EMERALD SHACKLES ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS

THIS ESSAY IS AN UNEDITED WORK IN PROGRESS…

My mother planned to come to my grandmother’s house on Christmas morning around eleven. Tensions were high since I moved out of her and my stepfather’s house into the safety of my grandmother’s careful watch. I so hoped that moving out would ease the strife between my parents and I, but it only made it worse. It was as if my moving was an admission of guilt that they were trying to now deny and hide by making me into a monster…deflecting by projecting their atrocious behavior onto me.  My stepfather did the best he could to paint me as the evil stepdaughter to anyone that would listen and my mother obliged in spreading his lies with him.

The first time after moving out that I tried to let “water flow under the bridge,” was for my stepdad’s birthday party. I made him his favorite cherry cheesecake and brought it over. Instead of thanking me, he spent the evening literally hiding in his room despite his sister visiting from Africa. My mom again told me it would have been better for her and everyone if I would have never been born. Another abusive weekend leading up to this Christmas was over Thanksgiving. We spent it at my aunt’s cabin in North Carolina. At this point, my stepfather was so extreme in his “ways” toward me that his own mother and sister resolved to do something about it, mostly praying…as is the Catholic way. But also, my aunt took a “hands on approach.” She did her best from afar to protect me, sending me notes and calling me weekly. During these years, a therapist told me to stop associating with my stepfather because he was never going to change. There was a lot of emotional distance that everyone held yet no safety.  Everyone in my family seemed to be in a state of fear and panic, but it was Christmas…and Christmas is about family and as is the American way, it was also about gifting.

I didn’t want anything from anyone. I was content just to live at my grandmother’s again in a room that felt safe. My mom, however, wanted to get me something and kept asking me for a “Christmas list.” I reveled in the solace that music provided. It gave me a contentment me and an escape just as literature gifted me. I was sixteen, enjoying a wide variety of music. I was often practiced my viola for orchestra and love listening to classical music. In fact, I loved a bit of everything from jazz to Nirvana to glam bands to rock.  My grandmother could often be seen dancing to Led Zepplin, which I introduced to her despite it being the nineties. Watching my grandmother dance, I felt like was in the right place, the right home, finally. My grandmother was the mother I should have had and I was the daughter that should she should have had. At this point, my grandmother’ s '“CD player” was a large stack of encased stereo equipment in her bedroom. The connected to speakers were in the living room of the town home we shared. I didn’t mind this because I enjoyed listen to music with my grandmother but for her sake, I decided it would be best if she could be left in peace and I had my own CD player for my room.

I didn’t feel comfortable asking anything from my mom but my grandmother played Christmas liaison that year. My grandmother tried her best to repair my relationship with my mom and hers with my mom as if it her responsibility. My grandmother would likely never use such a strong word for her relationship with my mother but I could sense a lot of disdain between the two of them. In her dreams, my grandmother’s subconscious replaced my mother with me every time. She would dream of her kids being young, with my two uncles and me instead of my mother as her third child and only daughter, I am sure that this subconscious blip hurt my mother’s feelings but it was as if she had her chance and that time had passed. It was my turn to be a daughter to my grandmother and she and I had an unbreakable bond. My grandmother was an angelic host full of love and patience. She believed in hope and was forever attempting to get us to forgive and reconnect. My grandmother knew I wanted a CD player so she let my mom know and arranged a Christmas visit.

On Christmas morning, my mother arrived late, flustered, and with my stepfather and my half brother. I know from my grandmother that there had been an argument regarding me wanting to see my brother and my stepdad not allowing my mom to have him near me “without his supervision.” In retrospect, my stepdad knew what was about to happen and wanted to see his master plan unfold. We were his puppets that Christmas morning, a scene he arranged. He set the stage to humiliate and scorn us. He arranged us as pawns for his own sick and twisted pleasure of malignant power.

After greetings and gift exchanges between my mom, grandmother and brother, there was one last present. In my mothers handwriting, the hand made card read, from “Mom and Daddy.” It was a rectangular box that was small enough to fit in my hand. Hmmm, maybe a dollar store watch, I thought.  My mom being a clown, she had already gifted me a couple of prank gifts. I assumed the contents of this small narrow box was a joke gift. I knew that my stepfather controlled all the money in their household. I knew that my mother had little or no access to her own finances, so I did not expect that she could buy me anything expensive nor did I care for her to. I actually preferred she didn’t because price purchases would cause strife with my stepdad. So there in my hand was was, a seemingly innocuous little box.

