Sinful Purity (Sinful Series) (3 page)

Kelly called me String Bean, which wasn’t original at all, but because of my height it was fitting. I was going through that gangly stage. You know, the one where you’re all legs and knees and nothing else. My early teen years were not becoming on me. I was way too tall and lanky and painfully thin, not because they didn’t feed me or anything, but just because it was my curse to be awkward. I wasn’t even talented or coordinated enough to play on the basketball team, where I might have fit in. Kelly frequently alternated between teasing me unmercifully and assuring me that with my height and svelte frame, I would make a supremely perfect willowy supermodel.

Kelly would say, “Promise me that when you’re out of this concentration camp and are a gorgeous, rich model living in New York or Paris, you’ll make me your assistant. So I can go to all the fabulous parties and meet exotic sexy guys.”

“Keebler, you’re insane,” I’d squeal, secretly hoping that one day my life would live up to Kelly’s fantasies. Kelly hated being called Keebler, but I felt it was only fair after all the taunting I had endured. Besides, I thought it was more creative than her pet name for me. Kelly’s wild red hair and short stature reminded me of an elf—one of those shoe-cobbling elves, not the beautiful, mystical, woodland fairy–type elves. So it was that Keebler stuck, at least as long as she insisted on calling me String Bean.

Kelly was always planning our new lives together, far from Mary Immaculate Queen. The dreams were always formulaic: we were beautiful, wealthy, and adventurous women. Highly sought-after commodities, she’d say.

“We’ll spend our days unearthing lost cities, starring in rock videos, and posing for the covers of magazines, and we’ll spend our nights fighting off men,” she’d laugh.

I knew how much Kelly loved guys. I imagined that I intended on doing a lot more “fighting off” than she did.

Regardless of Kelly’s more zealous nature, we were a perfect match, and except for Brett’s occasional visits, we were all each other had. Kelly said that in a couple of years when she left, she wanted me to come with her. I told Kelly all about the Perkinses and their intent to come for me someday. I could tell she didn’t hold out as much hope as I did for the matter.

“If the Perkinses want you so damn bad, then why haven’t they come and broken you out of this detention center?”

“I don’t know all the details. Maybe they’re away on business,” I hissed.

“Business that was so important it has taken almost ten years?”

“Maybe they had an accident and are in a hospital overseas with extensive injuries.”

“More like amnesia,” Kelly retorted.

“Look, I don’t know the circumstances. But I know that my family had one hell of a reason to leave me here. Maybe it was for my own protection, to keep me safe.”

“Well, String Bean, last time I checked, the witness protection program lets you not only take your whole family but even your pet. So unless your family decided that Bowser was more important than their daughter…”

“Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Kelly,” I threatened.

“Or what, your precious fictional family won’t let me talk to you anymore?”

At that moment I lost it. I lunged at her with all my force, knocking her to the ground. I tore at her hair, hit her in the face, kicking and screaming while I sobbed uncontrollably. Two of the sisters pulled me off her. Another helped her to her feet. I could see the terror and anger though her scratched, bloodied face. But I didn’t care.

My unnatural wailing continued for two more days broken only by the uncontrollable sobs. Kelly and I didn’t speak again for several days.

One of the boys at the orphanage, Peter, goaded me. “We knew it was only a matter of time before you…snapped.” He followed me around the school, always just a few paces behind. “Mary Elizabeth, Mary Elizabeth, Lizzie. That’s right, Lizzie. Lizzie took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done she gave her father forty-one. You know that’s why you’re here, right, Lizzie? Tell everyone, Lizzie. Tell them you’re a psycho.” Peter then broke into the theme from
Psycho
—“Eee! Eee! Eee!,” waving his arm in a stabbing motion as if he held an invisible knife. Undoubtedly his take on the whole Alfred Hitchcock Psycho thing.

“Peter, leave her alone. We all know you’re just a dick,” I heard the voice behind me exclaim. When I turned around, I saw Kelly with a smile on her face just below the remnants of a black eye.

“I’m so sorry, String Bean. I never should have...”

I ran toward Kelly with my arms stretched wide, and before she could even finish her sentence, our fight was over.

