HUSH, MOAN

My assigned roommate, the “buddy” in the Buddy System, was reticent as well. Only spoke three or four words in total before stepping aside to call her mom. They talked in hushed voices, too. The trip was fine. She’s fine, she’s nice. I’m fine. Etcetera. This entire place was quiet, my heartbeat the only unhushed sound. I noted this down, also, rolling it around my mind, tasting it. Me, my thumping heart, and all the bright and silent people.

The chapel was big, bigger than the word chapel might suggest. No masses were held here, but it held altars for the Filipino saints (all two of them) and the Virgin Mary. Three lines of pews, columns and rows, cheap but polished. Center stage was He, chest and stomach chiseled to shit and wiry arms nailed to dark oak. Tan, blood brimming and boiling under the surface. I had to look away from Him.

It was obviously a place of prayer, silent contemplation, hushed confessions. There was no room for me here, I felt it strong as anything, but after all of that I wasn’t sure why. All around me were bright, silent, salient shining heads, haloed and hallowed, hollowed-out, pinpoint pinpricks. A throng around me. As one, we all knelt down to worship.

That night—a hushed night—a rumor rushed through the dormitories almost instantaneously; as if passing not from room to room or even person to person, but from heartbeat to heartbeat, a melodic thrum. A boy had been caught doing something only boys do in exactly the place boys shouldn’t do it in. A boy had been caught in the chapel, and it was plain he hadn’t been there to pray.

DAY 2

Another day, another fire; tall white wax candles looking lean and almost oily in the shifting colored light. Three on either side and one sat center. I also sat center pew, near the back. I calmed at the symmetry, at my vision of the halved candle and halved flame; and flames on either side of me. It was morning, and cold for it.

Waves of people with dark hair, tall to short to tall to tall to short and short and short, curls I could surf through… I wasn’t paying attention. I was people-watching, noticing, noticing. We were all praying, ostensibly, quietly, our congregation of the talls and shorts, though I saw decks of cards and jackstones glinting from the corners of my eyes.

My roommate had her hands in her lap beside me, sat primly with ankles crossed, and I saw her hands had perfect little oval divots instead of mountainous knuckles where her fingers met palm. I noted this down, too. I kept noting it. I tried my best to stop. She looked just fine. Even her calves were finely shaped. Forcibly making myself look up, I met His red-brown eyes. They were varnished and gleaming and judgemental. His palms were open, blood dripping from his digits. I stood up and walked away.

A group of girls is called a giggle. A group of girls with me in it can only be called a sigh. Me, alone? I call that an article. I had dreams, I did—I was close enough to feel my fingertips touch gold. Something was stopping me, though, and that something was here with me.

That something wasn’t a boy—but a boy did appear. Boy of rumor, of creeping and skulking and sulking. We’d never talked, but as he walked toward me he looked as though he wanted to rectify that. There was a palm tree directly behind him, his common brownblack hair giving way to trunk and leaf and coconut; another sight. It distracted me enough that I never even tried to get away.

When he stopped short of three feet away from me, I noticed he was shaking in his polished black leather shoes. Like a nervous dog, with mangy hair and a thousand fleas. Maybe worms, as well. His legs were long and lean and unsteady.

What to say? He was clearly at a loss. My heart went out to him despite myself. But the rumors, the allegations were a squat brick wall between us—I just couldn’t hop over it.

“Hi,” he said. Common. Tilted higher at the end. “I’m Jed.”

Again acting against myself, I asked about his night. I was told, haltingly, hauntingly. I listened. I nodded. I noticed. I noted it all down.

DAY 3

That morning, I was woken by a flash of light so sudden it burned. My eyes shot open. It was her. My roommate, my Buddy, of the porcelain hands. She held her phone in her right hand, her left hand on the light switch. Her bed was messy and spotted with red—it caught my eye like I was drawn to it, drawn for it. I wanted to say something. I didn’t have anything to say. Awkwardly, my mouth watered. With another click she turned the light off, plunging me into a hushed darkness. Her brown hair caught the moonlight, though, and shattered me in half.

An auspicious start to the day, though I’d fallen back to sleep afterwards for an hour or two. It had set a precedent. She was even more reticent. Even mice squeaked more than my roommate, her black leather shoes and fine ankles making no sound except a whisper on the tiles.

The chapel was empty except for two silent priests. Everyone was having breakfast, raising spoons and forks to respective mouths as one, over at the big dormitory building. The pious quiet looked over at me and away, quick like I was nothing to worry about. Nothing to be noted here.

There He was, center still, immoving and immovable; His cheekbones cut through the soft details of his face, his downturned mouth and eyes.

Footsteps behind me. I knew it was Jed without turning to look.

Jed was a character the way I wanted to be a character, cutting through life, but in no way was he a character I aspired to be. He had been caught, twice, thrice, doing unsavory things in public places. He had many labels in our deeply Catholic elementary school—pervert, maniac, fucking weirdo. The curse felt glorious, felt good and holy when directed at his shaky frame. It turned to ash in my mouth, though, the unsaid words, when I considered that we were something approaching friends.

His reputation wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been. All things considered. My Christian Life Education teacher, a balding yet lovable man around 40 years of age, had defended him. Boys had urges, he said, urges that they could never fully suppress, and no matter how unsavory these urges were and how often they were acted upon, He would always forgive them. It was excusable, understandable; another thing that separated boys from girls. Girls had impeccable control. Girls had no excuse.

Who could ever understand those mythical pagan creatures, those girls?

