Fragile Animals, page 12
‘Oh, this,’ my father said bashfully.
‘Yes, that,’ I repeated, annoyed that he’d thought I wouldn’t notice. I deludedly believed he was trying to signal me.
‘I suppose you’re wondering what it is…’ my father began. The skin beneath the tattoo was red like a rash. I mushed every piece of my cereal, waiting for him to keep speaking.
‘Well, I wasn’t sure if I should tell you because I don’t want to make things complicated…’ he said. ‘But actually I’ve joined a new church.’
I blinked at him. ‘Like you’re a Protestant?’
He frowned. The frown wasn’t disappointed, just sad. He had always been bald and unassuming, careful and polite but these days his eyes had become so tender. ‘I want to take a step away from Christian ways of thinking.’
I didn’t know what this meant. He asked what was going through my head.
‘Our old church,’ I said honestly. ‘Who will play the organ?’ He loved being the organ-player. It was a great metaphor to him. The sheer size of the instrument compared to his quivering man’s body, a perfect allegory for his relationship with God. He played in his socks, teasing the pedals with his toes. He treated that organ so gently. It pained me to imagine who might be playing it now, greasy fingers on the ivories, eliciting discordant screams.
‘They’ll find someone,’ he said and wouldn’t look at me.
‘What church is it then, if not Christian?’ I finally made myself ask. My eyes closed because it was hurting too much to keep watching him.
He kept stammering. ‘Well, I say church but it isn’t really a church, it’s just called that.’
‘Just tell me.’
He inhaled deeply and slowly and I know if I’d been looking at him I would have cried. ‘I’ve joined the Church of Satan.’
I opened my eyes. He was pink with worry. I nodded my head. ‘Okay.’
‘You’re okay with that?’
‘Will it hurt God?’
‘I think that’s the point.’
I almost bit my tongue trying to form the words: ‘Will you go to Hell?’
‘It isn’t like that,’ he said with sorrow. I felt horrible. He must have been so embarrassed after everything. By now, the parish scandal had died down and the sympathy run dry. It was thrilling when we could hate them as a congregation, our righteousness finally put to good use, but slowly people had begun to move on until eventually it was just my father who felt injustice. A harsh pain of the least interesting kind. Even I didn’t feel anything anymore.
‘We don’t actually believe in Satan, we just use that word to mock the church because we do not believe in their god. Satanists try to be realistic about human nature… human impulses. We refrain from moral judgements in order to free ourselves from shame. We don’t have a god. We treat ourselves as gods. It’s just… something I’ve been trying…’
He said all of this with such uncertainty, as if he had memorised the words from some guidebook but not yet come to terms with their real meaning. He was crying now and so I focussed on eating the mushy cereal, not wanting to see his thin tears leave his eyes. It took until I’d choked my last slurpful down my anxious gullet before he’d pulled himself together enough to talk.
‘The tattoo is just to remind myself…’ he said with his head hung, ‘that I am not who I was once. And that–’
I cut him off. ‘Do I have to be one? Uh… Satanic? Or whatever.’ I imagined sitting in a black church full of black candles, shoulder to shoulder with demon freaks, denouncing my God, hailing Satan. My body tightened instantly, physically nauseous.
‘You’re free to explore whatever beliefs or ideologies you like, or none at all if you don’t want to. It’s your choice.’ He shuffled uneasily in his seat, hands tucked into his lap like a restless child in church. ‘I have a pamphlet if you’re interested though?’
He reached into his work bag and produced the pamphlet, which was titled, So You Want to be a Satanist? in bold red lettering. My life had become a sick parody. ‘I got it on the internet,’ he said, blushing. We had recently gotten a computer. She would never let me have one and the one time I asked, hoping to create a Facebook account and make friends or something, She laughed as if I didn’t know what was good for me. ‘I’ve been chatting on the Satanism forums.’
‘I’m okay, I think,’ I said. Then I heard the front door fumble and left my cinnamon squares to tend to the mail.
