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The Story of Barrett (Part 1)
The Very Early Years
My biological entry into the world was in Lee Hall,
Virginia
just outside of
Newport News
and occurred on the 10th of
February, 1945. It was my misfortune to be born to Edward Richard Barrett, an
alcoholic navy ensign and Margaret Mary Barrett (nee McMorrow), an equally
alcoholic sociopath and registered nurse.
Their relationship began in a
Springfield
,
Massachusetts
bar on the seamier side of town, progressed through a series of sweaty sexual
encounters and culminated when Margaret claimed to be pregnant. In the early
1940s, such a claim produced considerable social pressure to marry. My father has never been one to challenge the
social norm so it wasn’t long after her announcement that my father found
himself exchanging vows with the Wicked Witch of the East.
I'm sure he was surprised when, shortly after their
marriage, Margaret "discovered" that she wasn't pregnant after all
but merely suffered from gas (or maybe it was alcoholic gastritis). It would take more than the good intentions
of a naive ensign to "make an honest woman" of her. Silk purses and sow's ears come to mind. I
was conceived in mid 1944 and born a preemie the following February by which
time their "union" was already in trouble. It would end in divorce
shortly after my third birthday.
My father's motives for marrying were probably mixed. He's
capable of warmth and charm though he can claim neither as signature
characteristics. I'm sure his sense of
duty played a role (giving the child a name). Certainly social pressure and a desire to "do the right thing"
were involved. He may have thought he
loved Margaret. No one has ever
described my father, then or now, as particularly worldly-wise. It was a time
of war. For the country it was a period
of fear and uncertainty. In February of
1942, a Los Angeles Times column urged that security measures be taken against
Japanese-Americans, arguing a Japanese-American "almost inevitably ...
grows up to be a Japanese, not an American." In
Pennsylvania
,
peaceful German-Americans and their families were often the victims of vicious
attacks by mobs of vengeful "patriotic Americans". It was a time when sexual attraction, fed by
the insecurity of the times, could easily masquerade as love.
Margaret's motives were more obvious and had nothing to do
with love. Certainly a desire for
security was part of it. As the wife of
a naval officer, she wouldn't have to work to earn a living, she could receive
a $50.00 a month allowance from the government and, if she got really lucky, she
could collect his $10,000 government life insurance. Those who don't know her,
like my father didn't know her, have always underestimated her. Like a newly hatched rattlesnake, she has
been poisonous since her birth.
Her parents, my grandparents, told me the story of a female
collie they had when Margaret was around 9 or 10 years old. One day, for no apparent
reason, the dog attacked Margaret. My
grandparents immediately took the dog to an animal shelter where it was put to
sleep. I have always felt that, in their
rush to judgment, they killed the wrong bitch. That one incident could well be the reason for my attraction now to the
breed. (As I write this, three collies are sleeping at my feet.)
My very earliest childhood memory is of being in the living room
of the house where my father and Margaret lived with his parents (my
grandparents). I was probably 2-1/2 or 3 years old. It was mid-afternoon. Both
my parents were drinking. My mother was
in the bedroom with the door shut. Periodically, the sound of things banging
and smashing could be heard through the closed door. Each time it happened, my father would go in
the bedroom and shut the door after him. There would be more banging and I would hear Margaret screaming. Things would become quiet and my father would
re-emerge from the bedroom. During one
of these lulls, he picked me up, carried me to the kitchen and sat in one of
the kitchen chairs, placing me on his lap. I believe his intent was to reassure
me that everything was alright. Soon there would be more banging from the
bedroom and the cycle would repeat.
The next thing I remember is night. The house was dark except for a single lamp
burning in the living room. The bedroom
door was now open. Margaret was calling
me to come to her in the darkened bedroom. Her words were slurred.
"Richard,
come to mommy."
I didn't move. I
stood in the doorway of the living room, looking across the dim hallway into
the darkened bedroom. I don't think I
said anything. Her voice sounded
different. For some reason, I was afraid.
"Richard,
come to mommy. Daddy cut my head
off. I want you to see."
What had been fear turned to terror. I was frozen to the
spot, unable to speak or move, picturing a headless monster that had once been
my mother.
"Richard,
please come to mommy. I need you to put
my head back. Daddy hurt me. He cut it off. Please honey, help me."