So it wasn’t so bad. People took that teacher’s word as law, so they excused Jed, excused and excused and excused him. That first night, though, in the chapel, burned bright in everyone’s memory. It quickly became a legend no one ever brought up to Jed directly.

They said the CLE teacher had caught him, armed with a plastic torch and a rosary. Jed, allegedly, had been front center pew, as close to the stone altar and faux marble steps as possible. Above him, He shone, every muscle flexed. Even though it was all in my imagination I had to look away, physically look away, and there beside me stood Jed, here and now and real. Staring up at Him with no guilt or shame. Something undefinable in my chest tried to get itself defined, but I pushed it down.

We stood together, Jed and I. Front center. When the chapel started filling up with students, the pious quiet left to be pious and quiet somewhere else, I heard a delighted whisper alight from everywhere behind us; rumors, budding rumors, those beautiful, those fast and melodic beating-heart thrums.

DAY 4

San Lorenzo Ruiz was who our school was named after. A martyr! Undoubtedly the best class of saint. Killed off early and sinless for it. He was Chinese-Filipino and persecuted for his faith. He was our first, our pride and joy. Patron saint of everyone I knew. White robe, head thrown back, brown as my skin was brown, the same nose, the same hair, clasping a rosary in his fingers.

San Pedro Calungsod was the Catholic Filipino’s second son. Another martyr, another Peter to join the line of Peters and Peter-adjacents, another healer. Pedro had a palm leaf, hand over heart, different angle than Lorenzo; head turned rightwards. Same white shirt, brown skin, common hair in a different haircut. I knew both of them by sight.

Their stained-glass likenesses at their respective altars were more approachable than Him. Their torsos were less defined and they had large flowing shirts on, their expressions gentle in their pain. Their torture didn’t seem apparent, both looking as if they died quietly in their sleep with His hand cradling them, bringing them upwards to Heaven. I knew better. All of these men had gone through the worst sorts of pain, which was their point, their meaning. Faces calm because, not a despite, not a misinterpretation or an anachronism. It must’ve felt like the easiest thing in the world. I lit a candle at San Lorenzo’s and San Pedro’s altars. Kneeling, I found I had no words to mutter for a prayer—I spoke Tagalog, smatterings of Spanish and Latin, but I didn’t speak their language: the language of complete and utter faith.

Next, I went to the Mother. A snowy white, a distinct blue, a red tear. Back of her hand facing forward, fingers crossed some way. She had divots instead of knuckles, too, perfect dimples where fingers met palm. She was sculpted from some sort of stone or plaster, not flat stained glass, and her face was agonized yet perfect and smooth in its agony. She seemed younger than her son.

Finally— Him— of the flowing hair and fine form. Hard as marble. I went on my knees in front of him and stayed there as the sun burned its way through the sky. Committing to my mind every detail—all ten of his carved toes, his calves, his knees turned inwards, and his face, that holy, holy visage. A circlet of thorns and one of light. I took no notice of anyone else, just the four holy effigies, my appointed wardens to my personalized Hell.

The day passed me by as I begged forgiveness from each of them in turn.

DAY 5

The problem, I felt, about the church and the school and the people and everything, was that they were all utterly unsubtle. Metaphor was saved for higher forms of being. Regular people had to go through life being wholly and completely themselves.

My roommate could’ve been a stand-in for the Blessed Virgin, lookswise, but she wasn’t. She made me feel unholy like an idol or a boy; it followed that she herself must also be unholy. There had to be a length of rope or ribbon or stalk connecting our chests as one. There had to be.

It can’t have stopped at me. With me.

Waking up again to a flash of light—but She was still asleep. It can’t have been her. It had come from the window. Someone crunched on by, ignoring the leaves underfoot, ignoring the sinister beings hidden by black night. I couldn’t see their face. The sun was two, three hours away. I let the light disappear, and then I opened the window and followed.

It only took me a bit to realize They were going to the chapel. The doors should’ve been locked, they should be kept safe and lonely every night, I knew, but They passed right through them. They had opened such a tiny crack and slid so effortlessly right through that it seemed as though the doors were water.

I didn’t follow immediately. I stood there and noticed, took careful notice… stained glass and marble and stainless steel crucifix. Palm trees and bougainvillea arches. This place was idyllic and silent and objective, had been built to the specifications of The Garden, had been built to keep specific evils in and ward every other evil out. I thought about shifting through, cutting through water like a cartoon shark’s fin. That’s when I decided quick as anything to slide through the door as well, following Them to the abyss, the cavern, the center altar.

Darkness—but I knew where the candles were. I sensed Them, their presence, somewhere in the front middle. So I stayed by the sides. I let my presence be known in the absence of any alternatives. Feeling in the dark for wax and cheap metal, I found what I was looking for and lit a tall white candle.

It was Jed. I had known it would be. He didn’t twitch—or, at least, he didn’t twitch because of me. He had himself in his hand. Jed was staring up at Him, writhing in quiet and gentle pleasure-pain.

I didn’t try to go near him. It was a private moment, but one that didn’t repel or repulse me. Instead, I went over to a pew by the side, and stared at Her in her marble-stone-plaster-gold glory. I sat down, still staring. Her image was clear, so clear—beyond human, approaching metaphor, simile, the sin of personification—the sin of impersonation—the impersonal offensiveness of calling a person by someone else’s name in bed———

What to do? What did I do? What ever did I do? I’ll tell you.

Slid my left hand down. Pulled my right hand up. Slope of your forehead—bottom of your chest—left shoulder right shoulder—I knew exactly which parts of my body to touch. I had always known.

🕯️🌙