Passing this on...
Losing My Religion
It was 1994, my first year in college, well, my first year in four-year college, anyway. I had just graduated from a trade school on the advice of the elders of the congregation, who knew I had been floundering with odd jobs trying to make enough gas money to drive myself all the way from Sumter, South Carolina to Columbia for my missionary work. My education was supposed to have ended there, so I could get a small, part-time secretary job somewhere to free me up to “advance Kingdom interests.” It was during my second semester at Columbia University that things started to change for me. Although I had never stopped going to the five weekly meetings, even having hosted one of them in my own apartment, I read Thoreau, and one grain of his wisdom stuck in my sensible door-to-door shoes: Have we really explored all there is to explore? As westerners, why have we limited ourselves to the Bible only? Why not read the Bhagavad Gita or the Koran? I started noticing that the meetings of the Crusaders, my religious group, took on an eerie tone. Advance Kingdom interests this. Advance Kingdom interests that. Door-to-door, door-to-door. Follow the direction of the Sheperding Ministers (the group of 12 white men in Columbus, Ohio, who wrote all our magazines and dictated the words of the Lord).
Up to that point, I had changed so little since my 17th year, I, a senior in high school, Drum Major of the band. Conducting our little high school band was one of the high points of my life thus far, and just to be on the safe side, I had talked to my band director about certain songs I could not direct: such as the national anthem, which we considered too worldly and also disloyal, for we were simply aliens on earth, our government not a democracy, but a Theocracy, ruled from heaven, our country, the only one God supported, of course. Well, I had settled quite comfortably into the role of leader, a role I had never been given in my life, except for the time I was given the responsibility to take care of the class gerbil in fourth grade and neglected the poor thing because I was too embarrassed to admit I was scared of rodents. Now, my arms moved with ease, telling the band to be quieter, louder, to pick up the pace, to slow down, until the day I looked up one evening, and one of the blurry dots in the stands intrigued me with its trigger on my memory bank. That face looks familiar, I thought. Is it him? Wait, no, it’s not, it’s just some—oops, it is. I saw the face of one of the members of our congregation, watching the band, and I felt an accusatory stare, or was it a glare, from his eyes and the eyes of the entire congregation. I could feel the gossip making its hurtful way through the congregation, as if I had been dealt one of those little bugs, which travel beneath the surface of one’s skin in so many science fiction movies. My arms flailed about with insecurities about my future standing with the congregation. Maybe he’ll be cool and not tell anyone, I hoped.
Days passed, and nothing happened. I’ll be alright, I imagined, as I slouched in front of the couch on the floor with my records scattered about the living room, listening to my Culture Club album, which gave me some relief from biting my nails and pulling my hair out by the roots, strand by strand. It was Thursday, a high-schooler’s eternity since the football game the Friday before. My fears had eased into comfort as I realized nothing bad was going to happen to me. I went to the meeting that evening confident that I was an okay person, that God was smiling down on me as one of his creative children just expressing herself. The meeting went okay, and I got to give a lot of answers as always. Geez, the answers are so simple, right there in the book, and nobody seems to want to raise their hand. What’s up? I thought, as the minutes dragged by. The time after the meeting was a joy, as I got to socialize and hang with all of my friends, young and old alike, all encouraging and strengthening one another to face the world and its sometimes cruel persecutors. We would often have an almost manic excitement in the air, but only after the meeting. During I noticed that everyone would become rather sleepy, as if the Devil himself were trying to oppress us and cover our ears. People would make frequent trips to the bathroom or water fountain to stay awake. I remember secretly thinking that the sisters with children to discipline were so lucky, because they had an escape. But it shamed me to think such thoughts, and I would convince myself I was just fighting my own selfish tendencies and sinful thoughts. So I made the meetings more interesting by preparing my lesson beforehand so I could raise my hand and answer questions from the podium over what we had learned. I learned to be quite a convincing speaker with this training. As one of the few loyal Bible students who had never rebelled or took boyfriends at school, I was always welcome to every gathering and sing-along, where I found a rare chance to show off my singing voice a little, but just a little, for we were ever cautioned against haughty thinking. On this day, as I was saying good-bye to a few of my friends and gathering my books, two men blocked my happy way to the exit.