I have no memory of how long I stood there motionless,
crying and terrified. She continued to
plead with me to help her. I'm almost
certain I didn't go into the bedroom though I have no memory of what happened
immediately after that. Perhaps my
father returned from whatever errand had taken him away. I do remember some time later that the house
was full of men. One of them picked me
up and carried me into the kitchen again, telling me he was a policeman and
that everything was going to be okay.
I don't believe I saw my father that night and I don't
remember ever seeing him again until I was 15.
There are several things I've never understood and several
things I've never forgiven my father for. For example: assuming that he did beat my mother (and since I have more
than her word to go on, I'm willing to make that assumption) why couldn't he
have had the decency to beat her to death? I would almost certainly have had a much better childhood.
And why, if Margaret wanted help or comfort as she lay
bruised and bleeding in the dark bedroom, did she choose words guaranteed to
terrorize her 3 year old son. While she lacks a conscience and is incapable of
anything resembling warmth, her cruelty is usually goal directed. For years, the episode seemed to me to be
counter-productive and pointless. Why
make me believe she was a headless monster at the same time she was calling me
for sympathy and comfort?
Only after I became an adult did I begin to understand. She
miscalculated the effect of her words. The monster she hoped to create in my mind was an image of my father
brutalizing her. It never dawned on her
that I would see HER as the headless monster and refuse to go in the bedroom.
For my sake and for the sake of the many people who have
crossed paths with her in the nearly sixty years since that night, why couldn't
my father have cut her head off when he had the chance?
I spent the next year or so with a foster family in
Easthampton
,
Massachusetts
. This was, I was told, so that my father would
be unable to find or injure me during the subsequent divorce and custody
hearings. During my "time in hiding" my maternal grandparents
occasionally visited. I never saw my
mother or anyone from my father's side of the family.
This was in late 1949 and early 1950. The legal system in
those days was biased and tended to automatically award custody to the
mother. It was axiomatic in those days
that mothers were more important to the child than fathers and that mothers
were better at parenting. As a
consequence my mother was eventually awarded sole custody of me.
In the late 70s, my partner and I attempted to adopt a
child. We were turned down although a
court later forced the California Department of Social Services to award us a
foster home license. We were the second
openly gay licensed foster home in the state of
California
. During this process, one of the objections we heard repeatedly was
"yes but you're two guys and a child needs a mother".
Any child in the state who is desperate for a mother would
be welcome to mine if I didn't feel that such a gift would be child abuse of
the most evil sort.
Let's expose a myth or two, shall we.
The fact that two people have the appropriate plumbing to
reproduce does not make them fit parents. Every day, people copulate who shouldn't be allowed to have a dog, let
alone a child. There is nothing about
their differing genitals that pre-disposes either parent to be better than the
other at nurturing and caring for a child.
Children are under no obligation to love their parents. Love is earned and doesn't spring into
existence as a side effect of biology. Some parents deserve love and respect. Some deserve loathing. The criterion for judgment has nothing to do with
gender nor is it influenced by sexual orientation.
Society is slowly coming to realize that two gays or two
lesbians in a loving, committed relationship can provide a child with as much
safety, security and love and be every bit as skilled and effective at
parenting as their more conventional heterosexual counterparts.
At some point in early 1950 the threat of paternal contact
seems to have abated and I was taken to live with my grandparents, also in
Easthampton
,
Massachusetts
,
where I remained for the next several years.
Georgiana Dill McMorrow and Patrick Barnabus McMorrow were
Margaret's parents. Patrick was a mousy,
clerk-like little man who seldom said much to me. He was simply a presence; someone I probably liked
more than disliked. He had his own
business (The Campbell Coal Company) which distributed coal to area residents,
coal being, in those days, the primary home heating fuel. While Margaret was many things, she was never
stupid. I suspect that her intelligence
was a result of her father's DNA rather than her mother's.
Today, I look back on my grandmother, Georgiana, and see her
as an older version of my mother ... but without the intelligence. If my mother
were Adolph Hitler, my grandmother would be either Boris or Natasha of Rocky
and Bullwinkle fame. In her 60 odd years
of life, I doubt she ever heard a myth or old wive's tale that she didn't
immediately accept as revealed truth. As
she passed through the many trials and tribulations of her life, any and all of
which she would gladly itemize for her listeners, she was frequently the
recipient of Divine Guidance and support. At one point, the Blessed Virgin appeared in the beam of a flashlight
she carried to the bathroom at night. Unwilling to believe the Mother of God had come to her hoping to relieve
a full bladder, she insisted this was Mother Mary's way of reassuring and
helping her to endure. It was never made
clear exactly what she was enduring other than this divinely inspired intrusion
on her privacy when she felt a need to go potty. Neither I, nor my grandfather nor the pastor
of our local Catholic church could convince her that what she was seeing was a
shadow cast by an imperfection on the aluminum reflector behind the bulb of the
flashlight.
