Marshall has always enjoyed shocking his younger brother. He proceeds to describe what else is involved in the submission role. Andrea bends him over her knee and spanks him with a paddle or a whip. She handcuffs him and ties him to the bed. She even orders him to wear a remote-controlled collar around his body parts; if he does or says something that displeases her, she gives him an electric shock on a level of one to ten, depending on the offense.
I bite my tongue, do my best not to react, and change the subject. Marshall, however, can talk about nothing else. As he continues, giving more graphic detail than I want to hear, it occurs to me that my brother is still looking for ways to break every rule in the book.
Andrea lasts a year, until she tires of him. Next he meets Brenda. This time Marshall takes the dominant role, and Brenda goes along with it for a while. Eventually, the kinkiness makes her so uneasy that she joins the group Adults Molested as Children and comes to terms with her sexual abuse as a child. As soon as she sets boundaries, the relationship falls apart.
Each breakup sends Marshall into a downward slide. After Brenda’s departure, Marshall and I spend many hours in phone conversations. “I can’t understand why breaking up has to end the physical part,” he says. “What if I pay her to have sex, just like I pay her to schedule my piano-tuning appointments?” I try in vain to explain why she might object.
The next phase of Marshall’s life is the most unexpected of all. Gradually, after a decade in California, my countercultural brother becomes a full-fledged member of the middle class. He takes up golf and becomes a wine connoisseur. Above all, he devotes himself to bridge. His remarkable memory allows him to keep track of all cards played, and he learns enough strategy to start winning tournaments.
During cocktail hour after bridge one night, he meets Molly, a mother of three who has recently divorced her second husband. Molly has a high-paying job, and when they move in together, Marshall lives without financial worries for the first time in his life. They travel overseas, go on cruises, and gamble in Reno and Las Vegas.
Soon the two have a formal wedding, which I attend. Molly likes luxury cars, expensive jewelry, and romance novels—a decidedly different style from Marshall’s. Somehow, though, they make the marriage work. Compared to Molly’s two previous husbands, who had addiction issues, Marshall looks like a winner.
* * *
—
During all this time, Mother and Marshall have no contact. In fact, my ongoing relationship with Marshall causes a constant prickly tension between Mother and me. She believes that any friendly association with him would imply approval. I believe the contrary, that Marshall needs to feel love for the person he is, not just the person he should be or could be.
Whenever I bring up the curse she put on him when he went to Wheaton, Mother defends it as “turning him over to the Lord,” who will deal with him someday. “After all those people prayed for him to do the Lord’s service, it’s only right that God would take away his mind when he rebelled,” she says. “You can’t run away from God.”
Long ago, on a mound of dirt in a cemetery, she presented him to God as a sacred offering. In her view, he sabotaged that transaction through one deliberate act of rebellion after another.
Occasionally I drop tidbits about him, which she routinely ignores. On one visit to Atlanta, I am driving her on an errand. “Did I tell you that Marshall got married a few years ago?” I ask, somewhat mischievously. She doesn’t respond. I glance over at the passenger seat where she sits, impassive, showing no interest in news about her son.
I reach in my shirt pocket. “Here, I have a picture from the wedding. It was held outdoors, at a garden near San Francisco.” To my surprise, she takes the photo and examines it closely, as a doctor might study an X-ray.
Her firstborn—she last saw him as a hirsute hippie dressed in flamboyant, sixties-style clothing. Now she is looking at a mature, well-groomed man dressed in a suit, his arm curled around the waist of a woman in a bridal dress. What is going through her mind? I wonder.
A full five minutes pass. At last she speaks: “Did he ever get his bottom teeth fixed?”
Even after disowning him, she can’t stop thinking like a mother. But as she hands back the photo, she can’t resist a barb: “I wonder how long this marriage will last.”
* * *
—
When Marshall and I see each other, we try to gain perspective on our fractured family. On one such visit, we start talking about The Great Santini. Based on Pat Conroy’s memoir, the movie portrays a family dominated by an abusive father who’s an officer in the Marine Corps. Santini calls his kids hogs and makes them march in formation. In a scene difficult to watch, he beats the daylights out of his son, who bested him in a basketball game.
“I cried and raged for three days after seeing that movie,” my brother says. “It brought back all those memories of living with Mother.”
“The movie got to me, too,” I say. “But, Marshall, kids survive family trauma much worse than ours. We weren’t sexually abused. No one hit us with a two-by-four or kept us behind barbed wire.”
“I know,” he says. But the pained look on his face shows me that lacerations of the soul can wound as deeply as those of the body.
I encourage him to write to our mother and unload some of his feelings. “Everything I know about victims indicates that ‘getting it out,’ and especially confronting the abuser, is an important part of the healing process.”
He must have heard me, because he soon composes a one-page letter, his first correspondence with our mother in almost three decades. He mails a copy to her and also to me.
Perhaps you will recall one of our last conversations in which you told me that every day you will be praying that I will either die or lose my mind. Yes, you did say precisely that. I have yet to find anyone who can believe that a mother would say that to her son. Not one. All because I wasn’t going to become the missionary that you had decided I should be.
