day of our birth: a contract in which we agreed to toe the line and know our place simply because we are the fairer sex.
Shit, I think I’m becoming one of those hairy, bra-burning feminists in my old age.
I always wondered why the priest had paid so much attention to Dee while ignoring me and I finally understand why. He knew the world of women is split into two types: the ones like me who’ll kick a man like him in the nuts, and the ones like Dee who’ll swallow the poison he feeds them, allowing it to slowly kill them. Predators like that have a sixth sense for picking out the prey that will succumb most easily, which is not the same as the weakest; if anything, Dee has proven to be the stronger of the two of us.
The intercom buzzes, interrupting my thoughts, and when I check the screen, it’s a deliv
ery van. I go cold, remembering the last delivery of the doll with the hunting knife through its head. Still, things seem to have settled down. It’s even been a while since the last threatening phone call.
“Yes?” I ask through the intercom.
“I have a delivery for Ruth Richardson,” a man says.
“I don’t suppose you know what it is?”
“Documents,” he replies, which makes me breathe a sigh of relief as I press the button to open the gate.
Mandla and Zodwa are sitting at the dining room table as he eats lunch. Jezebel sits crouched at their feet, ready to scrounge whatever Mandla drops. Considering he insists on feeding himself, she gets more than her share of scraps.
When I open the door, the man hands me a clipboard. “Please sign to confirm receipt.”
He shoves a large brown envelope at me and makes a run for it when Jez decides that a visitor is more interesting than the peas and carrots raining down from above.
“Should we see what this is, Jez? Hm? Another offer for me to write my memoirs? Or a documentary request? Should we put some money on it?”
She whines in response as I reach for a knife to slit the envelope open. It takes me a minute or two to realize that it’s a legal document inside, and not the kind I was imagining.
“That son of a bitch,” I whisper, dropping the divorce papers on the table. “He did it. He actually did it.” It’s difficult to breathe past the rock of hurt that has wedged in my throat.
Wrestling off my engagement and wedding rings, I march to the front door, fling it open, and then throw them out. I mean for it to be a dramatic gesture, and for the pieces of jewelry to disappear into the long grass—where they can languish in the vipers’ nests, fitting, because the man who gave them to me is a snake—but instead, they clatter onto the gravel just beyond the steps.
The diamond of my engagement ring sparkles in the sunlight, mocking me with its cheeriness.
“Damn it.”
I grab the remote control and then march down the steps, pick up both rings, and then make my way out the electric gate and along the driveway to the overgrown pathway that leads to the dam. Winded by the time I get to the water, I have to take a minute to catch my breath. As I do so, I stare at the rings in my palm. The perfect rose stem profile of the engagement ring, its pinkish hue, brings back so many memories that it makes me well up again despite my fury.
If You Want to Make God Laugh Page 26