Much later, when I was a young teenager, she would
frequently voice the opinion that I was demonically possessed. In her eyes, this was proven beyond doubt by
the way I "sassed her back". She would assure me in solemn tones that someday she would be gone and
that I would then be sorry for "the way you've treated me".
Since she's now been dead for close to 50 years, I have to
concede that she was half right.
But this view of my grandparents was formed much later
on. As a child of four or five, I was
probably almost as dumb as my grandmother and, at the time, failed to recognize
her stupidity. I believed that I was a Catholic which was good because
non-Catholics were going to Hell. I
believed that my mother (wherever she was) loved me and her parents, my Nana
and Poppa loved me. I was taught that
they would always protect me from the threat (never articulated) represented by
my father and HIS parents. All of these things I believed and, who knows, I
might still believe, if I hadn't, at the age of 6, been suddenly and
unexpectedly uprooted from that environment and placed in the physical care and
custody of my mother.
Before that happened I think I was a reasonably contented
child. God was in His Heaven. All was
right with the world.
My Introduction to the real
world
At age 6, I’m told I developed respiratory problems and was
diagnosed with asthma. A decision was
made (though certainly not by me) that Margaret would relocate, taking me with
her to live in
Albuquerque
,
New Mexico
. Time has a way of telescoping memories and it
seems like only a matter of days before I was riding the “Super Chief” with my
mother, heading west toward the “
Land
of
Enchantment
”.
I long ago learned to not believe anything my mother told
me. If I didn’t have independent
testimony from at least a few non-involved witnesses, I wouldn’t swear she was
really my mother. She has a propensity
for lying when telling the truth is easier. In the same way, I wouldn’t swear that the move to
New Mexico
had anything to do with asthma or
my health. I have nothing but her word
to go on. I do know that leaving her
nursing job at Springfield Hospital and beginning a new life on the other side
of the country is not a step she would have taken just on my account regardless
of my health. I believe there was
another reason for the move though what it was I will probably never know.
The first place we went when we arrived in
Albuquerque
was to a Catholic fostering
agency where it was arranged that I would be “temporarily” placed with a
Catholic family until my mother “got situated’. I was transported that afternoon to the family’s home where I became one
of 6 or 7 foster youngsters being cared for.
I was homesick and missed my grandmother (hence my own subsequent
reputation for stupidity). I wanted my
mother to come back and pick me up. I
was miserably unhappy … for perhaps an hour. By nightfall, though, my homesickness was nearly forgotten as I got to
know my foster “brothers and sisters”. Two or three of the older foster boys were in their late teens. There were two girls of perhaps 12 or
13. At 7, I was the youngest of the
group and was soon the “baby” of the family, being pampered and fussed over by
everyone and loving the attention I was receiving.
Within days, I was enrolled at the local parochial school
(my first and less than pleasant experience with nuns). I began to experience family life for the
first time. I helped one of my new
“older brothers” paint the front porch. My two “sisters” and I entered into a conspiracy to go to the movies and
see King Kong, (the 1938 version) a film our foster mother forbade us to see
because it was too scary. My sisters
briefed me at great length about the plot of the movie we were claiming to be
seeing. I must have had a good memory
because I passed the post-movie interview by our “mother” without exposing the
conspiracy.
And I found a best friend. Billy (I no longer remember his real name)
was my own age and lived next door with his Navajo parents. His family and my foster parents were good
friends and if I wasn’t doing something with my new “family” I was next door
playing with him.
When summer came, my foster family and the Navajo family
spent a vacation week together visiting
Taos
,
New Mexico
. At that time (and probably still)
Taos
celebrated an annual
Navajo festival and Indian celebration that attracted visitors and tourists
from around the state.
An Indian dance was scheduled for our first evening at the
motel. I was especially excited about
seeing REAL Indians. There was Billy, of
course and his family but they didn’t count because they dressed like normal
people and they weren’t “wild”. If you
had asked me to explain the difference between wild and tame Indians I would
have been hard pressed to answer but I just KNEW there was a difference.
