by Angela Patera

When I was eleven years old I underwent a colossal anti-religious epiphany.

I was perched on the bench outside the church waiting for service to begin, admiring the new altar boy. His name was Eric and he had just joined my class. Unlike my mean-spirited classmates, he possessed an ethereal yet earthy quality, like a child out of a pre Raphaelite painting. His complexion had the hue of wheat and his hazel eyes shimmered every time someone talked to him. The headmaster always yelled at him that his unkempt hairdo would land him straight to hell because cleanliness is next to godliness but I sincerely hoped no one would cut his honey coloured locks. He was American. His mum was of Greek origin but his dad used to be a prominent member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His dad had recently met a fateful end, following a drunken car wreck. He had died on the spot, leaving Eric’s Mum to voyage through life alone with nine kids under the age of fourteen.  His mum had decided to find solace in the Greek orthodox church of her childhood, exchanging one system of oppression for another so she took her nine children across the ocean, all the way to Greece to stay with her sister Of course, Eric never talked about this personal calamity; I had heard all of that through the grapevine. Eric almost never spoke at all; as one of the teachers had told us in a mean, gossipy tone the day before he came “this new boy, the American, has something called selective mutism. His aunt says he’s smart but I think he’s a bit crazy in the head”.  I thought he was perfectly fine; he was just slowly working things out.

My parents’ choice of school was truly peculiar and it defied reason. They were staunch atheists, yet I attended one of the most conservative schools in the city. It was run by nuns and priests and a ridiculous motley crew of like-minded fundamentalists. Nestled atop a steep hill and surrounded by a dense forest, the school was housed in an austere pre-war building. The entrance to the forest was a few steps away from my house. My parents, in a questionable display of practicality, thought it would be more convenient for me to propel myself back and forth to school rather than take the bus or ride the subway. When, years later, I confronted my parents about their ridiculous choice, they looked guilty and admitted that I was a rebellious kid and that growing up in the wild 90s and early 00s, they were worried about me so they had hoped that attending such a strict school would shelter me from all the supposed threats to teenage girls: sex and drugs. For rock and roll it was too late, I was already listening to Nirvana. The only solace I found amidst this absurdity was the early morning and late afternoon ritual of walking through the forest. This forest was my pathway to freedom, my happy place where I could put my headphones on, listen to music and unwind.

Every passing moment spent in that school felt like a descent into the abyss. Attending service every Friday morning at the local church was mandatory. Confessing our childish transgressions to a priest (that also doubled as the Headmaster) every Thursday afternoon was also mandatory. The girls were made to wear a school uniform consisting of a long blue button up dress and a thick cardigan while the boys wore nylon shirts that caused them to sweat profusely, strict-looking jackets and thick trousers. Despite the fervent veneration of PE, we were not allowed to switch into sports attire. PE carried a sense of martyrdom; both girls and boys were thrust into impossible challenges like competing in impromptu track and field challenges or running endless Marathons. Participation in either the school’s volleyball or basketball teams was also mandatory because it allegedly boosted team spirit. Football was forbidden as it was castigated as a sport for “the retarded” while dancing was also prohibited on the grounds that it was the first step towards debauchery. Although the school boasted an open, Olympic sized swimming pool, wearing swimming suits was considered to be a taboo due to the immodesty it entailed. But we swam often, especially during the winter months: our task involved diving into the muddy swimming pool wearing our full school uniform and our shoes just to fetch a brick from the bottom of the pool. The person who came up first holding the brick won.

I was not particularly fast but I excelled at long jump. Doing the long jump in my school uniform was a nightmare as I always ended up encrusted in dirty, sticky sand, with nasty friction burns on my buttocks and the back of my thighs. Corporal punishment was not only allowed; it was actually encouraged. Nobody would beat us black and blue but a few slaps on the face would do the job.  All classes sounded like sermons. Science was interesting but dogma always reigned as the teachers always concluded lessons with the quote “God hung the stars in the sky”. Biology could have been fascinating too but quite early on I got the sense that everything was presented to us through the misty lens of religion. English used to be my favorite subject. It was a beacon of hope, the only time during the school day I actually found myself paying attention in class. Our amazing teacher defied the status quo of the school. She followed the school syllabus but at the end of the class she wrote the names of authors and poets we would enjoy reading on the blackboard, make us memorize them and then quickly erase them with a wet sponge. That’s how I was introduced to Judith Blume and Virginia Woolf and Nathaniel Hawthorne and Stephen King. One day, one of my pious classmates, zealously devoted to the authoritative regime of the school, reported this amazing teacher and she was fired on the spot.