“Sister Huerta, we were wondering if we could take a moment to talk to you about something that has come to our attention,” one dryly stated. I could tell by the sounds in their voices that I, the pillar of the youth in the congregation, had finally fallen from grace. “We understand from a few observers that you have been directing the band as a majorette in your school.”
“Yessir.”
“Well, we’d like to ask what your duties are in this task.”
“Well, I just direct the band at football games, but I do not direct the National Anthem,” I defended.
“This is to be commended, sister,” said the other elder approvingly, although I somehow guessed what the next word would be. “But what about the alma mater?” I had guessed the word “but” correctly.
“The, uh, ah, alma mater?” I feigned innocently.
“Yes,” they replied, waiting. I fell silent, hesitating, and their next question curiously enough flashed like written words in all capitals before my face, “DO YOU CONDUCT THE ALMA MATER?”
I know how to tell a white lie, how to tell sister Brewster she did a good job on that awful, quilted, polyester scrap vest she wears frequently. But lie to the elders? In a prejudicial hearing? No way, I can’t. “Yes, I have had to conduct it as a part of my duties. You see, when I decided to try out, I specifically asked the band director if I could avoid the national anthem during the year, and he had said OK, that he would conduct that one since it was in the stands. But on the field, each performance ends with a rendition of the alma mater, and I had not thought enough ahead to avoid that one.”
“Sister, your honesty is to be commended. It would be good to consider what God’s Word has to say about all this. We don’t need to remind you, a serious Bible student, of the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and how they refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s national symbol. But have you ever stopped to consider how the school is like a mini-government? The alma mater is the national anthem of the school, and as the Good Book say, ‘he that is faithful in little shall also be faithful in much.’” Quipped the elder cheerfully. I began to cry. I was surrounded by feelings of death and gloom, a tired, sick feeling.
“There, there, sister,” one comforted, “we all make mistakes, and the purpose of this visit with you and with any of God’s Crusader children is to save the straying sheep before they get lost.” This somehow didn’t take away the sick feeling.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t see it before—what am I going to do? I am the only one who went to drum major camp, and there is no one else to fill my position on such short notice, and at the end of the football season!” I cried.
“A scripture in the letter of James will help us,” the first one said as the familiar rustle of Bible paper clouded the air. “The implication of this scripture, to let your yes mean yes and your no mean no, is that, if you have already committed to a job for the world and fell into a pitfall unknowingly, you are first to fulfill your contract, doing as little of the bad deed involved as possible. For example a brother might unwittingly sign a construction contract and find that a few of the projects are on the Navy Base. Then what? If he can get out of those through the mercy of his employer, then he will. But if his employer shows no mercy, he must fulfill his duties until the contract is up, asking God for forgiveness.”
“So I can finish out the year? We only have two more games and then maybe district, because it looks like we’ll make it,” I said, my tears subsiding somewhat by now.
“That Sumter sure has a good team,” one mused. “They’ve really come a long way in the past few years. Heh heh, there’s nothing like a good football team…”
“Ahem, ah, brother, back to the subject,” the other corrected, “Sister, what this all boils down to is, even if no worldly songs were played, it is one thing to be in the band, but quite another to be leading it. We have to live in this world, but we do not want to be deep into it. That is why we do not run for office, or other such worldly leadership positions.”
“Yessir, I understand. I’m sorry. I will talk to my teacher and see if I can be relieved of some of my duties. Thank you for correcting my path,” I slurred humbly, with my head hung low.
