Photo by Julian Gentle
“Good Christian People”
Malia McCarrick
Uncle Ed was a character. He and my dad spent nine decades engaged in hilarious banter, often focused on Uncle’s somewhat dubious piety. “Went to a new dentist this week–goes to Standville Baptist,” Uncle Ed informed Dad.
“He any good?”
“Hurt me like a sonofagun, but he’s a good Christian man!”
My father had little patience for his brother’s hypocritical nonsense, and my mother and I would hear about it, usually at the dinner table. “Ed’d let a chicken drill his teeth s’long’s it wore a cross,” he’d lament.
Both my parents came from Grand Rapids, Michigan, the seat of the Christian Reformed Church, and a city with a history of religious intolerance. They had their doses of it; growing up, I often heard stories that provided a stark contrast to Uncle Ed’s trusting nature of anyone proclaiming faith. Grace Bible Church drummed Dad out for divorcing his first wife. Mom lost her only sister, who was forbidden by her fire-and- brimstone husband from having any further “fellowship” with my mom once she married Dad. That was 1962; the sisters remained separated for thirty years, until my aunt’s death. I still have cousins I’ve never met. Yet every Sunday, my mother marched me to Sunday services.
After college, in 1986, I moved to Grand Rapids and began my “hiding out” period–twelve years of staying in the shadows of the city’s LGBT community while working in broadcast media. I experienced plenty of intense hostility and hatred pointed at gays and lesbians courtesy of area church groups. Letters to the editor of The Grand Rapids Press routinely broke into diatribes against gays. Calls for blatant discrimination–and worse–often came courtesy of cherry-picked Bible verses, somehow proving that the Almighty had given the writers permission to ignore other verses on peace and love when it involved one’s sexual identity.
Then, the story of Gerry Crane filled the local Grand Rapids newspapers.
A high school choir director, Crane worked for a small school district on the west side of Grand Rapids. His stellar performance evaluations and popularity with students came to a screeching halt in November 1995, after a commitment ceremony with his partner that summer became public knowledge. Parents stormed the monthly school board meeting, creating a combustible atmosphere of religious dogma mixed with hysteria. The school board joined the foray, questioning Crane’s character as a teacher. Students were pulled from his classes as the national news media got involved. Amid newscasts with cameras pushed into Crane’s face, fanatical citizens shouted angry, hateful slurs. Hounded by the media, parents, and community, Crane finally agreed to leave Byron Center High with a reference letter and a few months of pay.
Next, he dropped dead.
The forensic pathologist’s autopsy found that the thirty-two-year-old Crane had a congenital heart condition that, while rarely proving fatal, was most likely exacerbated by all the stress and homophobic hysteria forced upon him.
Witnessing this modern-day crucifixion, I understood why my father distrusted organized religion. Watching Crane in the nightly news literally being harassed to death by people who marched like robots to Sunday services didn’t help my attitude. I would soon finish graduate school and embark on my own teaching career, and while the people of Grand Rapids broke Gerry Crane’s heart, I determined they would not break mine.
Two years later, I met Moana, and it felt like I’d finally escaped quicksand when I left Grand Rapids for paradise on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, her home.
Unfortunately, Grand Rapids didn’t leave me. It was 1998, and Hawaii was about to vote on a statewide marriage equality ban. The airwaves were filled with ads by conservative and Christian groups, equating same-sex marriage with bestiality, and caricaturing it with something absurd. I felt so surprised to see such vitriol across the Pacific–I honestly thought people in the islands would be more open-minded. Whenever Moana wanted to go to church, I protested that those people couldn’t be trusted, that they’d turn on us quickly if they knew we were a couple. It seemed much safer to keep our beliefs to ourselves.
A few years later, at thirty-one, Moana was diagnosed with terminal cancer; it seemed wrong to keep her from seeking comfort from a church family, so I agreed to go with her to Easter services at Hope Chapel Waikele. We’d been invited by Tracy, one of Moana’s graduate school classmates and a sweet girl trapped in a second marriage to Richard, who struggled with addiction. Richard’s dependence on alcohol created a wedge between himself and the church. Trapped in a devastating cycle, he’d go to a Men’s Prayer Breakfast and then disappear for two days on a bender. Men from the church would wait for Richard to reappear at home, then show up to chide him for his lack of self-control and faith, assuring Tracy they could pray the addiction out of him. Richard would follow the straight and narrow path until the urge to drink overtook him again, and the entire scene would repeat.
As Moana sought palliative treatment, we went to church, where the people greeted us with friendly faces each Sunday. The congregation consisted of mainly younger, middle-class families from the west end of Oahu. Each Sunday I’d see an array of faces–Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Samoan, white–and be amazed at the diversity found on the island. But while the people were friendly, the minister confused me. Pastor Keanu had no formal education or divinity training. Before becoming Hope Chapel’s minister, he’d been a maintenance worker for China Airways. His favorite before-sermon anecdote involved the time he was draining a plane of its lavatory waste and a tube slipped, covering him in excrement. I wasn’t sure what qualified him to lead a church, but I doubted it was this event.
