If you asked Sister Evelyn what she
thought about homosexuality, she would roll her eyes in a semi-circle, set her
piercing pair of brownish red cornea on you and inhale. After that, she exhaled
a fiery warning; “you will burn in hell if you thought of that even a minute in
your head!“ And if she caught you reading “any of those books” she would
virtually drag you by the ears, expose you before the others and declare
“Listen, if anyone allowed these stuff to stay even a minute in their brain, they
will be possessed by the devil!”After the scorching moment of shaming, the
fellow was put on counseling for a week.
No one enjoyed the eerie feeling of walking
down the corridor on Thursday evening to meet Sister Evelyn for counseling. The
dead silence that accompanied the wait in her dimly lit office, and the thick stiff
look of her brown curtains were enough to make you pass out…and when she
strolled out of the closet behind the curtains, she poured you a cup of hot
tea, whose vapor added to the steam and pressure in the room. And then she
hissed verses at you from “revelations” about the end times and about the mark of
the beast. In the end you came out sweating and sobbing, and hating church. After
two weeks, you learnt from your mistakes and found a better way to avoid being
caught; Like covering the cover of your “Falling for seduction” novel with a
“Living with Jesus” magazine page. Because somehow it seemed that even though
we were warned against the devil, we were more afraid of Sister Evelyn and the apocalyptic
judgment she pronounced on the head of her culprit.
In July, the Girls Camp for the Church
took off with Parents dropping off their sulking daughters at the Ave Maria
Retreat Centre, into the awaiting arms of none other but Sister Evelyn and one
other Deaconess Sarah, who said, the girls were in safe hands. I for one did
not feel “safe” around a woman who judged me for the color of my lipstick.
“Only harlots wear that thing, go wash it off in the bathroom and take out the
chewing gum…”, went Sister Evelyn’s strict voice. I was off on a bad footing
for this years’ camp. And I hated Mum in my heart for bringing up this whole
idea in the first place. I may have had a better summer holiday if I had just
run off with Dad back to the U.S.
“Well, I know some of you have
already turned 18, and some of you have lived abroad and probably have some
“stuff” mixed up with your faith…” she gave me a glance, “ but we are all here
to drop off our preconceived ideas about what “growing up” means, what
“fashion” means in fact what everything means today in the modern sense and
focus on what the Bible says about “the woman”. So now, piercings red lipsticks,
short skirts, shorts… she stretched the latter, obviously because that was what
I was wearing for the opening gathering “have to come off your bodies even
before we start this program. “ When I looked around, indeed I was the only one
with shorts, so I made for the bathroom door where Deaconess Sarah stood in her
own version of a modest woman’s dressing, long dotted top with a way below the
knee loose skirt, and a head band.
“Yeah right, modesty indeed”
“What did you say Victoria?”
“I said thanks indeed”
“You’re welcome. That is what Christ
would have done. Our verse for this year’s conference ….” The solemn voice died
in my ears as I made for the bathroom. “Mum, it’s a prison camp” I shrieked
through a conflicting network connection, “ I can’t believe I’ll be without
Instagram for a month” and ”oh lord!” no “gossip girls” no “lying game”, none
of my favorite series for a month! No Mp3 players allowed went the last snatch
from my back pocket as my earphones stringed along.
“It’s the principle behind that never
changes,” Sister Evelyn explained with all her force as if she could read my
mind. “…The underlying faith of these women when it came to the promises of
God! It still works. Faith works in today’s world and that is what we are going
to deal with this weekend, cultivating Faith in the midst of controversy, and
holding on to God in the storm. So, I want every girl to list 7 promises of God
in her life and then, we will meet up after lunch to talk of the reality of God’s
promises and what it means to have Faith in God’s word.
During siesta I found something more
interesting to do other than writing the promises of God. I wrote in my diary a
long account of my present state of quasi in-existence. I wrote about my brother
who died last year and how he loved scuba diving. If only God had saved him
from drowning I would be with him this summer, I wrote a short poem on the
forbidden love I felt for Frederick, a rascal who may never finish school or get
a job early enough to put a ring on my finger some day. I also wrote about
cancer, the disease my mum was fighting with, and though she prayed with all her
might God never answered. And then, dad’s gay partner…
When we got back together after break, I still
was lost in the world of diary writing, when the rest of the girls
busily handed in their “promises” on a sheet.
“Victoria?” Sister Evelyn’s shadow
loomed over me, as her strong fingers whisked my diary from my lap. She flipped
through, and just seeing her cross that line of privacy without notice,
repulsed me! I got angered by her intrusion.
“Just give that back”
“And where’s your list?”
