Forgive Us Our Trespasses

--A day before Thanksgiving--

St. Raphael is a quiet church.

In its quiet, at the front of the antechamber, a marble relief of Mary stands with a face bowed and lovingly expressionless. Before her, an exchange priest draped in a white chasuble kneels with his hands clasped. whispering prayer. His name is Elijah, and his patron saint is Michael the Archangel. He is recently ordained and soon to be headed home from his time preaching in the States.

He stands again with his brow still cross in thought.

Then there’s the soft shuffle of an old man’s footsteps. Another priest, chalk-skinned from a long deficiency of sun, shuffles into the antechamber. His name is Patrick. His gray hair might have been brown once. His patron saint is John the Apostle. Without a word, he shuffles right up next to Elijah and claps him on the shoulder. He looks straight up at Mary as Elijah’s gaze is still fixed below.

Patrick doesn’t say anything, so Elijah clears his throat and speaks up.

“Busy day today, ‘m?”

Patrick lets a grandfatherly chuckle and gives Elijah another pat on the shoulder before crossing his arms. “You know it, my friend. How’re you holding up?”

“Good enough. good enough.”

Elijah’s voice carries a Zambian accent as thick as Patrick’s Irish one, and his lips curve into a small smile as he speaks. Still looking down, his eyes close briefly. “I’ll need to run out for more boxes—sometime today. Before tomorrow.”

There is a pause, and a bit of an ‘eh-eh’ noise from Patrick that might have been another laugh. The kind of laugh that’s a good way to fill time while he thinks of something to say. “What good timing from the archbishop, sending you home for Thanksgiving. The Lord looks out for you.”

Elijah glances up at him thoughtfully.

“Ah--well--we do not have Thanksgiving outside of America. But thank you. I feel the same.”

Patrick returns his smile wholeheartedly. “I don’t know how that slipped me”, he says. “Still, we see our families; only right you see yours just‘s well.”

Then he turns, vestments rustling. He shuffles to the doors. Old oak doors, carved with the stations of the cross. There’s a dull patina along the edges where fine details were worn away and rounded by decades of hands.

Elijah turns with him after a moment. Humor lights his voice. “Yes, well, how wonderful it is here. But it has been too long. Much too long. My brothers call on the phone near every day... ‘Elijah! Elijah! Cough twice if you are a hostage over there!" This makes Patrick laugh.

He goes on. “And I have to tell you, the first time I saw snow here it was like magic, and not the devil kind. Now I think it is growing old on me. The cold is nice but, you know what they say about too much of a good thing.”

“Eh-eh, a reason why I’m happy to be growing old in this fine life”, says Patrick. “So long looking up to Heaven, I’m about ready to join the party.”

“You think Heaven will be a party?” Elijah asks, used to his wandering change-of-subjects.

“Why wouldn’t it be? Certainly a-a praiseful kind of party, like a soldier’s welcome home or a ninetieth birthday, but I like to think there's a lot to celebrate.” Patrick says. “‘Endless praise and singing’, I mean I like to think reverent-like, but after all these years… it sounds like that might’ve been John's way of saying there’ll be cheering and music. If there’s music, there ought’a be dancing.”

“Be careful there, old man, don’t hurt yourself!” Elijah smiles.

“Oh, y’think I can't? Y’think I won’t ‘dance before the lord with all my might’? Y’think so?” As he says this the old priest starts cabbage-patching aggressively.

Then, and immediately then, the doors swing outwards with a low groan, a mist of cold air and frost from outside curling in after the clicking bootsteps of the young woman rushing in. She is armored in a puffy silver nylon coat and a red scarf, her cheeks equally flushed from the chill Maine-November air. Realizing she threw open the doors with a bit too much force for them to close themselves behind her, she turns back and pulls them shut. Her name is Gwen, and her patron saint is Joan of Arc.

“Morning! Sorry I’m late.” Her voice echoes noticeably under the arched ceiling. Patrick quickly re-folds his hands in a priestly fashion.