I held the box, just staring at this “final gift” as the whole room stared at me. it took me a second to begin to unwrap it. My stepfather sat in the chair of the antique secretary set next to the front door. Even though my stepdad was the furthest away form me in the room, his presence bore down on me in the most suffocating manner. I could feel his eyes weigh be down like he was pushing me under the surface of a rushing river, pushing me far enough down for the currents to take hold of me. I looked down at the box to avoid his piercing gaze. I tried to smile but the box felt like fire, something felt off. A Pandora’s box?

My fingers slid slowly down the length of the package and felt something soft.  A green velvety jewelry box revealed itself from the paper. Gold letters bore the name of an antique jewelry store. My stepfather bought much of my mom’s jewelry from this place. As I opened the box, my stepfather’s face went pale. Inside was a gold antique slide bracelet with a single gold and emerald slide. The paleness bled to red as a veil of fury washed over my stepfather’s face and without saying a word, stood up and darted straight to the car and drove away.  

As I stared at the emerald slide, the front door still open and my stepfather’s car gone, I felt betrayed. Somehow the desire for a cheap CD player manifested into an expensive gold and emerald bargaining chip in a gamble that was impossible to win. My grandmother gave my mom a ride home. My mom was devastated and blamed herself. Ultimately though,my mother still made excuses for my stepfather’s behavior, hoping he would quickly return and “work everything out.” In the weeks leading up to Christmas morning, my stepfather prohibited my mom from buying anything for me. The financial hold he had over her was a constant part of their relationship. The prank gifts were easy for her to buy as “professional clown materials,” something my stepdad allowed. My mother had perfected the art of disguise so well that I’m not sure she even knew herself anymore. This Christmas, my mother wanted to buy something bigger than prank gifts for me so she asked my stepdad if she could buy me a CD player. He forbade that and any other purchase for me. At the same time, my half brother wanted a drum set to add to his expanding musical instrument collection. The drum set was my mom’s stronghold. She protested the purchased of a drum kit for my brother. My stepfather, not caring about my mother’s assertion of willpower bought the drum set. Christmas morning for my mom before their arrival to my grandmothers was spent under the sly sneer of my stepdad’s betrayal with a background of pounding drums. After all of the years of not standing up for herself,stepdad going behind my mom’s back to buy a drum set while not being allowed to purchase something for me seemed to have lit a fire in her that burned just long enough for my stepdad to squash it. She secretly used my stepdad’s store store credit line to purchase the bracelet. This jewelry shop was probably one of the last places to offer true in store credit accounts well into the nineties and my stepfather used them often. After his roaring outbursts, my stepdad would often woo my mother into submission with trips, gifts and art supplies. He built quite a line of credit with the small shop. My mother bought the perfect unwanted and nonreturnable gift for me.

This entire scenario was not about me or about Christmas, and it especially was not about a CD player or a bracelet. This scenario was about him. He made a scene to puff himself up. Instead of my mother protecting me or standing up for me, she set me up for failure. My grandmother’s heart hurt for me. She told my mom in trusting confidence about the CD player I wanted. She knew I tried to keep my desires a secret, to protect them from my parents. She even suggested I was being “too dramatic: to not ask for anything for Christmas. Now that Christmas had devolved into a game of toxic chess, even in his absence, my grandmother felt the need to make it up to me. She came up with chores and errands I could do for her to pay me (even though she knew I would do anything for her for free). Meanwhile my mother was frantic at the silence and absence of her husband. I was over it and really didn’t want to have anything to do with them. I didn’t want to look at the stupid bracelet. Every glance at it made me feel like I had been punched in the gut. I stuffed it into an empty drawer, one that had nothing useful in it to avoid the site of it. I wanted to get rid of it but I was stifled by fear that if I did so, I would be punished. So it sat in the drawer, closed and hidden.

