Every Saint a Sinner

by Pearl Solas

  Now Daddy is fiddling with his camera and with a stand he hasn’t used before that has three legs. Daddy keeps sliding his camera into the stand until it clicks, and then he looks through the camera and moves it up or down or side to side. Finally, he nods to himself, takes the camera out of the clicky stand, and asks if the star is ready for her photo shoot. That’s me!

  We take some photos for a while, and I do all of my best poses and twirls, and Daddy says, “Beautiful! Gorgeous! Look at the camera, Julie!”

  Daddy takes a lot of pictures and then, after a while, he slides the camera onto the three-legged thing until it clicks, and he takes my hand and we walk over to the bed in the corner. Sometimes I take naps there when Mommy is working or exercising in the basement. I can’t help skipping as Daddy takes my hand.

  Daddy asks if I want to do an extra special photo shoot, a kind that only the best and most famous models do. I clap my hands and say I do! I really do! Daddy frowns at me and says he’s not sure if I’m ready for it, but when tears try to sneak out of my eyes, Daddy winks at me and says, “I can never say no to you, my girl, my sweet Julie.”

  Daddy says we’ll have to have a costume change, so he helps me out of the pretty nightgown, and my Wonder Woman underoos, and then he folds the clothes at the foot of the bed. When he is finished folding, he looks at me and says, “Poor girl, you must be so cold! Come here and I’ll warm you up before I go get your new costume.”

  I am shivery, so I take two quick skips to Daddy, and he lifts me into his lap, hugging me tightly to warm me up. Daddy sways back and forth, singing softly with his mouth against my hair. After a while, he begins petting me like I pet our dog, Claude. His big warm hand starts at the top of my head, goes all along my hair and then all the way down my back. It feels nice. I love being so close to Daddy.

  Daddy has done a good job of warming me up, but I don’t say anything because the petting feels nice, and I don’t want to move my arms and legs. They feel heavy and comfortable. My eyelids feel heavy, too, and my eyelashes flutter against Daddy’s shirt as I breathe in his clean smell.

  I feel so sleepy that I don’t even mind that we’re not finishing our fashion show. Then Daddy lays me onto the bed and untangles my arms from his neck, like he and Mommy always do when they try to put me to bed without waking me up. I keep my eyes closed and let Daddy place my arms by my side, knowing the next step will be to cover me with a snuggly warm blanket. I don’t realize that the blanket hasn’t come until my skin gets a little prickly with cold. I hear some rustling at the end of the bed, and a zipper.

  My eyes pop open as Daddy quickly pulls my legs apart and then I have to turn my head to the side to get a breath because Daddy is heavy on top of me. I feel something hard pushing against the place that Mommy and I call the puff-puff when she gives me a bath. I want to ask Daddy what’s happening, but his chest is pushing down on me and I have to keep moving my face just to find an open spot to take a breath. Trying to breathe is the most important thing, but I forget about that when the thing between my legs keeps pushing so hard that it feels like I’m breaking and my head fills with yellow and red. My puff-puff is ripping. I finally catch a breath and, as it leaves again it takes a scaredy sound from my throat. “Be quiet!” Daddy says in the low, angry voice he only uses with Mommy or when I’ve played with the toys on the special shelf in Daddy and Mommy’s room—the toys Daddy’s told me “a thousand times are strictly off limits.”

  I can’t see Daddy’s eyes, but his voice tells me his bright blue eyes have those icy beams that turn Daddy into a stranger. A scary stranger. I know how important it is to keep the scary stranger calm, so I try my hardest not to let out the sounds that bubble up to my throat from the ripping and fire in my puff-puff.

  * * *

  Daddy doesn’t look at me when he uses a damp towel to clean me up and put my nighty back on me. He starts talking in that low, icy voice as he takes out a package from his bag. It’s my favorite treat: Ring-Dings.