Tracy wanted us to join a group Bible study, so, each Wednesday, we entered the lion’s den, where nobody ever acknowledged our relationship. I kept waiting for disaster. Moana and I shared our day-to-day struggles, especially her fight to stay alive through new radiation treatments aimed at her lungs. Lowering my defenses, I tried to be open and mention the dread I felt at the idea of losing her. Empty stares, robotic head nodding, and group members’ silence met us. No one asked questions about our nearly nine years together, how we’d met, or any of the hundreds of questions I imagined heterosexual couples had tossed at them in similar circumstances.
Soon, Moana entered the hospital for the last time as her ability to breathe became extremely labored. For years, she tried to convince a family friend, a Catholic priest, to marry us. He always refused on religious grounds. Now, as she lay in the ICU, gasping for each breath, he finally agreed. We removed the BiPAP mask long enough for her to say, “I do,” as my parents and her mother looked on.
Ten days later, Moana slipped away from me on a rainy November evening. In the room, along with her father, my parents, our friend Aura, and me, stood the members of the Wednesday Bible study group. I’d invited them to share Moana’s last hours, and they witnessed firsthand the utter despair and heartbreak of losing a spouse.
Moana’s death felt like it would destroy me; the months of fighting against her inevitable loss had taken its toll, leaving me with clear symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. At my parents’ insistence, I spent the holidays with them in Michigan, but soon, I found myself back in Hawaii, all alone, and living in what had been our home, a place full of everything Moana–except for the woman herself. The sense of loneliness and isolation choked me.
Wednesday night Bible study was the last place I wanted to go. I had half-heartedly promised Moana I would keep attending once she passed, but now, with our friends settling back into their busy lives, and her family’s phone calls and text messages to me drying up, I desperately needed a lifeline.
I dutifully showed up each week. Harvey, the Bible study leader, would call on me in his thick Pidgin accent, and I’d talk about the effects of grief–the paralyzing sense of hopelessness and emptiness that engulfed me when awake . . . the inability to close my eyes without replaying scenes of Moana’s struggle to breathe . . . the endless questioning of why God let this happen . . . the loop tape in my brain taunting me that I didn’t try hard enough, that I failed to sense that she was sick before it was too late . . . the fact that, being eight years older, I’d already lived longer, and it should have been me, not her.
I needed the group to tell me that I would survive this period, to wrap me in their arms and acknowledge that I grieved not only the death of a spouse, but the loss of a future now irrevocably changed into something dark, full of pain, and unknown.
Without fail, the women would meet me with silence, heads bobbing at appropriate intervals, eyes focused on the ground, while the men would suddenly become very interested in the pastries and fruit set on the table in front of us. Only Tracy would speak up, saying she, too, missed her friend, as if our pain had somehow been equal. It didn’t take long before I felt simply tolerated at Bible study.
One Wednesday night, three months after Moana’s death, the group took a break from sharing to get food in the next room. One member, an elementary school teacher at a Christian school, oversaw her teenagers filling their plates as she asked me about my upcoming trip to California to help fulfill my doctoral program’s residency requirements. She asked what my dissertation was about. I kept it vague, but she kept pushing to know more.
“Well, I’m looking at lesbian writers from 1949 through 1985, and how the lesbian characters in their stories go through the stages of sexual identity development set forth by Cass’s psychological studies of the 1970s.”
Glassy-eyed stares greeted me from around the room, and suddenly, I could hear all the cockroaches scurrying around the sidewalk outside. Tracy broke the silence by joining the conversation and deftly moving it away from my apparently sordid topic onto something much more acceptable to the group, namely how Richard was out again on another alcoholic bender. Suddenly, several voices piped in with sympathetic assurances. All our prayers that night would be focused on poor Tracy’s husband. My research interests were never mentioned again.
When I returned from California ten days later, a voicemail from Harvey greeted me. Please call him right away. Happy to have something to distract me from the emptiness in the house, I dialed the phone. Harvey’s tone was reserved, yet friendly. Could I come by their home the next night for dinner so he and his wife, Kim, could talk to me about something?
Harvey and Kim lived in Waipahu, a working-class section of Oahu mainly populated by Filipino families. An overgrowth of shrubs scratched at my ankles as I made my way down the buckled sidewalk to their one-story, cement block house. Faded shutters and flaking paint led to a rusty hinged door where Harvey stood. Instead of exchanging pleasantries, he hurried me inside. I’d heard so much about their son and asked if he’d be joining us for dinner.
“Oh, he out tonight,” Harvey answered a bit too casually.