Three weeks later, my stepdad came back but refused to go to the church we all attended. For over a decade, my stepfather and mother went to the same Presbyterian Church as my grandmother and uncle. I went to the church since preschool and still went with my grandmother on Sundays and for youth group. This Southern neighborhood church was not strict or conservative. It was an easy going congregation, preaching love form the pulpit. It was full of very nice people and hosted fundraising dinners and community events. The church focused on Southern hospitality as opposed to religious dogma. My stepfathers’ abuse and neglect began to raise eyebrows among congregational elders and youth leaders. I could tell that my stepdad stopped attending that church due to his own shame. He took his mask off one too many times revealing his repugnance. Once others knew how disgusting he was, there was no going back. At first my stepdad attended Catholic Church. Not only was his upbringing Catholic so it was a “return home’ for him, but as we all know the Catholic Church was a perfect cover for any number of abusers. A couple of months after my stepdad returned from his excursion of fury, everything changed. My stepdad very abruptly began attending a fundamentalist evangelical church almost daily. My mother followed along with him almost immediately

I tried my best to focus on my own goals during this time of my life. I was happy being with my grandmother and I was happy that my mom and stepdad’s time was occupied by church instead of plots of revenge. As long as the two of them were at church all of the time, I didn’t have to worry about being caught in the middle of their drama, or so I thought. By early spring both my mother and stepfather declared themselves “Saved by the Blood of Jesus” and “Carriers of the Holy Spirit.” For those unfamiliar with evangelical terminology, “filled with the spirit: actually means that they “speak in tongues” when they worship. This new lifestyle was a world away from the laid back Presbyterian Church I grew up in. In migrating to this church, my mom and stepdad replaced teachings of love with hellfire teachings of punishment. Puritanical ideas of rewards and punishments were the force that drove their entire world view.

After only a few months of constant indoctrination, my mom invited me to her baptism. At this point, she had burned all of the “secular music,” ditched all alcohol, began dressing very modestly and talked a lot about Blood of the Lamb. At this point, my mother exasperatedly shared her testimony of being saved by Jesus at this new house of faith so I wasn’t surprised when the congregation spoke in tongues neither was I surprised at the “prophetic proclamations” from the pulpit. After the regular service, my stepfather led the baptismal service as he always found a way to achieve a position of power in any setting he immersed himself and lucky for him, evangelical Christians were easy to dupe. He baptized my mother and several others in a full bodied baptismal pool. Before the submersions, he told his salvation testimony. He talked in very general terms about being a sinner and not being a very good husband or father. He told the story of how his heart was filled with hatred for his stepdaughter. As I sat there surrounded by a fully fooled congregation, my stepdad carried on and on about how terrible of a child I was and how he could not stand the sight of me. He casually admitted that his hatred prompted him to run away from us all on Christmas morning.  He described his emotional outburst in the most mater of fact manner stating, “I was in the woods, at my brother’s hunting house. It’s a modest camp. While I was there, I spent three weeks plotting to kill my stepdaughter and kidnap my son. I was obsessed with murdering her. I drew up extensive plans to kill her after my return home.” For me,” he continued, “this was a true “Damascus Road Experience. I was Saul with a murderous heart, and now I am like Paul, cleansed by the blood.” 

The room spun around me. I thought I might pass out. I wanted to run yet knew that if I did, it would cause a scene. I was not imprisoned in that church the way I had been imprisoned in my carpeted room years ago, yet I sat completely frozen and unable to escape. I held my breath and sat as still as I could as he told the rest of the story as if breathing less would help me to disappear. I side glanced at the rest of the congregation. They listened intently as if my stepdad was revealing a cosmic secret that only he possessed. In that moment, their silence was as much of a betrayal as his intent. Their attentiveness and praise was the richest enabler of my stepdad’s malice that he had ever discovered. He was certainly hooked on the addictive draw that fundamentalist religious provided him. With the star glazed eyes of the congregations beaming upon him, my stepdad described his “salvation moment.” He said, “I was back in my office, trying to catch up on work when a miracle happened. My friend invited me to THIS church and instead of committing murder; I committed my life to the Lord The hands of the LORD worked through YOU.” The congregation cheered and applauded and he was a hero in that moment. My stepfather’s conversion from murderer to now preacher was simply gave off a vibe of, “Oopsie, that was crazy and now I’m fine.” He provided no recognition that of any fault that was greater than any other one going thought “spiritual struggles.” His self-righteous monologue projected and even darker shadow over me. After his admission, my stepdad put his head down to lead everyone in prayer.

