Tag: Anger

Part 14

A while back a fellow survivor said something to me that I cannot stop thinking about. She described the church we grew up in as having a caste system. A caste system is a cultural structure where your class is determined by birth. So if you’re born a certain race or in a certain social economic class you cannot escape it. I believe this is true for people within Calvary Gospel. I think I was keenly aware of it during my childhood. No matter what I did right I would never rise above the poverty and race of my family. Plus I had this sin stain on me like a scarlet letter. They would really never let you forget who you were in their eyes. Small daily occurrences would remind you of your place. If you were born into the right family you could get away with almost anything. If you were not then the hot spotlight of shame and humiliation would be shone on you. I was never spanked at school but many others were. The “right” kids never got spanked, but if you were a poor child or a child of color your chances of being whacked went up considerably. One little girl comes to mind. She was a beautiful child and very high strung. She was not a child of color but came from an economically disadvantaged family with an unpopular mother. She was spanked a lot. She was not the kind of child you would expect to sit in a tiny office all day staring at the wall but that did not matter. She was bright and full of energy! I got the feeling that most of the adults working within the church and school did not like her and I always felt sadness for her. I babysat for her and her siblings and never really had any issues. I think she just needed to burn off steam, she may have been hyperactive, for sure she was not getting what she needed from the school. Hers is a common story. The perceived sins of the parents rolled down unto the children and for those of us at the bottom of the food chain things could feel pretty cold at times. At least I was old enough to understand in some ways why things were happening to me but I feel for the little ones who had no clue. 

Sometimes I felt like a workhorse. I was a smart kid and driven by ambition. We never associated with other schools even within the UPC. There were no plays to try out for or academic meets to compete in. If you were into sports you were out of luck because the church wasn’t big on sports. Don’t cheer for a team, cheer for Jesus! We did not have band or music lessons outside of singing in the youth choir. Then came Bible Quizzing. I do not remember how quizzing was introduced to our congregation but I joined up right away. I was the captain of our Senior Bible quiz team the entire time I was on the team. The UPC had two levels of quizzing back then, junior and senior. Elementary kids would be on the junior team and then the older kids would compete on the senior level. I never quizzed as a junior because we did not have teams when I was at that age. The UPC is pretty picky about what translation of the Bible you can use. The church of my childhood only read and studied from the King James Version. To this day any other version just doesn’t sound like the Bible to me. Before we ever had a quiz team I knew that I was special because I could read the King James version better than other kids my age. I had been reading above grade level since I started to read. I won big parts in the Christmas programs because I could read the text better. In some ways this raised my status. Normally being brown and poor would have kept me out of the spotlight. At times I would be disappointed because I wanted to be a shepherd or angel, but instead I had to stand at the podium and read. One year for Easter I was allowed to play the part of a Pharisee. I got some laughs from the congregation and it was really fun. When we started quiz teams I quickly rose to the top because of my strong reading and the fact that I could memorize scripture very easily. I worked hard at whatever I did. That hard work and dedication made me the best candidate for captain. 

I have many happy memories of quizzing. I won trophy after trophy and that really built up my confidence. I felt needed and enjoyed the experience of being part of a team, that was the good part. There was a dark side, because of course there was. My coach Perry drove me very hard. He put expectations on me that he did not come close to putting on the other kids. I feel he liked all of the attention we were receiving from the church leadership as we traveled around the state racking up wins. Soon winning became everything and the pressure on me as captain of the team was very high. I feel Perry knew that I was pretty much a free range child and no one was going to complain if I was driven to exhaustion. He was completely without empathy or compassion. As time went on I became more aware of his attitude towards me and it was heartbreaking. In the beginning I felt very accepted by him and his wife Connie. We traveled the state together and it felt good to get praise and a sense of belonging from adults. By the time it was over I felt like a tool that had outlived its usefulness. 

I was really struggling with algebra during this time. I went to Perry and told him I needed help. I could not manage all of the verses he wanted me to memorize and get through the math homework I was saddled with. I would cry alone in my room trying to get the story problems right knowing that I had hours of memorization to complete. Not to mention all of the scripture memorization that had to happen for my school work. Something had to give and school always came first. At this point he was having me memorize all of my chapters and when that was complete circle around and memorize everyone else’s material. He told me as captain I had to be able to answer every question that might come up, I mean what if someone gets sick? He did not have much confidence in my teammates and so the pressure all fell on me. Each team had three main players at the table and could have two substitutes waiting behind them. One season we memorized Paul’s epistles and each of us had an “equal” number of chapters to memorize. At one time I had most of them committed to memory. You were required to answer the questions verbatim and any wrong word would mean not getting points. It amazes me to think of it now! What if I had been encouraged to use that power to learn and memorize more useful things? What could I have done?

I was a little afraid to talk to Perry about my problems but I made myself do it. At this point I was 15 and I was trying to handle things in an adult manner. I figured I just need to have an adult heart to heart with him. He would see how much I had thought about it and how troubled I was and surely help me out. I told him I needed a lighter load because I really needed to focus on my school issues. As you might expect I did not get any help or permission to rest from him. Scowling at me he reminded me of how important my role was and told me I just needed to dig deep and work harder. At first I did not push back and walking away my load felt even heavier than when I first sat down with him. 