As she passes Father Elijah extends a hand in greeting. He’s a moment too slow for her to notice before she’s headed for the coat rack, already unwinding her scarf.

“Praise Jesus, I was starting to think no one would show.” Elijah says, tone as quietly jovial as before.

He looks over at Patrick who shoots him a jokingly pointed look. “Don’t mind the youngun,” he says at the newcomer, who is batting at her coat on the hook after the second time it’s fallen off. “Ms. Gwen, yes?”

“That’s me,” She says with a slight grunt, finally throwing the coat on top of the rack instead.

She walks into the church proper, boots clicking against the stone tiles. A police badge flashes near her pocket. She unexpectedly takes Elijah’s hand from where it was at his side and shakes with some vigor and a nod of respect. Maybe she did see before, he thinks with mild confusion. Then she shakes Patrick’s hand.

Patrick pauses, recognition twinkling in his gray eyes.

“Hey--! I know you from not too long ago. Sacrament ‘a Confirmation, er, last month? Sister Elma’s group?”

“You know it!”

“He-hey!” He puts out his hand awkwardly for a fist-bump, and she returns it with enthusiasm.

After a pause Officer Gwen glances at the doors again with a quizzical arch of her brow. She puts one hand on her hip, mumbling something. “--Should be here by now. Huh."

“Hm?” Elijah intones.

“Well, I was going to tell you I wouldn’t be the only one helping to set up. See, my friend from work—she’s usually at another parish, right, but she came along this time, which is nice. We haven’t actually hung out in ages. She followed my car here and said she’d be right behind me, but. . . I just hope she didn’t slip on the ice.”

“Ah,” Elijah says. “Should we. . .?”

Then, as if on cue, one wooden door at the other end of the antechamber barely creaks open, and a small woman dressed in a knit white shawl tiptoes in. She bows gracefully toward the cross and Mary once inside, crossing herself with practiced reverence.

Her name is Martha Langley, and her patron saint is Mary, Undoer of Knots. Elijah gives her a warm smile in greeting which she returns wordlessly.

Patrick claps his hands together, seeming to recognize her instantly. “Martha! Ms. Martha Langley—if my eyes don’t deceive! How’ve you been?”

Her head inclines as he says this, her and wispy white hair tumbles over her shoulder like smoke. “Father Patrick,” she acknowledges softly. “I’ve been well, thank you. And you?”

Elijah’s veins flood with ice.

That voice.

Patrick says something else Elijah didn’t listen to, and Martha laughs respectfully. Gwen throws an arm around her shoulder.

Following behind Patrick, Martha crosses herself again at the holy water font, and Gwen follows suit. Martha clasps her arms neatly behind her back.

She peeks into the little side-chapel closed off by a glass door from the antechamber. “I see a table in there already,” she says with that voice, that voice he knows. “That’s where we’ll be working?”

She turns to Elijah for confirmation. There is a very, very long pause.

“It is,” he mumbles.

At that moment something in her gaze changes. Her smile remains exactly the same, but all the sudden it gives Elijah the startling impression of bared teeth.

She turns back to her friend, the officer Gwen, with her expression renewed sweetly. “Wonderful. And what a beautiful room for Thanksgiving dinner,” she says back at Elijah without turning to him again. “I didn’t see anyone else at the lot. Yes, we should be started if it’s just the four of us.”

Patrick nods in agreement. With a comically flourished come-on-in gesture, he says something that this time makes Gwen laugh, and leads everyone down the hall with him. Conversation flows like a river parting around Elijah. His face, half-lit by reddish sunlight from the stained glass above, is set like stone.

It’s strange how someone not even in the room can still cast a shadow. And how that shadow might be joined to someone else's, which really is there, and the two twist together like smoke and grow long and black across the walls--until even in a place full of light, it’s as if they’ve blotted out the sun.

