Tattered Secrets

While outwardly the reverend continued to exude this devoted, albeit slightly aloof character, his private manner, I was beginning to learn, was something quite different. Still, he did his utmost to maintain the pretense at home too as he gathered the family each evening to kneel in our combined solemnity on the living room floor – my mother, Billy and me – each of us listening with our heads bowed and our eyes lowered, while he recited an assortment of doleful prayers.

Incredibly, he appeared to view this daily ritual as proof of his reverence, glaring proof in fact, adequate enough to persuade even us of his integrity. In reality, he was most likely trying to convince himself of it more so than us, his family, and I suppose all this farce was just his way of insisting that he was the man he claimed to be. And maybe he was even arrogant enough to believe he had us fooled, just as he had everyone else fooled. After all, we never gave him any reason to think otherwise. During every prayer session, without fail we each slipped into the same old passive routine of burying our eyes in the carpet while he glowered over us, his hollow black eyes inflamed by the circle frames of his thick glasses.

How could he possibly have known how transparent it was? We all saw it, this fraudulent cloak of shadows he veiled himself with, but we never let him know it – except for one particular occasion. I was thirteen at the time and while my mother and Billy had grown increasingly submissive with the years, I, on the other hand, had grown more rebellious, in my own mind at least if not in anyone else’s. There was little I could do about my present circumstances, I knew that, was painfully aware of it. But even so, I always felt as though I had something over him – the truth.

If nothing else, I knew what he was. And on this particular night, I decided I was going to remind him of it.

He was nearing the end of the prayer session, and just as he was blessing himself, his wrinkled hands moving with the slow, pious curl of his outstretched arm, I lifted my eyes and dared to meet his glare head on. There was an immediate break in his low measured speech as he caught sight of my bold stare. Unwilling to break from their yielding stance, my mother and Billy kept their eyes fixed on the carpet despite the unusual interruption. It lasted only a few moments, just long enough for him to register my defiance. Then, he turned his head away from me and brought the session to a hasty end, racing through the final words, his voice sunken to a husky whisper.

I held my gaze on him until the very last syllable had escaped his dry lips; I would not let his sanctimonious eyes forget, there was no secret still to keep.