Famished and ready to sit down to a home-cooked feast, I passed through the entryway, by a kitchen full of dishes drying in a rack, and an old gas stove standing on stained linoleum. Stacks of yellowed newspapers, magazines, and random items cluttered the countertop. In the corner by the garbage can sat trash bags full of empty Hawaiian Sun and Aloha juice cans spilling out.
Kim sat at the dining room table. Three places had been cleared off, while the rest of the surface drowned in an array of everything from car parts and hardware to half-used makeup bottles and jewel cases for Christian music CDs. At each placemat sat a Bento box, a covered tin container with an assortment of Spam, fried chicken, teriyaki beef, kalbi and two scoops of rice. The label on the box read 7-Eleven. In the middle of the table sat a Bible.
Both Harvey and Kim were all smiles as they handed me chopsticks and a can of guava juice, but I sensed an undercurrent of tension coming from them.
Harvey spoke first: “How your trip? You went San Francisco?”
I answered between mouthfuls of rubbery food, wondering how many calories I could burn simply by chewing. We exchanged small talk for a few minutes, my jaw getting tired from bouncing up and down on dried-out chicken and beef. I avoided the Spam at all costs.
“We want you come ovah tonight to ask one question. What you like get outta our ministry?”
I considered how to answer.
“I’m trying to heal,” I began, “from everything–Moana’s illness, the months of fighting, watching her suffer–her death. I’m trying to just take each day and get through it.”
The mere mention of Moana made Kim wince–or maybe it was the chicken leg she was biting into.
“We want help you grow in da Lord,” Harvey continued, sitting back in his chair, “Dat’s why we call you ovah, to talk ’bout your lifestyle. God no want dis kine life for you.”
Oh Lord, I thought, here we go.
“What lifestyle?” I hissed.
Of course he meant my lesbian lifestyle, Kim piped in, whispering lesbian lest the next-door neighbors could hear our conversation.
“My lifestyle isn’t any different from your lifestyle.” I struggled to be polite. I felt the dry chicken I’d managed to swallow earlier threaten to reappear. “I go to work. I pay my bills. I worry about money. I grieve just like a spouse should grieve for the loss of her love. We aren’t so different. I fail to see how God is upset with me for living my life the same as anyone else.”
This apparently didn’t sit well with Harvey and Kim. Harvey reached out for reinforcements–the Bible in the middle of the table–while Kim put her fork down and touched my hand. I pulled back, instinctively.
“But you’re wrong!” her voice sang out, sickeningly sweet, “God wants you to have a meaningful, loving, stable relationship with a man.” She spoke as if this was breaking news that would make all the difference in my life. I couldn’t resist the opening.
“So, you have a hotline to Jesus and He tells you what I need in my life?” I smiled to mask the hostility behind my sarcasm, but no laughter followed. “For nearly a decade, I did have a very meaningful, loving, immensely stable relationship in my life, with Moana. And God willing, someday I’ll meet another woman I will love as well, and I’ll be blessed with another meaningful, stable relationship. Because this is who I am.” I hoped my honesty would open their minds, but doors sealed shut by years of ignorance and church-sanctioned animosity refused to budge so easily.
“But dat’s jus it,” Harvey interrupted, triumph in his voice. “You can change! Can!”
“When we realized we needed to talk to you about this problem,” Kim took over, “we asked Pastor Keanu how to go about it. We thought there hadn’t been anyone in the church before who was, well, you know, gay.” She spit out the last word as if by simply uttering it she had committed some unpardonable sin.
“And we found out there had been others in the church who overcame this problem! In fact, there’s a woman Pastor Keanu told us about who attends services all the time, and she used to be in that lifestyle.”
Buoyed by his wife’s enthusiasm, Harvey piped in, “She want talk wid you!”
I thought uh, yeah, she wants to talk to me all right. She wants to date me!
“Listen, I don’t think you really know a lot about where Moana’s academic interests were, but she focused a lot of her research into the dangers of reparative therapy–the idea that a homosexual can change and become straight–and in fact, we cowrote a paper and presented it at several conferences. Most studies show that changing sexual orientation is not only an impossibility, but it’s abusive to even practice this kind of therapy.”
I looked at Harvey and then over at Kim. Vacant, glazed-over eyes looked back.
“Really?” Harvey’s voice fell flat, and his English suddenly improved as he said, “We were under the impression that Moana wanted to change, and that’s why she came to our church.”
The kid gloves were off now. These two meant business. Put a seed of doubt in my mind about Moana and her commitment to me. Watch it sprout and grow out of control until I questioned my own sexuality. Soon I’d be denouncing her as a vile, confused culprit who led me down the path towards sexual sin and destruction, but through the grace of God–not to mention her timely death–I would see the error of my ways and change. My future was clear: I’d be a happy, church-going heterosexual and oh, how I’d love that man–some man–of mine!
The sheer cruelty behind Harvey’s words and actions reverberated inside my brain. They did what most people do when they realize their arguments hold no weight–they went for the jugular.