“Sister you have always set a fine example for the other young ones. I would hate to see you stumble now and bring anyone else down with you. The end is near! From the looks of things, I doubt this old world will make it to the year 1990. Armageddon is fast approaching. We must do all we can to leave this system behind and do all we can to advance Kingdom interests,” he preached and droned through the thunder of my doomed fate…
The passing years seemed like a blur, with no distinguishing marks on any given year, simply the repeat act of knocking on doors, rejection after rejection. Excitement came around once of twice a year as the young people around me married, each one with a feast and a dance following. The yearly conventions were high points for a time, but the information was always the same and seemed to lull us to sleep every time with the familiar sermon narcolepsy which made us mill about in the corridors so much, looking for our future spouses so we too could have a big party. Wow. 1994. I never thought this world would last so long. I wonder sometimes, what have I worked for so hard? I feel duped. Why don’t they want me to go to college? If I had started in 1985 right after high school instead of becoming a missionary, I would have finished by now. Those that chose to go were gossiped about so badly, I didn’t have the courage to join those rebellious ones. I thought I would be laughing if Armageddon came the day after they graduated, all those years of learning down the drain. But they have good jobs now. They don’t seem to care what anyone thinks. They just do what feels right to them. Maybe Thoreau is right. Maybe reading other holy books, or even just non-Crusader books isn’t so bad. The world has not caved in. Now that I am starting friendships out here, why, I can see that they are even nicer than some of the Crusaders. The elders always used to pound out the scripture, “By this you will know my people, if they have love among themselves.” Maybe this congregation is just a bad seed. Overall, the Crusaders are still the only ones with enough faith in their convictions to go out and try to make converts and save the rest of mankind, no matter what people say or think. Maybe they don’t all gossip and spy on people and report them to the elders.
That year I received my first kiss at the age of 26. I didn’t like it very much. I had squelched my sexual feelings for so long, I didn’t know how to feel anymore. I thought about telling the elders what I had done, but decided to leave it between God and me. But God’s soldiers were not far behind.
“Sister, we just came by your apartment to ask if you were okay. We haven’t seen you at the meetings in quite a while. But more importantly, we want to talk to you about something that has been concerning us. The other day, as you were jogging, we passed you and noticed you were wearing a shirt with an Israeli flag on it,” they stated.
“Yes, I just, ah, was at a flag store in San Antonio and thought it would be nice to have a T-shirt from the Holy Land,” I said, knowing this was not going to fly at all.
“Sister, you know we refrain from nationalism of any sort. It is imperative that we set an example of neutrality in the affairs of the earth,” they scolded. Something in me welled up, a latent ball of mucous from the sick feeling I regurgitated from my high school chastisement nine years before.
“It’s just a T-shirt, for crying out loud!” They looked astonished, and I felt shocked that the words buzzed from my lips with such ease. For the first time, I saw them clearly, not as God’s representatives on earth, but a bunch of ego-fed men, knowing they had power over me. Well, no more! I felt my own pride like an angel hovering between me, and my precarious relationship with these men, along with the other 5 million members worldwide. “If I remember correctly, we were counseled years ago that a person’s dress was a matter of conscience and very personal, not to be dictated by the congregation. I like that shirt. I am not getting rid of it.” I slammed the door in their faces.
A couple of weeks later, the phone rang. It was my mother. Her voice was that of the Wailing Woman, mourning the loss of her children, for I was all she had. The voice was low and choppy, with a vibrato like Katherine Hepburn, but without any of her redeeming charm. It was the voice of a broken woman, shattered beyond repair, with a strong, nasal quality. She had emptied a thousand rivers. “Do you ‘ave to tear my ‘art out?”
“I’m sorry, mother, but I am 26 years old now. I have to do what’s best for myself, and I am tired of being spied on.” She hung up. Another ring. “Hello?” I said.
“Sister, it’s not too late to change your mind, if you want to retract your former statements,” the elder offered.
“No, thanks. I need to be on my own to figure everything out for myself,” I said.
“Sister, it will indeed be very lonely out there,” he warned. “You know you cannot talk to any of the Crusaders, and they cannot say hello to you. Is this what you want?”
“Just do it. Just make the announcement,” I said…
“Vivi! Vivi Huerta, I could just strangle you!” said my chubby, bipolar neighbor Marge. “I heard you were leaving the congregation. I hope you realize that God is not with you anymore! He doesn’t love you anymore! You have—CUT HIM OFF!!!!”
“No I haven’t,” I screamed. “I know in my heart He still loves me, and He loves you, too. I don’t care what anyone says or does, that’s the truth,” I hissed, and I turned around and entered my apartment to face the first of many lonely nights as an outcast of the only friends I had ever really known, both in childhood and adulthood.
I lay on the bed feeling heavy. I had a dream that night that everywhere I turned for a friend, people turned away slowly and walked. So I ran to my mother. She turned and walked away. I ran to my father. He, too, walked away. I called out to God, and he turned His back on me and I slipped further and further into unconsciousness, as though I might slide into death. Just at that moment, I awoke with a start and a sweat to the sound of my cat, Sally. She was hungry.
Valerie Fernandez