So, there I was, eleven years old, on a sweltering May morning, perched on the marble bench outside the church, eyeing Eric, the altar boy. Our eyes met a couple of times and we exchanged a few shy smiles. It had been a crappy morning. The previous day, our Headmaster had been sick so our confession sessions had been postponed. However, unless we confessed our sins, we were barred from attending the service. Skipping the weekly service led, unfailingly, to detention. Thus, we half-heartedly agreed to go to school earlier than usual and confess in the morning, right before service. I usually found a couple of trivial offences to account: stealing stationery from my dad’s office. Telling white lies.  Wearing lipstick.  Being rude to my mum. Sometimes, when I was in a creative mood, I would add other “sins” to my usual repertoire that I knew would scandalize the priest: watching the MTV Music Awards. Listening to rock bands that most definitely participated in Satan worshipping. Painting my toenails black. On that particular morning, I could think of nothing. I hadn’t done anything wrong as far as I could remember. No great sins to confess. But the priest said that only Jesus was free of sin so I had to think of something. He sounded restless and kept on pressing me “Come on, you are a woman, you are the cursed offspring of Eve, sin is in your blood”. I wondered if he told  my boy classmates the same things . Did he chastise wicked Antony who kicked the school cat and drowned her kittens in a bucket? Had Andrew ever confessed that one day he had knocked me down on the dirty toilets floor, put his dirty shoe on my face to immobilize me, raised my school dress and showed my underpants to his idiotic brother? What did Benjamin have to do to repent for the sin of throwing bricks at the windows of the poor Pakistani family down the road and calling their children names? I felt my blood boil with rage. The priest kept on bubbling about the original sin and women luring men into sinning. Wrath was my true sin but I didn’t feel any remorse. Suddenly I felt so weary. I felt like that confession session would never end. I yearned to get rid of the priest, get the service over with, have a couple of hours of school lessons and head back home. I decided to fabricate a tale. I lied that I had smoked a cigarette the previous day. The priest nearly had a heart attack. He yelled at me for a couple of minutes and finally I was dismissed.

Finally out in the church yard, my gaze sought Eric’s honey locks. I saw him sit under a tree all alone. I stared at him until he stared back. I wanted to go and talk to him but we were not allowed to talk to classmates of the opposite sex outside class. I wondered what transgressions he had confessed. Eventually, we were summoned inside the church to attend service. The stifling heat inside the dark church combined with the intense scent of frankincense and my own feelings of fury were making me feel dizzy and light headed. Suddenly, everything went dark. I was taken outside by the PE teacher and the janitor. They splashed a bottle of holy water on my face and one of the nuns told me that my fainting spell was a fitting punishment for poisoning my holly body with tobacco. So, confidentiality during confession proved to be a myth. Most probably all of the nuns already knew I had allegedly smoked a cigarette. I complained that the heat and the frankincense had given me a headache and she yelled that only the Devil himself got a headache from frankincense.

I was forced to get back inside despite my state. I found myself engulfed in a passionate sermon about the sinful impulses of the body. To my terror, something resonated inside of me for the first time. I realized I was experiencing some kind of unexplained bodily impulse towards Eric. It wasn’t some kind of sexual attraction, the way I had seen it happen in films. I was eleven and a half, flat chested, tall and awkward like a praying mantis. It felt like there was this unsettling magnetic pull towards him. I wanted to touch his face, run my fingers through the honey-colored curls of his hair. I yearned for his friendship. The priest addressing the sermon kept on talking about the sick urges of the human body and the weakness of the spirit. I felt uneasy. I usually shook off these silly sermons about the evils of the modern world but this one felt like it was addressed to me personally. I felt guilty. I realized I was once again on the verge of fainting or throwing up. Something was constricting my throat, suffocating me. Little did I know that I was experiencing my very first panic attack.  I ran frantically outside the church and stood on the marble bench, gasping for air. My heart was pounding so fast I thought it would break my bony chest and land on the marble stairs.