“Your impression was wrong. Moana was extremely proud to be gay. She planned a psychology practice for gay teens–helping their struggles coming out and accepting themselves when society and so many churches hate them.”
“Well dat’s not what we was told,” sputtered Harvey, his pidgin returned.
Now I moved in for the kill.
“Do you know what Moana’s last words were to me? Three days before she died, with her whole family around her, she’d been tapered off the drugs long enough to enjoy a few hours with everyone as they said their goodbyes, and at the end of the day, with her mother, her sister, her father–with aunties and uncles all around her–she pointed at me and signed the words ‘I love you.’ She couldn’t get enough breath to speak them, but she mouthed them as she signed.”
Silence.
“Now that doesn’t sound like someone who wanted to change and be straight. So whoever told you otherwise was either very misled or flat-out lying. And to even bring that up to me when you know I’m grieving–that’s Christian?”
Neither Harvey nor Kim said a word. I moved my now-cold plate of food away from me and took a sip of warm juice. Finally Harvey spoke.
“Some folks at prayer group, they concerned ’bout you being part of it anymore. They feel you flaunting your lifestyle in da meetings. They no like it–make ’em feel uncomfortable.”
Me flaunting anything at this point in my life was completely absurd. I was lucky to get out of bed each day and go to work.
“This lifestyle thing again,” I said, now clearly exasperated. “Know what my lifestyle is? Figuring out how to pay a fifteen grand Visa bill in my name that paid for Moana’s pain meds in her last few months. It’s me trying to make all the household bills on one income now instead of two, since Moana had no life insurance. It’s breaking down into sobbing fits on the H-1 as I drive home from school each day, facing the empty house that’s full of everything Moana owned, full of her memories–everything that was our life together–but a house that is now heartbreakingly devoid of her.” My words spilled out rapidly in a torrent of indignation and frustration.
“My brain is a movie reel that replays her final fourteen months. I have nightmares that I’m the one hooked up to that damned BiPAP machine, drowning in my own fluids while my body eats itself away. And every morning when I wake up, my first thought is, ‘She’s gone. Moana is dead.’ And every night, my last thought is, ‘She died. Moana will never come back.’ So if that’s the lifestyle you’re talking about–the one that makes people’s Wednesday nights uncomfortable–then I don’t give a great goddamn.”
Kim tried to touch my hand again, but pulled back once I took the Lord’s name in vain. She sat back in her chair and looked at the grimy floor tiles below. Harvey, though, wasn’t finished.
“You talked ’bout lesbian stuffs when you las’ went to meeting. There was keiki all around,” he chastised, using the Hawaiian term for “children.” He obviously hadn’t heard a thing I’d just said.
“Oh dear God.” I shook my head. “Linda asked me a question and I answered her. Her kids were in the room. Are they going to become gay because I mentioned the word lesbian in front of them? Only if they’re blessed! If those kids can’t deal with someone uttering lesbian, then good luck living in the real world!”
I stood to go.
“Wait now, you don’t have to leave angry. We don’t want you to leave. We love you,” Kim pled.
“We want pray wid you,” Harvey followed up. “The others, they no want you in the group no more ’less you ready to change.”
I crushed my juice can, then stood up, throwing wadded up napkins into my half-eaten bento box.
“So this group of so-called ‘Christians’ is kicking the grieving lesbian who lost her spouse to a horrific disease out of Bible study–unless she agrees to change her sexual orientation, which all credible scientific research says is impossible?”
“No!” exclaimed Kim, “it is possible–with God!”
Cue the church authorities bursting in and carting me away to reparative therapy camp. Fight or flight took over. Time to leave. I headed for the door.
Harvey jumped up, “Jus cause you no come no more Wednesday nights no mean we won’t pray wid you. You come here any time. We talk wid you, pray, and . . .”
“I’ll tell you what.” I looked at them both. “I’ll make you both a deal. When you change from straight to gay and can prove to me that sexual orientation is changeable, I’ll believe you. Until then, nobody–not you, this group, this church–no one has the right to tell me that my grief isn’t normal. That I’m not normal.”
The idea of her changing from straight to gay appeared to both amuse and horrify Kim. She stayed glued to her chair, eyes crossed slightly, as if puzzled by the implication of change working both ways.
Hastily retreating down the hall, I felt like a horror movie star. Close at my heels, Harvey muttered something about being sorry things had to end this way. I refused to look back for fear of turning into a pillar of salt.
And that is how I was booted out of Hope Chapel Waikele.
I managed to get home, strip, and take a shower as my mind replayed the entire scenario over and over. I felt dirty, a dreadful corruption.
And yet, I had pushed back. Sitting in that kitchen with two people who hid their judgement and disgust behind God, I realized that there will always be “good Christian people” waiting to terrorize others who threaten their narrow beliefs.
I refused to deny who I am.
I even had the audacity to be proud of it.
That kind of pride cost Gerry Crane his life a little over a decade prior.
