Anointing of the Sick (cont.)

2. First Confession: The Whipping Boy

Childhood: The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age. ~Ambrose Bierce

There was blood on the floor beneath the shards of glass.

Pink carnations lay scattered about the blood tinged water and the pieces of the vase. Light from the noonday sun struck the floor, creating tiny spectrums across the pale, marble flooring. My bare feet were dampened by the water and blood; I had cut the tender flesh of my feet on small pieces of the glass when I had walked back to stare down at the disaster I had created. Since my foot was already injured, I did not hesitate to nudge a larger piece of glass with my toe, and I blankly watched as blood bubbled from a small, jagged cut.
Soft footsteps broke the silence about me, and a slender, pale hand came to rest quietly against my shoulder. Long, straight blonde hair tumbled against my cheek, and I closed my eyes as I took in the calming presence of my brother.

“Its as if the flowers are bleeding.” The voice was quiet; it reminded me of how God’s voice was described: a still, small voice.

My twin’s name was Shepherd.

The both of us had long, beautiful blonde hair that reached to our shoulders and eyes as blue and clear as the ocean. Shepherd’s eyes were slightly wider than mine, however, and looked far more innocent than my narrow, hard ones. I remember that that day he was wearing white; it was a long white, button down shirt and loose white pants. He had been ill for a few days, and had taken to wearing his pajamas all day. I had a similar pair, but mine were red like blood.

I didn’t see him look, but just after he spoke of the bleeding flowers, he began to run his little fingers through my hair tenderly with one hand while his other laid against my neck, and he drew me against him. “You’ve hurt yourself now, haven’t you?” He whispered against my temple. I can still feel his slightly chilled touch, the warmth of his breath that smelled faintly of cherries from the medicine he had obediently been downing, and the faint beating of his heart as he pressed my chest against his own.

“Climb onto my back, I’ll take you to the bathroom.” He gently pulled away, turning his head to softly cough after he had spoken. The thought that he was still weak from his illness did not cross my mind, and I immediately moved around him and climbed onto his back. He hesitated a moment, doubled beneath my weight, then he straightened and started to walk.

My feet stung when he cleaned them, and I complained to him loudly while he knelt in front of me, patiently taking my complaints and softly whispering back to me that I would be alright. When he had finished putting the bandages on my cuts, he placed his hands on my knees and tilted his head back, looking into my eyes with an expression that instantly quieted me. His smile was angelic as he parted his lips. “There you are, if they hurt when you walk, just remember that the Lord was beaten to the brink of death and yet He still was able to walk and carry His cross most of the way. When I’m sick, or I’m hurt, the thought that our God patiently bore pain for us, it makes what little pain I feel not so bad. I know I can bear what I have to for Him, just as He bore that for us.”

…

I shuddered as I recalled that day, and my voice broke; the words shattered on my lips and collapsed onto the floor almost audibly in the heavy silence that now hung in the room. My fingers found my lips and splayed about them as a sob tore through my chest.

“Did your mother find out?”

I barely heard his voice through my soft cries, but somehow I managed to answer. “Yes, but…” I found that I could not readily finish, and it took several moments for me to regain my composure. The priest waited patiently then touched my shoulder once my cries had died down.

“Perhaps I should come back tomorrow,” He began, but I quickly grabbed the edge of his sleeve, tightly clenching my trembling fingers about the dark fabric.

“No, it has to be today,” I croaked, my voice scratchy and hoarse from crying. “I have to tell you now… I have to tell you what happened…”

…

My mother always smelled of coffee.

Her fiery red hair was always pulled back into a ponytail at the back of her head; the thick, wavy strands of hair would shift in the band and while most fell like a waterfall, spilling in obedient, glistening currents to her shoulder blades, a few defiant curls would fall across her ear and tap against her full, freckled cheeks. Two pairs of earrings always dotted her pale earlobes; one pair would be simple silver hoops, and the other pair would be diamond studs framed in the same, shimmering silver. Her eyelids were always colored a soft grey, her mascara was always perfect and unclamped and her lashes would flutter like agitated butterflies over her round, emerald eyes whenever she was angry. Her attire was a two piece suit: a double breasted grey jacket with black buttons and a snug, straight skirt that ended just above her knees. Her feet were always pressed into black heeled shoes with rounded toes; her curving legs were always darkened slightly by stockings.

Also when she was angry, she would sit in her favorite chair, a black leather monster that rested on a small ebony pillar that branched off in four directions to house four small wheels, and while she sat in this chair, she would cross her legs at the knees and rest her hands in her lap, tapping an erratic tune on the face of her Fossil watch with a perfect, false onyx nail.

Her room was an office; a piece of her work away from the tall building where she spent the majority of her time. To this day, I have never seen her wearing anything but that suit or something similar to it; I swear she sleeps in it, assuming she does sleep.

The black chair sat behind a black desk; the walls were white like the rest of the house, but the desk and chair were black. They were the blotches of sinful neglect in a house of purity.

Shepherd stood at my side that day when after viewing the disaster at the end of the hall, after seeing the droplets of blood, after hearing the crunch of glass beneath her heeled shoes, after noticing the absence of the vase, when my mother summoned us to the office. He stood with one hand on the stiff arm of the oaken chair that I had settled into.

Court was in session.

All rise; the judge is entering.

We both stood when she passed us by, her heels tapping against the white floors. She sank into the embrace of the chair, and I sat down in my small seat. Shepherd remained standing like a good lawyer.

Oh, holy one, intercede on my behalf.

