The question lingered in the back of my mind for a time, but I batted it away as soon as I consciously acknowledged it. There were only two kinds of people in the world, and my classmates belonged firmly in the Esau category. They didn’t seem to know or care about the Bible. Their parents were divorced and remarried. And some of them were as good as committing fornication already, what with all the hand-holding and kissing they were doing in the hallways. They might be friendly to me, but these “friends” of mine were enemies of God—and therefore must be my enemies, as well. Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
During the winter, baptisms were done in the baptismal font in the church sanctuary—essentially a large blue bathtub near the pulpit, typically hidden from view by peach-colored curtains. Summer baptisms took place in the in-ground pool. It was about fifty feet long and located just outside Westboro’s rear entrance. On the afternoon I was baptized, the congregation filed out into that communal space in the blinding noonday sun, and I joined them a moment later, after changing into a white T-shirt and cutoff jeans. In silence, we all clustered around the shallow end, waiting for my grandfather to emerge. Three black stripes were painted the length of the pool to identify lanes for lap swims, and when Gramps walked out in a red windbreaker suit and old Nikes, I followed him as he waded to the stripe in the center. When I was a child, he would stand in just this spot, lift me out of the water as if it cost him no effort at all, and toss me several feet for a big splash, to the place where the bottom of the pool slopes down to the deep end. And then Bekah. And then Josh. My cousins. Over and over we swam back to him, one after another after another.
Now he stood to my left and motioned for me to use both of my hands to take hold of his left wrist. He was nearly seventy now, with slight tremors in his hands. He began with a passage of Scripture: Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. He spoke of my profession of faith, and that I’d given evidence of being one of God’s elect. “I baptize you, my sister…” he declared, but his conclusion was lost to me as he covered my nose and mouth with a white cloth, supported my shoulders with his right hand, and pressed me down into the water.
* * *
Five years later, on the morning of my high school graduation, my brother disappeared. Saturdays were as welcome in my house as they are anywhere, and that one—sunny, warm, breezy—seemed like the perfect start to summer.
Still in pajamas, I was the first of the sisters to slip into the kitchen, which was brightly lit and full of activity. Several of my younger brothers were seated on bar stools around the island, chattering, munching happily, and swiping bits from each other’s plates. At two, Luke was the youngest, and his face was deceptively cherubic: he was the one most likely to do the thieving and least likely to tolerate such insolence from anyone else. Mom was standing over the stove making breakfast—pancakes, maybe, or scrambled eggs—and singing a seventies pop song I’d only ever heard in her soprano. I heard the huge smile in her voice before I saw it, and when she turned, her eyes caught mine and then she was singing the love song to me, with exaggerated feeling and theatrics at full voice. I couldn’t help but laugh to see her in such high spirits, because this was one of the places my mom seemed perfectly in her element.
“Where is Josh?” she called over the din. “It’s getting late! Would one of you boys run down and wake him up?” My brothers tumbled over themselves to race down to Josh’s basement bedroom. Moments later, they were thundering back up the stairs, Jonah leading the pack.
“He’s not there! It’s all gone!” Jonah was seven and a little confused, but not worried. I wasn’t, either; bizarre declarations were par for the course in a family with eight brothers. My brow furrowed a little, and I looked to Mom, whose mouth was ajar.
“Would you—”
“I’ll go look,” I said, and headed for the stairs with three little brothers trailing. There were fourteen steps down, and with each one, more of the stripped basement came into view. The television was gone, and so was Josh’s beloved Xbox. The bookcase, too. No clothes or random knickknacks strewn about. It had been years since I could see this much of the blue carpet, and I wondered briefly if he’d cleared the place out for the carpet cleaners. Rounding the corner, I was reassured to see that the dresser was still there and the bed neatly made. He was probably just in the shower. The boys flung open the flimsy double doors of his closet, and time slowed down.
The shelves and racks were completely bare.
One of the boys suddenly thrust a white envelope he’d found into my face. “Go show it to Mom,” I said, waving him on. They all took off.
I checked the bathroom, just in case.
* * *
“Mom and Dad, I didn’t think I would ever be saying this…”
The letter was one page, single-spaced, Times New Roman font, size twelve, dated May 21, 2004. The day before. He must have left in the middle of the night. I knew that meant he was a coward, just like two uncles of ours who had left the family long before either of us was born. “Slunk away in the dark” is how it was usually put. It wasn’t often that Mom spoke of her four absentee siblings, but when she did, it was with an edge of disdain. She didn’t seem hurt by their loss, precisely, instead vacillating between a strident good-riddance attitude, an outraged how-dare-they sense of betrayal, and a but-for-the-grace-of-God-there-go-I pity. The stories I was told were copious, and they painted clear portraits of the defectors: Kathy, vain and whorish; Nate, a thief and criminally rebellious; Mark, an entitled manipulator; Dot, an idolatrous witch. As such, their reasons for leaving the church could never be valid—just paltry attempts to mask the fact that they were wretched creatures controlled by their lusts, dastardly, selfish, unable to hack it in the rough and tumble of the Wars of the Lord. The implication of these tales had always been abundantly clear: these deserters were not like us, and we were better off without them.