--Three weeks before Thanksgiving--

“What’s going on? Shouldn’t’je be at Confessions?” Patrick asks. Then, at the look in Elijah’s eyes, he feels a paternal sort of alarm.

"Elijah, what’s wrong with you?”

He walks into the dim sacristy where Patrick is folding vestments, closing the door behind him slowly to muffle the sound. He immediately paces to the window, face buried in his hands, then is back at the door facing Patrick. "I had to stop. I just stopped--’everyone out, out! We’re finished!’ I couldn’t go on, I tried. I couldn’t.”

Patrick raises a hand haltingly. “Slow down-- here, sit.” He quickly shoves the folded cloth away from the table-spot in front of the opposite chair from his. A few squares topple off the edge before he can catch them.

Elijah sits with his face immediately in his hands.

“Alright, catch your breath. . .. Can I make y’a tea or anything?” Patrick offers.

“No, thank you, I'm...” Elijah rubs at his nose, a note of desperation entering his voice. “Man, I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I need your help, I need. . . something, I don’t know.”

“Slow down,” he says again. “Tell me what’s happened.”

He looks up. “Pat--oh, God, man. The Confession—someone told me that--”

Patrick, alarmed, reaches across the table and shakes Elijah by the arm, reminding him to stop. Elijah’s next words die.

Patrick lets out a sigh of relief. “Not like that,” he says.

Elijah visibly can’t stand this.

“You can’t tell anyone what any fellow said at the booth. Not even me.” Says Patrick. “But you can tell me what’s happening here.” Patrick taps at his own chest.

“. . .Here?” Elijah gestures to his own heart with a still-panicked expression, and Patrick nods gravely. “I guess I—I have a question.”

“OK,” says Patrick

“My question is, does the Seal. . . always apply?”

Patrick’s eyes crinkle."Till the day we die. Martyrs died for it.”

“So, then. . . even to the police?”

His eyes meet Elijah’s straight-on again. This time with recognition. "Yes, t’the police.”

“You--you understand, now. Then what should I do? What can I do?”

“Mm.” Patrick thinks for a long moment.

He speaks slowly at first. “This is off the record. Just us ‘s friends, not priestfolk.” He waits for no answer, lowering his voice and speaking close now. "What you do is, when you hear something like that. . . you convince the parishioner to stay a’while. To give advice, to talk. You might convince them to take the right steps. Or you might get ‘em to mention whatever it were to ye outside the Sacrament. Then. . . you tell anyone.”

Elijah meets this with a dull look.“I know. I--I know of that.”

“Oh.”

“Sh-the parishioner knew. Must have. Said they would stay, and I wasn’t--I wasn’t ten more minutes in the room before I kicked everyone else out. They had disappeared already.” Elijah buries his face in his long sleeves. "They were gone, Patrick. They were gone.”

Patrick leans back in his seat, rubbing his face with a deep sigh.

“What can I do?”

“I’m so sorry," He says.

"You pray. You just pray," He says. "I’ll pray with you.”

--A day before Thanksgiving--

“Tilt it left,” Elijah says to officer Gwen, shifting his hands again under the table. Too quickly, he tries to move forwards. It's out-folded metal legs clang against the narrow doorway.

“Wait, wait—your left or my left?”

“Mi--” Elijah pauses, his brow furrowed. “Alright, never mind. That’s good, thank you. Just—yes, like that.”

They stagger into the room, narrowly avoiding the doorway and the pews, and the many folding chairs the group has already brought in.

"Good, good,” he says, lowering his side to the ground. She follows with a huff. “I can just-- scoot it along from here. Could you grab the tablecloth? It should be, ah, in a cabinet in the same corner. The one with a Joseph on top of it."

“On it.” Gwen shakes her sore hands, then marches back out. As the sound of her boots (click-click-click) disappears down the hall, there is a familiar shuffling sound at the door.

Father Patrick stumbles in, shuffling backwards carrying one end of the third and final table to line up end-to-end with the others. It’s still folded—a heavy, awkward rectangle of plastic that the stiff old man lowers to the floor with impressive care not to hit anything. In the same motion he flipped it upside-down.