It didn’t really bother me to begin with. I mean, sure it might have been nice if he had spoken to me earlier, maybe it could have been a process we embarked upon together, brought closer by disaster – but it seemed I would be soul-searching alone. The mouse trembled in my palm as I looked up Satanism online, clicking first on wikipedia. I felt relieved to read what Dad had already told me, that they didn’t actually worship Satan. I read through a few forums just to feel his experience for myself. Clumsy on the keys, I navigated to the Church of Satan website and clicked a recent post from a user called SeekingFreedom_75. It took a moment for me to compute the words in front of me. Then I memorised his confession.
Hey everyone,
I hope you’re all doing well. I’m writing because I find myself in a complex situation. I could use some advice. I’ll try and keep my story brief.
I was raised Catholic, but kept my faith through adulthood to please my parents. They were corporal punishment types and their views dictated my life. They’re dead now and I should have abandoned Christianity when they died – but by then my wife had become seriously religious and she was adamant that our daughter go to church. She’s fifteen now.
To cut a long story short: last year I discovered that my wife had been sexually involved with our parish priest. I was the organist for the church, so theoretically I should have seen it coming, but I’ve been zoning out in mass for years and I guess it slipped me by. I regret this now. We’d been loveless for years and there should have been another way to end things. Of course, my ex-wife is no longer in the picture. When I found out, we were in church and she left with him immediately, never returning for any of her things. I can’t get rid of them because I can’t even bring myself to touch them. But anyway, that’s besides the point.
Recently, I’ve been exploring my beliefs and have found resonance in the philosophy of LaVeyan Satanism. It’s a deeply personal choice and not one I intend to force upon my daughter. She still prays at night, I hear her muttering, so I wonder if god might still be a comfort to her. This worries me but I no longer believe in enforcing ideologies. If she’s Catholic, she’s Catholic. I understand.
I want to be open with her, but being a teenager is already so difficult and I don’t want to create unnecessary stress or confusion.
Has anyone here faced a similar situation, or have any advice on how to approach this with sensitivity? I want to make sure I’m doing right by my daughter while also being true to myself. We haven’t talked about anything that happened. At this point is it better just to say nothing?
Attached is a photo of my recent inverted cross tattoo – I tried to put it somewhere it would be hidden.
I clicked the photo but I didn’t need to. Seeing it again made me want to rip it off his skin. I scrolled down to read the comment below, posted by RebelRebelGal.
Fucking hell!!! You poor soul!! What a horrifying way to lose your faith. There’s a lot of ex-catholics around here but it doesn’t usually get as messy as all that. I can’t even imagine the weight you’ve been carrying from such deep betrayal. I’m so sorry you had to go through that.
But! You’re here now!! Trying to move forward. I want to commend you for thinking about your daughter and coming here to seek advice. That shows tremendous sensitivity.
Given the circumstances I think you should tread carefully with her. You’re right not to impose any beliefs. She’s her own free spirit. I’m wondering if she knows the reason you and her mother separated??? If not, it might be wise to tell her. The answer definitely isn’t to just say nothing. Trust me, she’ll resent you for that.
I mean, I don’t have kids, but if I was in your shoes I’d start off with an honest conversation. It might be a lot for her to take in (especially if she’s still a practising catholic) but the openness might strengthen your relationship. Teenagers often end up internalising divorce, so she probably needs you to tell her that this wasn’t her fault. And if you need an ear while you manage all this then feel free to reach out and message. I feel really taken by your story.
And about the inverted cross tattoo – congrats! What a powerful symbol of your journey toward self-discovery. Just remember it’s the meaning behind it that truly counts.
I clicked away. He’d commented more but it was gross to read and the computer screen was giving me a headache. He never told me it wasn’t my fault but I decided not to care. At least I had found the actual truth about how someone in my family felt. As far as I was concerned, he was entitled to any kind of crisis he felt the need to have. We were all responding to change in our own ways. I, for instance, was repeatedly tripping up Alistair when I passed him in the school halls and had recently taken up masturbation. Satanism was wholly his business.