I felt like a crumpled up piece of paper laying discarded in the trash. Each set of congregational eyes felt a million pounds of trash piled on top of me, the weight of their gaze suffocated me. The church was witness to his felonious admission yet no one cared. In fact, my stepdad was heavily praised for “how far he had come and how much he had changed.” He painted me as a monster to new church just as he had painted me as a slut to his coworkers, as troubled child to the Presbyterian Church and a hypochondriac to the pediatrician. He prayed for his demon of a stepdaughter as if I needed an exorcism, but the demon he wanted to exorcise was just a normal girl. But normal girls weren’t allowed in this church, only Jesus girls were accepted. Once the vile mouth of my stepdad lashed out my name like a snake preparing to constrict its prey, the congregants surrounded me. They coiled around me with their hands on every inch of my frozen body. They prayed for my salvation as strange languages stifled the air I breathed. They prayed for me to a Jesus girl, to be like my Jesus stepdad.

My stepdad was presented as THE model of evangelical perfection. I should be my own Paul, they pressured. I felt so afraid of him, over the next few months, I fell into the temptation. Despite my terror, that church service was the apple and my mouth was now filled. I was so shocked at his confession that I could not process my feelings. The glimmering promise of safety got the best of me. I didn’t swallow the seed at first. Instead, I railed against my stepdad’s baptismal performance, but over time, my mom tapped away at the foundation of my stoicism, She spoon fed me a religious dream that filled up a hole in my heart that I so wanted filled. Simultaneously, I felt as though I had no other survival option than to seek the refuge in the same grass that the snake hid. The desire for safety and for the family I never had was supported by my grandmother’s insistence that my stepdad was capable of change. The day of the baptism, I was mortified by my stepdad’s Damascus Experience, but the web of my own indoctrination was already being woven around me. A swallowed the seed and grew to believe that a strict religious regiment would save us all. Eventually, I believed maybe I was in fact a demon. My original horror became self doubt. Self doubt became self hatred because any virtue of the self was considered worldly and evil. The hellfire teachings were that we should not be ourselves but should only strive to be exactly like Jesus. The church’s foundational belief was that denial of the self and spiritual resignation to God is the highest form piety. There was a lot of talk about holding oneself accountable and backsliding into sin was heavily frowned upon. Despite my initial shell shock and with the gentle nudging of my grandmother, I fell as deeply into the pit as my mom and stepdad had. Over the next three years, I was trapped in the depths of fundamentalist hypocrisy.

From my senior year of high school to my second year of college, I immersed myself into the evangelical culture of their church. Still living off and on with my grandmother I did my best to “make nice” with my stepfather. I attended church three or four times a week. Going to Bible studies and traveling for mission trips became my norm. I enjoyed the outlets for compassionate work. I loved the mission travels and working in local soup kitchens and children’s homes. Church outreach activities filled my big heart with gratitude, joy, and healing. The fulfillment of compassionate work acted as a veil over my eyes for everything else that was around me. The more full my heart became, the more shackled my mind became. I created a space for indoctrination and self doubt. I followed the flock of fundamentalist teachings. I allowed myself to be brainwashed, to be the sheep. I actively encouraged the erasure of my sense of self, I abandoned it like a discarded rag doll. It took almost no effort to allow an already disassociated self to fall into a fundamentalist mindset. Destroying what was left of my soul was simple as it already had turned to dust . The breath of the church blew all that was in me away. I fought for survival as this new non-self. Each inconsistency I noticed, I met with a new veil until I was completely cloaked with religious deception.