“Right... hehah! Let’s get this old thing set up. Martha?”

Elijah watches Martha lean on the edge of the nearest pew to lower herself to the ground, where she unfolds it with dexterity; metal creaking as it wrenches outwards and into place. She reaches for one jointed bar on the left to help Patrick lift and right it.

She freezes with a sudden parted-lip look of disgust. She pulls both hands away from the bar, and they come away slick with copper-reddish grease from the joints. She doesn’t wipe her hands on her nice white skirt where she’s sitting; she holds them there opening and closing for a moment with a creased brow, then uses her elbow on the pew to help her back up.

“Excuse me,” she murmurs apologetically. “I'll--I'll be right back. Don't start again without me, I’ll help you in a moment.”

“Take yer time,” Father Patrick says as Martha leaves. He eases himself down onto a nearby folding chair for a much-needed break.

Elijah watches her go. Not for long. Gwen quickly reappears in the doorway.

“No tablecloth, sorry,” she says, out of breath. “Help me out?”

“Of course.” Elijah says. He brushes his hands on his vestment, the motion distracted as his gaze darts up again at a familiar soft voice, 'excuse me', passing Gwen. He immediately looks down again as if he hadn’t jumped. He can’t be acting like this.

Is he being too cautious, or not cautious enough?

Gwen had already started walking, but backpedals to look at him. “You sure it's in the same storage?” Are you good? she meant.

“Yes,” he says briskly. He follows her out and nearly runs into Martha… just there at the door, not coming in. She is wiping her hands with a white towel, movements absent and casual, leaving copper-red stains. Elijah stops (for no good reason, he thinks. Why did he do that?) Gwen passes the corner ahead and disappears.

He thinks she’s not going to say anything, until she does.

“Say, what was your name again?” Martha asks softly. Her tone gives Elijah the prickle of a fly buzzing too close to your ear.

“Elijah.”

“You have such a different voice,” She starts in that certain way. “—You must be an interesting preacher. Where are you from?”

He fights his face bravely to keep a friendly expression. “Africa,” he says.

He was vague on purpose. He hasn’t figured out what he wants to say to her yet, and he wants to avoid a conversation until he does. Why did he stop walking? “Excuse me, I’ve got to find something.”

“Mm-kay.” She replies.

--Three weeks before Thanksgiving--

“God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins. . . Through the ministry of the church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy spirit.”

“Amen.” Returns the muffled, sheepish voice of the penitent man on the other side.

“Your penance is, ah, five rosaries. The Lord has freed you from your sins. You may go in peace.”

“Amen, man, thank you.” The man says. Elijah can hear the new clarity in his voice, and it makes him smile. It always does.

“You take care, ‘m? Have a good week,” Elijah says. As he says this his hand comes to rest on the lattice wall. From the other side, he hears the man pat the same place twice—a soft sort of high-five through the divide. "You too, take care,” the man says.

There is a shifting sound and then a brief light from the other side of the confessional lattice as the door opens again, and an ‘excuse me’ ‘sorry Ma’am’, as the man brushes past the next parishioner walking in. Elijah takes a long breath like clearing the slate.

“In the name of the father, and the son, and the holy spirit.” The woman’s clearly practiced voice comes through the latticed wall immediately with the click of the door, before she's even sat down. Elijah blinks a few times, pleasantly surprised. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

There’s a pause. Elijah makes an encouraging ‘mhm’ sound for her to continue.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” She repeats and continues, following the exact script to start. “These are my sins.”

“I stopped going to church for a long time, but I do now. I haven’t prayed as often as I should. I was impatient with people. I don’t donate. I've envied, been greedy, and lied, and people make me angry. I’ve held a long grudge. I’ve broken promises including marriage. I’ve ignored those who cried out for mercy. I planned to hurt someone, and when the moment came, I did.”