But on this day, it saved mine.
Malia McCarrick
Uncle Ed was a character. He and my dad spent nine decades engaged in hilarious banter, often focused on Uncle’s somewhat dubious piety. “Went to a new dentist this week–goes to Standville Baptist,” Uncle Ed informed Dad.
“He any good?”
“Hurt me like a sonofagun, but he’s a good Christian man!”
My father had little patience for his brother’s hypocritical nonsense, and my mother and I would hear about it, usually at the dinner table. “Ed’d let a chicken drill his teeth s’long’s it wore a cross,” he’d lament.
Both my parents came from Grand Rapids, Michigan, the seat of the Christian Reformed Church, and a city with a history of religious intolerance. They had their doses of it; growing up, I often heard stories that provided a stark contrast to Uncle Ed’s trusting nature of anyone proclaiming faith. Grace Bible Church drummed Dad out for divorcing his first wife. Mom lost her only sister, who was forbidden by her fire-and- brimstone husband from having any further “fellowship” with my mom once she married Dad. That was 1962; the sisters remained separated for thirty years, until my aunt’s death. I still have cousins I’ve never met. Yet every Sunday, my mother marched me to Sunday services.
After college, in 1986, I moved to Grand Rapids and began my “hiding out” period–twelve years of staying in the shadows of the city’s LGBT community while working in broadcast media. I experienced plenty of intense hostility and hatred pointed at gays and lesbians courtesy of area church groups. Letters to the editor of The Grand Rapids Press routinely broke into diatribes against gays. Calls for blatant discrimination–and worse–often came courtesy of cherry-picked Bible verses, somehow proving that the Almighty had given the writers permission to ignore other verses on peace and love when it involved one’s sexual identity.
Then, the story of Gerry Crane filled the local Grand Rapids newspapers.
A high school choir director, Crane worked for a small school district on the west side of Grand Rapids. His stellar performance evaluations and popularity with students came to a screeching halt in November 1995, after a commitment ceremony with his partner that summer became public knowledge. Parents stormed the monthly school board meeting, creating a combustible atmosphere of religious dogma mixed with hysteria. The school board joined the foray, questioning Crane’s character as a teacher. Students were pulled from his classes as the national news media got involved. Amid newscasts with cameras pushed into Crane’s face, fanatical citizens shouted angry, hateful slurs. Hounded by the media, parents, and community, Crane finally agreed to leave Byron Center High with a reference letter and a few months of pay.
Next, he dropped dead.
The forensic pathologist’s autopsy found that the thirty-two-year-old Crane had a congenital heart condition that, while rarely proving fatal, was most likely exacerbated by all the stress and homophobic hysteria forced upon him.
Witnessing this modern-day crucifixion, I understood why my father distrusted organized religion. Watching Crane in the nightly news literally being harassed to death by people who marched like robots to Sunday services didn’t help my attitude. I would soon finish graduate school and embark on my own teaching career, and while the people of Grand Rapids broke Gerry Crane’s heart, I determined they would not break mine.
Two years later, I met Moana, and it felt like I’d finally escaped quicksand when I left Grand Rapids for paradise on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, her home.
Unfortunately, Grand Rapids didn’t leave me. It was 1998, and Hawaii was about to vote on a statewide marriage equality ban. The airwaves were filled with ads by conservative and Christian groups, equating same-sex marriage with bestiality, and caricaturing it with something absurd. I felt so surprised to see such vitriol across the Pacific–I honestly thought people in the islands would be more open-minded. Whenever Moana wanted to go to church, I protested that those people couldn’t be trusted, that they’d turn on us quickly if they knew we were a couple. It seemed much safer to keep our beliefs to ourselves.
A few years later, at thirty-one, Moana was diagnosed with terminal cancer; it seemed wrong to keep her from seeking comfort from a church family, so I agreed to go with her to Easter services at Hope Chapel Waikele. We’d been invited by Tracy, one of Moana’s graduate school classmates and a sweet girl trapped in a second marriage to Richard, who struggled with addiction. Richard’s dependence on alcohol created a wedge between himself and the church. Trapped in a devastating cycle, he’d go to a Men’s Prayer Breakfast and then disappear for two days on a bender. Men from the church would wait for Richard to reappear at home, then show up to chide him for his lack of self-control and faith, assuring Tracy they could pray the addiction out of him. Richard would follow the straight and narrow path until the urge to drink overtook him again, and the entire scene would repeat.
As Moana sought palliative treatment, we went to church, where the people greeted us with friendly faces each Sunday. The congregation consisted of mainly younger, middle-class families from the west end of Oahu. Each Sunday I’d see an array of faces–Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Samoan, white–and be amazed at the diversity found on the island. But while the people were friendly, the minister confused me. Pastor Keanu had no formal education or divinity training. Before becoming Hope Chapel’s minister, he’d been a maintenance worker for China Airways. His favorite before-sermon anecdote involved the time he was draining a plane of its lavatory waste and a tube slipped, covering him in excrement. I wasn’t sure what qualified him to lead a church, but I doubted it was this event.