We all knew this, but my mother had never been the sort of parent to let a lesson—or anything, really—go unsaid. Still standing over the stove, she was only quiet for a moment after she read through the letter. All four little boys were clustered around her, hushed now, waiting to be told what was going on, where Josh’s stuff had gone. Her tone was sober, and there was finality and resignation in it: “They went out from us, but they were not of us.” She was quoting the Bible, I could tell, but this wasn’t a verse we’d focused on before—not in my memory—and I was as mystified as the boys.
I couldn’t pay attention anymore, though. My thoughts were racing. My nineteen-year-old brother had gone apostate. We’d been together since my birth precisely seventeen months after his, but I’d never see him again. I’d never speak to him again. He hadn’t said goodbye. Why did he leave? Where did he go? What was our family without him? I tried to imagine our house without his near-constant recitation of esoteric movie quotes, and failed. I tried to imagine our family “Sock War” game without him pelting me with pairs of striped kneesocks, and failed. I tried to imagine never again standing on the picket line discussing the philosophical questions raised by Stephen King novels, and failed. I knew that none of this was important, that his departure was the only thing that mattered. That he was just like Mark and Nate now, and that I should feel about Josh what Mom felt about her departed siblings. I didn’t, though. I couldn’t conjure an image of Josh that made him like our degenerate uncles, couldn’t exchange this new picture of him with the one I’d had just the day before, just that morning: my big brother, the one who taught me the cheats and secrets to Super Mario Brothers 3 on Nintendo, my verbal sparring partner and fellow bibliophile, lover of mashed potatoes and abuser of ketchup. It was impossible to reconcile these two
narratives.
“Can I…?”
I reached for the letter, and Mom passed it over. I read through it once, and then again, hoping repetition would reveal why he’d done this drastic thing. He had a wide array of complaints—rejections of everything from the church’s picketing ministry to the way our parents ran our household—but at first, none of his grievances made any sense at all. I paused briefly and reconsidered: I could appreciate some of his grumblings, but none of them was a reason to leave the only known place in the world where God meets with His people. So what if babysitting our little brothers could be a miserable, thankless job? So what if he hadn’t been allowed to get an apartment? I’d been appalled that he’d even asked, frankly. He was only nineteen! We were supposed to be at home, taking care of things there.
There was one part, though, that I simply couldn’t fathom.
“We picket these people and they hate us for it and I have had enough of it.”
I shook my head as my eyes traced that line again and again. I knew there were some difficult parts of the life we’d been living, but being reviled wasn’t one of them. The fact that people hated us was cause for great happiness. Jesus Himself said so: Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you. Gramps always said from the pulpit that “rejoice” meant “leap for joy.”
Dismayed, I set the letter down on the counter. Maybe Josh really was a coward.
Mom made an announcement on the intercom, and speakers built into walls all over the house rang with her voice calling the family to the living room. I made my way there, and stared at Josh’s vacant seat while we waited for the stragglers. Since I had been a child, this was the place where we’d convened as a family at least once a day to read the Bible, talk through family matters, and discuss the church’s interpretation of current events. This was how my parents kept our household of twelve—eleven, I mentally corrected myself (Sam having moved out a few years earlier)—on the same page, united, working toward common goals. The couches were hunter green with tiny flowers printed on them, and they were arranged in one big rectangle, an invitation and a signal that each of us should be participating in these discussions.
My parents were sitting at their end of the rectangle, and when everyone was in place, Mom began with the passage she had quoted earlier from First John. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us. Don’t you see, children? Josh was here, but he was never of us. We have a promise right here—that if he were of us, he would have continued here with us. ‘No doubt’! But he did not. He’s come to years, and he’s decided that he is not going to serve God in truth. Flip over to Hebrews 10.”
The older ones of us opened our Bibles to the book of Hebrews. We’d memorized chapter ten during a recent summer, including a particularly terrifying meditation on the fate of those who leave the faith. It was full of the promised vengeance of God, of judgment and fiery indignation, and a grave warning: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. The chapter ends thusly:
But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.
We are not of them. Long ago, I had dedicated my life to serving God and His people, and I would not be like Josh and draw back. I would not follow him to destruction.
They are not of us. I comforted myself with these words, searching for every distinction I could find, for any shred of evidence that would distinguish me from my Judas of a brother. Josh was wicked, a coward. He wanted the praise of the world, he’d said so himself. He had denied Jesus, trodden underfoot the son of God. No, I was not like Josh. My heart was fixed.
I will never leave this place.
