Beyond Belief (24 page)

That weekend I learned that what was going on at my church wasn’t enough; that the fire of the Holy Spirit needed to catch ahold of everyone I came into contact with; that I needed to be—was
called
to be—a witness. And witnessing was critical because, if I didn’t convince people to follow Christ, to shut off the secular world and dedicate their entire lives to God, they would be doomed, their souls destined for hell.

“D
AVE, JUST TRY TO
breathe slowly, okay?” I am shaking but focused. “I’m going to unlock the door. I’ll be right back.” I run down the stairs to where my other brother, Donny, the youngest, is sprawled on an air mattress in my living room. My brothers are staying with me in Minneapolis for the weekend to go to a Twins’ game.

“Donny, get up!” I kick the mattress, but he doesn’t move. I run to unlock the door. Next I squat and with all my force shake the bed, all the while wondering if Dave is still breathing. “Donny, get up, something is wrong with Dave. An ambulance is on the way.”

Donny groans and rolls, “Huh? Whatever. I don’t believe him. I’m so sick of his crap,” he says, disoriented.

I have no time to explain. “Donny, this is not a joke. Get up. Hurry! And open the door when they come,” I yell as I run back up the stairs.

I am thankful to find Dave breathing, but he is still in the same position, hands curled like he’s crippled, face hanging like he has Bell’s palsy, eyes looking at me for answers.

A
FTER THE YOUTH RETREAT
I grew frustrated with everyone back home. Sitting idly in church, repeating prayers, and singing hymns wasn’t enough—people needed to embrace the Holy Spirit. And it was my job to show my family, my church, and my classmates the
real
way to God. Jessica and I organized the first ever “See you at the pole” morning at our school, where we’d gather at a designated time with others all across the country to say prayers. I also started to wear Jesus T-shirts and pin a tiny cross on my collar. At home I listened to Christian music and read my Bible. I felt like a righteous rebel for God.

During this time Dave had just entered high school. I told him how important it was to develop a relationship with the Lord. I bought him tapes of Christian hard rock groups that mimicked the music he liked. I expected him to follow my lead, as he had always done.

The boys in my class found it thrilling to target my brother with alcohol and parties as a way to taunt me, the Bible-banger. I’d hear, secondhand, about Dave getting drunk. Furious and panicked about his salvation, I asked him to consider what God thought of his behavior, reminding him of the love and peace he’d find if he lived his life for the Lord. Dave was quiet, his eyes angry.

All the while I was experiencing my spiritual transformation, I was also in love with Jessica, an inconvenience that would cause me to look at things differently in a few short years. In my mind, the love I felt wasn’t wrong because it was founded on our connection
to God. I had known from age four that I was gay. And when I ran in the trees, wild and young, full of wonder and believing in miracles, I never felt like a sinner. The God I knew was the giver of this love, in fact. But the more involved I got with fundamentalist Christianity, the greater the tension grew between my feelings and what I heard from spiritual leaders. I kept my struggle hidden. As the years passed my inner world became locked in a painful struggle between the voice of the zealous leaders, who told me what God thought about same-sex couples, and my own inner voice that whispered something entirely different.

A
N HOUR BEFORE
D
AVE
got into the tub, he’d been lying next to me in my bed, and I’d been annoyed. We could have been kids again, under the covers, with a flashlight. Back then we’d be giggling and drawing pictures on each other’s arms. Or, if I felt evil, I’d be telling a scary story to bring my little brother—who believed anything I said—to tears. But we were not kids and I was tired. My brothers had come home, late, after a night out on the town.

At four in the morning they had tumbled into my house like wild buffalo. I’d stood in my robe, watching as they ravaged my fridge and—squeezing my arms, flashing their big grins—told me not to be mad. They are as close as two brothers can be and in many ways almost clones of one another: Both are handsome, with kind faces, easy smiles, big eyes, shaved heads; and they share the same hiccupping laugh. But Donny is almost a foot taller than Dave, and emotive, a big hugger, a talker; Dave is reserved, tentative about affection, usually quiet, conveying his feelings mostly via a furrowed brow.

After they had taken their fill, Donny hit the air mattress. Dave bypassed the couch I’d made up for him, followed me upstairs, and
dove into my bed. I ignored him, crawled to the other side of the bed, and pulled the covers up to my nose. Whether he slept on the couch or next to me, I was intent on getting a couple more hours of sleep.

“Mel, Donny is mad at me,” Dave said.

“Go to sleep, Dave,” I said.

“But he’s mad at me,” Dave repeated. “We had a fight tonight.”

“Dave, Donny isn’t mad at you. Donny loves you. Now go to sleep.”

“No, he doesn’t. He thinks I’m a bad person.”

“He doesn’t. And you are a not a bad person. Go to sleep,” I said, hoping he would grow bored and drift off.

“Does too! What do you know? You weren’t there,” he said, whining. I realized right then that I
was
in bed with my four-year-old brother—the alcohol-induced version.

I sighed and decided to indulge him, “Why, Dave? Why does Donny think you’re a bad person?”

He turned onto his side, away from me. “Because I told him I don’t think there is a God. And he is mad at me. And April thinks I’m a bad person too. She’s always reciting Bible verses, asking me what God would think when I don’t want to go to church.”

With this admission I realized I was in for more than a drunken ramble. I opened my eyes and braced myself. April is Dave’s wife, a beautiful woman with an open and loving disposition. She, like Dave, can be strongheaded and stubborn. And she is a devout, faithful, deeply convicted Catholic. I have no idea what she would make of this news.

“I’m sure April doesn’t think you’re a bad person. What did she say?” I asked.

“I haven’t told her. I’m terrified. She’s sooo religious.”

