“Please, open the window, Mary Katherine,” the woman whispered.
Mary Katherine walked over to the window and slowly unhooked the lock. When the window opened, the freezing air of December hit her white cotton nightgown. The cold made her flesh stand up all over her body.
“Thank you. It’s so cold out there. And no one would help me,” the woman whispered.
The woman sat in Mary Katherine’s white wicker chair and shivered. Mary Katherine took the extra blanket from the foot of her bed and gave it to her. The woman took Mary Katherine’s hands. She was ice-cold, but a warm itch ran through her fingers.
“What are you doing here?” Mary Katherine asked.
“I’m here to save you, Mary Katherine,” the woman said.
“From what?”
“From Hell, of course.”
“Yes, please. How do I keep from going to Hell?” Mary Katherine asked.
The woman smiled and opened her mouth. But when she spoke, there were no words. All Mary Katherine could hear was the sound of a baby crying.
That’s when she woke up.
Mary Katherine sat up in bed. For a moment, the dream occupied her mind. But soon, the memories of everything she had done flooded back. Her horrible sexual thoughts. Doug’s thing in her mouth. Waking up in the tree house and rushing home to her parents, who had never been more disappointed in all their lives. Mary Katherine’s face was hot with shame. The pit in her stomach felt permanent.
She felt like she was going to throw up.
Mary Katherine rushed to the bathroom. She opened the toilet and knelt in front of it like an altar. She started to throw up, but it was a dry heave. There was no food in her stomach. There was only that pit. After a moment, the nausea passed.
But the taste was still there.
Mary Katherine took the mouthwash out of her medicine cabinet. She filled the cap to the rim with blue liquid and filled her mouth with it like her Irish grandfather did with whiskey sours at Christmas. The Listerine sat in her mouth like a cold blue ocean.
Then, it started to heat up.
The heat covered her tongue like the itch on her arm. Tears began to fill her eyes as seconds turned to minutes, but she wouldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. The mouthwash burned like Hell, but she didn’t dare spit it out. She just held it there, begging God to take it all away. Burn the taste off her tongue like a memory killed by time.
Make me forget.
Make me a child.
Make me forget Doug’s thing.
Make me forget I liked it.
Eventually, her flesh won, and she spit the liquid out in a gasp of pain. She left the bathroom and moved down the hall to the master bedroom. She looked at her parents sleeping in the king-size bed. All she wanted to do was crawl in between them the way she did when she was little. She knelt in front of her father and took his hand. She closed her eyes and asked for his forgiveness. The itch moved through her fingers to her father’s hand. He stirred for a moment, then turned over and started snoring.
She spent the rest of the night writing her essay for Notre Dame about Jesus’ mother, the Virgin Mary. She thought if she could get into Notre Dame, her parents would forgive her.
In the morning, her mother came downstairs and made breakfast. Mary Katherine tried to engage her in conversation, but her mother was too disappointed to speak. The only thing her mother told her was that she was allowed to go to school and volunteer at Shady Pines. Then, it was right back home.
“No friends. No Doug. No nothing.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry,” Mary Katherine said. “Where’s Dad?”
“He’s in bed. He doesn’t feel well this morning,” her mother said.
Mary Katherine rode the bus to school. She looked up at the sky and saw the beautiful clouds floating above her. For a moment, she remembered a rhyme Mrs. Radcliffe taught them in CCD.
Clouds gave us rain.
God gave us floods.
Mary gave her son.
Jesus gave His blood.
When she arrived at school, Doug was outside, waiting for her. He was the last person she wanted to talk to right now. Just seeing him made her want to throw up. So, she snuck around the side entrance to avoid him and waited under the stairs for ten whole minutes while the world passed above her.
When the bell rang, Mary Katherine ran down the hall. She was late for first period. She had been so wrapped