Tracy wanted us to join a group Bible study, so, each Wednesday, we entered the lion’s den, where nobody ever acknowledged our relationship. I kept waiting for disaster. Moana and I shared our day-to-day struggles, especially her fight to stay alive through new radiation treatments aimed at her lungs. Lowering my defenses, I tried to be open and mention the dread I felt at the idea of losing her. Empty stares, robotic head nodding, and group members’ silence met us. No one asked questions about our nearly nine years together, how we’d met, or any of the hundreds of questions I imagined heterosexual couples had tossed at them in similar circumstances.
Soon, Moana entered the hospital for the last time as her ability to breathe became extremely labored. For years, she tried to convince a family friend, a Catholic priest, to marry us. He always refused on religious grounds. Now, as she lay in the ICU, gasping for each breath, he finally agreed. We removed the BiPAP mask long enough for her to say, “I do,” as my parents and her mother looked on.
Ten days later, Moana slipped away from me on a rainy November evening. In the room, along with her father, my parents, our friend Aura, and me, stood the members of the Wednesday Bible study group. I’d invited them to share Moana’s last hours, and they witnessed firsthand the utter despair and heartbreak of losing a spouse.
Moana’s death felt like it would destroy me; the months of fighting against her inevitable loss had taken its toll, leaving me with clear symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. At my parents’ insistence, I spent the holidays with them in Michigan, but soon, I found myself back in Hawaii, all alone, and living in what had been our home, a place full of everything Moana–except for the woman herself. The sense of loneliness and isolation choked me.
Wednesday night Bible study was the last place I wanted to go. I had half-heartedly promised Moana I would keep attending once she passed, but now, with our friends settling back into their busy lives, and her family’s phone calls and text messages to me drying up, I desperately needed a lifeline.
I dutifully showed up each week. Harvey, the Bible study leader, would call on me in his thick Pidgin accent, and I’d talk about the effects of grief–the paralyzing sense of hopelessness and emptiness that engulfed me when awake . . . the inability to close my eyes without replaying scenes of Moana’s struggle to breathe . . . the endless questioning of why God let this happen . . . the loop tape in my brain taunting me that I didn’t try hard enough, that I failed to sense that she was sick before it was too late . . . the fact that, being eight years older, I’d already lived longer, and it should have been me, not her.
I needed the group to tell me that I would survive this period, to wrap me in their arms and acknowledge that I grieved not only the death of a spouse, but the loss of a future now irrevocably changed into something dark, full of pain, and unknown.
Without fail, the women would meet me with silence, heads bobbing at appropriate intervals, eyes focused on the ground, while the men would suddenly become very interested in the pastries and fruit set on the table in front of us. Only Tracy would speak up, saying she, too, missed her friend, as if our pain had somehow been equal. It didn’t take long before I felt simply tolerated at Bible study.
One Wednesday night, three months after Moana’s death, the group took a break from sharing to get food in the next room. One member, an elementary school teacher at a Christian school, oversaw her teenagers filling their plates as she asked me about my upcoming trip to California to help fulfill my doctoral program’s residency requirements. She asked what my dissertation was about. I kept it vague, but she kept pushing to know more.
“Well, I’m looking at lesbian writers from 1949 through 1985, and how the lesbian characters in their stories go through the stages of sexual identity development set forth by Cass’s psychological studies of the 1970s.”
Glassy-eyed stares greeted me from around the room, and suddenly, I could hear all the cockroaches scurrying around the sidewalk outside. Tracy broke the silence by joining the conversation and deftly moving it away from my apparently sordid topic onto something much more acceptable to the group, namely how Richard was out again on another alcoholic bender. Suddenly, several voices piped in with sympathetic assurances. All our prayers that night would be focused on poor Tracy’s husband. My research interests were never mentioned again.
When I returned from California ten days later, a voicemail from Harvey greeted me. Please call him right away. Happy to have something to distract me from the emptiness in the house, I dialed the phone. Harvey’s tone was reserved, yet friendly. Could I come by their home the next night for dinner so he and his wife, Kim, could talk to me about something?
Harvey and Kim lived in Waipahu, a working-class section of Oahu mainly populated by Filipino families. An overgrowth of shrubs scratched at my ankles as I made my way down the buckled sidewalk to their one-story, cement block house. Faded shutters and flaking paint led to a rusty hinged door where Harvey stood. Instead of exchanging pleasantries, he hurried me inside. I’d heard so much about their son and asked if he’d be joining us for dinner.
“Oh, he out tonight,” Harvey answered a bit too casually.
Famished and ready to sit down to a home-cooked feast, I passed through the entryway, by a kitchen full of dishes drying in a rack, and an old gas stove standing on stained linoleum. Stacks of yellowed newspapers, magazines, and random items cluttered the countertop. In the corner by the garbage can sat trash bags full of empty Hawaiian Sun and Aloha juice cans spilling out.
