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After the exhibition, I’m going to give it to my mom.
SIXTY-FOUR
NATALIE
The following month: November
The desert wind pelts against my face as I cruise down the 10 in my Mercedes, the top down. It’s unusually hot for November, maybe a hundred degrees, and though I have the air-conditioning blasting, it does little to thwart the heat. The blazing sun beats down on me, but inside my body I feel a chill.
I haven’t been back here for over twenty years. It hasn’t changed much. The desert looks the same, with its glistening white sand, sagebrush, and cacti. Surrounding me, the San Bernardino Mountains soar into the turquoise sky, licking the puffs of cotton-ball clouds. Trailers line the road. Murderers and serial killers lurk inside them. Bad men. Bad women. And maybe some bad kids.
After this past year, I’m more uncertain than ever if all children are born good with the events of their lives and socio-economic environment shaping them, or if some are hardwired to evil through genetic material handed down to them. Can our DNA predispose us to psychopathic behavior and acts of violence, as if they’re an inherited disease? Even when I think about myself, the choices I’ve made, I can’t help wondering. Nature or nurture?
I turn on the radio to distract myself from these deeply troubling thoughts to a random country music channel. Ironically, John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” is playing. I can’t be far from where I grew up. Another chill. I think about turning around, but will myself to continue. To drive past the roots of my evil.
Five minutes later, I reach the location and get a jolt. The trailer park is gone. Instead, on the beige, acrid grounds where it used to be, there’s a giant Walmart with a parking lot packed with cars, SUVs, and minivans in every color. They sparkle like jewels under the hot desert sun.
Relief floods me. Yet erasure, no matter how complete, isn’t the same as forgetting. A Walmart, no matter how vast, can’t erase my past. I can’t erase my past. It’s not possible. It’s mine to own alone forever. The truth is, I’ve never totally shed that skin. We carry our past selves in tight layers as time goes by. Inside me, I’ve always been that girl, the one whose sins bind me at my core.
A few miles later, I turn off the road and head into Indio. Following my GPS, I come to a small New England-style church. Saint Ignatius. I pull into the gravel parking lot and park my car in one of the many empty spots, it being Wednesday, not Sunday. I push a button and the top of my convertible goes up as I unbuckle my seat belt. I take a deep breath and exit the car. I feel the oppressive heat. The oppressive weight of my heart.
While the architecture of the church hasn’t changed much since I was here twenty years ago, it looks different. The once peeling gray clapboards have been repaired and painted with a bright coat of white. There are more succulents around the edifice and the flowering shrubs have grown. The cracked brick steps leading up to the entrance have been repaired and new hand railings have been installed. My gaze travels up to the cross that still sits on top of the gabled roof, then back down to the glass-paned front door. Now a shiny red, it, too, looks newly painted.
Slowly, carefully, I mount the three steps leading up to the entrance. I remember climbing them, exhausted from my life-and-death birthing ordeal, my torn insides so sore, and worried the decayed bricks would give out, and I’d take a tumble. I was holding a sheepskin-lined basket, a gift from the lovely Morongo women who’d taken me in, the tiny life-form inside it peeking out from under a colorful woven blanket. My nameless two-day-old baby. I couldn’t bear to look down at her because she reminded me of him. The monster. So dark and hairy with his cleft chin. Keeping my eyes straight ahead, I crouched down and deposited the basket on the landing in front of the church door. She began to howl. Loud, sharp, ugly wails. Cries that seemed to be screaming, please don’t leave me. I wanted to cover my ears with my hands. Or smother her. I did neither.
Instead, I gave her the softest of kisses on her wrinkled red forehead, my tears mingling with hers. She stopped crying and reached out to me, as if she wanted to take hold of my heart, and curled her tiny fingers around one of mine. I remember how forceful her grip was, like she didn’t want to let go of me.
“You’re strong, baby girl. Follow your dreams. Do better than me,” I whispered.
Before I could change my mind, I stood and left her behind…and the girl I was as I knew her.
Without looking back, I hurried down the steps. Tears rained down my face as I ran to the Greyhound bus station down the street. With the money I’d found under my mother’s mattress, I purchased a one-way ticket to Los Angeles. The City of Angels. The City of Dreams. Sitting alone in the back seat as the bus cruised up the 10, I couldn’t stop thinking of my baby. Of the horrible thing I’d just done. Despite who her father was, she was still born from my flesh and blood. Tearfully, I prayed that she’d end up in the loving home of a childless couple. That she’d never be hungry or unloved. Or be anything like him.
I know now my prayers weren’t answered. And I believe God punished me by taking away my Anabel. His own cruel game of tit for tat.
Karma.
The toll of church bells startles me and hurtles me back to the moment. I curl my fingers around the polished brass handle and pull the church door open. It’s heavier than I thought. I let it close behind me. It makes a soft thud as I step inside the chapel. The air-conditioning is a welcome relief from the blistering heat.
I’ve never been inside this church. Though my mother was a God-fearing woman and told me God was going to strike me down if I didn’t behave and do all her crap chores, we never went to church together on Sundays. She was usually too hungover. And I didn’t have a means of transportation for getting here. I knew about the church because we drove past it in her dirty, beat-up Pinto every time she needed a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of booze.
Standing frozen in place, I take in the sanctuary. It’s very different from Saint Andrew’s, the majestic church I belong to in Los Angeles. Yet there’s beauty in its simplicity. My eyes wander from the vaulted ceiling to the wood pews that can accommodate at most two hundred parishioners, and the stained-glass windows that let the sun shine in. Exalt it. To the right, I eye a pair of nuns lighting candles; they look as old as the church and I wonder if one of them found my abandoned baby. I’m not going to ask. Neither of them notices me. After they leave, I light two candles, one after the other, and say a prayer. For them.
Shortly afterward, I find the confessional. Sucking in a breath, I work up the courage and tread over to it. A small gold-metal cross sits on the apex of the wooden box and in front of the confessional window there’s a wooden chair.
Bracing myself, I lower myself onto the chair. It is hard and uncomfortable. I tap my forehead, chest, and shoulders, and murmur, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…Amen.” And then fold my hands in prayer on my lap. Through the sheer red fabric shrouding the window, I can see a shadow of the priest behind it. His profile. He looks surprisingly young. Possibly handsome.
I clear my throat, and with a shaky breath, I begin.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
“My child, when was your last confession?”
His soothing voice is deep and melodic. A balm.
“Father, forgive me for I have never confessed before.”
He nods. “There is nothing to forgive. There’s a first time for everyone.”