On Marshall’s birthday, four months later, Mother sends a letter in reply. She explains away some other misunderstandings but mentions nothing about her notorious prayer.
Marshall regrets initiating the contact. “It irritates me when I’m reminded she’s alive,” he says.
* * *
—
After two decades in Chicagoland, Janet and I move to the foothills west of Denver, Colorado. And in August of that year, Marshall pays us a visit.
For a week we drive around, exploring the natural beauty of our new state. On the last night of the trip, Marshall pulls out of his suitcase a bottle of expensive red wine, bubble-wrapped for travel. He drinks a glass, then another, then another, growing more morose with each one. His speech becomes slurred, and without warning he chokes back a sob.
“What’s wrong, buddy?” I ask.
“It’s just…well, being with you and Janet, I see what meaningful lives you have. You travel around the world on book tours. You affect people, and they care about you. If you died, people would miss you. I would miss you. I can’t imagine living without you.”
He pauses, takes another sip of wine, and works to control his voice. The room is warm and very still. “If I died, nobody would care. I’ve never done anything meaningful. I’m a failure. My life is one screwed-up mess.”
Janet and I interrupt, assuring him that we care, that we love him.
“Marshall, you’re forty-five years old,” I say, trying to lend comfort. “You talk as if your life is ending. My goodness, you’re just getting started. What would you like to accomplish? Your life isn’t over, not by a long shot.”
He leans forward, staring intently at his wine. A tear falls, splashing scarlet drops against the inside of the glass. “You know I can’t change. Not as long as she’s still alive. That’s her legacy to me.”
“What are you talking about? Marshall, our mothe
r is sixty-eight years old. She has white hair and wrinkles, and sometimes she walks with a cane. You haven’t seen her in at least twenty years. You live three thousand miles away from her. Are you telling me you’re still letting her dominate your life?”
“It’s the curse,” he says. “She cursed me. She never believed in me, and if your own mother doesn’t believe in you, how can you believe in yourself?
“And then I went to Wheaton. My own mother wished me dead. Or crazy. She prayed for it—still does, for all I know. It’s like a witch’s curse. I’ll never amount to anything as long as she’s alive. Even if I felt productive, there’s nothing to produce. It’s me or her.” He sounds more weary than bitter, as if the alcohol has slurred his emotions along with the words.
My brother has never before let me see the depth of his wounded soul—cursed not only by our mother but by God, as if he can’t separate the two. We talk late into the night, and nothing I say makes an impression. He sounds utterly, irredeemably lost.
Just before the clock strikes two, I stand up. “Marshall, you’ve got an early flight, and we all need some sleep. But I promise you one thing. If you believe you’ve been cursed, then as your brother I promise you that on my next trip to Atlanta I’ll confront Mother and ask her to remove that curse.”
He exhales with something between a snort and a stifled sob. “Good luck,” he says.
* * *
—
Janet and I have already made plans to spend Christmas in Atlanta, in a condominium I helped Mother buy. We fly down, rent a car, and over the next few days go through the motions of decorating a tree and exchanging presents. My insides are churning as I plan how best to fulfill my pledge to my brother.
The day after Christmas, Janet purposely goes for a long walk, and I ask Mother to join me at the kitchen table. “There’s something I need to tell you,” I say. She shoots me a look of suspicion, and I notice that already the tendon in her jaw is twitching.
I begin. “Mother, as you know, I’ve kept in touch with Marshall all these years. I feel caught between you and him because I care for you both. There’s no question he’s been through some rough times and made lots of bad decisions. But I’ve got to tell you, Mother, he’s come a long way. He’s married now, has three stepchildren, and is more stable than he’s ever been. He’s changed a lot.”
She looks at me with fiery eyes, a gaze that would melt a glacier, saying nothing. I would not have believed that a person could look so angry. I take a sip of water, moisten my lips, and describe Marshall’s visit to Colorado in August. I repeat what he said that final night, almost verbatim. “So, the bottom line is, he believes he’s been cursed by you, and you’re the only person who can remove that curse.”
I have carefully thought through her potential responses. She might be dismissive: Well, we all say things in the heat of the moment that we later regret. Or she might deny the fateful scene when she “cursed” him for transferring to Wheaton College, although she knows I heard the whole conversation. I have envisioned every possible scenario—except one.
She stays silent for at least three minutes. The refrigerator motor kicks on, then off. I hear the growl of a garbage truck outside. The sweat under my arms feels cold. When she finally speaks, she does so with clipped syllables and a disembodied voice, like something out of The Exorcist.
“I told your brother I would pray for God to do whatever it took to break him, so he’d come to the end of himself. Even if that meant an accident. He was asking my blessing to go to that school. You think I’m gonna bless my own son to do whatever he wants, to go against everything he’s been taught? That’s like feeding a kid rat poison.”
I feel the heartbeats inside my ear, and in the tips of my fingers against the table. As gently as I can, I say, “Can you see how Marshall has a hard time reconciling that attitude with love?”
