On writing and on reconciliation
The relationship between the two main characters in my novel is inspired by one of my childhood friendships. Many of the things the characters do in the book, we did not do as children. Many of the things we did as children, the characters in the novel did not do. The only important parallel is a kind of sticky betrayal. This friend chose God over me and elbowed me out of belief. This friend had become fanatically religious and—the last time I would ever see her—she said I’ll see in you Heaven and then shut the door to her house. That moment on her doorstep, unequivocally the first heartbreak of my life. There would be many more down the line, but that one, that I endured as a 19-year-old, hurt and hurt badly. About five years later, this friend called me. She told me that God spoke to her while she was in the bathtub. He told her I needed her. I breathed, terrified, into the silence. She waited on the other end for me to tell her that I needed her. I waited, conjuring her apology with my breathing. I pressed the phone into the bone of my ear until it hurt and then hung up. I knew she wasn’t brave enough to do it, and I knew I didn’t need her to anymore. I had turned the devastation into fiction. The characters in the novel don’t reconcile. They go on living in a thorny acceptance that pricks like penance.
I made my First Reconciliation in the second grade. The girls had to wear smocks made out of pastel crepe paper. I think mine was yellow. We were matching paper dolls, marching up the aisle of the church. Our parents watched our procession towards a lifetime of professing and reconciling. We were full of sins committed at lunchroom tables and from mini van bucket seats. We were paper dolls and we knew how to hit and punch. The paper dolls could blame with pointed fingers and stomp paper feet. The paper dolls stole from siblings and lied to parents. The crepe paper scraped at the softest parts of our arms. Somewhere inside of us were the sins we would later commit and likely never confess. As paper adults, we would hurt people. We would leave without saying goodbye. We would disregard people who loved us. We would accuse and be wrong. We would stir up the hatred—passed to us by the parents in the pews—and use it against people we would later meet. We would put our foots in our mouths. We would never stop pointing and stomping.
When I was 28, I decided to forgive a person who had deeply hurt me. But I let him off too easily, and I gave him too much of myself. I went back to him without requiring him to say the words “I’m sorry.” I thought a kiss was enough. I thought he had said the words without saying them, but that wasn’t—and never will be—enough.
I’m sorry I didn’t wake up at 6:00AM and start writing immediately; I’m sorry I watched HBO instead; I’m sorry I said yes to getting drinks with my friends; I’m sorry I didn’t feel like thinking deeply so I shut down; I’m sorry there’s always so many months between blog posts; I’m sorry I didn’t read at all this weekend; I’m sorry I’m too anxious to think about my characters. I’m sorry I apologize for myself, it’s annoying. I’m sorry my decision-making and my time management is so unimpressive. Disappointment coexists with pride, and I’m sorry for that.
Two of my dearest friends invited me to their baby shower after they hadn’t spoken to me for two years. I had given up on them after a year without returned phone calls or messages. I agonized over their silence. It kept me awake at night. I shut my eyes as I drove past the turn for their street, picturing them moving about their house, putting things in closets and organizing drawers. And, then, out of the blue, they called. We’re having a baby, they said. Don’t be resentful, be in his life, instead. I intentionally arrived late to the shower, willing myself to be unimpressed. They asked me to make a toast (in Spanish, nonetheless). They were asking too much of me. Forgiveness—without a formal apology—a public display of affection—in my second language—and forced excitement—about a kid I hadn’t even met, who hadn’t even been born. When I stood up, words that I had not prepared in conjugations that I hadn’t practiced, escaped from my mouth before I could stop them. I told them how happy I was to be in the room. And I was happy. I told them they were like older sisters to me and that they had taught me things I never could have imagined I would learn in this life. I cried, uncharacteristically, in a room full of mostly strangers. I sobbed an “I love you” into the crowd. Their eyes were full of tears.
Recently I asked someone I hurt for forgiveness. I had loved this person without telling him, and that is a wrong thing to do. Others had hurt me profoundly by saying they loved me but not actually loving me. By doing the opposite I was giving hurt, too. This someone and I went to dinner. I wore high shoes that were difficult to walk in. I said the words “I’m sorry,” and, after I said them in the way I had practiced, I thought about how those words hadn’t been said to me by anyone. I thought about how much it would have meant to me if they had been. The person I apologized to pushed back. He made me name the hurt. He made me explain it. I felt like a fool. An hour or so after I apologized, we sat on a bench and he kissed my cheek. I couldn’t kiss him back, and I told him as much. The apology was still there, wedged between us. It pressed into me. I had to feel the whole weight of it. Apology weight is different, more precious, than guilt. Apology weight is made of courage and regret.
When I was a junior in college, I studied abroad in Seville, Spain. In this city, the last week of lent—Semana Santa—covers the city in incense, bent palm fronds, and the holy, battered body of Jesus. Impressed and terrified, I stood on the outskirt of the crowd that had arranged itself on either side of the street at the mouth of the Triana bridge. The procession began with a glinting cross followed by many men in dark hoods. There were candles and gold, flowers and chanting. Humans awaited the forgiveness they were promised. Then came the float. Gilded and adorned, Mary and her Son were carried on the shoulders of another sea of men. The wooden beams balanced in the haunches of their shoulders. They were barefoot. I watched the tiny bones of their feet, like the wishbones from Thanksgiving turkeys, crush into the broken pavement under the weight of the Holy Family. Of all the symbolism and cultural fanfare, the question I later asked my host mom was about the bare feet. The question didn’t sit well with her. She was embarrassed that I had bore witness to a lazy grasp at forgiveness. The men think if they don’t wear shoes, God will forget the terrible things that men do. It is not penance—it is foolishness.
I am the type of writer who likes to write because she likes to edit. Like many, I write first drafts unabashedly and without monitor. Sentences are unwieldy, word choice is wrong, everything is tangential, and so much is missing. But, I like to go back. Revisiting sentences and deleting paragraphs put me back in control. Each deleted word is a broken promise. I’m sorry I told you that you were important to me, but you are not. I’m sorry you thought you fit in here when you don’t. I’m sorry I will forget about you—my darling—by the time I am done sipping this coffee. Editing is an act of apology. Editing, like apologizing, makes room for the right ending.