  “I can’t give you a treat if you can’t stay awake during our fashion shows.” He sounds so angry with me for ruining our secret playtime. He takes a Ring-Ding out of the box, opens the wrapping, and takes a big bite. He doesn’t look at me as he chews, swallows, and then finishes it with a second bite. A few more drops slide out of my eyes, and Daddy looks over right when I’m wiping them away. I love Ring-Dings, but I don’t care about them right now. I can’t stop my eyes from leaking because I ruined the fashion show, and now Daddy’s looking at me with squinty, angry eyes instead of wide, smiley eyes.

  “I’m sorry I fell asleep, Daddy,” I whisper.

  Daddy drops the Ring-Ding wrapper into his bag, zips it, and picks it up with his arm through the strap. He walks over to me and the ice in his voice melts a little as he says, “You’ll do better next time.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “When I woke up, I was breathing like I’d run a marathon, and I was drenched in sweat. At first I was relieved to realize it had been just a dream. The relief didn’t last long, though, because I knew it wasn’t like any other dream I’d ever had. It didn’t have any strange inconsistencies of time, or space, or characters that dreams usually have. It had been linear, logical, and detailed. It had felt as real as it felt to be sitting in my bedroom after waking up. I had BEEN that little girl, Julie. I took out the notebook in my bedside table and wrote down exactly what had happened.”

  After he finished writing, Frankie remained in bed, paralyzed by the lingering intensity of the dream. He felt overwhelming waves of nausea, sadness, and guilt. As the ability to move his limbs gradually returned, he crawled across the bedroom to the adjoining bathroom, and vomited repeatedly into the toilet. When Frankie had exhausted the contents of his stomach, and had no more strength for the subsequent dry heaves, he collapsed on the hard tile and cried. The animal-sounding noises that came out of him terrified him, as did the rivers of snot and tears pouring from his face. Physically exhausted, he fell into a dreamless sleep on the bathroom floor.

  After jolting awake again, all Frankie wanted was to escape back into sleep. Instead, he pushed himself off the floor, rinsed his mouth, and splashed his face with cool water. These simple actions had an immediate comforting effect and helped him feel human again. Instead of drawing his blinds and burrowing back under his covers, Frankie crossed himself and knelt by his bed to make a desperate plea to God. God had previously seemed distant and removed from Frankie’s life outside of Mass and Confession. For the first time in his life, Frankie spoke to his Creator in words that had not been written by someone else or formalized into liturgy.

  “I just asked God to help me,” Father Frank told Tavis simply. “I told him I was lost. I was weak. I was . . . I am . . . disgusting. I told him how disconnected I felt from him, and how ashamed I was for him to see me that way. How ashamed I was to see myself that way. I told him I felt too weak and unworthy for him to bother himself about, but I wanted to be better. I wanted to control myself, but I couldn’t do it without him. I prayed, ‘If you’re there, Lord, and if you can use even someone like me, I’m yours. If you care even for someone like me, please help me. Please help me. Please help me. Please help me. Please help me. Please help me.’”

  As a professional who had encountered more than his share of evil, sick bastards, Tavis knew Father Frank had continued with his story, so far, because Tavis had not allowed his face or his body language to betray the revulsion he felt about what Father Frank had admitted to doing. But within Tavis, another fragile, nearly imperceptible, unexpected feeling began to take root. Intertwined with his disgust were tender shoots of sympathy for the confused kid who rightly felt alone in the world.

  “When I woke up the next morning, I knew I needed to commit to two things: First, I would never again contribute to or participate in any way in the harm of children. I knew I needed to avoid all contact with children, and especially to avoid time alone with them, because clearly I could not trust myself. Also—and this felt like i
t might be an overreaction—I promised to cut all ties with computers.”

  Maybe Frankie could have turned things around and used his love of computers for only wholesome purposes, but being honest with himself, he doubted it. Already, and even knowing what he knew, or thought he knew, about what had happened to little Julie, his untrustworthy brain was trying to find a way to justify taking another peek at the images he had saved. And if that was too much, it tried to convince him, couldn’t Frankie just spend some time with the photos of other kids in the ‘RealJailBait’ folder? No kids had been hurt making those pictures, right, so what was the harm?