Next came some noisy boots along with a squeaky pair of leather trousers and eventually, after a few years and probably a few hundred forum threads, a kindly bespectacled girlfriend. This was Rebel. She had legally changed her name a few years ago and she wouldn’t tell me what it had previously been. Not the kind of woman I would have ever expected my dad to end up with, someone who could express a loving opinion and mean it. Not the keyboard geek I had gleaned from her forum comments, but a Rebel with a cause. She had bleach streaks in her hair and a sun-pocked freckly face. She was young, and she never sat on chairs like a normal person. Always backwards or sideways or crosslegged or splayed. But mostly Dad was still the same. Looking back, I wonder if I would have developed differently had I decided to become Satanic with him. Had we approached it as a family endeavour maybe I would have understood my life as something that had actually happened.
‘I’ve done some research about her online,’ The Reverend says to Miss Fraser. The past appears in colour behind my eyes. ‘She’s written a book of very troubling poems.’
‘Oh, yes, I’ve read those.’ Miss Fraser replies.
‘You have?’ I ask, horrified, neck snapping round.
‘Noelle, this is my home. I can’t just have anyone to stay. I found one of them when I searched for your name on my computer.’
I should be more troubled by how involved these people are getting in my life, but mostly I am just astounded that I am searchable.
‘What did you think?’ the Reverend asks Miss Fraser. I hate myself for wanting to know the answer.
‘Very… raunchy,’ Miss Fraser says with a curl of her lip. ‘If you like that sort of thing. The one about the dove-woman made me feel quite sad. It must have been hard to have parents like that.’ She turns to me and the apprehension behind her eyes evolves into something more malleable, offers that malleability to me. She glances at Reverend Curdle and her gaze snipes shut. Is she… glaring? This woman.
‘Reverend, just because Noelle’s father has chosen a particular path doesn’t mean Noelle herself is the cause of my dead angel.’
He opens his mouth to object but is interrupted by the kitchen door swinging open. The heat, which I had not realised had become so oppressive, suddenly lifts and I can now feel a sheen of sweat wrap my skin I didn’t know was there. It’s Moses with dishevelled hair and eyes that are bright and sheepish. He looks sweet with his limbs all loose and his cheek still textured from the fabric of his pillow, but I still don’t believe he’s been sleeping. His gaze is never less than fully alert. I wonder distantly what his breath smells like.
‘Are you making pancakes?’ he asks.
As though he has been struck, the Reverend recoils. He clutches his nose and screws up his face like he’s about to wretch.
‘Good god!’ he cries, ‘You stink.’
‘Reverend!’ Miss Fraser scolds.
Moses blinks and looks down at himself. He ducks his nose to his armpit and sniffs.
‘I didn’t shower after my hike last night,’ he confesses, ‘but I didn’t think I smelled that bad. Noelle, would you mind checking?’
He walks over to my chair, lifts his arms slightly and stands by as everyone watches. I press my face into his stomach uncertainly. It is the closest I’ve ever been to him aside from when he holds me above bodies of water and my cheeks blush when my nose finds the dent of his bellybutton. His stomach gurgles as if in greeting. He smells a little musty, sure, but it is dog-like and not unpleasant. I feel something in our mechanism give way.
I draw my face back. ‘You’re fine,’ I tell him.
‘Maybe it’s your robes,’ Moses suggests to the Reverend, ‘It’s really hot in here. It might actually be you.’ There’s a playful edge slicing beneath the innocent tones of his voice. He has never met this man in his life and yet he toys with him instantly, reminding me of how openly he played with me that first night. What is this instinct for amusement? How deeply does his boredom go?
‘Maybe it’s your detergent. What brand do you use?’ Moses asks.
In spite of my doubt, my uncertainty, my still-fresh disgust for this man and the way he conducts himself, I cannot help but smirk. Probably it’s the pheromones I just snorted from his stomach reaching my brain and turning me psychotic.
‘Smelling things that aren’t actually there can actually be a sign of epilepsy,’ I say to Reverend. Then, turning to Moses, ‘Miss Fraser found a dead swan in the garden.’