When the sun set and it became dark, my “family” and Billy’s
joined with the motel’s other guests sitting around a large campfire in the
center of a cleared area in the courtyard. As we waited, I could feel myself growing increasingly nervous. When the soft beat of Indian drums could be
heard and began to grow louder, my nervousness increased exponentially. The beat of the drums grew louder still, the
tempo faster as the marching Navajos got closer, still hidden by one wall of
the motel but approaching the corner of the building and the courtyard.
As the first of the dancing Indians appeared from behind the
building, I leapt up, turned and ran through the portals of the motel to the
street beyond. I pounded down the street
as if the devil himself were pursuing me as indeed I thought he was. I could even hear him laughing as the sound
of his footsteps on the sidewalk behind me got closer and closer.
And then my older “brother” caught me and scooped me
up. When he could stop laughing and got
me calmed down, he carried me piggyback all the way back to the courtyard where
the Indian dance was still in progress.
And I enjoyed the rest of the evening. The story of my terrified flight was the source
of good natured ribbing that continued long after the end of our joint
vacation.
All good things must eventually end. My sojourn with my foster family probably
lasted for six or seven months and
ended when Margaret arrived one Sunday to reclaim me. She had bought an old car and was renting a
single bedroom apartment built over a garage behind the home of the doctor who
was employing her. The house and
apartment were within a few blocks of the same parochial school I had been
attending (I was now in the 1st grade) and it was an easy walk to and from
school during the week and to church on Sunday. While she dutifully sent me to church each Sunday, I always went
alone. Only later would I learn that her
relationship with the Catholic Church was just as consistent as my own though
of a totally different, more personal nature.
The days followed an unvarying pattern. During the week she would send me to school
in the morning and get home from work about 2 hours after I got back in the
afternoon. She would fix us dinner and
begin drinking. By seven thirty or so in
the evening she would be well lubricated and I would hear stories about the
monster who was my father. He was
vicious, cruel and incredibly violent. He had almost killed her. One of
her favorite stories told how he had strangled a puppy she had bought for me
when I was a baby. He would have beaten
me too if she hadn’t protected me which always resulted in his beating her.
And I believed it all. Hey, I was seven years old. What
did I know?
There were other stories too; stories about how she hadn’t
ever wanted to marry my father. She had
been in love with a pilot called “Dutch” who had loved her and had been going
to marry her. Before true love could
conquer all, Dutch had been shot down over
Germany
during the war. They never found his body and he was
officially “missing in action and presumed dead”. When she had reluctantly agreed to marry Ed,
her father (remember mousy little Patrick) had made her write a letter to the
missing Dutch, explaining what she was going to do and telling him how sorry
she was. She would tearfully tell me
that writing that letter had been the hardest thing she had ever had to
do.
Thirty years later, at the request of my father, I attempted
to learn whether Margaret was by then dead or alive. By following a lead that pointed to a small
Methodist church in
Maine
, I finally located
her in a small community near
Portland
where she was living under the name Margot Monahan. When I spoke by phone with the pastor of the
church and she learned who I was, she expressed shock that I was alive. One of my mother’s frequently told stories related the way the plane I had been piloting in
Vietnam
had been shot down. The story explained
that I was officially MIA and presumed dead. Fortunately, my grandfather Patrick was himself dead by then so nobody
ever forced Margaret to write ME a letter.
I slept on a cot in the apartment’s only bedroom. Margaret slept on a daybed in the living
room. By 8:00 or 8:30 I would be sent
to bed where I would lay awake, reliving the stories I had heard about my
father and planning for the day when I could exact violent revenge on this man
who had brutalized my delicate, loving mother.
On some nights, after I was in bed, I would overhear her
talking on the phone, her voice too low for me to make out the words. On those nights when I stayed awake long
enough, my mind racing with plans to someday become her avenger, I would
sometimes hear a soft knock on the front door and then muted conversation
between my mother and a man I didn’t know coming from the living room. It would be a month or more later that I
would finally meet Father Frank Gilchrist, the Catholic chaplain from nearby
Sandia Air Force Base … and the father of my as yet unborn half brother.
It was also at this point in my life that I began to suspect
I was really a bad person and almost certainly doomed to burn forever in
Hell. It wasn’t a certainty but more of
a suspicion, a fear that was so horrible and evil that, if true, I couldn’t
talk about it with anyone.
And it had started with Billy, my seven year old Navajo
friend. I had wanted to hold him. I had wanted to kiss him.
