It was summer 2002. The year before I lost my innocence totally and irrevocably; the year before I became a parent. The losses of innocence started early on, likely predating even my toddler remembrances. But this was the first public verbal instance.
We were at a summer fête. I was there in my rôle as Vicar’s daughter: the expression of his purity. In his capacity as enabler, listener, parish priest he walked around, joking with stall holders and local farmers, writing appointments into his Filofax. He had already cut the ribbon. Declared the fête open. Been suitably ceremonial. Now he was jovial, plain clothes policeman of his ecclesiastical order. Clerk in Holy Orders stowed in the vestry, ready for Sunday’s liturgy and ritual. This was Saturday. A day for drinking ale and bowling between hay bales. A day for eating cream teas and counselling newly-weds. A day for hob-nobbing with Morris Dancers. Who needed a Vestal Virgin. At that precise moment. When I was caught off-guard, innocently sharing conversation with a congregation member. Then the strike: “We need a Vestal Virgin”. I didn’t know what it meant.
I didn’t know what it meant.
I didn’t know what it meant. Only that it wasn’t me. I thought they said Vessel Virgin, and my mind threatened for a split-second to tumble down a nearby rabbit hole of thoughts to do with bearing clean water and a Holy Child. I slammed the brakes on my internal literary investigations, and tried desperately to remain present, to get out of being nailed to a crucifix for which I was not worthy. I guess I was dissociating. There are, for me, trigger words that will separate me from my present self. They rip apart facets aspects sinews of myself as a bullet would. Trigger words. Gunning for me. Virgin is one of those.
I heard their words in slow motion,
“W-e — n-e-e-d — a — V-e-s-t-a-l — V-i-r-g-i-n” –.
I moved quickly, my external spliced from my questioning internal. Inside, I turned those words, unfamiliar, over in my mind. Outside, I fled behind my father’s back. He wasn’t wearing his cassock. There were no forgiving folds in which I could envelop myself. His priestly pardon couldn’t help me now. Couldn’t help him, now.
I’m shorter than my father. I’m slight. Or I was then. Before children. He’s not a big man, my father. He’s not a big physical presence, so why does he terrorise my dreams, Goliath to my Israelite army? He was useless in that instant. Overarching (but providing no support or defense) theme for my life: the non-protective Protector. His was the place to say, “Shall we ask one of these young ladies?”, and indicate a local farmer’s girl. Oh, wait, no: that would be weird. That would indicate there were some non-virginal aspect about me. Can’t have that. How will the Vicar stay unbesmirched?
So he said nothing.
I was brought out from my useless hiding place, hoisted high above the now-gathering crowd, so all could see my non-virginity (ironically, I wore a white top that day), and I could not die of shame in the brightening sun.
That wasn’t the ugly part.
The ugly part came first, when a woman unknown suddenly screeched, “She’s not a virgin! She’s not a virgin!”, her finger defining me in the air it broke with its demarcating stab, her grating cackle of delight shrilling and piercing the breath around my ears.
So, woman whose name I never learned, this is probably addressed to you.
A benediction (that’s posh for kind words):
May your daughters die in their virginity; unblemished, unbesmirched, unspotted, unwanted, unlusted after, unabused.
May their purity blind you with its whiteness, making your shadow the embodiment of seen evil.
May their separation unto an ideal split your life in half, leaving you ever bereft, ever ideology-less, ever purposeless.
May you yearn for their children – your grandchildren – and go mad, imagining them at your hands, pulling, asking, loving.
May you live long, long, and long, feeling every moment of childlessness more keenly because you are childed, and they are not.
May you have no answer to their desperate, “Why?”, and may your full quiver separate them from you in life through jealousy, and in death through different destinies.
May you be eternally tormented by that phrase Vestal Virgin, ever see me in your dreams, lifted higher and higher, my own children surrounding me.
May you reap back on your own head what you sowed, and learn, at the last, to never ever ever criticise the child for the sins of the father; learn too late to never mock the abused; learn too late that rape may make a child a mother, may unvirginify a Vicar’s daughter, may separate separate separate.
Author
thinkspeakrun@gmail.com