“I just don’t care about the promises
of God ok? If there were anything like that my Dad would not have left my mum
to be with his male colleague. I would not have to see her cry every day, while
I sat by her finding ”something” to say,
like “its fine, it’s alright”, and those words never fall out of my lips
naturally, it never sounds true, because it’s not! It’s not alright that a God
who is LOVE, just looks on at the woes and plight of those He claims He loves .
You have no answers do you? You don’t even want to talk about these things:
sex, homosexuality, divorce, our real issues, you never go there”
She stopped and stared, I ranted on,
lost in the satisfaction of letting it all out.
“I guess Church is just a place to
pretend everything is alright, clean, good with God. I was raped at 12 how
about that? My elder Cousin introduced me to pornography at 14 and I am madly in
love with a hopeless drug trafficker! Can your God fix all that? What do you
care anyway, what do you know about all that when all you talk about is purity;
you know nothing about reality, do you…?”
All eyes were glaring, not at me, but
at Sister Evelyn. What was she thinking? what was she going to do? With her
head slightly bowed and a quiet air blowing across her brow she breathed some
words into Deaconess Catherine’s ears and beckoned me forward. I thought after
that I would have my ears twitched and dragged to the back for a scolding, but
instead, she addressed me in a shaky, crackly tone, “Victoria, let’s talk in my
office”.
Two minutes after, I sat in the brown
room (that’s how we called Sister Evelyn’s office) stirring and staring into a
steaming cup of milk tea. My eyes were
moist with tears and a remorseful cloud of apology hung in my throat but I just
couldn’t bring it out. I had no idea how angry, and bitter I was over Dad’s
choice and mum’s current state. I didn’t even know that I was upset and tired
and frustrated by my circumstances. Was there anything better? I didn’t know,
did I know what I wanted?
I wasn’t sure. I just felt like I had the whole
universe shoving me down a tunnel I did not want to be in, that whoever was in
charge of destiny and life, was
directing things pretty wrongly and had
made a reel of options for me, that were affecting me. Or maybe I had been
programmed before time to fall into these circumstances, to have to deal with
so much at so young an age… I wasn’t sure I could come out of it straight and
right. All these daunting family fights and rough choices, they were haunting
me and they were affecting my way of thinking, my identity, and my personality. I thought church was a place to deal with that, find some answers or maybe
get delivered from depression and frustration! But the longer I sat on a church
pew the more I felt like the stuff said were meant for aliens that lived far
off from the world I lived in, and in the end i just felt like being happy was
my sole responsibility so I got to work! My life will never make full sense.” I
thought.
“Your tea… it’s spilling”
“I’m sorry” I whispered. “I’m sorry
for ruining the conference and speaking to you like that.”
“You shouldn’t judge God’s ways based
on your parents’ lives, you should find Him for yourself” She cut in even
before I finished speaking, and there again I thought that was so “churchy”, no
one understood you, and the responses were always “alien”.
“I know Him already, I’ve prayed that
sinners’ prayer over and over again, I’ve felt like a fool standing in front of
large church congregations, praying, admitting that I was wrong so He starts
over with me, and then, I was ushered in to the Kingdom of God, with my
conflicting struggles, forever shut down in me. After a while, I get chased down the
corner again by the famished shadow of my past, it runs after me like a lion
unleashed, and throws upon my breasts the net of its desires. I repent, I weep, I pray, I
try to read the Bible... but one look at the
Holy scriptures, and all I seem to see are black prints, words, coming
together like an army of Holy ants, pursuing me in Holy judgment, so I close it
and scream for help from the church pews, but when I lift my voice, it gets washed along with the “Holy Halleluyas”,
it gets drowned by the fervent tongues and the perfect sermons of a Sunday
afternoon.” She listened carefully as we both inhaled the tensed vapor rising from our mugs of tea.
“I have gradually learnt to save
myself the trouble of telling a story that no one around would understand.” I
told her, “I feel I know God because my
mum is really spiritual, and sometimes I kind of think I feel His love but I
just don’t understand Him. Where was He when my brother died? Where was He when
Dad ran off with his “gay partner”. Where is He when mum weeps herself to
sleep? Even I would have answered half of mum’s many prayers by now….”
In the silence that reigned between
the walls that witnessed our conversation and the ceiling that hang over our
hurts, both of our hearts palpitated a certain hidden despair. I felt it seep
through our breaths and our lowered gaze and then through her trembling lips:
“I don’t understand Him either” She
murmured. I suddenly seemed awakened from a dizzy daze. These words gave me a startle,
especially, coming from the “Sister Evelyn” i knew.
I just stared at her.
“I don’t have all the answers either.
I’ve also been wondering how my son got possessed by “that spirit”, and went
running around with his ”boyfriend” whilst in college. He sang in the choir since he was 6, beautifully
talented... I warned him, and in despair disowned him hoping that the lord Himself would do something, but He’s still not….”
I had to hand her some tissues.