It’s difficult to think of it now as a sexual impulse. I had no idea what sex was. I knew what queers were. My mother had warned me (in suitably
age-appropriate terms) about queers. They had high-pitched voices and they sometimes hung around schools. They waved their hands around and tried to
talk little boys into letting them feel their private parts. The idea of touching anyone’s private parts
or of having them touch mine was completely disgusting and offensive to my
seven year-old sensibilities. I not only
had no idea what sex was, I didn’t know people had to have sex to produce babies. I had been told and believed that babies
happened spontaneously when two people loved each other. I was also pretty sure one of them had to be
a girl.
I didn’t want to touch Billy down THERE and I didn’t want
him to touch me. I just wanted to cuddle
with him.
I had a vivid mental picture of what a queer was and knew
what to look out for. There was no
question in my mind, no doubt whatsoever that I wasn’t one of THEM.
But I also had a pretty good idea that boys weren’t supposed
to want to kiss each other. They didn’t
have fantasies about holding each other and stroking each other’s hair and
hugging each other. Other boys didn’t …
but I did. So what did that make me?
The dilemma was too big and too painful for me to deal
with. For the next 10 years I learned to
push questions like that out of my mind, even though, from about the age of 8,
I would have the same feelings and longings for other boys from the
neighborhood, from school and from church. And, for the next ten years, I would only occasionally feel the all
encompassing gloom and fear descend on me like the closing lid of a coffin, as
I would again realize that I was going to burn forever in Hell and there was
absolutely nothing I could do about it.
As my self-image began to change, so did my behavior. I hated the Catholic school I was attending
with its regimentation and grim-faced nuns. I made no attempt to hide my dislike for our 1st grade teacher. (She started it though, by asking me if I
hated her. I just answered her truthfully.) I played hokey with enough regularity to be
noticed and this was duly reported to my mother in a note that was sent home
with me and that I was required to have her sign before returning it to my
teacher. After the note, my attendance
improved slightly but was still far from stellar.
When I wasn’t in school, I was in a market close to my
mother’s apartment, shoplifting from the candy display. I was caught once by the butcher who could
see the candy rack from his post behind the meat counter. He followed me out of the store, grabbed me
by the collar and then lectured me on the evils of stealing. I immediately started crying which I guess he
wasn’t expecting so he fished a nickel from his pocket and held it in front of
my face. He said I could keep the candy
I had taken and that he would pay for it BUT I was never to steal anything,
ever again. I tearfully promised I
wouldn’t and he never ratted me out. This close call made a deep impression on me
and changed my behavior. Never again
would I shoplift anything without carefully checking first and making sure no
one was watching.
I even managed to commit crimes that I didn’t know were
crimes. A girl that lived in a house
behind my mother’s apartment was my age and a sometimes playmate along with a
couple of other neighborhood kids that lived on her block. Her house and yard were visible from our 2nd floor kitchen window. When she and her
family went on a weeklong vacation, leaving the house empty, her other friends
and I continued to play in her yard. I
was the one who masterminded the break-in when I discovered an unlocked window
on the far side of the empty house.
I can’t tell you today why we broke in. None of us had any intention of taking or
damaging anything. She was a friend and,
even at the tender age of 8, I knew it was wrong to steal from a friend. We simply toured the house, tiptoeing through
the rooms and giggling at each other. After we made a complete circuit of the interior, we climbed back out
the window and continued playing in the yard. We only entered the house once.
Once, as it turns out, was enough. Early one evening, about a week later, when
the girl and her family returned from wherever they had been, there was an
angry pounding on the apartment door. When my mother answered it, the girl’s mother stood in the doorway,
trembling with rage. When confronted, I
freely admitted the housebreaking though I was never able to offer any logical
motive for my actions. I was punished,
of course, and forbidden from ever stepping on their property again. I was to have nothing to do with the girl or
any of her friends who had aided and abetted me in the crime. Since this meant every kid my age in the
immediate neighborhood, I was from then on forced to go farther afield when
searching for accomplices.
But it was the barbeque that ended my criminal career and
forced us to leave the state.
It was a Saturday morning. I collected the only friend I had left within walking distance that I
was still allowed to associate with and, together, we began to plan our
activities for the day. To start things
off with a bang, we went straight to the market, cased the joint for witnesses
and, when the coast was clear, we each copped a candy bar and made our escape,
undetected.
My friend ate his while we walked to my house but I left
mine in my pocket, untouched. Truthfully, I was getting tired of chocolate. There was too much of it available and it was
too easily obtainable. I wanted to try
something different.