“Dave, April is religious, yes—but she’s also understanding and open and a thinker. You should just tell her what you’re feeling,” I said. “It’s better than not talking. She’d probably appreciate it.”

“I don’t know how to talk about it,” he said.

“Well,” I thought for a second. “You know, Dave, just start with this: April, I need to talk to you, and I need to feel safe. I want you to hear what I’m about to say with an open heart and not judge me.” I imagined this was too soft, too mushy for Dave. I imagined he would burst into laughter—instead he burst into tears.

I tumbled inside to hear my brother crying next to me, especially since he rarely exposed his inner thoughts, much less his raw emotion. Part of me wanted to turn away, plug my ears, and not see, like I would have had he cut his finger as a child and run to Mom. Simultaneously I felt the weight of this conversation—the importance to get it right this time.

“Mel, do you think there is a God?” he asked, sobbing.

This was such a complex, tricky, loaded question. My family and I don’t often talk about God or faith. They are as devout in their routine today as we were early on. But for years they thought of me as the religious one, the one who went to a Christian college, the one who worked as a camp counselor, the one who studied each tissue-like page of the Bible, demonstrating to everyone what active faith looked like. I was, after all, on a mission to save their souls. But over the years my perspectives had transitioned; I had changed. And I had no idea what they thought about my beliefs today.

“Dave, I sort of think there is this creative energy that made us. And we are all a part of it. We
are
it. And I think there are many paths to understanding it, or God, or source. And all those paths, all beliefs, just lead to the same impulse. But religion has
distorted a lot. I think the human translation of the divine has become harmful.”

“But you think there is
something
. I don’t even believe there is something. I thought when I’d have kids it would change my mind. But I don’t feel it.” He was still sobbing, pent-up contemplation leaving his body. And I was feeling sick with care for him.

“Dave, I think that’s okay. You may feel differently some day or you may not. But you are not a bad person.” I put my hand on his back, wishing the moment would pass, that the air would shift and he’d be okay. But a deeper part of me knew this release was years in the making, and that somehow I had contributed to his pain. I also realized how much I had changed from that young witness who’d clung to dogma, on a mission to save souls.

“But everyone thinks I’m going to hell.”

“Well. Everyone thinks I’m going to hell too, because I’m gay. So we’ll be there together,” I said, hoping to make him laugh. Then I felt something—an old anger, a stirring. “Judgment, Dave, is the greatest sin in my mind. No one has a right to judge you. This is your life and your way of making sense of it.”

We talked for several more minutes until Dave calmed down. “Davey, you just need to relax. Let it go. You don’t have to figure out everything now, or ever.” I waited for his response.

“I think I’m going to take a bath,” he said.

“Ah, great idea,” I said, surprised but encouraged by the thought of him relaxing. “I’ll get it ready for you.”

I drew his bath, sprinkled salts in the water, and got out a clean towel. I thought about baptism, and communion, and Jesus washing people’s feet. At one time I’d been drawn to these rituals, these miracles, enchanted by their mystery. I remembered how when Dave and I were kids I’d smash white bread, pour grape juice, and
give him communion. He watched me. He listened to me. Then more memories surfaced: the years I scorned him about his parties, and the times I told him his music was evil. I remembered how silent he’d become, and, for a time, how distant we’d been. Now, no longer trying to convert him, drawing a bath for my brother somehow seemed holy, a different kind of baptism. I wanted the water to soothe him, to wash away his fear.

After he settled into the bath I listened for the movement of water and then crawled back into bed. A few minutes later I heard his voice.

“Dave, did you say something?” I said quietly.

“Mel, come here,” I heard Dave call again.

This was odd. My brother would never call me into the bathroom with him. I cracked the door and stuck in my head. “Dave?”

“Mel, I just don’t want to drown,” Dave whispered. His face was flush. I went in and knelt by the side of the tub. He was sweating. He looked terrified. “Mel,” he said, not sounding like himself. “I don’t want to drown,” he repeated. I was still trying to make sense of his words and the panicked look in his eyes when he started to breathe heavily, like a dog in a desert. Within seconds, he was gasping for air. This was when things started to go bad.

A
DOZEN PEOPLE HAVE
filled my small bathroom. A police-woman bends down, shining a light in my brother’s eyes; behind her paramedics cram into the area. I retreat into my bedroom to give them space. I can see, through the crowd, someone strap a plastic mask over Dave’s mouth. After several long minutes of commotion, people start to back out. A paramedic tells me that my brother will be okay. He has probably experienced a panic attack, the paramedic
says, which induced hyperventilation and then extreme hyperoxia. With too much oxygen, Dave’s body had started to shut down. I sit on the edge of my bed and only now start to shake.

T
HE NEXT DAY, WHEN
it is all over, after my brothers leave, the house is quiet. We had said few words to each other as they’d gathered their things. I think each of us felt exposed—the moment too blinding.

I go into the bathroom to collect the wet towel I had used to cover my brother’s body. Standing near the tub, the place where I thought Dave was dying, I sink to the floor and cry the purest sort of cry—like at a death, like at a birth. Sadness fills me for what the world, people in the world, like me, had pounded into my brother, had planted in him, had established in him—a sense of unworthiness, a fear to explore his own inner world for answers, a silencing of any words of searching, seeking, questioning. And this oppression, I was certain, had just played out in concentrated, physical form—choking him, suffocating him, drowning him. I cry for myself, too: for the young girl who lost her own version of God, a God that lived in the trees, performed miracles, and granted all forms of abundant love. The cry flushes me. It is a cry of relief, a cry of rage, a cry of love—but mostly a cry of thankfulness that I had, I hoped, finally been able to be, after all these years, the right sort of witness.

Eva

Leila Khan