* * *
A steady stream of visitors poured into our house throughout the day, church members coming to affirm our righteousness and my brother’s wickedness. Their bitter demonization of him began almost instantly, so quickly that I had to fight hard against my instinct to defend him. On the picket line that afternoon, I listened as my cousins referred to Josh as a “punk” and a “little bitch” and a dozen other insulting names. We were planted on the sidewalk in front of the Kansas Expocentre, picketing my graduation ceremony before I headed inside to get my diploma—and though it was still a little strange when my two separate worlds collided, the context of the protest barely registered. My brother was gone, and it was disquieting to think of how my loved ones would have spoken of him just the day before, the same tender, loving words they were now using to describe those of us who remained. I furrowed my brow and stayed quiet. I trusted their judgment far more than my own.
The following day, our family vacation to Colorado went on in Josh’s absence. The nine-hour drive would be filled with tears both going and coming—even from my dad, the only time I can ever remember seeing him cry. But from the moment we returned to Topeka one week later, our tears were no longer acceptable. “We’re gonna make the Lord mad at us if we keep this up,” my mother warned sharply when she came upon me in tears the day after we got home. “This is from the Lord. We must be thankful and praise Him for all things, not just what seems good to us. We have to be in charge of our spirits. You hear me?”
My mother’s words were shades of a sign that would come many years later—GOD HATES YOUR FEELINGS—and correlated perfectly with a passage she called upon often: Casting down imaginations … and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. We were to bring every thought into control and obedience to God, and our mom was going to help us get there.
With great effort I stifled my tears for Josh, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him. For years, Josh and I had been comrades in discontent, united by the bitterness we felt at the way our mother often treated us—her wavering between incredible kindness and unjustified cruelty. She could be so very abrasive, provoked into a fit of rage by the smallest infractions: a flash of anger across our face, an edge in our voice, any sign of hesitation or displeasure at what was being required of us. These were unmistakable signs of rebellion that she simply could not abide, and her lack of patience for our wayward emotions was one of the great hallmarks of our upbringing. But over time, I’d come to see things differently, in a way that Josh had never seemed to. I understood our mother’s hardness to be a painful necessity, not unlike our picketing: an expression of love manifesting as a harsh warning against sinful behavior. That was her duty as a mother.
It was a hard-won perspective, one that I had arrived at only after years of battling with my mom and with myself—but all the while, Josh’s heart had apparently been drawn further and further away. Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living God. He was an Esau, our enemy, doomed to eternal destruction. I felt so sorry for him, and so grateful to have been spared. As Josh and I had walked through the years of our teenage rebellion, he had missed the lesson that had become so clear to me: that happiness came only through submission—to the people and the circumstances and the limits that God had set for my life. The bounds of my habitation.
With that realization had come a peace with my mom that I had never thought possible. Just a few weeks before we lost Josh, she and I had walked in lockstep one afternoon, arm in arm like the close confidantes we had become. We were picking up Gabe and Jonah from the elementary school—the same one I had escaped to as a child. The spring sun was so warm on my face and the world was green and coming to life again, and I felt such a surge of joy and gratitude for my place in it that I started to cry. “Oh, what is it, sweet pea?” Mom asked, rubbing my arm soothingly with her free hand.
“I’m just so content,” I sobbed, clinging to her. “So happy and so grateful and so co
ntent. I don’t ever want that to change. I’m so afraid that it will. I don’t ever want the Lord to be mad at me for being ungrateful for my lot. I want to always love this life.”
My mother shushed me reassuringly. “The Lord has blessed you with so many wonderful talents, and you use them to serve Him. But more importantly, He’s given you a heart to know Him, and to love Him, and to love and serve His people. All we can do is trust Him and keep doing what He’s put in front of us to do.”
I pushed my sunglasses up and brushed the tears away.
“I love you, little girl.”
3. The Wars of the Lord
Three days after nineteen hijackers crashed four commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a field in rural Pennsylvania, a lamentation sounded forth from Westboro Baptist Church pastor Fred Phelps. It was not a mournful cry for the thousands who had been murdered. It did not echo the grieving prayers sent up by thousands more whose loved ones had perished in wreckage and rubble. It did not reverberate with the near-universal horror that overtook the world, nor with anguish at the unspeakable atrocities that human beings are capable of visiting upon one another. To my grandfather, such sentimentalities were entirely beside the point—and therein lay his grief. For three days straight, the American media juggernaut had been a continual dirge, wholly devoted to the “caterwauling” of preachers, pundits, and politicians alike. Of all the “backslidden, hypocritical” preachers and “self-aggrandizing” politicians whose words were filling the airwaves, my grandfather insisted that not a single one was speaking a word of truth as far as the Word of God was concerned. And the truth was that in the council halls of eternity, God Himself had issued the command, sending those airplanes like missiles through time and space, casting down these symbols of American strength and vitality in punishment for her great sins: homosexuality, adultery, fornication, idolatry, rebellion.
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