Still

by Maggie Boyd Hare

Beth wants to breathe the air of the confessional, to feel the tightness of it and be sure that no one else is breathing there. She climbs onto the cushion on the wooden seat on the priest’s side, a side she isn’t sure she’s allowed to enter, presses her fingers to the holes in the partition, and thinks of what she came here for—the girl like her she saw at mass with yellow-green eyes, bright like a cat’s, who slipped in here and never came back out. She listens, listens. Hears the air in the small room, hears the air beyond it, the air of larger space. Or she thinks she does, she knows its shape and imagines air shifting around: vaulted ceiling with wood paneling, wooden pews, altar and the table at the altar, the cabinet locked around the corner full of holy wine, holy golden cup and plate, holy tiny hosts. Beth breathes in deep and holds it—thinks of the porcelain Christ, pale and bleeding pale blood on the cross in the alcove behind the altar table, thinks of Mary in her own alcove, swaddled in baby blue, palms pressed together, face paper-white and looking down serenely on the congregation—she lets the breath go, sends it to wrap around these figures, hopes to hear them rattle.

She peers around the dim confessional and it feels muggy, too small; the velvet cushion matted with her sweat, pricking her thighs. She stands and wants to open the door, but dares herself not to. She knows when something feels too small, you can wait it out. Like when she’s playing hide and seek, crammed up in the back of the storage closet in the basement of her grandparent’s house, legs pulled up to her chest so she fits up on the shelf beside the basinet her daddy slept in when he was little and that she maybe one day would lay a baby in real gentle. While she’s waiting up there, there is always some panic she has to get through, some feeling that she can’t breathe, some feeling that the space is gonna collapse with her in it and there’s no getting out, but she’s okay if she just keeps still, just taps each finger to her thumb one at a time, just breathes thinking about the ocean she got to swim in last summer. Where the wave pushed her down and wouldn’t let her up and she felt all those bits of shell press into her collarbone, felt her legs go up and over, tried and tried to keep her mouth shut against the hot salt water, wanted to breathe, felt her lungs go flat. Then it ended, let her stand. She walked to shore, sticky and gasping, and her momma wrapped her in a towel and sat her down and put a plastic baggie of peeled and salted cucumber slices in her hand—the kind Beth liked, from a garden, tiny and crisp, not slimy, no big slick seeds—saltier from her briny body. She sat on towel and let the sun make her hot, watched the waves come in and out, easing so gentle on the shore, just soft white foam touching the sand like her momma touched her head to check for fever, a tender press, intent, then back out. She filled her lungs again and again—every time the tide rolled in, filled them up, and when it left, let go.

In those small spaces, waiting for someone to come find her, that’s what she does, she pictures the big ocean that pinned her under being calm on the sand, touching it and moving its hand. She holds the memory of the girl in her mind, tries to call it up vividly. Sunday and she’s sitting between her momma and daddy, fanning herself with the bulletin like she’d seen old ladies do. A wasp buzzed around the big window at the end of their row and bumped sleepily into the pane, its dangling legs drifting back and forth. The priest said his communion speech, when it was time for her to sing, Christ has died, hallelujah, Christ is Risen, hallelujah, Christ will Come Again, hallelujah, le-e-lu-i-a, she did without taking her eyes from the wasp. She was afraid if she looked away she would lose it and it would sting her, but her momma nudged her so she stood to get in line for the Eucahrist and that’s how she saw the girl slip into the confessional booth. Only it wasn’t a whole girl, just the eyes of a girl, maybe a hand, like the teeth and tail of the cheshire cat in that Alice movie. The cheshire girl saw Beth looking and she swears, even though she knows God says not to, that girl’s eyes flicked to the wasp and it hit the window, bounced off, and drifted down to the ledge, started crisping in the July sun filtering through. Beth knows the cheshire girl is still in here and she had to come alone. No one could see her come in, no one could breathe this stuffy air with her, the cheshire girl could twist their life out. But Beth was not afraid, she was breathing, thinking about the ocean, waiting for those eyes.

Maggie Boyd Hare is a writer from Kentucky whose work appears in publications like the Oxford American, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Arkansas International. Her essay, “Self Portrait in Essays I Don’t Want to Write,” was named a notable essay in Best American Essays 2023. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she also worked as an instructor, a publishing assistant, and as both the design and poetry editors for Ecotone magazine.