the indignities of occasional hits and kicks from my stepfather and mostly stayed away from home. I usually spent extra time at school with my music teacher, or with Ron and Mary Lou.
During this time, I was also spending more and more time away from the formal church, and I discovered that I still had a sense of my inner life and anointment; those gifts that had been so highly praised during the services at Mt. Carmel Baptist Church were still in me. My ability to turn a phrase and deliver the heart of a song didn’t disappear. I loved music-making just as much as ever. I decided to try praying. It was reassuring to know that that Unknown Something that filled my church work was still with me.
Day after day, I would become still and call forth the wondrous sense of rightness and calm. So much for the church and formal Christianity. Meditating actually gave me courage to continue, on my own. This knowledge freed me more and more to be the true person I was, emerging from within. It was months and years before I was comfortable knowing that the God I loved and served actually was everywhere, that I could access Him anywhere and everywhere. What did this mean for me and my role in the church? Was this sense of transcendence also present in Schubert or Beethoven songs, within operatic arias, and paintings, and dance—all which often left me feeling hypnotized? I had to do some serious thinking about this. I did not take any of these questions to my mother or pastor. I needed to live alone with them for a while.
When I look back on that early spiritual awakening, I realize that I was separating myself from any formal dogma or church. In my humility, I still struggled with the fact that I carried a powerful spirituality that had nothing to do with any organized religion. I treated all religions the same but also found no fault with agnostics, atheists, Unitarians, Christian Scientists, Mormons, Baha’is, Buddhists, Religious Scientists, Earth Goddess Worshipper, Sikhs, Taoists—all manner of expressions were fine with me. Time and time again, people wanted me to be a judgmental, fundamentalist Christian singer who hated a lot of regular people, and I just couldn’t do it. I was not there. It is not who I am. My message is simply one of inclusiveness and love. Period.
Despite this, my relationship with Mt. Carmel was about to be shattered.
Judging from all the talk, everyone around me was having sex. But I wasn’t. So I dared to think that a few other people, like my sisters, were also “pure.” After all, frequently when I went to church, they went with me. I blithely went along believing in the best of everybody because I was still a virgin. In my limited experience, sex never solved any problems. It seemed to create problems, especially for people who were not married to each other. In my opinion, sex was polluted and involved girls. I still hadn’t solved the problem of being gay. I did not want to be intimate with girls.
I had read enough of the Bible to know all about adultery and fornication. If I could have physically washed my mind, I would have, but abstinence would have to suffice for me during those turbulent teenage years. I sincerely felt that my brother and sisters were as committed to purity and abstinence as I was. The fact that I was so naïve didn’t really register with me until I was in school and heard several of my classmates talking about the fact that my fifteen-year-old sister was pregnant. I didn’t know anything about it.
In spite of everything I heard, I really knew little or nothing about sex and still believed on some level that the stork was a central character in the process of procreation. I wanted to believe in the stork. It seemed so wholesome and magical. This other stuff about petting and grinding that I heard people talking about, especially Hiawatha, seemed messy and complicated. Over the years, I had not changed my mind. I was a stubborn Taurus who wanted to be clean and wholesome and angelic for God, so I clung to my fantasy.
Gossip and rumors are crafty demons that have immense power to ruin people’s lives. They are often found in the least likely places.
My friend Elaine Logan pulled me aside and stage-whispered that the students were talking about the fact that my sister, one of the twins, was pregnant.
“How do people find these things out?!” I lashed out. “And who is spreading such scandalous gossip?” I was outraged. I lived with my sisters and hadn’t seen or heard the first hint of one of them being pregnant. I promised Elaine that I’d ask at home about this just as soon as I could get to my mother.
It wasn’t long before the sordid facts and all the horrific details were out. It read like a cheap soap opera, and I was profoundly saddened and shocked. It involved the new pastor at Mt. Carmel. It seemed that while I was spending so much time at the church singing, the new pastor was making another kind of music with both of my sisters. Only one became pregnant. Whatever he had said to my mother to justify his actions was never clear to me. My mother and stepfather kept me at a distance and would only discuss superficial details in my presence. There was no lawsuit or accusations of statutory rape. The pastor left town and moved back to Chicago; I never saw or heard from him again. The whole situation was so foul to me that I became even more silent and introverted. I was so disillusioned that I never went back to Mt. Carmel again.
I agonized over the obvious questions: How could God have allowed this to happen? Whose fault was it? What should or could have been done to prevent it from happening? How come one sister became pregnant and not the other sister? For days I silently raged against this God whom I loved so much. Again, in my life, someone whom I trusted implicitly, an authority in the Church, had betrayed me, to say nothing of my sisters’ profound betrayal at his hands. On some level, I was also asking, How could my sister not have known something like this could happen? I hated the Bible; I hated the truth; I hated Christianity! So this was what sex and procreation was all about. I didn’t want anything to do with it and vowed even more strongly to remain a virgin. All my illusions about the stork and fairy tales were utterly shattered. I was being forced to grow up.
I remember hearing Nina Simone sing this mournful song:
Trouble in mind, I’m blue
But I won’t be blue always
. . .
Let that 2:19 train
Ease my troubled mind!
I was troubled and blue too. Worse, I was a singing basket case of rage and confusion. I wanted to protect my sister from the scandal and gossip of nosy neighbors and false friends. My helplessness added to my pain and sense of worthlessness. Being a big brother had no special power or perks in this case. Over and over, I questioned my value to the family, to myself! Where were Great-Grandmama Laura Mae and Granddaddy Saul when I needed them? I wished I could just disappear.
My mother and Warren forced my sister to give up the baby, a little boy, for adoption. My sister didn’t want to give him up, and it caused a tremendous rift in the family. After the pregnancy, my sisters were taken out of my mother and Warren’s home and sent to live with a black Islamic family. Mary Lou Phillips was the caseworker; the girls told their stories to Mary Lou, and Mary Lou reported the situation to the authorities. I was always welcome to go over and see them in their new home. There were times when I tried to salvage my sisters’ lives and ambition. I tried to get them to focus on school, but it was hopeless—I felt like I was talking to a wall. Over the years, we slowly drifted apart; the whole ordeal changed my family forever.
And speaking of change, I was at Elaine’s house when I got the call that took my breath away. My mother didn’t say much, just that Great-Grandmama Laura Mae had died quietly the night after her eightieth birthday gathering, amidst her family. The funeral was to be held next week. We weren’t going to attend. After all these years, Mama was still afraid that we would have trouble with my daddy.
Great-Grandmama Laura Mae loomed as a powerful bigger-than-life legend
