As I’ve mentioned in a few threads, I come from a fairly large family. When we were growing up, I was closest to my sister “Lindy,” seven years my senior. We just got along really well; we clicked. There was never any doubt in my mind that she simply adored me more than she adored my other brothers and sisters, and likewise she knew she was my favorite. She’s always the person I list as my emergency contact; her daughter is my life insurance beneficiary; for years she was the first person I’d call when in danger, trouble, or distress. Because our mother had so much on her plate when we were children, Lindy largely raised me – not out of obligation, but out of love.
But the worm has turned.
Lindy is a racist, you see. A virulent one. She’d deny it, but a prime part of her defense is that it’s impossible for black people to be racists–a common claim I personally feel to be (a) moving the goal posts and (b) bullshit. She doesn’t use pejorative terms like “honky” or the like about or towards white people. She does, however, consider them evil, and any political or social conversation we have will inevitably include her blaming any problem the evils of White America. She didn’t go to one of our favorite cousin’s wedding because he was marrying an redheaded Irishwoman.
Lindy is also a fundamentalist Christian. Well, Pentecostal, anyway. Her church (the same one I was raised in) teaches Biblical literalism and hellfire and the damnation of fags and dykes–everything you’d expect. She thinks – no, let me change that, she WORRIES, she FEARS – that I’m going to hell because I belong to a church that teaches that the Bible is mostly metaphor and myth and history, and that each individual has the responsibility to figure out her or his own path.
As you may be able to tell, this has been bugging me for a while. It got worse around the end of last year, when our mother was in her final illness and all of the Rhymers were quite stressed; we had a couple of screaming arguments. The worst of these was when I was reporting to Lindy and the rest of my siblings the doctors’ report on Mother’s cancer, which has begun as breast cancer (requiring a double mastectomy) but had progressed to tumors in both hip bones, one shoulder bone, one thigh – and, well, you see where this is going. The doctor had described a course of treatment that was basically palliative, meant to make Mother as comfortable as possible in the time she had left. I hadn’t argued, because during his presentation I had the sickening realization that I’d heard all this before, in the same hospital, when my former girlfriend’s mother was dying.
Anyway, I took copious notes (the doctor commented on the salience of my questions and deduced that I’d already gone through this) and made copies for my siblings and aunts. Lindy got angry because, she said, we couldn’t trust Mother’s doctors because they were white and likely to use her as a guinea pig. She screamed this at me, and I told her I didn’t appreciate her taking her anger at the doctors, fate, the world on me.
Mom died in October. Two large parts of the reason I managed to get through it (though grief is still killing me, to tell you the truth) are the Straight Dope and my (then new) girlfriend “Beth.” Beth (who’s white, and a good deal younger than me) worked hard to keep me from screwing up work while I was most incoherent. The Dope helped because I posted about my grief at the time, and **NuttyBunny ** suggested I write Mother a letter and place it in her coffin to get out my feelings.
I took that advice.
All of which leads to what’s happened in the last two weeks. First of all, I called Lindy Saturday evening because I’ve been trying to recapture our former closeness. I mentioned that I’d just had dinner at Beth. Asked about her day, Jeanie proceeded to inveigh against how all white people in county government are evil and determined to screw all the non-whites. Referring to specific celebrated case hereabouts, she harped on the “fact” that, while not all white people seem evil, none of them can be trusted.
Most of this I ignored, because I’m used to it. But last night –
Last night we had dinner at another sister’s house. Beth was one of two non-Rhymers present. The other was “Bobby,” pastor of the church we grew up in. He’s one of the few ministers of that denomination I can stand. At any rate, during the evening, I talked privately, the way people do. He mentioned to me that he was worried about my immortal soul, because he was told that I didn’t believe in the afterlife or resurrection, and, of course, disbelieving in Heaven and Hell is a sin. I needed to get away from my church if those are its teachings, he said.
Bobby didn’t seem conscious of the irony of his approach. But what concerned me more is that I’ve never had a discussion about my spiritual beliefs with him, or for that matter with any of my blood relatives. Moreover, in his lecture to me, he specifically referred to my finding comfort in the thought of my mother’s body decaying and becoming part of the earth again, and her thus becoming flowers and earthworms and birds trees and so forth. So I asked him how he knew this, and he said Lindy told him. I asked him how Lindy possibly knew, and he didn’t answer.
Beth, looking fairly miserable, said that she thought she knew.
Remember the letter I mentioned earlier? That specific imagery was mentioned in it. I spent days writing it, and Lindy had asked at on point if she might read it. I told her no; it was private, and no one but me would ever see it. (Which includes Beth, by the way.) Shortly before Mother’s funeral-- after the casket was placed in the church but before it was closed and before the service started – I put the letter, in an envelope, in the coffin. A little overwhelmed I went outside. Beth stayed inside the church, either because she figured I needed space or she was a little tired of standing beside her drama queen boyfriend. Being inside, she saw Lindy when she came to the church a little while later. Lindy, she said, had placed a flower in the casket–but it also looked like she took something out. Beth had wondered about it but chosen to keep her thoughts to herself. She wasn’t sure of what she’d seen, and she didn’t want to borrow trouble; and she was a chary of confronting Lindy herself, as she finds her intimidating.
I wasn’t chary. . I was pissed. I went to talk to Lindy. I asked her if she’d taken my letter to Mother out of the casket and read it. She hesitated a minute and said yes. She was worried about my salvation, she said; she didn’t want me to go to Hell when I died; she wanted me in Heaven with her. Anything she had to do to accomplish that, she would do.
So Beth and I left at that point. And right now I feel like saying “Put a fork in me, sis. I’m done.”
)