We entered the yard through a wooden gate at the side of the
property without needing to go past the “Big House” where Margaret’s employer
lived. There was a dirt driveway that
stretched for about a hundred feet from the gate to the garage and the upstairs
apartment we were renting. Lining the
driveway along a cedar fence was a row of small sheds and outbuildings that
must have served some purpose once but now stood abandoned and empty. We entered the shed at the end of the row
closest to the garage and I announced my plan.
I was going to barbeque the candy bar.
I had no idea what it would taste like but figured it would
probably be pretty good. No matter, it
was going to be fun.
As I look back now, I am able to appreciate several problems
with the plan but, as with any criminal endeavor, hindsight has a way of
highlighting the mistakes that are so easily overlooked during the planning
stages of a caper.
My first and biggest mistake was in my choice of an
accomplice. He was the one weak link in
the plan. It takes nerves of steel to
live outside the law and I could tell he was nervous as we climbed the ladder
and hoisted our small bodies through the trapdoor onto the wood roof of the
shed. With my usual forethought and
attention to detail, I had a book of matches in my pocket though I can’t
remember why I had them or where I had gotten them. My partner-in-crime complained bitterly when
I insisted he climb back down the ladder and collect some branches and dry grass to fuel our barbeque fire. I was finally able to persuade him only by
promising to share half of MY candy bar once it was cooked.
My second mistake was really more of an overlooked detail
than a mistake. Half a century after the
fact, I am willing to admit that building a fire on the old, weathered and
dried out wooden roof of an equally old, weathered and dried out wooden
building was probably not the smartest thing I have ever done.
There was quite a lot of smoke. My colleague and I were busy stamping out
tendrils of flame that wanted to escape the confines of the piled brush and
kindling we had carefully stacked on the roof. I felt no urgency as I looked up at the sound of loud sirens coming
closer. I was only mildly curious about
where the fire trucks were going … until the wooden gate at the end of the
driveway opened and I realized where they were going.
Almost before I knew what was happening, firemen were
stringing hose, extending ladders and swarming over the shack. My friend and I were hoisted over shoulders
and hustled down the ladder while streams of water began pouring over the roof,
the shack and the small crowd of spectators that was beginning to gather in the
driveway. Among the
spectators, our landlord … and Margaret.
Margaret’s landlord, the doctor who was also her employer
and lived in the “Big House” had a number of options. He could have ignored the whole thing and
returned to the Big House where he could have fixed lunch, had a glass of iced
tea and taken a nap. He could have seen
the humor in the situation and had a good laugh about it while the firemen were
“mopping up”. He could have smiled wryly
and made the observation that “boys will be boys”.
He did none of these things. What he did was fire Margaret on the spot. He told her to vacate the premises as close
to immediately as was possible and to take with her all of her personal
possessions as well as anyone in the neighborhood that shared her DNA.
And that’s how I finally met Father Frank Gilchrist.
It was hours after the fire. I had been confined to my bedroom with the
door shut for the rest of the morning and all that afternoon. I knew I was going to be punished but I
didn’t yet know how. I had thought
about the likely possibilities and had already decided that if I were given a
choice, I would opt to be placed for adoption rather than being sent to prison
for the rest of my life. So engrossed in
my thoughts was I that I never heard the approaching footsteps and looked up,
startled, when the bedroom door opened and a priest walked into the room. He was carrying a plate with a sandwich and
some potato chips on it. He put the
plate on the table next to my bed and glared at me sternly then told me I was
not to leave my bedroom except to go to the bathroom. I was a horrible, ungrateful child who had
ruined my mother’s life and God was going to punish me.
It was a moment of incredible relief. I was already pretty sure that I was going to
burn in Hell forever for reasons having nothing to do with fires or stolen
candy bars. It almost sounded like
eternal hellfire might be the extent of my punishment. I might not be placed for adoption or sent to
prison for the rest of my life … at least not in the immediate future.
I knew better than to show relief and must have managed to
conceal my elation because the priest turned without another word and stalked
out of the room, closing the door behind him.
I don’t know if father Gilchrist spent that night in the
apartment or if he left and returned early the next morning. He was there when I awoke and it was him who
supervised the loading of all Margaret’s luggage and my few possessions into
our car. By 10:00 o’clock we were
pulling out of the driveway, with him at the wheel, past the Big House, leaving
the apartment for the last time and beginning the journey to what would be my
next home in
Phoenix
,
Arizona
.
|