  Frankie nearly gave in. His body remembered and liked how it felt when looking at those photos. But before getting that drive out of his closet, or connecting to the bulletin board, he asked God to help him know and do what God wanted him to do. Thankfully, the answer was clear. Maybe other people could resist temptation, but Frankie did need distance from technology. He did need to avoid spending time in a virtual world where access to every desire he might have, was only a few keystrokes away. He might be able to resist temptation most of the time . . . when he felt strong, when the reasons for his commitment were fresh in his head, or when he remembered to ask God for help . . . but he needed to make it harder to give in during the times that would inevitably come when he felt weak.

  When those times came, his best strategy was to repeat the spontaneous prayer for help he had prayed on his bedroom floor. As soon as he asked for help, he felt less alone, and he knew he could make it a little longer . . . at least until the next time he needed to ask for help. In the beginning, he had to repeat this process every few minutes. For a few days, he didn’t leave his room—he told his parents he didn’t feel well—and between periods of begging for help, he dismantled all of his computer equipment.

  Eventually, Frankie didn’t need to beg for help quite as often, and he experienced increasing periods of clear-headedness. The little girl whose experience he had shared in his dream never fully left his mind, and the disgust he felt at his body’s attraction to the evidence of her destruction also stayed with him. He couldn’t undo the role he had played in damaging her, as a consumer of her pain. Still, with the steady infusions of grace and resolve he continually requested and received, Frankie gradually healed. He asked his Helper for direction about how to live in his service, how to atone for what he had done, and how to prevent his unwanted attraction from ruling him and hurting others.

  Frankie saw a solitary, lonely life stretching before him. He knew it was impossible to discuss his struggle with any other human being, that the risks were too great. He couldn’t expect anyone to understand that he despised his inclinations, that he would do anything possible to kill them, and that he wanted to avoid, at all costs, the damage that would come from taking any action on those inclinations.

  Though lonely, Frankie knew he was not alone. His invisible compassionate companion stayed close, constantly encouraging Frankie in his prison of shame and despair, and using Frankie’s deep remorse as fuel for a service-oriented, redeemed life.

  Frankie knew that he needed sacramental confession, but he could not bear the thought of any of the priests in his parish knowing the truth about him. So Frankie drove three hours to Ashford, where nobody knew his name, face, or voice. He visited a church and made a full confession to an unseen priest behind the screen in the confessional.

  The priest spent a long time with Frankie, asking probing questions, raising important concerns, and cautioning him about the dangers of believing he could resist his desires without professional assistance. Eventually, the priest seemed satisfied with the sincerity of Frankie’s repentance and his commitment to change, and he assigned Frankie penance and granted absolution.

  Frankie left the unfamiliar house of worship with his remorse intact, but he had replaced much of his shame with a motivating hope. He did not delude himself into believing he had been “cured.” He faced the future with clear and pragmatic eyes, recognizing that he would struggle against his sexual desire throughout his life, but also appreciating the reasons he had to hope.

  “God helped me understand that there was no law requiring me to allow this aspect of my personality to dominate my thoughts or my actions. I knew that, in spite of my best efforts to avoid it, there would be times of temptation. I also knew, because I had proof of it, that I was, and am, capable of making disastrous choices if all I rely on is my own willpower. Fortunately, I also had experience with touching the faintest outlines of the help that was available to me for the asking, and I knew that source of strength was more than sufficient,” Frankie explained to Tavis.

  After completing the sacrament of reconciliation, Frankie transformed dramatically. He ripped off the band-aid and began running, without delay, the race that had been set out for him. Because he had no business putting himself in situations involving regular interactions with children, Frankie quit his job at the ice cream store, and the next time his neighbor asked him to babysit he told her his schedule had changed and made babysitting impossible. Frankie resolved to direct not just his actions, but also the eco-system of his thoughts, into paths of empathy and righteousness, which required him to maintain his distance from children.

