When I was fifteen, I invited this kid home from school. I had been secretly crushing on him for about a year, so when the opportunity to help him study for a calculus exam came up, I took it. I didn’t plan on doing anything but help him study, and I certainly never dreamed he had any feelings for me, but when we were alone in my room, there was this moment when we started looking at each other with soulful eyes. Before I could even think about what was happening, we were kissing. And I mean right on the mouth. I was shocked and terrified, but I was also thrilled. It was wonderful to be kissing him. That was more than I ever hoped for.
But the best moment in my life was quickly followed by the worst. My mother, who usually respected my privacy--I was a very good kid who never gave her any reason not to--must have sensed that something was going on between me and my friend, so she barged into my room just in time to see me, her first born son, the one who was expected to take over my father’s ministry some day, lip locked with another boy.
She didn’t say anything right then. She just looked at me with horror and disgust and quietly shut the door. That’s how I knew I was in serious trouble. My friend freaked out and left immediately, leaving me alone in my room. I was too frightened to even peek out the door, so I just sat there for two hours. When it was dinner time, I got up the nerve to face whatever it was that was coming my way. I left the sanctuary of my room and made my way to the table. That’s when I discovered that my place had not been set. My father didn’t look at me when I walked into the room. He remained seated at the head of the table. My mother, who was arranging bowls of food on the table, didn’t look up. My brothers and sisters didn’t look up. Finally my father told me to return to my room and that he would talk to me later. Oh, shit!
It was dark by the time my father paid his visit. He still wouldn’t look at me. He just sat down on the edge of my bed and told me what a disappointment I was. He said I had sinned against the Lord and invited the Devil into my heart. Dad went on to say that he would consult some of his colleagues about an exorcism, and he warned if that didn’t work, he would have to ask me to leave his house.
The next Saturday, I was left alone. An old man from our church had died, and Mom and Dad went to comfort his family. I don’t remember exactly what my brothers and sisters were doing, but they were out. I appreciated the time to myself. But then the doorbell rang. It was my Aunt Phyllis.
I was surprised to see her, and the first thing I told her was that my parents weren’t home. If Aunt Phyllis thought this was rude, she didn’t say so. Instead, she walked on in like she owned the place and said, “Good. I came to see you.” She then went into the living room, plopped down in one of the chairs, lit a cigarette and told me to have a seat.
“I understand that there was a bit of drama over here a couple of days ago, and that suddenly I’m not the only black sheep in the family. Well, kid, I’m here to tell you a few things about your family. You’re old enough now to know, and considering what happened, you need to know. What I’m about to say might turn things upside down for you. You may not be able to look at some of the members of this family in quite the same way again. But believe me when I tell you, I don’t mean to break your heart. It’s just that your parents have the Jesus bug so far up their asses it ain’t funny, and you need to know the truth before they smother you with their holiness. I know you love them. I love them, too. But they’re not nearly as perfect as they like to pretend, and they don’t come from perfect people either.”
For the next half hour, I sat there in stunned silence as Aunt Phyllis explained a few things to me. She told me that my Great Uncle George was never in a sanatorium. He never had tuberculosis at all. That was just a story that had been passed down because no one wanted to admit that he had been sent to the state penitentiary for armed robbery. My grandmother--Mom’s and Aunt Phyllis’s mother--got herself hooked on sleeping pills and ended up killing herself with them when I was still a toddler. Uncle Tommy, Mom’s and Aunt Phyllis’s brother, used to abuse my Cousin Tammy when she was a teenager, and no one knew for sure if the daughter she had when she was seventeen belonged to her high school boyfriend or Uncle Tommy.
I thought I would pass out, but Aunt Phyllis assured me that what she had revealed was only the highlights. And she said that my father’s family wasn’t exactly the most pious people around either. She said that my great grandfather supported his family by selling bootleg whiskey, and word had it that he had a few girls working for him, too. My grandfather was, in Aunt Phyllis’s words, a no account drunk who died from cirrhosis of the liver when my father was still a boy.
“There was still enough left from the whiskey money for your grandmother to support your daddy and his brothers. She even had enough to leave your daddy a significant legacy. The home you live in and your daddy’s church was paid for with money that came from running booze and whores.”
Aunt Phyllis saved the best for last. She told me that my mother was “wild” when she was a teenager and got herself “knocked up” when she was sixteen, and rather than tell anyone, she secretly had an abortion. Aunt Phyllis drove her to the doctor herself. And when I was five years old, my mother almost left my father because he was caught cheating on her with the church secretary.
“They used church money to shut that woman up and get her out of town.”
She went on to say that I shouldn’t think I was the only one of my kind in the family. She told me that her sister Helen wasn’t really an old maid at all. She had been living with a woman for the past thirty years. And Aunt Phyllis informed me that her own son had “went for men.”
“I know I’ve told you a lot. I wanted to knock a few people around here off their high horses. But I’m not trying to make myself out to be no saint. I don’t know what you are and what my Charlie was is a sin or not. I ain’t no preacher. But I know in my heart that the way I treated my Charlie when I found out about him was a sin. It wasn’t my place to judge him. Nevertheless, I wasn’t a mother to him the last year of his life.” For the first time, Aunt Phyllis’s voice cracked as she admitted, “I was a bitch. He disgusted me, and let him know it at every turn, and finally he couldn’t take no more and hung himself in that old maple tree in our backyard.”
Aunt Phyllis cried at this point, but my head was spinning and I was lost in all the things she had said, so I didn’t react. I just sat there. After a moment, Aunt Phyllis pulled herself together and continued. She said she regretted the way she had treated her Charlie. She said she was foolish to act the way she did. And she said she would have to live with the fact that she drove her own son to kill himself for the rest of her life. Then she paused. I thought she was going to cry again, but she didn’t.
“Well, I need to get going. I just wanted you to know these things. I know I’m not taken very seriously around here, but I know where the bodies are buried, so I have some influence. It seems the angels have seen fit to give me a second chance to do the right thing, and I’m not going to miss it. You can rest assured that you’re safe. I can’t make your parents accept who you are, but I can see to it that there won’t be any exorcisms, and they won’t dare throw you out of here until you’re ready to leave. And if they give you too much grief, you come to me.”
That conversation took place thirty years ago. In time, Aunt Phyllis and I become close friends. I lived with her the last year I was in high school. And I stayed with her off and on throughout my twenties. I was there by her side when she died of lung cancer. She told me that I had become like a son to her.
My father left the ministry and became a real estate agent. He and my mother separated for a while, but they got back together. Eventually their religious beliefs softened. My husband and I visit them a couple of times a year.
Photographer and subject unknown
Fictional short story by Gary Cottle
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