“I have been so lonely without you, Keebler,” I cried.

“Me too. Me too. Come on, get off me before we give these freaks anything more to talk about.” She glanced sideways at Peter. “You know he’s just hot for you,” she remarked loudly as we walked off.

“What?” I said weakly.

“That’s why he’s such a jerk to you,” Kelly replied.

It was never any secret that Kelly loathed the orphanage and its religious foundations. Kelly and Brett’s parents were cradle Catholics. Their parents had been baptized as babies. They had made their First Communion. Even their Confirmation and marriage were all dutifully overseen by the Catholic Church. As a family they had always attended Mass every Easter and Christmas. Once in a while they would even throw in a random Sunday for good measure. But neither Kelly nor Brett had ever developed a taste for the devotion it took to be a really good Catholic. Living at MIQ was what you could call a “culture shock” for her.

At St. Matthew’s, Sunday Masses were reserved for the who’s who of the congregation. Reporters and news crews could frequently be seen waiting for church to let out so they could snap pictures and get comments from the political phenoms and reclusive geniuses who could be found amongst the rich and famous parishioners. Friday and Saturday Masses were for the regular upper and middle class families who dappled the nearby community. Thursday Masses were the working slobs, the poor folks who trudged on in their daily lives unaware of all the secret, closed-door deals that held their fates precariously in the hands of the more powerful and elite. The earlier in the week that you attended Mass, the more insignificant you were to the whole worldly picture. Of course, these arrangements were unspoken and rarely even hinted at. No one ever tried to improve their station in life by trying to hobnob at St. Matthew’s on their undesignated day, although secretly I always wondered what would happen if someone were ever so brash. In the grand scheme of things, us orphans were at the bottom of the heap, at least until we were adopted into the upper crust. We went to Mass every Wednesday. The only souls even more unfortunate than us were the old people, the geriatrics who had either outlived or been abandoned by their families to live alone and in poverty. They had the Monday/Tuesday slot.

Every Wednesday Kelly, me, and the other sixty-plus charges of MIQ would wake early, dress in our usual bland, conservative blue-and-gray parochial uniforms, hurry through an even blander yet nourishing breakfast, and then wait. We’d line up double file in front of the orphanage’s large iron gates that lined Enoch Street. Then we waited in anticipation for our excursion, which in reality was the extremely short fifty-meter jaunt next door to St. Matthew’s. While predictable and routine like all other aspects of life at MIQ, this was the one and only time we were allowed to leave the premises. Upon filing into St. Matthew’s we would tarry some more,
this time for our turn in the confessional, always mindful of our flawlessly straight queues. One after the other we would enter the confessional and bare our souls to Father Brennigan.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession,” each of us would begin.

“Tell me your sins, child,” Father Brennigan would reply.

After you told Father all your sins, he would issue you your penance and tell you to go in peace. That was your cue to kiss his ring. Kelly thought it was crazy because he wasn’t the pope, or even a mob boss for that matter. It was just his way. It had always been his way ever since I could remember, and who was going to argue with a priest’s traditions?

I remember when I was younger, I loved watching Father Brennigan give his homily during Mass because he always talked with his hands. The light from the altar candles would catch his big gold ring and inevitably shoot a beam of light onto one of his unsuspecting parishioners. I would imagine the light as a sniper’s laser targeting its next victim—or in this case, sinner. Father Brennigan wore the ring all the time. I don’t think he ever took it off. It was only during confession that you were really able to get a close look at it, though. To me it resembled a men’s class ring, large and masculine with an oversized red stone on top. After many years of closer inspection I can tell you it was really much more detailed than that. The red stone had been carved in bas-relief style to reveal understatedly a lamb standing in front of a cross. I thought the ring beautiful and priceless. It looked extremely old and historic, fitting for the pastor of the esteemed St. Matthew Cathedral. I must admit, I spent more time fixated on his ring than on my sins during confession. I suppose I should have confessed that also.