She pounces. “You wouldn’t understand that kind of love! I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“You’re right, Mother, I don’t.”
“I saw Brother Paul recently, from the Colonial Hills church. He told me that deep in his heart he thought Marshall knew God. I asked him, ‘Brother Paul, knowing the Scriptures as you do, do you really think he should still be alive? There’s an unpardonable sin, a sin unto death, you know.’ ”
I work to control my voice. “Mother, do you want Marshall dead?” I ask at last. No answer. A cardinal is singing cheerily outside, as if in mockery. “Tell me, do you wish your own son was dead?”
“He has no right…” she mumbles, and leaves the sentence hanging. She mentions a passage from 1 Corinthians, in which Paul hands over a man to Satan “for the destruction of the flesh.” She adds, “A few verses later, the apostle says we shouldn’t even associate with such immoral people.” I feel the jab directed at me, and my mind races to prepare a self-defense.
We both start as the outside door swings open. Janet has returned.
I get up, walk back to our bedroom, and tell her about the conversation. Then I call United Airlines to change our flight to the next day, cutting short our Christmas vacation. I need to flee from the spirit in this place—righteous evil unleashed in the name of God.
On the plane trip back, I think back to how it all started. How could a sacred vow, by a distraught young widow, corrupt to such a degree?
When I report to Marshall on my attempt to lift the curse, he laughs. “What’d you expect?” he says. “At least you get credit for trying.”
* * *
—
In September 2001, Mother’s anger boils over again. I have just published the book Soul Survivor, which tells of my racist past and the Southern fundamentalism I grew up under. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution has shrewdly assigned an African American reporter to profile one of Atlanta’s native sons, now an established Christian author.
The reporter asks me bluntly, “Did you really believe that racist stuff, or were you just going along with what others thought?” I hesitate, and tell him the truth, that I really believed it. I wrote a school paper on the Ku Klux Klan. I sometimes used the N-word and told racist jokes. Until high school days, I bought into what my church taught about the Black race being inferior.
He asks me how I would feel if he interviewed my mother and tried to contact my brother. I smile, imagining what he’ll hear in those conversations. “I’m a journalist, too, and it’s a free country,” I reply at last. “If you can locate them, you’re welcome to interview them.”
A few weeks later the Sunday magazine feature leads with this paragraph:
Philip Yancey has sold 5 million books, traveled the globe and won the highest awards in Christian publishing. Yet he’s been unable to make a fan of one 77-year-old Atlanta woman, despite years of personal effort. His mother, Mildred Yancey, refuses to read any of her son’s 15 books, though she shares his Christian faith. Nor will she say why. “He’s just like his father. He’s a Yancey,” Mildred Yancey says when asked about theological differences with her son. “Let’s just leave it at that.”
I puzzle over what she meant by the comment about my father—some suppressed resentment perhaps?
The article goes on to quote Marshall, who recounts his turn away from any faith. And it reports my answer to the question of how my view of Christianity differs from my mother’s: “She’s more comfortable with the Old Testament God of judgment and wrath, with having very few people in the world that God loves.”
I wait a few days after the article is published. Then I phone my mother for what I know will be a difficult conversation. The date is September 12, 2001, and I talk for a few minutes about the terrible tragedy our country has just experienced in the World Trade Center attacks. She doesn’t respond. She maintains silence until I say, “I presume you saw the article on me in the Atlanta paper?”
When she finally speaks, I recognize the same tone of voice from
that tense Christmas when I confronted her about removing her curse. “A doctor friend told me that was the worst case of mother-bashing he’s ever seen,” she says. Then, “Maybe I should have had that abortion after all.”
It takes me a minute to grasp that the abortion comment refers to me. This from a woman who rates abortion at the top of the sin list.
Several retorts leap to mind, and I forcibly squelch them. The journalistic instinct has kicked in, and I wish for a tape recording that I could later replay to make sure I’ve heard her right. I try to calm myself by writing down on a pad of paper exactly what she is saying.
“Back when your daddy died, a woman offered to raise you so I could go to the mission field like I’d planned. Maybe I should have taken her up on it. We’d all have been better off.”
Abortion, abandonment—she is digging deep for revenge. I keep writing her words, suppressing my own emotions.
The conversation shifts to Marshall. For three decades now he has been a phantom figure to her friends and family, as though he doesn’t exist. Now he is being quoted in the local paper. “I tried every mode of Christianity that I could find,” he told the reporter. “There’s nothing anybody could say or do that could create a change in me.”
Mother seethes over that quote. Her own son, a prodigal, a self-confessed heretic. “One of these days, you wait and see, the Lord’s going to break him!” she says in a shrill tone.
I interrupt. “Maybe melt, not break him?”
“No, in his case, the Lord’s gonna break him!”
“You sound angry,” I say.
“I’m not angry, I’m hurt! There’s a difference. Anger you can get over. It goes away. Hurt stays inside. It never goes away.”
Where the Light Fell Page 28