My mother looked down at me, her eyes peering over the thin rims of her glasses before they were plucked from the thin bridge of her nose and laid onto the surface of the desk. She muttered my name as if it were the name of one of the criminals she read about in the paper; her tone was always judgmental, always critical. She hated me; she tolerated Shepherd.

“It was expensive, and now there is blood on the floor, Severin.”

“Ma’am,” I whispered. “I want to explain.”

“I want the blood off my floor. I want the vase to be made new, and I want the flowers alive. Do you think I care what you have to say? It was you that destroyed the last thing of beauty in this house. I can’t keep anything because of you.” Her words were punctuated by the rhythmic tapping against the watch face.

I hated her back, and in that moment, as she continued to diplomatically explain to me that I was a useless waste, in that moment my fingers clenched so tightly that I felt my nails break the skin of my palms. I wanted more than anything for her to be wrong, for all of her words to be proven false. How was she so certain it was me? I wanted to ask her. I had a brother of my same age; he was perfectly capable of breaking the vase.

“It was Shepherd.” I hissed below my breath during a pause between her words. I hadn’t expected her hear me, but to my surprise, she quieted and her nails hovered just over the scratched face of her watch. In unison, our eyes turned toward the boy at my side who had been silent during my mother’s seemingly endless speech. Shepherd’s expression had not changed much. Mother did not notice any change at all; I noticed that his eyes were dull and growing moist. I lifted my hand and grasped the white sleeve of his pajamas, leaving a smear of my blood on the fabric.

“It was me, ma’am.” He softly agreed, lowering his eyes to the floor. “I got out of bed to get some water and nearly fell as I stepped out of the hallway. I grabbed the table with the vase to try to catch myself, and I knocked over the vase. Severin heard the noise and came to see what had happened, and he cut his feet on the glass.”

I looked back to mother, releasing my brother’s sleeve, unaware that I had tainted its purity. I was sent from the room while Shepherd’s trembling fingers worked free the knot that held his pants about his small waist. They had fallen down about his ankles when my hand touched the door handle.

I did not look back.

Even when I heard the slap of leather against flesh, I did not turn. I simply and calmly shut the door behind of me and moved to the bathroom to get a bandage for my hand.

The blood stain never came out of my brother’s pajamas.

By your stripes, I am healed.

By your destruction, I am rebuilt.

His skin was dotted in red welts from the belt that he had been beaten with. The belt was hidden among files and papers in one of the large drawers of our mother’s desk. As soon as the door had opened and he had limped out, I had rushed to Shepherd’s side and guided him back to our bathroom, eager to see the marks of punishment he bore. I wasn’t disappointed and neither was I ashamed when I saw the welts. I prodded one of them lightly, and was rewarded with the soft sound of tears splashing against the floor.

“Is that all?” Mother’s punishments usually traveled in pairs.

“Yes,” He breathed, bending to grasp the edge of his pants and pulling them back up to cover himself. Somehow I felt cheated. “Lets go outside, Severin.” Shepherd had turned to face me, his eyes sparkling with gathering tears. The droplets scampered down his cheeks and dropped to the floor about his bare toes. I watched them for a moment before I shook my head.

“You should go back to bed, Shepherd. You’re still sick aren’t you?”

His shoulders slumped, his hair fell in front of his face as he cast his eyes to the floor; beneath the pale strands I could see more tears rushing down his cheeks in shimmering rivers. “Yes,” He whispered, turning his back to me to hide his disappointment. He twisted the door handle and stepped into the hall, offering no other word for me as he drifted obediently into his room.

I felt a brief flicker of surprise as he slipped away to his room. For the first time, I was old enough to understand that I had been obeyed. When I took a moment to look back into the hazy six years of my life, I could not recall a time when my brother had denied me anything. He had always hung on my every word and had done all that I asked no matter how trivial.

I stood immobile for several moments, lingering between the hall and the bathroom as I turned these thoughts over in my mind. Perhaps he was just being a good brother this time; surely Shepherd would not obey everything I said. I felt the need to test his loyalty, his obedience.

And I did.

Once he became well, I began my little experiment. I asked him to do my chores, asked him to give me his candy when mother felt generous enough to buy us some, I even asked him to destroy his favorite toy- a worn, limp teddy bear that he had had since we were both sharing a crib together- but no matter what I said or asked him to do, he did it without question. Soon he was doing all of the chores; mother, believing Shepherd hated chocolate, stopped buying him candy; and not a minute after I had spoken the command, Thistle the Bear’s ashes were being scooped out of the fireplace.

Years passed in this fashion, and I grew more and more controlling over little Shepherd. He became my whipping boy, taking all the blame for anything that went wrong though he never took part in my mischievous games, and his backside was forever scorched a flaming crimson from the lashes of the belt. Never once did he complain or utter a word of defiance. He never spoke a bad word against me, and he never denied me anything.

He never did until we reached eleven.

The day after our eleventh birthday was the day I will always remember as the day Shepherd said, ‘No.’

3. Second Confession: No.

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be. ~Thomas A. Kempis

Behind our house there was a garden.

It was surrounded by a stone wall with pointed iron arrows lining the top that were always laden with thorny vines that curled and writhed among the arrows like some form of ancient barbed wire. Rosebushes, nestled tenderly in black, moist soil bordered the wall, tilting their faces toward the sky in content and their petals daily peeling like old skin and falling away until they crumpled and died, their heads hanging like the countenances of elderly women. It was just the ending of spring now so that the roses were in their prime, dancing in the cool breezes and waving their green, prickly hands like children.