I am sure the swan has nothing to do with Moses. He would never leave something out to rot. Whatever he kills, he claims. That’s what he said.
A flicker of recognition crosses Moses’ face. ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I think I know something about that.’
Moses leads us all up the stairs in single file, me then Miss Fraser then the Reverend. Our footsteps thunk out a creaking cacophony and everyone’s breathing becomes stilted. Moses brings us to his bedroom where we stand together, uncomfortably close. The Reverend looks doubtful as he surveys the minimal furnishings just as I had done when I was snooping – as if Moses’ bleak number of belongings is an indicator of his spiritual deviancy. The Reverend pulls open a bedside drawer to reveal nothing. The space is empty of the usual hotel literature. He eyes Miss Fraser and shoves it hastily closed.
Moses draws back his curtains and gestures for us to see. I am squinting at the trees in the garden, looking at the spot in the bushes that Moses emerged from yesterday evening before the window itself comes into focus.
There, marked upon the glass like a large greasy thumbprint, is the ghost of the body of the swan. Two great beating wings; the unnatural curve of a snapped neck; the moment of death captured like an echo upon impact. The shadow is so massive, so striking and pronounced I am shocked that in its creation the glass was not destroyed completely. Swans are heavy birds, ungainly, better designed for lakes than skies. Yet the angel swan flew into this window with enough force to make ghosts of every feather.
I wonder, if I threw myself against a window, would I leave a mark like that? Would the grease of my skin echo? I wish, seeing the haunting of the avine angel, that I had touched the white feather when the Reverend had offered. Maybe it would not have felt like silk after all.
‘I heard a deafening crash last night,’ Moses explains, ‘but I was too tired to check. Didn’t see this until this morning. Maybe it was trying to migrate south.’
We all stare.
‘South is the other way,’ I say. They turn to look at me.
‘Is that true?’ the Reverend asks. His jowly face is incredulous. Not enough lashes to hood his naked eyes. He stares at the ghost.
Suddenly, I want to yank the curtain closed. Push these people and their screeching thoughts and their blinking eyes out, out into the hallway. Even Moses, with his stillwater skin, is too loud a presence compared to this thing. This entity, calcified, but still ringing. I know intent when I see it. So convincing in its clothes of mistake and inevitability. Anything destructive can, from another angle, look just like an easy mistake. It’s the difference between jumping and having fallen from a balcony. A tentative step off the edge and a chair slipped during afternoon tea. One is a tragedy, and the other is a tragedy but selfish.
I’d like to have thought that this kind of non-speaking pain was a distinctly human thing but now I know it is a fact of all life, not even just mammalian. It is even harder to deny its hurt. The primitive fact of it. Suffering is written in the DNA helix. It is fused to the most inceptive core of all beings, too deep to reach with a scalpel, and so it cannot be scraped off.
The thought of someone wiping the swan from the windowpane causes my abdominals to cramp.
At the front door the Reverend asks me if I would like to join him for coffee in the town and I say no, I would not. I liked him better behind the body of the peach and even then, not much. Miss Fraser seems keen for him to leave, and I feel a note of pride for her as she silently collects his coat.
‘Drive safe,’ she says, giving the Reverend a curt shove out the door.
We are left, the three of us, standing in her hallway with all the pictures crowding the walls. Cross-stitched scenes of cats frolicking, an odd painting of pixies and sprites stripping the trees of an orchard, leaving nothing but branches and the night. There are old photos of so many people but, always gathered in groups, I cannot work out which one Miss Fraser is. Only that she has attended many celebrations and at one point had an expansive circle of friends. Looking at these walls, I think of Her and Hate Her because She would have absolutely despised Miss Fraser’s taste.
Miss Fraser rolls her eyes between Moses and I and says, ‘Well. Wasn’t that something. I think I’ll take a nap.’ She seems weary from the onslaught of the Reverend and the drama of her religious experience, that is now my experience as well. Do I wish it had been me who had found the angel corpse? Was it meant to be me who found the angel corpse? Does any of it mean anything at all? I feel sad in my kidneys.