I don’t know about the other kids, but I never had much to confess. I usually departed with only a few Hail Marys and a couple Our Fathers as my penance. I was all too aware of the lack of depravity at MIQ and just assumed that everyone else had as few indiscretions to confess as I did. Also, the line moved very quickly, thus strengthening my perception and leaving me hardly any scandals to imagine. Even with my barely tarnished soul and being accustomed to weekly confession, I never cared for the practice much.

Father Brennigan was very old-fashioned and insisted that all inhabitants of MIQ give their confession face to face. “No veil of anonymity here,” he’d say. Everyone in connection with MIQ, from the groundskeepers
and cooks to the sisters and each of us orphans, all had to abide by Father Brennigan’s request. Only Mother Superior, Sister Christine, bucked Father Brennigan on this issue. I just figured she liked being difficult; it was her nature to be so. Believe me, I could tell you better than anyone—we had a history together, after all. Sister Christine was the only one who went to the private confessional. I honestly thought it was ridiculous. After all, we were the only ones in the church. Father Brennigan knew it was Sister Christine because he’d have to get up and leave the face-to-face confessional and go into the private confessional the next door over. It just seemed so silly to me. On the bright side, every week the monotony was broken by Father Brennigan’s musical chairs, or “musical confessionals,” as Kelly would say. I would chuckle under my breath and then Kelly would whisper, “Sister Christine, stubborn as mule and just as attractive.”

After all the confessions were made and penances satisfied, we would sit quietly in our pews, waiting for Mass to begin. The Mass at St. Matthew’s ran exactly sixty minutes, regardless of audience size or subject matter. Like I mentioned before, Father Brennigan was very traditional, and the only aspect of the Mass that had changed since its modern conception more than several hundred years ago was the translation from its original Latin to English. Personally, I think Father Brennigan regretted even that small alteration, even though he was barely old enough to remember anything different. Each Mass was concluded with Father’s immortal words, “go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” That was our cue to stand, genuflect as we left the pew, and start our brief but dreaded walk home. The silence was deafening on the way back. No one wanted to return. Yet we all knew we had to. Sometimes I thought it was just me, but it seemed the walk home always took just a minute longer. Everyone’s steps seemed a little slower and shorter than upon leaving MIQ.

“Here we are, back at the clink,” Kelly would announce. It was no secret she hated the orphanage and likened it to a prison. She was always coming up with a new and clever way to say jail. Sometimes it was the pen, poke, pokey, reformatory, juvie, detention center, concentration camp, rock, penal complex, cult camp, and my favorite, the POW (penitentiary of worship).

Upon entering the gates one day Kelly screamed, “Hello, Shawshank, where’s my redemption?” Everyone burst into laughter.

“Wow. That’s a new one, Keebler. You’re really on today.”

“Yeah, I think that’s a keeper.”

Just then Mother Superior made her way up the walk and into the schoolyard. “You’d better mind yourself, Mary Kelly, or we won’t be allowing your brother to visit next week,” Sister Christine warned through a deep, permanently pressed scowl, so carved into her face that we were sure she looked like that even in her sleep.

“Really, honestly, Mother? Is it true? Is he coming?”

“Yes, Mary Kelly. As long as you are respectful and well behaved all week, your brother will be here next Saturday to spend the afternoon with you.”

“Hell, yeah!” Kelly screamed. Mother Superior glowered. “Sorry, Sister, it slipped. Last time, I promise. I’ll be an angel if you let me see Brett.” Kelly made a gesture like she was crossing her heart.

“Well, I seriously doubt that. But do try, child. Do try,” Mother Superior remarked, motioning for the other sisters to follow her into MIQ’s front entrance.

As soon as Sister Christine left, Kelly couldn’t contain herself. “Oh, wow. Wow! Do you know what this means? Jail break!” she exalted.

“It’s not like you’re escaping, Keebler. You will have to come back sometime. And that’s if the sisters even allow you to leave.”

“I know, I know. But there’s still a chance I get out of here for at least a few hours. Back to civilization! Civilization, baby.” Kelly danced around, grabbing my arms and twirling me in circles.

I had never seen Kelly so happy. She usually perked up a little on Wednesdays when we went to church, although she viewed the trip as more of a convict’s work release program than an actual spiritual outing. Nevertheless, she was always pleased to be on the other side of the gates.