After three years of dedication, my stepfather was a high ranking pastor of the church as well as the school principal. I continued my college education. By this point, some of the veils were lifted off of me. Meeting new people and having new experiences made me long for my old self. My non-self was burdened by depression and loneliness. I could see how my stepdad’s increasing power was starting to become increasingly more dangerous. A bit of intellectual maturity made me highly away of the church;s promotion of misogynist domination and oppression. As a young unmarried woman in the church, I began to be controlled by the elders including my stepfather. While I did have many valuable relationships, I was starting to notice the bigotry, homophobia and sexism that this form of Christianity harnessed although I didn’t have the words to articulate that yet. One day I was called into the head pastors’ office. My stepfather and the pastor demanded to “have authority” concerning the guy I was dating. They demanded that we break up or suggested that I would be excommunicated from the church. This interference and betrayal was the viper’s bite that woke me up from my slumber. I did break up with that boyfriend, but I also left the church and abandoned all religious indoctrination. The intrusion and control of my personal life by my stepfather under the guise of God’s word was all it took for me to walk away and never look back. I immersed myself in art, literature, film studies, history, philosophy and cultural studies. I discovered feminist theorists and for the first time felt relief in the catalog of rhetoric. Having the words to describe my history was like a treasure box of jewels, each linguistic crystal describing my thoughts. I poured intellectual water of over the dust that the church had left me with and began to remold myself into the person I was meant to be. I never felt more true to myself until that moment in time.

Eventually my parents left that church too, but only to dig their feet deeper into the pit. My stepfather grew increasingly more powerful was offered a position helping a new mega church in Texas; This began a decade long period of church hopping. He would assume power, get booted out, and find another church…my making excises for him each step of the way as if trying to sweep the dirt away from an earthen floor One church had security escort him out of the building. My mother was not phaed by this instead she chimed at how the church’s head pastor was immersed in sin. She claimed that the lead pastor “got greedy” and took it out on my ever righteous stepdad. They moved on to another church and practically the same thing happened again.

Over time, large churches just didn’t seem to work out for them, so they started what they called “Hone Church” which was a handful of followers working on their Texan property. The handful of followers even lived on their property, following every work my stepdad uttered. My mother developed a prescription painkiller addiction. Opiod addiction mixed with religious fervor was the perfect cocktail for my stepfather to serve because in addition to preventing her from driving, it kept her stupefied and satiated. Most of the “followers” were ex heroin addicts that my stepdad employed for odd jobs on his property. He provided room and board for, giving him financial power over sect of vulnerable people. Watching them for a cult from afar disgusted me and I maintained not only emotional distance from them but physical distance as well, living on the east coast. Complaints from the neighbors miraculously inspired “new revelation,”and a move to Arkansas. My stepdad positioned himself as leader of a women’s indoctrination organization in which he assigned himself the title “Overseer of Women.” Their fetishized image of Christ worship masks all their transgressions, past, present and future. During the years that I was scouring out remnant pieces of the disappointing faith I had in the Church, and in the people who practice corrupt faithfulness, my stepfather and mother built a pedestal to display their newly cloaked selves. Masks upon masks presented to their new victims in all of their false glory.

My stepfather didn’t get away with murder, but he did get away with his admission to plot my murder. The structures of power within zealous spaces hide the deepest secrets of the most evil hearts. Women’s words are like lead dropped in a glass room, falling thought the bottom into the cold pit until they are silenced. Masculine power is effectively maintained by the silence of women and all women are under the power of men in the Church. The chains that that hold women prisoner within the depths of fundamentalism gain an endless number of links the more time goes on. Thirty years later, the tight noose of masculine religious control is now worn as a prized jewel on my mother’s neck.

I left the emerald bracelet unworn and in the empty drawer at my grandmother’s house until the day she moved into a retirement home. She put the little green velvet box with of some of my other things for me to take. As I opened the box for the first time in two decades, it let our a wailing creek. The unworn gold and emerald bracelet, to me was the most delicate shackle that ever existed, a petite and petulant. Closing the box, I looked at myself in the mirror. Peering at myself, free of religion, free of my parents and free to live my life the way I wanted it, I saw no veils. I had discovered myself my looking inward no by comparing the tally of religious deeds versus fleshly sins. When I stripped myself down to my inner core, I unlocked the shackles, finding my own path. Damascus was not to be my ending point, it was merely a stopping point. I walked away as soon as I was able to see my own entanglement. We must sculpt our own heart just as Saul became Paul. I found my own path even and discarded the mask of fundamentalism. On a religious path, I felt the dust of my soul was downtrodden. the sermons acting as the footsteps of Christ, trampling over a dead inner self. Discarding religion, I started on my own swirling and changing path, one that gave me freedom no matter the mountaintops and valleys. Abandoning the religion of my stepfather, I learned the importance of discarding shackles, even if one of them is a bracelet in an empty drawer.