Girl on a Wire

by Libby Phelps

  He didn’t make us do daily runs, like he’d once done with his own kids, but he did encourage us to run races around the track in the backyard. One afternoon, I won a race against my cousins, and to celebrate, Gramps picked me up and put me on the stone picnic table. I burst into tears, because I didn’t want to be the center of attention. Gramps thought that was really funny and reminded me of this story often as I grew up.

  This sort of devotion to the church, in body and in mind, dictated many of the unofficial rules that governed our family. Pets, for example, were frowned upon as a waste of valuable time, which could be better spent serving the Lord. Despite that edict, though, my family got away with having many of them over the years: a cat named Flufferbuns (an odd name chosen by my dad), a rabbit named Bugs, a hamster named Toby. We even had chickens at one point.

  My dad’s favorites were our dogs, though: Sunshine, Cosmo, and Newman—the latter two after Seinfeld, which my whole family loved, especially Ben. My sister also had a little Westie named April. The big dogs were outside dogs, so they lived in their doghouses in the backyard, and my dad loved them more than anybody. (The day Newman got hit by a car was one of the few times I’ve ever seen him cry. It broke my heart to see him cry. It was a time where a hug was definitely indicated, but historically that was not something we did. I just sat on our brown couch and held back my own tears. I was twenty years old at the time. A few months later, Sunshine got sick. He took her to the vet, but it didn’t do any good; she crawled away into the woods one day and died. On a hike one day, my dad and my little nephew Seth found her bones. “I could see all of her ribs,” said Seth, always a very unflappable kid.)

  Seth was one of the many children my mom would take into her day care at our house, for which she’d given up her job outside the house. Before, she had worked as a lawyer at the family practice, Phelps-Chartered, downtown on Topeka Boulevard. All of the church members of her generation had been encouraged to get law degrees, and if you were a direct relative of Fred Phelps, it was almost an order. Later on, he’d say, “God knew this picketing ministry would happen—so he prepared us by sending us all to law school.”

  Back in the years when I was too young to go to school, my mother took me into the office with her during the day. If clients came in, I’d simply play under the desk, poking my head out to stare at the strangers and then scurrying back underneath if they noticed me.

  One of my earliest memories is from those days, an occasion when Shirl came storming into my mother’s office. She was mad about a difference of opinion she and my mom had on a case Phelps-Chartered was representing, and her anger quickly got personal, as it usually did. From early on she’d made it clear she didn’t like my mom, and she took every opportunity to take her to task about the littlest things. My mother, even-tempered in a way that tended to make Shirl even more furious, scooped me up immediately and headed for our blue Toyota van in the parking lot; she didn’t want me around Shirl when she was throwing one of her fits. Shirl following behind, undeterred and vengeful. “You don’t raise your children properly!” she screeched. “You’re not doing your duty as a parent!” Outwardly unfazed—though I imagine it must have gotten to her—my mom calmly drove us home. She was good at not letting Shirl into our home life, a tall order considering how closely we all lived. Later on, I knew that a blowup like this meant I likely wouldn’t be allowed to talk to Megan for a while—that was how Shirl operated. She knew taking away my best friend was the worst punishment for me, so that was what she did.

  From as far back as I can recall, I always instinctively disliked Shirl. Everything was either her way or the highway. I was afraid to speak or even move around her; I yearned to get by her unnoticed. Some family members liked to say I had a temper like Gramps, or like my aunt Abi, but no one ever said I was like Shirl—and I was always glad of that. Her anger would cause my autonomic nervous system to kick in, fight-or-flight at its finest, increased respirations, increased heart rate. She made us feel like there was nothing we could do right; nothing would ever please her. So I kept my distance as much as I could, and tried to be obedient and helpful when I couldn’t.

  WHEN I STARTED SCHOOL FULL-TIME, MY MOM STOPPED working and watched kids, ones from both inside and outside of the church. I was expected to help her when I got home from school, but I was also allowed to go to the block to play.