“I remember that last fight before he
walked out of the door, he had spoken with eyes like two pellets of fire, and I
saw myself consumed by those hellish pellets while he gazed over the ashes, like
the guardian of hell, slithering careless pronouncements at me. I cursed him, I
hurled insults at him, I pleaded, I yelled and spat in disgust, I scratched my
claws through his shirt, tugged at it and yanked it loose, I twitched the
fistful of his t-shirt in my hand and slapped him. I tried to squeeze his neck,
but couldn't feel my bones, I tried to speak and convince him but couldn't feel my
teeth, I was just an image of gabbing lips and gashing jaws, my only sound came
through the “whizziness” of my choked nostrils, and when I was done ranting, he
brushed me off to the ground like saw dust on a window sill, and walked off like
an angel; still, I hoped that he would feel a tiny pinch of the connection that
used to exist between us, but he proved
that he had no memory! and he implored me to dispose of mine for sanity sake”.
As I watched her from across the table, I remembered that I had seen that same
look of anguish on my mum’s face when my Dad moved out of the house, I could remember that other look in Dad's eyes, that
look that defiantly implored mum to forget everything that she had know, because he couldn't hide it anymore, he was gay!.
“From then on” went Sister Evelyn , "I sought
after the shameless demon who had done this, the demon who had wrecked my
house, my home and everything I hoped for and somehow, I saw the culprits all around me, I saw it in the face of every male who grinned on the bus,
and in every reporter who announced gay right movements. And I began to search frantically
for a lead on where my own attacker may have been hiding. And when I was well
informed about the fellow who had snatched my son, I lost my mind. Even more, I
lost patience seeing that he lived in such glamor and innocent bliss, that
everything was at his beck and call, even my son’s body! And I couldn’t wait to strike back!” She sobbed, her chest rumbling with thunderous tears.
“It all sounds like a lullaby now,
but these are stuff that have corroded my strength, and eaten away my joy, it has licked
the bones of my hopes dry and buried the ghost of my dead courage, in a place I may never ever retrieve. That courage to live, that courage to give myself a
second chance has eluded me for so long, even when I seem to have snatched it,
it is no where to be found, it flees. And every time I stand here looking
strong, busying myself with the girls of the church… all I'm actually doing is trying
to get my courage back.” She sniffed,
“I’m just trying to get some escape
through the tasks. I wonder for how
long I’ll carry these unanswered questions in my heart, and I wonder how come He
doesn’t see all of that. I wonder what He says about my son, and I wonder why He did not stop it all! .”
I had thought that I was going to be
the one crying at the end of the day like everyone else who entered the “brown
room” to be counseled by sister Evelyn but amazingly, she was the one shedding
tears. She was the one confessing before me… And somehow her tears spoke a
message I could relate to. I never knew I could relate to her in that broken
way, that “I don’t know” state. No, not Sister Evelyn…But now as she sat gazing
through the slightly drawn curtain beside her armchair, the late afternoon ray
greeted her cheeks with a message of compassion I never imagined she yearned
for. Her voice had always been a voice of “Thus sayest the Lord”, so I was
baffled by the sight of her trembling lips and flickering eyebrows that inquired "what sayest the lord" at this moment? . In this Holy closet of secrecy I was
privy to, I discovered this was not the Sister Evelyn we knew. And I felt comforted
by all of this truth.”
“How was your life after your son
left?” I asked.
“At the time my son left, I was in a state of total
confusion, I was in a small church group in the neighborhood, well, mostly
because of the financial support they gave to struggling women like me.
But I
lived my own life in the closet you know, I just made sure I kept it from them…at a point I was touched by the
love the church showed me, the familial concern and all that , I started to
feel a part of the community, taking part in little community service programs,
but then again the life I knew in the past even before my son was born, that
life was imprinted in my memory… it appealed to my senses every now and then. I
yearned to erase it all but I couldn’t, so I threw a blanket of
oblivion on my conscience and just tried to juggle both lives for the benefits
that each brought…but later I accepted Christ you know, got into the choir, taught the word at Sunday school, I felt somehow on track again, but with time, I felt a big blow of rejection, started struggling again with my
drinking issue… I just went off…oh…” she sniffed, “ I dare not share these
stuff with you…” she lowered her gaze.
“Where was this?” I inquired
“In the States…I came back home 3
years ago”
“And…”
“And I accepted Christ again, and I
have taken my life more seriously now, and am trying to start all over again”
“Sister Evelyn…” the door flanked
open,
“I need to speak with you for a
minute” It was Deaconess Catherine at the door.
Our conversation had to come to an
abrupt end. Taking a cue from Sister Evelyn’s eye signal I murmured
“I was about leaving…” and waltzed
through the tiny space by the door.
To be continued....
Written By: Alice Blighton
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