The speed and amount said in her immediate confession threw Elijah off, and his response finds him after a pause. “Um, come again?”

She doesn’t speak for another moment. Elijah winces, thinking that this must be his own mistake. What he'd replied wasn't quite in persona Christi.

Why is she breathing like that?

“I… I’m sorry, could you say that again?” He says.

“I killed my husband.”

“You--what?”

On her side of the screen she’s breathing a sound just above crying, and her exhale turns into a kind of hiccuping laugh. He thinks she’s about to say something else, until she doesn’t.

On his side, adrenaline is spiking painfully like a bee sting of the whole body. Nothing prepared him for this. He lets her carry on and then, thinking of what Jesus might do, speaks again when her side is quiet.

“I’m… I’m here to listen. This is confidential… just help me understand. I will try.”

She mumbles something on her side, then audibly she says, “Don’t know why I fucking drove here.”

The hare-like way Elijah is looking at the lattice wall could burn right through it.

"He was a fucking leech." Her voice slices.

“Ma’am… If you are here to repent, I am listening."

There is the odd quiet laughing sound again. “This is my one chance. To say it all. I guess I…start with… I married him for money.”

Her voice barely mumbles through the divide, and if you were breathing too loud you couldn’t hear it.

“I married him for his money because, I’m going to die soon, and he, looked like he’d die a lot sooner. He loved me and I let him. I grew up with nothing, and I wanted to have something…before it’ll all end. I went to church every week, because that’s what you do, but no one ever took care of me… not God. I thought John’d take care of me, and you know what that leech does?” She doesn’t wait. “He forgets. Caught god-damn dementia. We never went to Carcassonne, he thought we did. All that money, he barely took me anywhere. I check where the money’ll go after he’s gone, and it's all to his grown-ass-men grandkids. Each year I lost more time keeping him alive, and everything'd go to them.”

“I put what was in his blood pressure pills down the toilet, and I put sugar in them. He died in a week. Before he went he wasn’t-there anymore, and he wrote his name wherever I wanted him to.” Her voice gains an audible smile. “And I got the money.”

“I had stopped going to church… after I met him here… so I stopped for years. But you go to church when you’re grieving. I went to a different one because I said I couldn’t bear to be in the same place as I met him, and, the same place where I saw his funeral. They brought me flowers. The grandkids. I threw them away in the parking lot.”

“I don’t believe in God, or if he is real, I think he is also up there, after his ninetieth birthday… already-dead in his chair, forgetting about us. All I ever had… I've had to scrape for myself. And now I’ll go to Carcassonne. I’ll go to Cancun. I’ll live until I die, and I’ll die a Catholic.”

Elijah has lost everything he might have said.

The old woman hiccup-laughs again, and he knows now that she is not crying. “You have a job to do now?”

Elijah’s response comes mortified. “I… cannot absolve you by the Father if you aren’t here to repent. I don’t know…” He trails off. “I don’t know what this is.”

She spits her reply, “Then this is enough, I could never do this at St. Nathaniel. Everyone knows the priest talks. You won’t.”

“I--I would like to talk. To you, after this.” Elijah stammers, thinking quickly. “I've never heard a confession like this before and I will need to consider scripture to help you. I cannot help you now, but if you stay and wait for everyone else to go, we can talk with more time. We are running out of time now.”

The woman doesn’t respond.

“Will you stay?” Elijah asks.

The other side is quiet for too long.

“Yeah, mm-kay.” She eventually says.

He doesn’t know if she means it or not, and she doesn’t wait for an answer. The door groans open, and he hears a polite ‘excuse me’ in the same meek voice he heard of her at first--now entirely alien--as the next penitent passes her to sit. The man starts talking at Elijah. He can’t listen.

--One day before Thanksgiving--

Gwen has gone to find the pumpkin centerpiece stashed somewhere in the sacristy. Patrick is off looking for the little plastic rosaries they hand out at things like this.

