SHOUT(27)
dirt on the floor
grease on the stove
grime on her body
left by her father
the smelly girl
who everybody looks at but nobody ever sees
Teri Litch
her last name means “corpse”
readers bewitched by a book rarely peek under the lid of names to the stewpots of boiling imagery below but I need to taste a name’s marrow to write a character to life kids like Teri Litch don’t have running water at home they go unnoticed until the smell is unavoidable and a kind teacher
offers to help with the laundry and the faculty quietly collects canned food so lunch won’t be her only meal few realized that the book is really Teri’s story, deliberately told through Kate’s cloudy vision cuz Kate is still learning how to see the girls are catalysts for each other their collisions changing the course of their lives, friendship grows in the most unexpected places
face my truth
This is not
a resting bitch face
This is
a touch-me-and-die face
a boy, a priest unholy
I was once a happy kid, the man said
altar boy,
Boy Scout, shortstop born on Sunday,
son and oldest brother ten years old, then eleven,
I loved the Lord our Father Father Michael gave
me cup wine sip
wafer mouth open
he blessed me, invited me
(special! so special!) to the wreck room,
the re-creation room wood-paneled basement lair below the rectory
i was chosen by the Lord,
father michael purred.
i had potential,
father michael told my parents who never once asked “Potential for what?”
the wreck room stank of moldy clothes,
sweat and desperation sweet wine and manipulation vomit, candy, and exploitation the taint of horror
he was a man of God Christ, i thought
he was God
one night, my dad smelled the stains on my uniform from St. Michael the Archangel Elementary, where father michael taught math and subjects unholy in the wreck room Dad’s face a volcano on the verge of eruption, i explained
he stayed silent,
clock ticking on the wall silent as he burned
my uniform in the trash barrel behind the garage.
He lied to Mom, said he wrecked my uniform with bleach. My fault, he told her, not his.
Not your fault, he told me but don’t say a word not a single word
to anyone.
Ever.
i still had to go to church after that, though i stopped serving at the altar, thank God.
When the time came
to kneel at the feet of the priests
for Communion, baby-boy bird mouth open waiting to be sanctified my dad knelt by my side.
My dad stared
at father michael feeding me the Body and the Blood with stained hands
my dad’s heart thundered like a volcano, hungry to destroy.
I don’t go to church anymore, the man said. Not many do.
Infected by the angel-cloaked demons whose hymns condemned us to darkness with a smile;
we are legion.
loud fences
when I went to elementary school, Wednesday afternoons
were for art projects and library books and playing outside
because I wasn’t Catholic
all the Catholic kids left after lunch on Wednesday and walked to the parochial school down the block for lessons from the priests and the nuns everyone knew about the dangerous priest there even kids like me who never met him don’t get caught in a room alone with that one, they said
he liked hurting kids
bad and gross hurting
which is a good way to describe sexual abuse when you’re ten years old
I traveled to Australia a while back to speak at conferences, schools, and libraries and be astounded by everything from kookaburras to Vegemite my last stop on the tour was in Ballarat, on the Yarrowee River
the school canceled my appearance at the last minute
instead, I spoke at the public library to a small group of kids
the librarian pulled me aside before handing me the mic
she whispered that a sexual abuse scandal was unfolding in town
and asked me to be sensitive about it Ballarat had priests who liked to bad-and-gross-hurt children just like Syracuse. Just like Boston. Minneapolis.
Dallas.
Arizona, Iowa, Oregon, Wisconsin, California, Kentucky, Colorado
Chile, Ireland, Austria, Canada, Guam just like everywhere
in Australia alone, there are thousands of victims countless suicides and immeasurable grief the official investigation that began the week I was in Ballarat
has now reached all the way to the Vatican In Ballarat, like in so many other places it wasn’t one priest, it was many generations of priests abusing generations of children
In Ballarat, like in so many other places some kids told their parents, who confronted bishops
who moved the pedophiles
to new churches, new schools where they had new flocks to prey on But in Ballarat, unlike so many other places something different happened in Ballarat people tied colorful ribbons to the fences
around the cathedral and the schools where children
had been molested and raped the ribbons loudly supported the survivors of the predatory priests