  Running, freeze tag, volleyball, basketball, playing on what we referred to as the “big toy”—a jungle gym—and tetherball were all regular activities in the afternoons. When it was warm enough, we could usually be found swimming in the pool and making up competitions to see who could do the silliest dive. Still, the church would always seep into the fun. If we wanted to mess with someone, we’d say, “You are a liar of the devil, and the truth is not in you,” or maybe call them a heathen. If there had been a sermon that week on a particularly scary aspect of the afterlife—as there often was—it was on the block that we’d hash its meaning out between us. Because the adults put so much emphasis on getting doctrine right, and not appearing stupid, arguments would inevitably break out about who was the most correct and who had learned their Bible lessons the best. When fights did happen, it was an unspoken rule that Shirl’s kids were never wrong, so even if we weren’t the one who hit the other kid, it was best to just take the blame.

  I took a lot of blame over the years. Maybe it was partly because of Shirl’s feelings about my mother, but even at a young age I remember feeling like I could never do enough to make my elders happy. It didn’t help that I often looked upset. It was my own misfortune to have been born with what I have since learned is called “resting bitch face.” Even as a toddler, I would sit in church services concentrating very hard, and I would be told I looked like I was glaring at everyone. To this day, when I’m not actively smiling, people think I’m scowling. This did not make me popular with the aunts and uncles, especially Shirl, who had made it one of her missions to enforce the church edict about everybody being in a good mood—or at least looking like it—all the time.

  ONE PLACE I DID RELIABLY HAVE FUN WAS AT OUR FAMILY parties. We never celebrated religious holidays, because Gramps said they were all dirty pagan celebrations at their core. He’d quote the book of Jeremiah, warning against “adorning trees with gold and silver,” which ruled out Christmas; Easter, with its relationship to pre-Christian fertility rituals, was definitely not for us. For a while, we celebrated the Fourth of July—but that eventually had to go too, once Gramps had decided the military was fighting for a “fag nation.”

  But we always had a monthly birthday party for whoever was celebrating one that month (with a family the size of ours, there were always at least a couple of birthdays every month). Before the picketing years, we also threw an annual Phelps Family Barbecue. We would rent a bounce house and a portable popcorn machine, and we’d invite all the neighbors and local politicians.

  In my early childhood, my father was very involved in local politics—which is always surprising to people who know the church for its stances today. But this was in the years before religion and politics were as linked as they are today, and both my dad and Gramps were proud Democrats for years. One of my favorite family activities was going to “bean feeds,” what we called political fundraisers, where we’d have chili and cinnamon rolls, a Kansan specialty. My dad was a real politics nerd, and that was one of the rare subjects I could get him to talk to me about, other than sports.

  One of my earliest memories is of a big fundraiser we threw at our house in 1988 for Al Gore, who was running for president. He and Joan Finney, who was later the governor of Kansas, came to our party, and I met Mr. Gore. I’m sure he wouldn’t be thrilled to be associated with my family now, but at the time he just seemed like a very nice man who enjoyed our Midwestern hospitality.

  THE BLOCK, BESIDES BEING OUR PERSONAL PLAYGROUND AND party central, was also where we tried to work out the meaning of some of Gramps’s sermons’ explanations of homosexuality, which often
included terms that we, at such a young age, had never heard of. We would have very inappropriate conversations for grade school–aged kids, nonchalantly throwing around terms such as “butt buddy,” “bestiality,” and “pedophile perverts,” all of which we regularly heard in Gramps’ sermons. We didn’t exactly understand the extent of what we were saying, but the important thing—as Gramps would say—was that we knew it was all disgusting behavior we didn’t want any part of.

