Reconciliation

by Cal Y. Pygia

 

In the old days, the act of reciting one's sins to the priest was known as "confession." Today, the same act is called "reconciliation." By informing the priest as to the wrongs that one has committed—or as to the good deeds that one has left undone—one seeks to reconcile him- or herself with a righteous God who is both just and merciful. Today, in some churches, the penitent sinner has the option of seating him- or herself across from the priest, in the same room, face to face, while he or she confesses his or her sins. In the old days, confession was done in secret, the sinner entering a confessional booth that adjoined the booth in which his or her confessor sat, with only a screened window between them, across which could be drawn a wooden panel. The new approach suggests, perhaps, that the sinner need not be ashamed of his or her wrongdoing. What was done in secret can be confessed openly and unashamedly. In the past, the implication was that sinful behavior was shameful and that humility required a confession that was, if not exactly secret, private.

Henrietta Samson preferred the confessional booth to the face-to-face encounter with the priest. She liked the darkness of the cubicle. She preferred the privacy it afforded her. She favored the secrecy. What she shared with the priest, Father Bender, was something that she would admit only to him and to the God whom they both served, and she wasn't eager to see the face of the priest to whom she confessed her sins. In truth, she did feel as though her sins were shameful. To her, they were disgraceful. They were appalling enough for her to wish not to show her face, and she welcomed the dark and silent confines of the confessional booth and the wall that it imposed between her and the priest.

She stepped into the vast interior of the church, which was empty and dark, with only the afternoon sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windows, to spill across the blood-red carpet and the white linen cloth that covered the altar beneath the great crucifix that showed her Lord and Savior nailed to the heavy timber of the ancient cross. Like the Holy of Holies, the innermost chamber of her church was empty—or seemingly so.

She made her way down the center aisle, past the empty pews. The silence seemed as sensible to her as if it were a great, crushing weight, waiting to fall. She looked at the crucifix. The figure of the Christ slumped upon the cross. His head was bowed, his features contracted with the agony of his passion, and his side rent from the point of the centurion Longinus' spear. She was conscious that her sin had added to the weight of the grief and misery of the Son of God, that her wicked behavior had helped to crucify God Almighty, the Creator-become-Redeemer. Her guilt lay upon her as an overpowering burden. Her eyes filled with tears at the thought of the pain and suffering she had caused her Savior not only once but daily.

Henrietta was young. She was more than merely pretty. She was beautiful. She was gorgeous, and she drew the attention of men wherever she went, even though she dressed modestly and wore little makeup. She excited men to lust, although she did nothing more than enter a room or reply to a question that a man asked her. She knew that she enflamed men's passions without trying to do so, but her conscience was clear in regard to this occurrence, for she did nothing to provoke such behavior.

For years, she had denied her femininity. She had hidden it beneath thick, shapeless clothing. She had worn extra-large shirts to conceal her magnificent breasts, and she had worn loose-fitting pants to shroud the fullness of her smooth, round bottom. She had foregone blush and eye shadow and lip gloss and perfume. She had worn her hair short and covered it with scarves and hats so that no man would see the radiant golden locks. She had repressed her own fiery sexuality and suppressed her femininity. In doing so, she had imagined that she was doing the will of God. Lately, she had come to see that she was insulting him; by hiding the beauty that he had created, as his gift to her, she was suggesting that her beauty was a shameful, rather than a glorious, thing. She had been ungrateful and unappreciative of God's gift, and it was this sin of which she had become conscious and for which she felt guilty and ashamed.

She paused to genuflect before the altar. Lord, forgive me, she prayed, as a tear of remorse trickled down her cheek.

She crossed the church to the confessional booth that occupied a dark corner of the structure, opened the door, and stepped into the close confines of the upright box. "Forgive me, Father," she implored, "for I have sinned."

"What is the nature of your sin, my daughter?" the priest asked.

Since becoming conscious of her wrongdoing, Henrietta had sought a way to put her sin into words. She had not been successful. The words that came to mind did not express the sense of wrong, the burden of guilt, or the weight of shame that crushed her, nor did they communicate her remorse. Until two years ago, Henrietta had been known as Henry, and he had been the son, rather than the daughter, or Henry and Linda Samson. She, who turned men's thoughts to lust, was, the year before last, a man herself. As a boy, Henrietta—or Henry—had learned that sex was intended for one purpose, and one purpose only—to produce offspring within the context of marriage. Aware that, as a transsexual, she could not give birth to children, Henrietta had hidden her charms within large, loose-fitting garments and shunned the use of cosmetics. It would not do, she had told herself, countless times, to encourage romantic notions in the hearts and minds of men, for they should be husbands and fathers, not merely lovers. For her to excite them to lust was to commit a grave sin, especially since her sin would encourage sin among her admirers as well. However, lately, she had come to understand that she was a creature of God as much as anyone else. The same deity who permitted two-headed snakes and calves, albino animals, Siamese twins, and bacteria and viruses had created her, roses, sunsets, and transsexuals, including Henrietta herself. If transsexuals were a mystery, so were many other creatures, but, surely, before she'd been created in the womb, God had known that Henrietta would be born of Henry and that the child who'd started life as a boy would end it as a woman. Once she'd seen this truth, Henrietta saw, further, that in hiding her beauty, she was concealing a gift of God, for it was he who had made her as lovely as the most magnificent woman born of women. To hide the light of her beauty from the world was as sinful as to hide any other gift that God bestowed upon a man or woman, whether intelligence, wisdom, artistic ability, strength, or love. These were the revelations that the Lord God had shown her in the past several weeks. Convinced of the truth of her understanding, she had put off the hats and scarves, the extra-large shirts, and the baggy trousers. She went bare-headed now, revealing the great, radiant curls of her blonde hair and displayed the fabulous curves of her full breasts, round buttocks, and long, tapering legs. She also used cosmetics, accentuating her natural loveliness with eye shadow, blush, and lip gloss. She showcased the beauty that God had given her, rather than shamefully concealing it. Of course, she had to admit, in her case, God had had more than a little help from plastic surgeons. Still, it had been God who had given them the knowledge and skill to sculpt and shape and mold her into a more womanly and feminine form of herself. She was as fetching as any screen goddess, model, or singing diva, past or present, even with the male genitals with which she hadn't been able to bring herself to part. She was, after all, a shemale, not a female. She was an androgyne, a hermaphrodite. Neither fully male nor fully female; she transcended sex, just as she transcended gender.

The priest coughed politely, before prompting his parishioner to answer his previous question, which he now asked a second time: "What is the nature of your sin, my daughter?"

No doubt, Father Bender would have a few follow-up questions to what she was about to confess, she thought, taking her rosary in hand. She took a deep breath, and then declared, "I have lived my life as a man, Father, when I am neither male nor female, but a new creature in Christ Jesus, our Lord."

  

  

  

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