Born Again

I grew up in an Evangelical Christian period of my mother's life. Born a few years earlier, I would have been weeding her pot garden; born a few years later, I'd have been accessing the goddess within. My brother, Sam, who occupied the plot of years before me, was not enthused about these metamorphoses and was especially resentful when she banished the Rolling Stones from the house. At age six, this didn't bother me; I was happy with my record collection. My favorite featured the line "bullfrogs and butterflies, they've both been born again." Equally popular was a story tape starring a large blue bible named "Salty" who conversed lengthily with "Charity," a rhyming churchmouse.

It was only recently that Sam reminded me of another treasure -- one lodged so far into my subconscious that only the tune is familiar. He and I were home for dinner recently, torturing our parents with songs of the past. Most were ads that my brother memorized at friends' houses and brought home to teach to me, the TV-deprived. (In our house, we looked to the electrifying and inspirational Guidepost magazine for our entertainment.) He sang the lead on the Chef Boyardee commercial while I provided the back up line, "badoo, badoo." I was "wimpy" to his "hefty" garbage bag.

When we moved from advertising to religious propaganda, my mother's face fell. Discussion of her born-again self now makes her visibly uncomfortable. I have to believe that she feels some guilt about exposing us to weekend camping revivals, Roller-skate For Jesus competitions, and Vacation Bible School. Even at age six, I knew enough to be suspicious of anything with both vacation and school in the title. But I also suspect that somewhere deep inside my mother's newly pagan exterior burns the fear that we are being overheard and that we should, at any minute, expect the lightning. She fidgeted through my rendition of "Bullfrogs" and a duet version of "Jesus Loves You." But when my brother got to "The Master has Taught Us How to Multiply," her face froze in horror. "Do I know that song?" I asked, suspecting, rightly, that this was a number reserved for the pubescent Sunday school classes. My brother knew all the verses and was determined to demonstrate. My mother fled for the kitchen.

At the end of the song, we laughed weakly, but our enthusiasm had waned. My mother emerged from the kitchen and found us, wary sinners, looking up at her with guilty expressions we perfected long ago. I could almost hear her feet stomping up the steep stairs to our bedrooms, the burst of the door, and the same two words, "All right-" after which she would insert that evening's accusation. For some reason, only one comes to mind, perhaps because it happened so often: "All right - whose teeth marks are these in the cream cheese?" Luckily for my perpetually scrawny, animal-fat-deprived brother, our teeth were sufficiently similar to share the blame.

Once again, this situation could go two ways. Option one would be massive amounts of Judeo-Christian guilt -- rivaled only by our own guilt for causing hers. Option two was anger, and gauging my brother's lingering Rolling Stones rage, that too would be rivaled. Standing there looking at us, she seemed as if she might not have made up her mind between Scylla of guilt and the Charybdis of anger. Finally, she just sighed. "I'm so sorry," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "Can we just chock it up to good material?" There was a long silence. I looked down the table at Sam who was still considering the suggestion.

We've come up with a new line to my brother's favorite Sunday school anthem. These days it goes, "The Master has taught us how to multiply...and God damn it -- I can't get no satisfaction."

Phoebe Damrosch-Williams is a member of the Dispatch editorial collective and editor of Coltura. This is the latest piece in her new Fact & Fiction column.

(c) Copyright 2002 Phoebe Damrosch-Williams