  “What’s a golden shower?” I asked my cousin one day, in between bounces on the trampoline. We would often come out to play after the church service on Sunday, where Gramps so often preached about the dangers of homosexuals and the ungodly things they did. But, as often when I was young, I didn’t know the terms he used. I tried never to ask the adults for fear of being laughed at, or told I should have paid better attention or read my Bible more thoroughly. All of these were likely outcomes of being too inquisitive around the grownups, so I tried to pry all the information I could out of Shirl’s kids. They tended to know more about these things than I did; Shirl talked a lot more than my parents.

  Mariah Carey blasted from Megan’s boom box while she and I tried to time our jumps perfectly to make the other jump as high as we could without being flung off onto the lawn. “It’s disgusting,” she said, “but what I think it is, is when someone pees on another person.”

  “Gross!” I yelled, coming to a halt on the elastic surface. “That’s disgusting! Why would someone do that?”

  “I know!” she said, shaking her head. “My mom told me they do it for sexual pleasure.”

  “Nasty!” I cried, giddy with the sheer outrageousness of it. “That would make me want to throw up!”

  The term would be pushed to the back of my mind as we began playing with the littler kids, who would throw Nerf balls at us as we tried to jump and avoid them.

  But it would come up again in church the next Sunday, and the next.

  NEARLY ALL MY CAREFREE MEMORIES FROM CHILDHOOD ARE intertwined with the terrifying lessons we learned in church from Gramps. On the outside, we were allowed to be kids like anyone else; we ran and played and swam in the pool and chased each other around the trees in endless games of tag. But the conversations we had as kindergarteners, as third graders, as fifth graders, were anything but childlike. We were raised to be constantly afraid of the wrath of God, of Gramps, of Shirl, and of course of the ever-looming threat of going to hell. Not to mention homosexuals, who were out there everywhere just waiting to entice us into their clutches and do depraved things to us, like they did to each other.

  Gramps did a lot to keep tabs on the area’s homosexual activity, including subscribing to the Damron Guide, a publication listing the best meetup and vacation spots for gay people. I felt dirty looking up addresses for Gramps (places to picket when we would go on out-of-town pickets), as my eyes would undoubtedly come across an ad where two men were holding hands, or even worse, kissing! But soon, thanks to all the intrepid scouting, our picketing in Gage Park began to expand to other spots around town that Gramps said had affiliations with gays or gay causes.

  Gramps made all the signs in the early picketing years. As we started picketing different locations, he updated his slogans. GAY was soon replaced with FAG because, as Gramps always said, “They’re not happy, they’re fags; they’re bundles of sticks who will fuel the fires of hell.” FAG CHURCH was made for all the churches who spoke out against the anti-gay crusade. FAG TPD was made for the Topeka police department because Gramps thought they were part of the gay agenda and didn’t protect us adequately when the “fags and fag enablers” harassed us on the picket line.

  Once, when I was in my final year of grade school, I was visiting Gramps while he was constructing signs on his dark wooden table that sat in front of the pulpit. The table bore an inscription reading THIS DO IN REMEMBRANCE OF ME in gold letters. I liked to hide under it during games of hide and seek during sleepovers. Gramps laid out a blue Mexican blanket so he didn’t scratch the table’s surface, leaned over, and drew a perfectly straight line on the “D” in his most famous sign: GOD HATES FAGS. I was impressed with how he could, without a ruler, draw a perfectly straight line. I wanted to help. I wanted to learn how to draw a straight line. I asked if I could work on a sign. He smiled and gave me TURN OR BURN to work on. I got to work on the black outline of the “T,” my hand shaking as I was nearing halfway down. I had gone off course. I was terrified. I knew how much these signs meant to Gramps. How was I going to tell him I had messed up one of his signs? I began to panic and started thinking of ways I could fix it before he saw what I had done. I came to the conclusion that I would just make that part of the line thicker. Way thicker than any other letter. I finished the sign and gave it to him, scared of his reaction to the disproportionate thickness of the line I had drawn. He smiled and told me I’d done a good job. There’s no way he overlooked my mistake, but I was relieved he didn’t point it out. I still wish I could draw a straight line like him.