  Not until taking these steps did Frankie realize how consumed he had been by thoughts about children. But he developed new mental pathways through physical separation and a commitment to asking for divine assistance whenever he needed it. As with anything, the results were not perfect, and troubling, obsessive thoughts still sometimes invaded his mind, but there was enough improvement to encourage Frankie to continue.

  To avoid falling into old patterns, Frankie devoted himself to spiritual development and academics with an appetite that bewildered his parents, his teachers, and his priest. He pestered Father James regularly about the philosophy or insight of whatever he was reading, and Father James suggested the seminary might be the best place to seek answers to his many questions. Frankie considered this suggestion carefully, but he didn’t think himself ready for that commitment.

  * * *

  Frankie graduated high school and enrolled in a well-respected liberal arts college in a neighboring state. After a few false starts in choosing a major, Frankie’s fascination with his introductory psychology class led him to pursue a degree in the field. Examining the complex and often counterintuitive workings of the brain fascinated him, and he jumped in with enthusiasm.

  Frankie was also drawn to psychology because he wanted to understand what was wrong with him. He understood the term pedophilia applied to him. Like most people, Frankie assumed that, because the label applied, he might be hardwired to hurt children.

  “As much as I wanted to fight against that part of myself, and not to hurt anyone,” he said to Tavis, “I was afraid I was really just delaying the inevitable because I was a monster who would eventually act according to my evil nature.

  “Thank God, literally, for my abnormal psychology course. More than anything since God comforted me on the floor of my bedroom, that course gave me hope for the future. There was a unit on sexual deviancy, which explored a number of paraphilias, including pedophilia. I learned that the media often oversimplifies the condition and uses the same broad brush to paint all individuals on a spectrum. One example is the commonly understood definition of pedophilia. Culturally, pubescent and post-pubescent adolescents are children, but the clinical definition of pedophilia is limited to sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children.

  “By far the biggest relief, though, was learning that those of us who are cursed with that attraction aren’t necessarily doomed to act on it. Obviously, it’s tough to get data about pedophiles who never commit offenses against children. It’s the same reason I could never talk to anyone about it when I admitted to myself what I am. We have every incentive to keep our struggle secret because not guarding that secret with our lives will cost us our lives—either literally, or in terms of ruining us within our communities. This is why the pu
blic only hears about pedophiles who act on their attraction. We learn about the harm they have caused to children, either directly or by consuming child pornography, only when they are caught.”

  As Father Frank continued, Tavis realized he had no idea how long he had been sitting in his office. Tavis had the same common understanding about pedophiles. He had spent so much of his career catching them that it was hard not to assume that all pedophiles hurt children.

  Father Frank was cut short by a light tap at the door, followed by a prim woman in late middle age opening the door and poking her head in.

  “I didn’t want to interrupt, Father Frank, but we’re getting quite a back-up out here. Can I give folks an idea of when you’ll be able to see them?”

  Father Frank smiled sadly at the woman. “I’m sorry, Schelle. I’m not going to be able to see them. Please tell them I’m dealing with an unexpected crisis. In fact, you should probably cancel my appointments for the rest of the week.”

  The woman opened her mouth as if to speak, and then quickly closed her mouth. She nodded once, and then reached for the doorknob with one hand while her other hand moved in search of the crucifix hanging from her neck.

  “Oh, and Schelle?”

  She stopped the door in its path and raised her eyebrows expectantly.

  “I hate to ask, but would you please bring us a couple of waters and cups of coffee? I think we’re going to be in here a while longer.”

  “Of course, Father,” she said briskly, shutting the door. Her shoes clicked on the floor as she sped away to complete her tasks. Tavis wondered what she thought they were discussing. He wondered if she would have willingly granted any favor to Father Frank if she knew what he had been confessing.