For the first time, I seriously considered a college education with a major in music. Previously, my parents had urged me to take up tailoring or plumbing—a trade, so that I would always have a good job. I was always fond of cooking and had even considered becoming a chef.
There’s no telling what I might have gotten into if I didn’t have my faith and my love of music.
MEANWHILE, MY HOME LIFE CONTINUED TO DISINTEGRATE. My older brother and I continued to drift further apart—he was interested in boxing, and I hated violence. He and my stepfather butted heads, and before long, they were challenging each other physically with my mother trying to play referee.
My stepfather had managed to get into the steel mills as a laborer when he was barely seventeen and had stayed there all his working life. He went to the army for three years and returned to the mills right where he left off when he was discharged. He managed to stay sober during the weekdays, but he always found a bottle for the weekends.
The drunker he got, the more abusive he was toward my mother, and my brother had had enough. It all came to a climax one evening after dinner while I was upstairs in my room with the door closed, trying to study for a biology exam the next day. The noise downstairs became too raucous to ignore. My mother and sisters were trying to separate my stepfather and brother, who both seemed focused on a battle to the death. They were straining and cursing at each other as though they were outside in some alley. I tried to break up the fight, but I wound up being the punching bag. I put my hands over my head and fell to the floor. After I took a couple of solid kicks, I tried to get out of there but was unsuccessful. I was not being disciplined by a parent but beaten up by a man who had been trained to kill by Uncle Sam. His three years in the military were not wasted. If it weren’t for the rest of my family, he could have killed me. The last thing I remember was a kick to my head over the right ear.
I only barely recall being dragged across the floor by my brother and my mother and hearing my stepfather cussing. I had done the unforgiveable. I had challenged him in trying to help my brother in the fight. I didn’t move as my mother and several of the neighbors dabbed my bleeding head with towels. I tried to talk, but my mouth was full of teeth and a fat tongue, so I stopped. I just sat there and let them minister to me. Part of me wondered which was worse: being beat up by your stepfather or being thrown out of a white church for being black. I wouldn’t have chosen either one, but my fate had generously given me both.
My brother ended up moving out, and several months later, he joined the army. I watched it all with confusion and anger. How could my mother allow this man, my stepfather, come into our lives and cause such havoc? At home, I became an introvert who walked on eggshells; I didn’t ask any questions and never offered any information. It seemed too dangerous to even be happy. I suffered the indignities of occasional hits and kicks from my stepfather and mostly stayed away from home. I usually spent extra time at school with my music teacher, or with Ron and Mary Lou.
During this time, I was also spending more and more time away from the formal church, and I discovered that I still had a sense of my inner life and anointment; those gifts that had been so highly praised during the services at Mt. Carmel Baptist Church were still in me. My ability to turn a phrase and deliver the heart of a song didn’t disappear. I loved music-making just as much as ever. I decided to try praying. It was reassuring to know that that Unknown Something that filled my church work was still with me.
Day after day, I would become still and call forth the wondrous sense of rightness and calm. So much for the church and formal Christianity. Meditating actually gave me courage to continue, on my own. This knowledge freed me more and more to be the true person I was, emerging from within. It was months and years before I was comfortable knowing that the God I loved and served actually was everywhere, that I could access Him anywhere and everywhere. What did this mean for me and my role in the church? Was this sense of transcendence also present in Schubert or Beethoven songs, within operatic arias, and paintings, and dance—all which often left me feeling hypnotized? I had to do some serious thinking about this. I did not take any of these questions to my mother or pastor. I needed to live alone with them for a while.
When I look back on that early spiritual awakening, I realize that I was separating myself from any formal dogma or church. In my humility, I still struggled with the fact that I carried a powerful spirituality that had nothing to do with any organized religion. I treated all religions the same but also found no fault with agnostics, atheists, Unitarians, Christian Scientists, Mormons, Baha’is, Buddhists, Religious Scientists, Earth Goddess Worshipper, Sikhs, Taoists—all manner of expressions were fine with me. Time and time again, people wanted me to be a judgmental, fundamentalist Christian singer who hated a lot of regular people, and I just couldn’t do it. I was not there. It is not who I am. My message is simply one of inclusiveness and love. Period.
Despite this, my relationship with Mt. Carmel was about to be shattered.
Judging from all the talk, everyone around me was having sex. But I wasn’t. So I dared to think that a few other people, like my sisters, were also “pure.” After all, frequently when I went to church, they went with me. I blithely went along believing in the best of everybody because I was still a virgin. In my limited experience, sex never solved any problems. It seemed to create problems, especially for people who were not married to each other. In my opinion, sex was polluted and involved girls. I still hadn’t solved the problem of being gay. I did not want to be intimate with girls.
I had read enough of the Bible to know all about adultery and fornication. If I could have physically washed my mind, I would have, but abstinence would have to suffice for me during those turbulent teenage years. I sincerely felt that my brother and sisters were as committed to purity and abstinence as I was. The fact that I was so naïve didn’t really register with me until I was in school and heard several of my classmates talking about the fact that my fifteen-year-old sister was pregnant. I didn’t know anything about it.
In spite of everything I heard, I really knew little or nothing about sex and still believed on some level that the stork was a central character in the process of procreation. I wanted to believe in the stork. It seemed so wholesome and magical. This other stuff about petting and grinding that I heard people talking about, especially Hiawatha, seemed messy and complicated. Over the years, I had not changed my mind. I was a stubborn Taurus who wanted to be clean and wholesome and angelic for God, so I clung to my fantasy.
Gossip and rumors are crafty demons that have immense power to ruin people’s lives. They are often found in the least likely places.
My friend Elaine Logan pulled me aside and stage-whispered that the students were talking about the fact that my sister, one of the twins, was pregnant.
“How do people find these things out?!” I lashed out. “And who is spreading such scandalous gossip?” I was outraged. I lived with my sisters and hadn’t seen or heard the first hint of one of them being pregnant. I promised Elaine that I’d ask at home about this just as soon as I could get to my mother.
It wasn’t long before the sordid facts and all the horrific details were out. It read like a cheap soap opera, and I was profoundly saddened and shocked. It involved the new pastor at Mt. Carmel. It seemed that while I was spending so much time at the church singing, the new pastor was making another kind of music with both of my sisters. Only one became pregnant. Whatever he had said to my mother to justify his actions was never clear to me. My mother and stepfather kept me at a distance and