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“It sounds like you need to start,” I reply.
“But I thought this was just for… I mean, I haven't had the ceremony yet.”
I cross my arms in front of my chest. For some reason, I feel like I need to shield myself from her.
“It won't be long now, Angel,” I reassure her uncomfortably. “You haven’t been overlooked. I promise you that.”
“Okay,” she sighs. She seems distracted and I’m not sure she believes me.
“And you have something to tell me, is that right?”
She swallows hard. I watch her throat flexing.
“Yes… I suppose I… I mean —”
“Come into the shack,” I tell her gently. “I'll hear your confession in here.”
She nods somberly, walking past me and up the small step onto the worn, wooden floorboards of the shack. I can smell the hard soap she used to wash up this morning, the dove white, clean smell of her. The sunburnt smell of her hair. The tiny, bitter smell of her fright.
I close the door behind us, and the shack seems plunged into darkness for a moment before our eyes adjust. In reality, there is more than enough light coming through the foggy window, high on one wall. More than enough. It illuminates the eight- by eight-foot space with a grayish, colorless halo.
She takes a few steps in and then stops, shifting foot to foot as she looks all around. She takes in the long bench along one side, with a stack of woolen blankets at one end. I can see her figuring out that the shack is sometimes used as a sleeping pen. Sometimes, when the situation makes that seem appropriate.
On another wall are three simple shelves with a Bible, some candles, and a few stacked bowls. There's a chair leaning against the wall. A squat, wooden chair with a worn, bowed seat.
“Should I…” Her hand drifts toward the chair, floating in the air.
“No, you kneel,” I instruct her. I slide past her, careful not to brush against her or her skirts. She's not to be touched. “On the plank. There.”
As I drop into the chair, she looks around, squinting into the gloom. Finally she sees it: the low platform where she is supposed to place her knees and confess all of her sins to me.
Here in the dark. Just us.
She begins to kneel, her eyes trying to find mine in the darkness. It's not appropriate.
“You need to face away from me,” I tell her, pointing at the far wall. She stops and jerks back upright, then shuffles in an awkward half circle and finally kneels on the plank. Her long skirts tumble over her calves, exposing her ankles and the dusty, pink bottoms of her feet.
“What… um, what do I do next?”
Suddenly, I'm not quite sure what to tell her. I know what the ritual is supposed to be, but I am not the one who is supposed to instruct her in it. I probably should have let one of the aunties bring her out here, and I'm not sure why I didn't. Her first confession should be taken by one of her kind, another woman. Once she's broken in, and once she’s officially a woman, then she can come to me to hear her real secrets. The sort of secrets an adult would want to hide. The secrets of children are for the aunties, not for me.
I remember her mother, Melissa, in much the same situation. When I brought her here, invited her to stay, the compound was almost brand new. We were still making a lot of mistakes. We hadn't finalized the rituals of confession, and Melissa took up much of my time.
Did I mind? No. She was a beauty, much like this one here. But she was spoiled, ruined, haunted by her transgressions. Though we worked through each sin together, untangling them like knotted thread, so much of her past encroached upon Kingdom Come’s goodwill.
I paid off her bookie, her drug dealer, and a boyfriend that I suspect was more of a pimp. Melissa alone cost our community more than any other three members combined.
She was beautiful. Not like now, when she's bitter, poisoning herself on her own bad feelings. She’s almost the opposite of Angel, who has none of that baggage. She feels encumbered, I can tell, but she really isn't. She's as carefree as any other innocent. Her burden is proof of her innocence, unlike Melissa. There's really nothing Angel could have done. I can't even imagine it.
“Father Daddy?” she begins, dragging me back to the situation in front of me. “What do I do next?”
I cough gently into my hand. I have to say something.
“First, you pray to God for the strength to tell me everything. Do that now.”
Her head drops forward automatically. Her hair falls over her shoulders, exposing the triangle of soft skin at the nape of her neck. Small ridges of her bones push through, a softly undulating shape under the downy flesh there.
Finally she lifts her head back up.
