Remembering her days as a young woman when she and Amanda could wiggle into tight blue jeans and bend over in front of the pimply-faced novices walking by her on their way to prayer, she cringed and then laughed despite herself.\u00a0 Were their old priests out there that remembered her and her antics? Or perhaps with all the scandal in the church, she was only turning the stomachs of staunch homosexuals; that’s what Amandas things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She, like so many growing up in the 80s, her parents stashing away for retirement, lost her virginity on prom night, officially left the Church her freshman year and pursued her own wants.\u00a0 Her first confession after 35 years of doing what she wanted seemed daunting; she kept to the basics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cForgive me, Father, for I have sinned.\u201d She thought of the youthful man in a black suit and white collar sitting there, his iPhone just recently put down as she walked into the confessional.\u00a0 Her confession was one-word knells of a bell: \u201cPride, Envy, Lust,\u201d from the seven deadly sins portion of the sinners\u2019 pile of deviance.\u00a0 She then dove into the portion of the 10 commandments \u201cI\u2019ve not kept the first commandment of having no other God before the Lord my God.\u201d\u00a0 Intoning those words in that little closet with the Millennial priest on the other side reduced her to tears.\u00a0 She had not kept the first commandment; she had never done so.\u00a0 Her God had been herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The priest, of course, gave her a penance to perform and then absolution.\u00a0 She felt certain he returned to his phone, and she did not care; she walked out with a storied\u00a0view on life; existence had a beginning, middle and end – everyone was heading toward the end. Everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat are you reading? Don’t say any book of the Bible.\u201d\u00a0 Amanda, her best friend from grade school and fellow scoffer, asked as she plunked down into the wide and roomy leather booth of their favorite restaurant. \u00a0Amanda\u2019s wine glass sloshed dangerously about the crystal rim of her long-stemmed goblet.\u00a0 Her friend kept her strict adherence to the atheistic-borderline-agnostic-church-for-her-mother\u2019s-sake, so took every opportunity to harass her friend on her \u2018weakness, \u2019 i.e. the return to the Church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Mystery of Edwin Drood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAh, the story of a frustrated love of a young man who knows a weak-minded gigolo when he sees one but can\u2019t tell when he\u2019s been drugged by opium.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe very same. But how do you expect the young man to know he was drugged when he never knowingly used opium?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Dickens never finished that one, you know.” Ignoring her friend. “I think he died on purpose.\u00a0 ‘Take me now oh Lord because this unfinished tome will drive them all mad’.” She mimicked in a poor rendition of the Queen\u2019s English through her nose and in a deep, gravely masculine voice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amanda got her Ph.D. and taught in the local community college.\u00a0 She taught students who were more interested in engineering and computers than anything smelling of the humanities.\u00a0 Going to school with no direction in her mind, but with a vague idea that she loved to read, she persevered to her doctorate.\u00a0 To her credit, she excelled in learning literature with the modern minds\u2019 interpretation and came out of her cap and gown with the idea that she\u2019d convey to her desperate students all writers were frustrated because of an over churched society.\u00a0 Epic poetry and the novel wasn\u2019t a story but a cry for justice.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You know,” said Amanda in a gossipy voice, “since your reaffirmation into the slave-maker otherwise known as the Church, Flannery O\u2019Conner is making headway into the accolades of those prominent priests and laypeople who, like you, count beads and repeat small bits of poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Amanda was on her third glass of wine and her friend felt a bit of a betrayer as she was only on her first.\u00a0 Because of the crowded restaurant they had to wait for their usual small booth for an hour; regrettably, their wait included an amiable bartender. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like Flannery O\u2019Conner, so I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll join that stamped.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor shame!\u201d said Amanda a bit too loud. A few people looked in their direction and her friend smiled at them. \u201cFor shame!\u201d she said again in a feigned whisper and a giggle. \u201cThere you sit touting Dickens like a long-nosed Protestant. I must go into confession with you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOver Flannery O\u2019Conner?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYes,\u201d said Amanda, suddenly flat and surprisingly sober.\u00a0 \u201cOver Flannery O\u2019Conner.\u00a0 Actually, I should go to confession with you and let the whole damned bunch of them know that their interpretation of her work, their twisting and turning of the woman is disgraceful! Ignore her for decades, breeze past the fact that her life was nothing but southern good manners and her work nothing more than a rewriting of the Gospels!\u00a0 It\u2019s disgraceful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIs that how they interpret her work?\u201d \u00a0 She had always looked at Flannery O\u2019Conner\u2019s characters as beetles in the corner eating the ants and nothing like a story in the dreary pages that followed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOh dear, you do dislike Flanner O\u2019Conner.\u00a0 What happens when you two meet?\u201d Amanda looked steadily at her longtime friend, smiling in a certain smug manner.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I\u2019m hungry Amanda, starving so I think I\u2019ll leave you here to call your cab and perhaps pick up someone at the bar.\u00a0 I\u2019ll go to the late-night diner for takeout so I can finish a story that will regrettably never be finished, count my beads and thank my God I can’t be brainwashed into believing Flannery O’Connor is anyone’s philosophical property.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Oh dear, we are a little put out. You’ll get bored with being pious my dear and join me in picking up any clean looking lover at the bar one of these ole days. Let’s face it, you’re too old to have ten kids in the good Catholic fashion. Besides, you don’t have the patience for it. You should have gone into teaching with me. I can tell you it’s better to threaten them into compliance with a GPA averages. They’re so easily driven, my dear. You’ll see.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cSo what novel, pray tell, are we at now?\u201d Amanda, her best friend from High School and fellow abdicator asked as she plunked down into the wide and roomy leather booth of their favorite restaurant. Amanda\u2019s wine glass sloshed dangerously about the crystal rim of her long-stemmed goblet. Amanda retained her strict adherence to the atheistic-borderline-agnostic-church-for-her-mother\u2019s-sake, so took every opportunity to harass her friend on her \u2018weakness, \u2019 i.e. the return to the Church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[36,15],"class_list":["post-1123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-short-fiction","tag-amwritingfiction","tag-fridayreads"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1123"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1787,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1123\/revisions\/1787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}