  Despite worrying that I’d make him mad, I loved spending time with Gramps. He was smart and he challenged me, which I have always credited with why I did so well in school. Gramps was also funny; he liked to laugh. He always said what was on his mind, and I have often been told I inherited that trait from him.

  When the picketing first started, I especially liked to stand next to Gramps. He had a lot of energy for a grandpa. I would teach him dances, like the Running Man, and we would use the sticks from our signs, which stood on the ground, to balance on while we showed off our moves. Or he would lead a sing-along with one of his early song parodies, like the one he based on “Back in the Saddle Again”:

  Get back in the closet again

  Back where a sin is a sin

  Where the filthy faggots dwell

  While they’re on their way to hell

  Get back in the closet again

  Preaching the truth once more

  Showing the faggots the door

  Where the filthy faggots dwell

  While they’re on their way to hell

  Get back in the closet again.

  These songs were incredibly catchy, easy for everyone to learn and sing. They also sometimes hit our targets even harder than the mottos on the signs we were carrying. People couldn’t believe the lyrics that were coming out of our mouths—especially from the kids.

  Making someone at a protest burst into tears didn’t happen very often, but when it did, my uncles would laugh. “Yeah, we got somebody to cry!” Brent, Shirl’s husband, and Tim would chortle. That made me feel conflicted. I didn’t think it was right to make someone cry. I didn’t like crying, and I didn’t want to make anyone else cry. But seeing my uncles’ reaction, I had to quickly change my reaction back to a smile. If we felt differently than the church leaders, we had to keep it to ourselves, or face ridicule for not knowing how to conduct ourselves as a member of God’s elect.

  MOST OF ALL, WHAT WE DIDN’T WANT TO DO WAS GET GRAMPS mad. Through his sermons, we all knew how fearsome he could be when raging about the godlessness of America. There were rumors—though I’d never seen anything to support them, myself—that he’d hit his kids in earlier days. With the grandkids, though, he was generally patient and kind, unless we did something to raise his ire. I recall once during a church service Gramps got mad at the children for not paying attention. Brent, sitting two pews in front of me, turned around, sat up tall, and slapped one of his sons, Zach, across the face. “He’s talking about you!” he angrily and loudly whispered while pointing his finger at him after the slap. Zach was very young, close to ten, but even at that young age, he knew he wasn’t supposed to make a sound as he sat there, his face beginning to turn red from the strike.

  Once, at a local picket, we were packing up the signs in the back of the white truck that was used for local pickets. I was struggling with a sign that was so big I had to stand on my tiptoes and reach across the back of the truck to lay it in. I stand at a gangly five feet, eight inches, but
even so, I had difficulty laying the sign down, and I let it drop the last few inches into the truck. Gramps heard the boards from my sign crash into the sign below.

  “What’s your problem, girl?” he said in his cutting preacher’s voice, as he furrowed his brow over powerful blue-gray eyes. “You’ve got those long arms, you shouldn’t be banging those signs together!” I looked at him, wide-eyed, scared stiff. I was never afraid he would strike me, but verbal lashings from Gramps were worse than any physical punishment I could imagine. His reprimands came quick as lightning and were razor-sharp. But looking in my eyes, he could see that I was terrified and his expression immediately changed—his stern face loosened into a gentle smile. By rule, he never apologized, but I could tell he always felt a little regretful after scolding me.

  ONE OF THE VERSES WE’D HEAR A LOT IN THE CHURCH WAS “He that spareth his rod hateth his son; but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.” Proverbs 13:24. As far as church parents went, mine were pretty lenient in that respect. Gramps would sermonize about how children were supposed to have fear of their parents, but mine didn’t spank us very much, maybe partly because we tried really hard to be good, and partly because they just didn’t touch us very much in general. I think my mother spanked me with a hairbrush once because I was talking back, but it didn’t really hurt that much. Mostly, it would be my dad getting mad and yelling. He was a little scary when he raised his voice. When my mom got mad, she would just stop talking to us.