Kim sat at the dining room table. Three places had been cleared off, while the rest of the surface drowned in an array of everything from car parts and hardware to half-used makeup bottles and jewel cases for Christian music CDs. At each placemat sat a Bento box, a covered tin container with an assortment of Spam, fried chicken, teriyaki beef, kalbi and two scoops of rice. The label on the box read 7-Eleven. In the middle of the table sat a Bible.
Both Harvey and Kim were all smiles as they handed me chopsticks and a can of guava juice, but I sensed an undercurrent of tension coming from them.
Harvey spoke first: “How your trip? You went San Francisco?”
I answered between mouthfuls of rubbery food, wondering how many calories I could burn simply by chewing. We exchanged small talk for a few minutes, my jaw getting tired from bouncing up and down on dried-out chicken and beef. I avoided the Spam at all costs.
“We want you come ovah tonight to ask one question. What you like get outta our ministry?”
I considered how to answer.
“I’m trying to heal,” I began, “from everything–Moana’s illness, the months of fighting, watching her suffer–her death. I’m trying to just take each day and get through it.”
The mere mention of Moana made Kim wince–or maybe it was the chicken leg she was biting into.
“We want help you grow in da Lord,” Harvey continued, sitting back in his chair, “Dat’s why we call you ovah, to talk ’bout your lifestyle. God no want dis kine life for you.”
Oh Lord, I thought, here we go.
“What lifestyle?” I hissed.
Of course he meant my lesbian lifestyle, Kim piped in, whispering lesbian lest the next-door neighbors could hear our conversation.
“My lifestyle isn’t any different from your lifestyle.” I struggled to be polite. I felt the dry chicken I’d managed to swallow earlier threaten to reappear. “I go to work. I pay my bills. I worry about money. I grieve just like a spouse should grieve for the loss of her love. We aren’t so different. I fail to see how God is upset with me for living my life the same as anyone else.”
This apparently didn’t sit well with Harvey and Kim. Harvey reached out for reinforcements–the Bible in the middle of the table–while Kim put her fork down and touched my hand. I pulled back, instinctively.
“But you’re wrong!” her voice sang out, sickeningly sweet, “God wants you to have a meaningful, loving, stable relationship with a man.” She spoke as if this was breaking news that would make all the difference in my life. I couldn’t resist the opening.
“So, you have a hotline to Jesus and He tells you what I need in my life?” I smiled to mask the hostility behind my sarcasm, but no laughter followed. “For nearly a decade, I did have a very meaningful, loving, immensely stable relationship in my life, with Moana. And God willing, someday I’ll meet another woman I will love as well, and I’ll be blessed with another meaningful, stable relationship. Because this is who I am.” I hoped my honesty would open their minds, but doors sealed shut by years of ignorance and church-sanctioned animosity refused to budge so easily.
“But dat’s jus it,” Harvey interrupted, triumph in his voice. “You can change! Can!”
“When we realized we needed to talk to you about this problem,” Kim took over, “we asked Pastor Keanu how to go about it. We thought there hadn’t been anyone in the church before who was, well, you know, gay.” She spit out the last word as if by simply uttering it she had committed some unpardonable sin.
“And we found out there had been others in the church who overcame this problem! In fact, there’s a woman Pastor Keanu told us about who attends services all the time, and she used to be in that lifestyle.”
Buoyed by his wife’s enthusiasm, Harvey piped in, “She want talk wid you!”
I thought uh, yeah, she wants to talk to me all right. She wants to date me!
“Listen, I don’t think you really know a lot about where Moana’s academic interests were, but she focused a lot of her research into the dangers of reparative therapy–the idea that a homosexual can change and become straight–and in fact, we cowrote a paper and presented it at several conferences. Most studies show that changing sexual orientation is not only an impossibility, but it’s abusive to even practice this kind of therapy.”
I looked at Harvey and then over at Kim. Vacant, glazed-over eyes looked back.
“Really?” Harvey’s voice fell flat, and his English suddenly improved as he said, “We were under the impression that Moana wanted to change, and that’s why she came to our church.”
The kid gloves were off now. These two meant business. Put a seed of doubt in my mind about Moana and her commitment to me. Watch it sprout and grow out of control until I questioned my own sexuality. Soon I’d be denouncing her as a vile, confused culprit who led me down the path towards sexual sin and destruction, but through the grace of God–not to mention her timely death–I would see the error of my ways and change. My future was clear: I’d be a happy, church-going heterosexual and oh, how I’d love that man–some man–of mine!
The sheer cruelty behind Harvey’s words and actions reverberated inside my brain. They did what most people do when they realize their arguments hold no weight–they went for the jugular.
