I’m a sinner. That’s the message I got repeatedly from the Catholic church I was brought up in. And my parents seemed to agree. So in addition to attending mass every Sunday, they made me go to confession every few months to cleanse me of my sins.
Once, when I was 8, I told my mom before a scheduled confession, “I can’t think of anything I did bad.”
“Ayyy, if you think hard enough, you’ll think of something.” Her tone suggested it was highly unlikely I hadn’t sinned in the two months since my last confession.
So I waited in the confession line, five adults deep. I noticed one woman slip out of the booth with tears in her eyes. What had she done, I wondered. I envied her: Although she appeared upset, at least she had a sin to tell the priest. As the line dwindled and I got closer to the confession booth, my hands grew sweaty. I prayed to God for a miracle. Please, pretty please, let me remember a sin. By the time I kneeled down in the confession booth, panic clutched me as my mind drew a blank on my bad deeds.
Moments before the priest in the adjacent booth slid open the wooden window panel, the solution came to me like Jesus rays shooting through a cloudy sky.
“Um, I hit my sister,” I blurted, even though we hadn’t yanked each other’s hair or pinched each other’s arms since the last confession.
“Um, I yelled at my parents,” I said, even though I hadn’t raised my voice for fear my mom would slap my open palm with the fly swatter, smeared sometimes with fresh fly gut.
After confessing my imagined sins, my heart slammed back and forth inside my ribcage. It must have sounded like the rhythmic beat of those hanbok-clad Korean female drummers whose arms become blurred as they bang multiple hanging drums.
I almost expected the priest in the adjacent booth to peer through the wooden grate and lock eyes with me. Would I then have to fess up to the sin of making up sins? The priest never looked up. He said a prayer. He sent me off with directions to say two Hail Marys and two Our Fathers as penance. Instead of reciting my penance, I kneeled with hands clasped and stared at the parishioners in the wooden pews in front of me. I counted how many Korean women had permed hair versus straight hair: 24 permed; 5 straight. The permed women win. Hooray!
Perhaps, if I had been more attentive and daydreamed less, I could now claim to be a good Korean Catholic, the virtuous type who goes to church every Sunday, does missionary work in South America, teaches Bible study and diligently saves lost souls via recruitment to church ice cream socials or prayer groups.
Instead, I might go to church twice a year, at most, for Easter or Christmas service as a compromise to my Catholic Filipino husband. Despite the priest’s reprimanding of parishioners during those masses for their irregular attendance. And I will flee if someone tries to recruit me to her newly formed church or Bible study class.
