SCARLETT – Chapter One

By Rosemary Okafor

Father. Forgive me, for I have sinned.

This’s just one week after my last confession… 

Whatever are the other reasons why confessionals have partitions, Scarlett was grateful that the Reverend Father wouldn’t know she was the same lady who was here last Friday, the Friday before that, and several other Fridays, recounting the same sin— colored with little lies to make it less despicable. 

Why she kept coming back, draped in one of the few long, free dresses she owned, with a shawl wrapped over her head and covering part of her face, she hadn’t figured out yet.

Father. Forgive me, for I have sinned.

Fiddling with the crucifix at the tail end of her Rosary, Scarlett brought her face closer to the latticed opening and started all over. The low light from the lantern at the end of the wooden handrest warmed her face. They said the light symbolises the warm heart of the Lord when a sinner returns home. However, this sinner keeps coming, and keeps running back.

Maybe she wasn’t ready to be saved. She didn’t want to be saved. But why would her feet always drag her to the confessional, her hand eagerly parting the curtain and her knees crumbling on the hassock?

“You can confess your sins to the blessed Lord now, child.” The calm, assuring voice of the Reverend father poured into her ears.

“I…” She swallowed hard. Her sins were too heavy to spew out, yet they possessed a smell so repugnant that she swore she would choke to death if she didn’t let them out. “I… sleep with men.”

The squeaking of chair from the other compartment told her that the priest had moved closer, so close that she could hear him breathing.

“Go on, Child.” 

“That is all, father.” Saying more could turn the old priest’s pale-white face red with shock.

“It is the will of the father that we receive forgiveness for our sins and return to the path of righteousness. Confessing your sins means you are ready to reject the devil and all his enticements…”

She suppressed a scuff at the priest’s statement. Hers wasn’t just sins— iniquity was a better qualifier.  

For eight years she’d been on the street where men haggled her like wares. Five out of those years, she slaved for her taskmaster– paying back a loan she didn’t know when and how she incurred. Her freedom came with a huge price– a story for another day. Now she had made money, a lot of it.

“My child,” 

As the priest began to speak, Scarlett wondered what it felt like to sit at the other side of the confessional, listening to mountainous tales of abominable acts. Being stuck to a wooden enclosure like this for hours and pretending to be patient with penitents who would likely find their way back to the same debris as soon as they stepped out of the church premises, must be the worst punishment on earth.

“Say the act of contrition. Tell the Lord how sorry you are and make a commitment with him…”

Murmuring the prayer she had mastered by heart, she felt a gnawing in the pit of her stomach. She was sorry. Sorry that she wasn’t going to make any commitment to the Lord anytime soon, that she was one of those penitents who would return to their debris like a dog would return to its vomit.

“…will you do it?” the priest asked.

“Uh? Do what?” she stuttered.

“The penance given to you.”

What penance? Goodness. She hadn’t been listening the whole time.

“Yes— yes, father. I’ll do them.”

“Say the fifteen decades of the rosary…”

The Lord’s prayer five times a day and the act of mercy. She was a regular visitor to this booth; it had been the same or similar penance for the past three years she’d been coming here.

“…may God grant you pardon and peace. And I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

Pardon and peace. What she felt at the moment was anything but pardon and peace. It’s funny how priests think that God would wave sins off just by the extension of their hands and the uttering of a few words. If it only takes a few hours of chanting a mantra and counting beads to appease God, then… shrugging, she gathered her dress and stood up to leave. Why didn’t the man ask her to go into the wilderness and fast? Or even something worse? She deserved it.

Dusk came sooner than expected, the last of the sun’s rays cosseted behind a soft gray cloud. Scarlett filled her lungs with the still-warm air, unhooked her sunshade from the rim of her dress, fitted the dark-tinted oversized pair over her eyes, and walked hastily out of the premises, to her newly acquired Toyota Prius Prime, 2017 model— another luxury acquired through whoredom. 

She was doing well— had transformed from a beggarly little girl who couldn’t afford a loaf of bread to a queen in her own world. She now had everything, maybe not everything, but more than enough. She even gave to charity every once in a while.

As she pulled the car to the AutoRoute Papineau Road, she told herself for the umpteenth time, “I will visit no longer. Coming to seek mercy is useless.”

But she knew that next Friday- her feet would drag her again to the church gate. 

*****

Paul

A muscle twitched involuntarily at the corner of his right eye and his mouth formed a rigid grimace. With arms folded across his chest, his foot tapping furiously on the wooden backstage floor, and all the while, eyes fixed on the curtain that separated him and greatness, Paul Clurkin knew that his fate would be decided tonight, here, at the prestigious ‘Sound Academy’ Toronto.

‘Praise Unlimited’ concert— the biggest gospel music show in Canada was scheduled for that evening and for the very first time in his music career, Paul got an invite to perform. 

It was the opportunity, the big push he had always prayed for. The thought of performing alongside great names in the industry added to the tumultuous thudding of his heart. 

Paul acknowledged the guys who were moving equipment in and out of the stage, glimpsed at his watch, and nodded. Four hours to play with. Enough time to rehearse some more with his backup singers and rest before the concert.

He had flown from Armstrong to Toronto the previous afternoon and spent the whole of yesterday rehearsing and praying with his crew. Yet, he felt he hadn’t done enough. Armstrong may have been his home, his territory, and people there loved him and his songs. But Toronto was different. People here seemed to be talking more about Kirk Franklyn, The Tri- city singers, and Tasha Cobbs than they do about him. He needed to do a song that would impress everyone and make fans out of them.

His 2016 hit song, ‘Rescued by grace’ seemed not to be the song that would do the trick.

“Holy Spirit, help me out here,” he muttered under his breath as he stepped into his rented car and headed towards his hotel.

Grace had always been there for him. Who could ever imagine that at twenty-nine? He’d achieved so much in a career he started in a local church where his father was the pastor while he and his sisters were the singers. But he needed more popularity, and this concert would have to give him that if God helps him. “I trust you Holy Spirit.”