The next day, I stopped by the church after school to help clean. My family had already been there an hour, but I would help for the last 30 minutes. Maribelle’s silhouette flashed at the end of the hall. I hurried to the end only to find a closed closet door. Inside, she searched through cleaning products. She whipped around when I opened the door.
“Hey there you are!” she said.
I shoved my hands in my pockets and prayed to forget about the night before.
“I saw that your family signed up to clean today, so I thought I would help. Never done it before, and I wanted my first time to be with—well, to be honest, I needed to get out of the house.”
The words ‘first time’ bounced like tennis balls. “You came to help us clean?”
“Yeah. Is that weird?”
“No way. You’re welcome here.” I thought about what I was supposed to say and said it. I thought of what it must be like in a home with a father who yells and bangs around. “Where are you cleaning now?” “The stage.”
“Mind if I help?” I said.
She leaned against the wall holding a rag and spray bottle, and I thought about holding her wrists above her head and planting a long kiss, just like in the movies.
“Sure,” she said. Behind the chapel was the gym, and behind the gym was the stage. Closed black curtains held silent secrets. The stage door closed and I went for it: I grabbed Maribelle’s small shoulder and turned her to lean in. She put her hand up.
“Sorry. Don’t.”
The air hung like a lame joke. She held her hands together on her lap. “I want to see what this church is about. Your family seems like it has something. You treat each other differently, I don’t know.”
The lights went out. “Anybody in here?” said a voice.
“Yeah,” I shouted, and the lights turned on, despite my wish to sit in the darkness forever.
A few days passed, then church. Mom and Dad and us five kids sat in the third row from the back. I stood up to use the restroom but decided to leave the meeting entirely to take a penitence walk. Funny word, penitence. It means feeling like you’ve done something wrong. Wrong to God. There’s so much he hadn’t addressed, and there’s so much we have to decide about. Penitence, then, is self-prescribed.