Chastity Week

For each year of middle school, the educators carved a week out of our schedules and deemed it Chastity Week. Instead of our regularly scheduled Health class, my class was split up into two groups: boys in one and girls in another. The five boys stayed in our classroom with the yellow painted walls and our homeroom teacher, Mr. Schmerbach, while the girls were hurried off into the room that Religion class was typically held in. Its walls were coated in a faint purple, not quite lavender but just barely. On the first day of Chastity Week, Father Liam, the priest from our Catholic Church around the corner, came and had a chat with the boys. I could only blush and sink inward into my embarrassment at the thought of what they might have talked about. I never asked any of the Five what was said among them or if they learned anything new, anything that might have been… exciting. Across the hall, behind closed doors, our female Religion teacher sat all of us young ladies down and read through a Catholic Archdiocesan approved script regarding the wonders of the female body. Mrs. Mills was not someone I had wanted to tell me about how my body would go through “magical changes” during puberty but she ended up being my only source on the subject for many years.

“Now, as young girls, your bodies are going to experience something wonderful. Some of these changes might seem strange at first,” she said, “Like growing hair in places you haven’t had hair in before… And certain body parts will start to fully… develop… you know…” She waved her hands above her ironically flat chest, “And when that happens, well you’re going to have to start dressing more appropriately.”

She paused, waiting for the lightbulb of acknowledgment and understanding to flicker above our heads. We had pushed the desks out of the way and formed a semi circle with chairs, facing Ms. Mills as she sat on a stool at the front of the classroom, slightly a part of the circle but still separate. Some of the girls were visibly confused, arms crossed over their lack of development while others were glancing down at their already developed body parts, eyebrows raised at the thought of what it might mean to dress more appropriately than the school mandated uniform.

“Because of your new figures,” Ms. Mills continued.

The next day was more of the same. The Five stayed in our yellow homeroom while the girls were shuffled off to the Religion room, both places under the watchful eye of Jesus hanging on a cross above the doors. But on the third day, the third day was when things really got interesting. Instead of the priest going to the boys, he came to us; to the girls, behind the closed doors and in the purple painted Religion room, with our perpetual witness, Jesus, scrutinizing us from his perch. Father Liam felt our semi circle of plastic chairs was a bit too informal so he had us rearrange the desks back to the way they were originally. He also made sure we sat one girl to a table, far enough away from one another that we couldn’t have side conversations and he asked us to place our hands folded on top of the desks. We joined him in prayer. I wondered how silly that might’ve looked. Then I thought of how silly it must have looked with just the five boys. But then I realized they probably didn’t separate the boys up at all.

“So young ladies, I bet you’re wondering why I’m here to talk to you all today,” he said in his famously soft spoken voice. Then he raised his hands up and sort of waved them around, noticeably uncomfortable.

He slightly alters his tone to mimic what can be assumed to be the voice of a young woman, and said, “Oh, um, what is Father Liam doing here I wonder? I thought it was Chastity Week and we were only supposed to talk to Ms. Mills or Mrs. Dewar about these things?” More hand waving and awkward upper body movement followed.

“Well you would be right to assume that these are topics you talk to your female teachers about but as your priest, I am here to offer spiritual guidance regarding chastity and your virtue as young women,” his voice returning to his normal pitch. “Now when a young gal, such as yourselves, gets her first menstrual cycle, she’s no longer a child. She is now a young woman, capable of being able to take part in one of life’s greatest miracles-- childbirth! Isn’t that remarkable? Your body was designed to create life, to partake in the joys of motherhood, which is truly a blessing from God. But the events leading up to childbirth and motherhood… those are specially reserved to take place between a man and a woman after they have been married in the Church and under the eyes of God. Now, as young women who may or may not have experienced their first menstrual cycle, you must understand that your virtue is a special gift from God, one that will only be tarnished if you give it away before you’re married…”

This was about the moment my ears started bleeding. Father Liam, the man who had baptized me as a baby, heard my first confession of how I lied to my mom once about wearing leggings under my snow pants and had been to family dinners at my house, was standing there talking to us about sex, but never actually telling us what he was talking about. I wanted to curl up on the floor in a ball and cover my ears while humming songs from The Wizard of Oz. My parents hadn’t even talked to me about sex--Father Liam and Ms. Mills were not the spokespeople I wanted to educate me on the avenues of all things sexual and developmental. I wanted to stand up and yell, to walk out of the classroom and say thanks but no thanks! I felt a magnetic pull from the chair I was sitting on and my hands grasped each other tighter. I wasn’t going anywhere. I felt a part of my soul, my faith in that world I had found myself in, die a little when I heard the words, “Your body is sacred, until it’s not. Your body is sacred now because it is untouched except by the Love of the Lord.”

My body was sacred, they said. Until it wasn’t. I could not allow my feminine form to be tempting to the males around me. I had to put my body on reserve, waiting for just the right man to give my special virtuous gift to. I could not allow it to be desecrated by the malicious male genitalia without rings on our fingers, legal documentation, and of course, God, Himself. Sitting up there in Heaven. Watching. Casting down judgments from his golden throne.