Thankfully, nobody thought to look for me so I spent a good twenty minutes outside, taking deep breaths and trying to regain my composure. I was sweating profusely so I took off my cardigan, unbuttoned my dress and pulled my sleeves up, only to realize I had erupted in hives. I found a bottle of lukewarm water left outside the church and wet my face and the roots of my hair. If one of the nuns saw me, she would report me to the Headmaster straight away but little did I care. I heard the bells ring; I looked up and saw Eric descend the bell tower, still in his altar boy vestments. My heart skipped a beat. He saw me in this desperate state, tears streaming down my face; hair wet like a Medusa and came towards me. He asked me how I was feeling. It was the first time I had heard him speak. His voice was soft and somewhat husky. I blurted out that I felt like dying. He gave me a sad smile, caressed my hair and went right back inside. I decided to pull myself together, put my cardigan on and button my shirt all the way to the top. The pocket of my cardigan felt heavy. I reached inside of it and touched something that felt like a credit card. It was a plasticized image of Saint Pelagia along with her short biography. Apparently, she was revered as “Saint Pelagia of Antioche” and she used to be the most renowned “harlot” of Antioche. She didn’t do much. At some point she grew sick of city life and decided to disguise herself as a monk and live somewhere in the desert. Pelagia died as a result of extreme asceticism, which had emaciated her to the point she could no longer be recognized. Upon the discovery that this popular monk had been a woman, the holy fathers tried to keep it a secret, but the gossip spread and her relics drew pilgrims from as far off as Jericho and the Jordan valley. I thought that in her early days as a “harlot” she had offered more to the local community. I turned the card and on the back I saw a handwritten message “Next time you do anything, think: would Jesus approve of it? Remember, he’s always watching you”. One of the nuns had probably slipped it inside my pocket as some point. Was Jesus really that interested in my extra bar of chocolate or my black nail polish or my sinful attraction to Eric instead of looking over to protect the hundreds of children dying every day because of war or disease or negligence? What kind of masterplan allowed despicable acts like child prostitution and rape and torture to keep on happening? And if it was indeed God’s will, then I didn’t want to have anything to do with this God or any God as a matter of fact.

It wasn’t that easy, of course. I endured another six years in that school, an arduous cycle of being subjected to mandatory weekly confessions and paranoid sermons, patriotic rants and sexual oppression. Humiliation and guilt.  God’s wrath and sin.  Angel or harlot. Heaven or Hell. The girls were earmarked for marriage and motherhood or the ascetic life of a nun. The boys could pursue any career they wished as long as they got married and fathered children. Eric was constantly bullied by the boys. They called him a fag, they pulled down his school trousers, they rubbed dirt on his face, they even tried to drown him –just for kicks- during one of our brick-diving swimming sessions. Finally, half way through the eighth grade, he was sent to an all-boys school in Ohio. I was consumed by rage. I got rebellious. By ninth grade I had stopped going to the mandatory service and I refused to confess. These deviations from the school rules triggered a deluge of detentions. They summoned my parents to school to discuss my “condition”. I dyed my hair and pierced my nose. I tested their limits and they tested mine. I was a stellar student and a good athlete. They couldn’t expel me but they could break me through relentless repetitions of divine punishment for my sinful life choices. Half way through my senior year, I decided that it wasn’t worth fighting for. I skipped classes and showed up only on exam dates. My grades remained impeccable. On the last day of the senior year, I fled, ran all the way through the forest and vowed never to set foot in that school again. In retrospect, I realize I may sound melodramatic. It wasn’t something extreme but maybe that’s where the problem was.  It wasn’t a Magdalene sisters kind of situation. I couldn’t take legal action as I had never been physically abused. No laws were broken. The problem was that as long as no one intervenes or struggles against this kind of manipulative oppression, such schools, such regimes, such systems are bound to persist indefinitely. Mine was a school run by people who believed that they would create devoted servants of God’s will. At the age of eleven I realized that I just didn’t want to be one of them.

Angela Patera is an author and teacher based in Athens, Greece.