“Your impression was wrong. Moana was extremely proud to be gay. She planned a psychology practice for gay teens–helping their struggles coming out and accepting themselves when society and so many churches hate them.”
“Well dat’s not what we was told,” sputtered Harvey, his pidgin returned.
Now I moved in for the kill.
“Do you know what Moana’s last words were to me? Three days before she died, with her whole family around her, she’d been tapered off the drugs long enough to enjoy a few hours with everyone as they said their goodbyes, and at the end of the day, with her mother, her sister, her father–with aunties and uncles all around her–she pointed at me and signed the words ‘I love you.’ She couldn’t get enough breath to speak them, but she mouthed them as she signed.”
Silence.
“Now that doesn’t sound like someone who wanted to change and be straight. So whoever told you otherwise was either very misled or flat-out lying. And to even bring that up to me when you know I’m grieving–that’s Christian?”
Neither Harvey nor Kim said a word. I moved my now-cold plate of food away from me and took a sip of warm juice. Finally Harvey spoke.
“Some folks at prayer group, they concerned ’bout you being part of it anymore. They feel you flaunting your lifestyle in da meetings. They no like it–make ’em feel uncomfortable.”
Me flaunting anything at this point in my life was completely absurd. I was lucky to get out of bed each day and go to work.
“This lifestyle thing again,” I said, now clearly exasperated. “Know what my lifestyle is? Figuring out how to pay a fifteen grand Visa bill in my name that paid for Moana’s pain meds in her last few months. It’s me trying to make all the household bills on one income now instead of two, since Moana had no life insurance. It’s breaking down into sobbing fits on the H-1 as I drive home from school each day, facing the empty house that’s full of everything Moana owned, full of her memories–everything that was our life together–but a house that is now heartbreakingly devoid of her.” My words spilled out rapidly in a torrent of indignation and frustration.
“My brain is a movie reel that replays her final fourteen months. I have nightmares that I’m the one hooked up to that damned BiPAP machine, drowning in my own fluids while my body eats itself away. And every morning when I wake up, my first thought is, ‘She’s gone. Moana is dead.’ And every night, my last thought is, ‘She died. Moana will never come back.’ So if that’s the lifestyle you’re talking about–the one that makes people’s Wednesday nights uncomfortable–then I don’t give a great goddamn.”
Kim tried to touch my hand again, but pulled back once I took the Lord’s name in vain. She sat back in her chair and looked at the grimy floor tiles below. Harvey, though, wasn’t finished.
“You talked ’bout lesbian stuffs when you las’ went to meeting. There was keiki all around,” he chastised, using the Hawaiian term for “children.” He obviously hadn’t heard a thing I’d just said.
“Oh dear God.” I shook my head. “Linda asked me a question and I answered her. Her kids were in the room. Are they going to become gay because I mentioned the word lesbian in front of them? Only if they’re blessed! If those kids can’t deal with someone uttering lesbian, then good luck living in the real world!”
I stood to go.
“Wait now, you don’t have to leave angry. We don’t want you to leave. We love you,” Kim pled.
“We want pray wid you,” Harvey followed up. “The others, they no want you in the group no more ’less you ready to change.”
I crushed my juice can, then stood up, throwing wadded up napkins into my half-eaten bento box.
“So this group of so-called ‘Christians’ is kicking the grieving lesbian who lost her spouse to a horrific disease out of Bible study–unless she agrees to change her sexual orientation, which all credible scientific research says is impossible?”
“No!” exclaimed Kim, “it is possible–with God!”
Cue the church authorities bursting in and carting me away to reparative therapy camp. Fight or flight took over. Time to leave. I headed for the door.
Harvey jumped up, “Jus cause you no come no more Wednesday nights no mean we won’t pray wid you. You come here any time. We talk wid you, pray, and . . .”
“I’ll tell you what.” I looked at them both. “I’ll make you both a deal. When you change from straight to gay and can prove to me that sexual orientation is changeable, I’ll believe you. Until then, nobody–not you, this group, this church–no one has the right to tell me that my grief isn’t normal. That I’m not normal.”
The idea of her changing from straight to gay appeared to both amuse and horrify Kim. She stayed glued to her chair, eyes crossed slightly, as if puzzled by the implication of change working both ways.
Hastily retreating down the hall, I felt like a horror movie star. Close at my heels, Harvey muttered something about being sorry things had to end this way. I refused to look back for fear of turning into a pillar of salt.
And that is how I was booted out of Hope Chapel Waikele.
I managed to get home, strip, and take a shower as my mind replayed the entire scenario over and over. I felt dirty, a dreadful corruption.
And yet, I had pushed back. Sitting in that kitchen with two people who hid their judgement and disgust behind God, I realized that there will always be “good Christian people” waiting to terrorize others who threaten their narrow beliefs.
I refused to deny who I am.
I even had the audacity to be proud of it.
That kind of pride cost Gerry Crane his life a little over a decade prior.
But on this day, it saved mine.