As time marched on, the stress of a number of things started to add up. Perry was not a very nice guy and over time this became very apparent. He was controlling and could really behave like a brute. He was ex-military and it showed. He treated his wife like a servant and would berate her in front of us. She was a gentle soul, the perfect submissive wife. By this time there was a tiny flame of anger always burning within me. I would watch how he behaved and it made me want to lose the quiz meets. I did not want to win for him. Two things happened that I believed pushed me to the edge. One was I got sick. I mean really sick the night before an out of town quiz meet. I was running a high fever and I had a very painful sore throat. It came out of nowhere. My mother had bundled me up in front of the t.v. and told me there was no way I could compete the next day. I cried, sobbed, all of the pressure running out of me. I was falling apart and this meant she had to act. She called Perry and told him I was really sick and couldn’t compete. He asked to speak to me. I’m sure just to verify that I sounded sick. He told me he would have the whole church pray and he was sure I would be fine the next day. At that moment I didn’t care. My head was so hot and my whole body ached. I was healed! Well kinda, the next day my fever broke and my sore throat was much better. I was still running a low grade fever and coughing, my body hurt everywhere and I was exhausted but my recovery was good enough to call it a miracle for the team. I won that day and it was all due to the power of prayer. Perry saw it as another sign that my being on the team was God’s will. 

Next came my worst day as the team captain. We went to Sturtevant Wisconsin for an important competition and I almost refused to show up to play. I was getting towards the end of my ability to be around him. He had yelled at his wife the night before for something that was clearly his fault. I was so embarrassed for her and I told him he was being a jerk. This kind of behavior was unheard of for a young woman of my age, and he yelled at me and told me I was being rebellious. That was a serious accusation in my church. Witches were rebellious and we all know what the Bible says about witches. 

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Exodus 22:18 

I ran up to the room I was staying in and sobbed with hot anger. I turned on my little radio to the most sinful music I could find, Rock You Like A Hurricane by Scorpions. I could not play it loudly so I had to press my ear to the speaker. I had so much pent up rage. Being angry was just not done by women and I had been storing mine for a long long time. A couple of my teammates came in and talked me down. They convinced me to play the next day. They all witnessed how Perry behaved and they agreed with me even if they did not have the courage to speak up. We all sat there in silence. The room filled with tension and a sense of hopelessness. I went to the meet the next day but my heart wasn’t in it. I was a zombie. I recognize this feeling even now. I get very still and expressionless. It’s like I just shut down. I did not answer many questions that day and many adults asked me if I was ok. It was obvious I was not, Perry was livid, and I just wanted to run away. Little did I know that was one of my last games. Soon after I quit. Perry was not ok with my choice but had little power to stop me. After that he turned most of his focus to the junior team and I started to fade away. I’m proud of my young self for setting boundaries. This brave action set my feet on the path of leaving. 

The exhibition game. When our team first started to compete it became apparent that I was a force to be reckoned with. There was only one person in the state who could beat me and another who was always at my heels. Perry got this idea in his head that it would be good for us to have an exhibition game with some of the ministers from our congregation. At first this idea excited me because I thought it would be a chance for me to compete with people who should know all of this material better than me, a real competition! Sadly it did not turn out that way. They did not require the ministers to follow the rules of how the game was played and they basically rigged it for them to win. I was so angry and I’m sure it showed. I have little ability to hide my true feelings. My face always reveals what is happening inside. It also became clear to me that they did not know the Bible as well as I did. Perry thought that I enjoyed showing them up a little too much and told me to remain humble. At the time it was just another way the church reminded me of my place. Now I know that we really won but they could not allow a female-led teen quiz team to beat the anointed of God. This is just another way they stole my joy and made me feel that any pride that I might have was wrong. 

In the end, I was encouraged to win but to not ask questions. I digested the scripture and tried to understand it. I would ask questions and often the answer would be that I could ask Jesus in heaven. My questions only generated more questions in my mind. Scripture just didn’t add up and all of my questioning made me a troublemaker. They couldn’t or were unwilling to see that I wanted to know God, they saw it as questioning God. As I got older I developed the opinion that I knew more about the Bible than many of our ministers did. This did not help me to respect them. They did not see my intellect as a blessing but instead looked down on me because of it. This made me feel really bad about myself. It made me question why God had created me this way. On the other hand, it feels good to know that you are smart and so I was always conflicted. 

I see Bible Quizzing as just another way the church sucked all of the joy out of my life. I found this thing that I was really good at and it made me proud of myself. For a moment I felt some self worth. When we would travel the quiz masters would always have kind words for me and they would encourage me to keep going. Because of Perry’s pride and selfishness I was driven too hard and I eventually quit. I lost out on the joy of what I loved to do because Perry could not accept anything less than 110%. By the way, he only demanded that from me. I think the other kids had parents who would have put a stop to that intensity but he knew mine would be hands off. Once I left Perry stopped talking to me. When my usefulness was spent I was invisible to him.