Kissing Doorknobs Read Free Page A

closer to the screen.
    “B-Bless me, F-Father, for I have sinned …,” I stammered. My heart was pounding and I felt dizzy. I was terrified.
    For most Catholics, confession is a way of getting their problems off their chests, a way of apologizing to God through a priest and being forgiven. In my mind, the loop never closed that neatly.
    “It’s been a week since my last confession and in that time I … um … I had a nightmare.…,” I croaked.
    “As far as I know, child, bad dreams are not a sin,” the priest responded in a near whisper, probably thinking about his own bad dreams.
    “But
after
the bad dream, the nightmare, I got out of bed, crept into my parents’ room and silently lay down on the rug next to their bed. I didn’t crawl into their bed because they don’t like me coming in their bed all the time … even if I need to. So anyway, I must have rolled under their bed after I fell asleep, because the next thing I knew my parents were running around the house calling my name. My mother was almost crying and my dad sounded scared too.”
    “I see,” he said, trying too hard to sound sympathetic.
    “The thing is, when I heard how worried they were, I didn’t come out. I stayed under the bed for a while longer. I
liked
that they were scared. I felt they needed to be punished for not letting me sleep with them when … when I get scared.”
    “So you just stayed under the bed listening to their terror?”
    “Until I heard them calling the police. Then I came out.
    “Hmmm.”
    “They were both really, really mad at me.”
    “Understandably. Is that all, child?”
    “Um. No. Not at all,” I said. I wanted to confess everything.
Everything.
I wanted to make absolutely
certain
that when I walked out of that box and finished my penance, my soul would be radiant and I’d be ready to die and go to heaven. Or at least not be doomed to hell.
    “There’s a lot more,” I said. I felt the walls shake as the priest made himself comfortable while muttering something inaudible.
    “What’s that, Father?”
    “Nothing. Go on, child. I’m still relatively young.”
    My confessions always took a lot of time. As a result, the lines outside my box often turned into an angry mob of impatient penitents. Once, the confessor on the other side of the priest passed out from kneeling and waiting so long in the heat. When I heard what had happened, I tried to get back into the box to confess my guilt in the situation, but it was almost impossible. Everyone, grown-ups included, started cutting in line in front of me. And they weren’t even polite about it.
    “Sorry, honey, I don’t have all day,” they’d mutter without looking at me. Even my friends started to cut in.
    “Sorry, I’ve got to be home before I’m an adult,” said Keesha with a smirk as she stepped in front of me.
    Although the priests tried to be patient, they realized that I was more compulsive than penitent in my desire to tell everything. Every sin, every sinful thought. Occasionally they’d even try to end my confession by saying something like “You can sum this up, you know.” But I’d never let them do that to my soul.
    “Oh, no, Father!” I’d moan. “I want to tell you
everything.”
I’m sure hearing me say
everything
sent a shiver down the spine of every priest who ever heard my confession.
Everything
meant they’d be in that box for a long, long time. First with me, then with a lot of others.
Everything
had lifelong Catholic priests wishing they were Buddhists.

3
Fifth Grade
    F ifth grade started out as the best year of my life. For no reason that I could identify, my nightmares stopped, my worries lessened, my eczema was better and I was even used to the stupid drills at my school. So with all that bad stuff gone, I was suddenly feeling a lot of good things. Like love. I
loved
my family, God, my teacher Mrs. Prack; and my three best friends, Keesha, Kristin and Anna, like never before. It was as if this really good