I bought a boat in the hill country, she says to herself,
In this place where the Sky always becomes an ocean
We have lost so much, but I will have this beat-up John boat, recompense for years ago when I
Told you, leave your anger and walk home from here
As though we all don’t have to do that
As though there is any other way for stone-cold prodigals to
come home
You tell yourself it is just food, knowing you want
To keep it for another time
when you could rejoice
For a year, for the first year after, for as long as it takes
like the frozen wedding cake
As though love could last forever
The way he says it does
Manna in our wilderness
I try to establish timeline–
It was the spring…close to Passover
How long had you been dying?
How long had you? he retorts, not angry, incisive.
Surely I have touched a nerve, who else gets bullied for coming back from the dead?
But it is the one question he answers, the one time I hear his speaking voice–
Same as you, from the moment I was born.
I wonder, perhaps more often than I should, what would happen if we actually expected church sermons to be practical, actionable, real?
I wonder this because in the last 10 years I have worn my proverbial mendicant’s shirt to communities of faith, as has my whole family, only to find that the churchy probably don’t want us there.
They don’t want us because we talk about horrible things–rape, sexual assault, the abuse of children, sexual exploitation, the way the justice system fails victims, the way branded communities fail.
Not all at once, mind you.
But the truth remains so. If you tell a story about faith-minded adopting family neck-deep in ministry and family and community and then those people, especially their young children, are hurt, terribly hurt, by the people they were supposed to consider family.
Well, that is not a good sermon.
It is, however, very similar to many stories in the Bible, which is where I have gone for my uncomfortable sermons.
Where do you find yours? Where do you go to find the way through
The darkest, hardest places?
I go to the stone lions, lean my head against their solid, immovable weight. I tell them the things one might tell a friend–stretches of fatigue and loneliness, grim sorties in search of solace in strange and blasted places, words for anger, stones for real
Children who cry out
Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes
In the name of the Lord!
-Luke 19:40
The smallish courtroom in the smallish building in the smallish town near the coast. I used to say the armpit of Texas and that is when I liked the place where the d.a. joked in juvenile court about the time his underlings ribbed him for his inadvertently possessed marijuana plant
I
I carry around the iterations of the Baptist pastor, the university president, the camp cook, the college preacher, the old friend, missionary doctor, adoptive cohort, biological aunts, uncles, cousins
Immediate family
With fear in their eyes because I
I
Told the story
About everything except the day they adjudicated Charles
My subjunctive regret
Had I been present in the smallish courtroom in the smallish building with the smallish judge
Would they still have been able to
Lie for him?
Let him off so Scott-free
Smallish voice says over and over
I should have been there.
That day.
The call costs five cents a minute and you have to be ready with a form of payment. On the other end of the line there is
A princess stuck in a well
Bears curled in around a wee-sleepy home invader
A girl in a badly blended family with a knack for the most inconvenient footwear
And all the rest of us-
sleeping beauties, garden-of-Gethsemane-tired
Of hearing about
This impending crucifixion.
First there was the shock-shock, which I would describe as a blanket of cotton, a fog, a zoned-out staggering thing. I am not sure how long this stage lasted, but it began to ebb when the nice women at the crisis center gave my five year old and her sisters their crime-victim quilts, hand-made, with such kindness.
The quilts underlined the permanent nature of the gift–beautiful crime victims. Undoable. Irrevocable.
Our story seemed one way for years, then just as things got safer because we knew and could protect them
The truth rolled over us, applying permanent tattoos everywhere.
I did not realize I had a thrill-seeker, risk-taker issue until the months of hunger, tears, and fighting were over…all technically either lost or a draw. Until after I wrote the book. Until after people began to disappear.
By then I had begun to walk through cold water.
Now I know why I do it. I do it because…I do it because
Because when I walk in cold water I can see you there
Through the dust
The crush of angry humans
The agony of your bedraggled well-wishers.
Your own pain indelible on your bloodied face
Dying for me
Deep
In cold water.
I read this morning that Sasha Obama may have made a decision about where she is going to college. I am happy for her. Happy she knows. Happy she is happy.
When I found out my daughters had been sexually abused by their adopted brother I was immediately aware of the similarities and differences between my children and Sasha and Malia.
Both sets of sisters are:
Are multiracial
About the same age
Have well-educated parents
They even share the same initials
Years ago I asked myself, “what would the world do if the Obama girls had been the victims of felonies?”
Surely we would mourn and pour out support for them.
I would hope we would, at least.
My daughters were the victims of abuse during the Obama administration. The way they were treated by the criminal justice system was a function of the Bush and Obama administrations, as well as the specific decisions of the elected officials of all three of the branches of the state government of Texas.
My partner and I argue about why they have and are being treated a certain way when they apply to universities in Texas and elsewhere.
He says it is because they do not attend a public school and that is all.
I maintain that while that has been a point of obvious discrimination against one, the other seems to have encountered additional roadblocks because she has written openly about her status as the victim of a crime.
Crimes.
Committed against her all before her eighth birthday.
She had the courage to write about being a sexual assault survivor and is now experiencing what I call bureaucratic limbo.
I rejoice for the Obama girls, but I cannot help but wish my daughters had the same rights they have.
The right to education and the right to be heard.
Due process. I am still waiting for due process.
Sincerely,
E.
*Some names have been changed because I don’t always edit as carefully as I should.
We have all been in the grips of a winter cold. This morning one of my younger kids slept-talked a single line–but I am not a vegetarian!!!
I don’t know the context, but the sentence itself was lovely in its exposition.
Often our lives are defined by others based on labels. The vegetarian label seems pretty harmless unless he was dream-offered a nut-apple-squash loaf or was inhabiting some sort of carnivore-topia.
In the world we are awake in we navigate through real perils when we reveal who we really are. Revealing we are a certain shade of skin or religion or sexual identification can cause people to see us differently–for good or ill.
Revealing our status as crime victims can do the same. I might not have thought so years ago, before I knew or started telling our family story, but now that I have, I can attest: it does.
Years ago I remember talking to my children’s counselor and she used the term “damaged good.” As in, “you wouldn’t want people to see your kids as damaged goods.”
Terrible to think she was right. We absolutely could have buried the story of what happened to us. We did not, and we are a healthy, happy, fairly isolated group of people now. Telling the story has categorized us as “high-risk” and the syndrome of isolation and silence has been almost categorical.
A small, small, lovely group of people have stuck around, bless them.
I used to believe that sexual assault victims should absolutely tell someone. I still believe that, but I would tell them not to expect much from those you tell.
I would tell them keep talking until you are safe.
I would tell them you are not alone.
Carrying Light 