This leaves Martha and Elijah alone, working. Elijah is at his limit.

…But not yet. Not yet.

It’s Martha who speaks first. Again.

“You’re headed home soon.”

It might have been a question, but it was said like a command. Elijah bristles. “I am,” he says. “Tomorrow.”

“That’s what Patrick said. When we were talking,” she says, smoothing her voice, smoothing the fabric with her clean hands. “You know, he and I’ve been friends for years… we fell out of touch when I started at St. Nathaniel. I’m so thankful for Gwen getting me back here. Such a kind young lady.”

“You know how I met her?” She continues with a grandmotherly lilt. “When my husband passed away, she was the one who came when I called. It was one of her first days on the job… she’s the good sort of officer. Not there trying to be the hero. Just there just to be there, when someone needs someone. She was there for me and listened to me cry."

“She kept in touch with me after that, over the phone. She’s the one who invited me here. I think she thought coming back would help me ‘break out of my shell’ again.” She says.

“What a nice surprise.” She says, aware of his dread. “Who would have thought I'd run into you on your last day here, on my first day back.”

Elijah makes a faint sound of agreement. When he finishes with the left corner he lingers there looking at the door, waiting for the others to return.

“I’m very grateful for your help, Elijah.” she says. His gaze darts to hers. He thought she’d just keep playing with him as if they’d never met.

"Because of you," she goes on, gently, "I think I've grown much closer to God these past few weeks. I've felt lighter."

Elijah swallows. His voice barely makes it out.

“That’s... that's good to hear,” he says. His voice is an unsettled whisper. Then, not a question: “You confessed here.”

“I did.” She smiles. One wall down. Now's his chance.

Elijah is going to say something he had planned then, but it betrays him and goes missing between his mind and his mouth. At the crucial moment he says nothing at all.

It wouldn't have mattered anyways-- she, of course, already knew what he was trying to do. He knows she did. When he tries again to recall how he'd planned to trick her into admission, he only reaches the thought of the grandchildren she'd mentioned.

He thinks about how they never got to say goodbye, and will never know they could've had more time, and will always wonder what they did wrong for him to leave them nothing at all.

Martha keeps on smiling. It gives Elijah the impression of bared teeth.

He began to understand, just a little bit, how Jesus must have felt after Gethsemane. How an innocent look, a smile, a laugh or a kiss can stir the most crushing helplessness when meant with another meaning. Jesus knew this feeling, perhaps all at once as the gloating killer, the silenced victim, and the ensnared witness as he felt the full weight of that sin hanging with him on the cross.

Elijah thinks again of the shadow that isn’t there, the ghost, intertwined with hers and now his, blotting out all light in the room. He thinks about tomorrow; his flight home to Ndola, where knowing this will mean nothing.

Martha makes her way over to him and speaks close to his ear. Not in front of him, not looking at him, at his side. Like a kiss on the cheek. “John was a leech, and you are a snake. I know you’re trying to do your job, but you're a snake. You tried so hard. But what would it have accomplished?” She says. “Nothing. I killed him, and now I've said everything I'll ever say about it. Now you and I'll both live with it. I will live happy. You’ll choose what you do with it, but the one thing you’re never going to do is tell anyone that matters."

She pauses there, still standing uncomfortably close. "I've done enough for the poor today," she says. "I think I'll tell my friend the officer that being here again was just too hard for me. Everything I've been through." And then, pulling away, speaking more to herself than him: "There's somewhere I've always wanted to go, and I think God is telling me it's time to book a flight."

Finally she passes him by, and Elijah is left with an unsettled prickle in the shoulder which was up against hers standing so close. She slips out the back door of the chapel without another word.

It’s funny that she left right then, and that she left through the back door and not through the hall.

Moments later, standing there in shock, Elijah hears another sound coming from very, very close by, as if also inside the chapel. He’ll remember the sound on the flight home and long after. Someone must have approached while they were talking and stopped just outside the door to listen. The sound was like bootsteps on tile.