The Preamble to my Constitution
In the beginning was Our Father and his Word. Always there, just like my sisters, stair-stepped, dodging muddy hoofprints in the horse pasture. An unholy trinity because we were girls, the Word always spoken in tongues over our quaking bodies to ward off evil. The curse of the fall.
But you can’t ward off what you were born to. May, August, September. Blossom, heat, and fruited trees, despite our father and his fundamental faith and expectations. We took to our seasons like Eve to the apple, even our hair played its role: honey crisp, wine sap, and golden delicious. Sprinkled tufts of owl feathers from the minute we flew from our mother’s warm nest into this cold world, eager to start a fire. Maybe we were what initiated his intrigue with chaos theory. He searched for balance and order forever after.
I’m the firstborn. Heather Leigh, a name my mother came up with after watching Brigadoon. Officially, a flowering shrub that grows wild on the rough Scottish heath, so maybe that’s why I’ve always bucked subjugation. In the summer, my hair and skin turned the hue of the hickory switches I got whipped with, thanks to what Dad called my dark countenance. Surly, he’d call me, but I disagree. While I do tend to slip toward solitude and silence, I’m a far cry from surly – I just don’t want to be controlled. I have waged an eternal war against being reined in. Rest assured, I’ll always fight against a bit. Take, for instance, back when I was labeled a Jezebel. When I snuck out. Shut down. Found myself shipped away before the hounds of the hell we were living with could devour me. I have to thank my father for that. And thank God, before he died, we’d mended our frayed connection. Though he never gave up preaching to me.
My second little sister is named Leslie Joyce. Her hair’s now the color of caramel cake, but back then, it was the curled black of burnt candlewicks – closest to his color. And if Dad was partial to any of us girls, it was Leslie. She’s still the closest one of us to taking up his holy mantel. The only one who still attends church. Her husband, her second – she and I are both on our second marriage – even teaches Sunday School to senior citizens. Daddy definitely approved. And honestly, I approve too. I’m happy for her. Happy she wasn’t scarred so severely that a house of worship raises her hackles and sends her scurrying away from the ghosts that still float in my mind, eager to froth up some mayhem.
It’s sad, really, how traumatized I am by the faith of my father. How the kindest, the most pure-intentioned texts about bible studies and organized prayers before football games can send me into a tailspin. I hesitate to compare it to a rape victim flinching at a tender, well-meaning touch… how a hug could trigger flashbacks of being encircled, overpowered, trapped, and out of control. How something so innocent can thrust a survivor back into the nightmare of her violent past….
But that’s the scenario that feels closest to how triggered I can become. John Donne prophesied my past before it was ever present when he wrote his Holy Sonnet and the lines, Batter my Heart, Three-Person’d God. That was the existence I led in my formative years. Back when my father and those elders did their best to o’ertrhow me and bend [their] force to break, blow, burn, and make me new — when I was already so brand-spanking-new and oh-so-incredibly vulnerable. And they did it. They battered and burned me, and while they didn’t break me, it stuck. It was imprinted, all the violence and force and fear. All that fury. So, maybe they really did break me after all.
And while I know that how I interpret Donne’s lines is not what he meant at all — and while I know how the Fellowship treated me and others was not what God’s words mean, not what God means, what Jesus means, what scripture means — that’s still what was done to me. And it’s still the baggage they left behind with me.
Likewise, I know it’s not what my friends, my fellow football wives, my fellow football parents mean, but violence in the name of God was what was done to me, and so when any sort of organized faith comes too close to me, it sends me crashing back into that place. Still. So, please know that about me, dear friends. And know that I mean no disrespect. No ill-intent. No judgement. It’s just trauma.
Lucky for Leslie, it does not do that to her. And I’m happy for her.
My other sister, she doesn’t attend church either. Her name is Emily Jo – or JoJo, as we call her. She was younger when I was shipped off. I was sixteen, making her twelve, so a lot of what was happening went over her head. She just woke up one morning and I was gone. That’s probably why she does her best to be the life of the party, the center of attention – so she won’t wake up dispatched and forgotten one morning. So, while she woke up with one less sister one Saturday, Leslie rode with Dad and me over the Mississippi River and through the Appalachian woods– to Grandmother’s house we’d gone. They left the next day in my Dad’s blue Isuzu Gemini, Leslie traumatized about leaving me, but not about what sent me there. The wrath of God and Daddy never came down on her head. She’d seen first-hand what it could do. Therefore, she remained obedient and does ‘til this day, staying in Our Father’s sights every single Sunday.
But honestly, banishment with a flaming sword brought me to where I am today. Honestly, it’s a pretty good place out here east of Eden. I have a beautiful life, with four beautiful children, and the man I was meant to find. The man who complements, not completes me. Have there been hiccups and hang ups along the way? Absolutely. But I have learned that I am enough. I have always been enough. I am ample and, as Whitman declared, I contain multitudes. And what’s more, I am able to be multitudes and I am able to speak my multitudes. Fully. To be me and to speak my mind. Until you’ve been denied those things, you never know how verily important they are. Yes, I said verily. Because this, which I speak to you, is my truth. And the truth will set you free.
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