I MUST CONFESS

My name is Amapola Gold and I am the shiksa from Manila...

About two months ago, I decided to go to Confession after an absence of, oh I don’t know, so many years. I did not have anything particular to say or confess. I had not committed any mortal sin that would have warranted my presence in the Confessional. It’s true that my mind wasn’t exactly fallow for all that time, preoccupied as it was with all sorts of adulterous, murderous, gluttonous thoughts but they don’t count.

I wish I could explain the impulse that possessed me to go but I can’t. Just did.

I chose to go in the afternoon when I assumed there were would be fewer people. I like walking into an empty church and having this big, voluminous space all to one’s self. Including me, there were nine others waiting their turn.

I felt awkward, nervous even. Like that nine-year old all over again kneeling before the sliding panel, waiting for it to open with a sharp noise, and seeing the silhouette of a man who could see me, all of me, but not the other way around. A man who usually came with a double chin and a voice that seemed to have risen from Hades. I remembered feeling trapped and claustrophobic, of not being able to escape, of being swallowed alive by my sins and this man.

What was I doing here?

I was up next. In the time it took me to walk over to the Confessional, I could have turned around just as quickly and left. But I’d gotten this far. I took a deep breath, pulled the door open...

...and stepped into a brightly lit cubicle the size of an airplane stall. Inside were two chairs next to each other, and on one of them, sat my parish priest whose eyes popped out as soon as he saw me. He looked like he really wanted to fall off his seat but there was no room. So instead, we giggled and chuckled as he invited me to take my place next to him as if we were old friends enjoying a quick cup of tea, knee to knee.

I know I was there for no more than ten minutes yet I could have stayed there forever. I wanted to keep on talking, saying every thing I had kept to myself all these years, no matter whether I made sense or not. Father M. sat there with his eyes closed, listening, nodding, smiling and not saying anything particular or meaningful in return.

By the time I left, the line had gotten longer. And I still couldn’t remember what brought me there in the first place.