Lessons On Forgiving

a gift to an angel

When I’m speaking or typing live, it’s often difficult for me to express myself fully. With a story, though, give me fifteen hundred words, and I’ll explain the universe. Tuesday, protégée’s mom said something really dear about how I forgive. I made a short reply at the time, but as I owe her so much already, maybe this story will make things clearer.

The history of every Mississippi family reads like a Gothic novel. Mine is the tale of sinners, innocents, the lost, the saved, gods, and monsters. Hi, I’m the monster. I’ll be your host. Please make yourself at home.

One year, my wife left, my brother died, and then my mother died. I’d been neglecting my health for almost two decades. By the time we had Momma’s wake, everybody wondered if I’d be next, maybe later that week. I have strong feelings about suicide, but “death by neglect” didn’t sound like something anyone would hold me accountable for.

On the patio alone, one of the last still smoking, my cousin Robert joined me. I explain to Mary that she’s related to General Wilson in the same way I’m related to Robert Mims. Her family history is pretty dang fascinating, too.

Despite his better judgment, Robert always liked me. We’d never discussed it, but I mentioned the time, when I was sixteen, when his mother and my grandmother took me to the fried chicken place in Maywood Mart to introduce me to the family secret. When Aunt Babe was eleven or twelve, a distant cousin raped her. In Learned Mississippi, in the twenties, every person, white or black, was a cousin at some level.

Aunt Babe had just died. “Why tell me now?” I asked. “You’re old enough” was their only answer. I fully expected Robert to reciprocate with the story of how he was folded into the family secret when he was “old enough,” but they had never told him. We both wondered why his own mother would insist on telling me, and not him. I was a beefy kid. If you needed somebody to move a piano or a chifflerobe, I’m your Huckleberry, but why this?

I thought about asking Joan Bailey, but was afraid to. One night, drinking at the kitchen table with Momma and Cousin Libby, I wondered what they knew about it.

Apparently, this distant cousin offered little Babe a buggy ride. Whatever happened, it happened during the buggy ride. After that, the entire Brady clan devoted their lives to taking care of Babe. She never married. So she would have a little money, the family hired her to babysit.

When I was a baby, diapers were cloth, laundered, and delivered in bundles by a service. Instead of tape, they were held in place by “safety pins,” which were only safe when they were closed.

Changing my diaper, she pricked the head of my tiny penis with the safety pin. From what I was told, the wound was barely visible, but there was quite a bit of blood. My grandmother was spending six months in Atlanta with my Aunt Jo. Babe frantically ran to Martha Hammond’s house, frantically banging on the door, weeping profusely, begging for help. She was beyond panicked. She was terrified.

Because of my speech impediment, in the first few years, I could only say “Hammond,” not “Mrs Hammond,” and it stuck. In her housecoat, Hammond ran to our house, where I was still crying in my crib. She cleaned me up and put ‘“nerosporin” on my wound. “See? He’s fine, just scared.” She said, bouncing me until I stopped crying and began to laugh again. When Momma and Daddy came home, Babe hid in the closet while Hammond explained what happened.

I get accused of having some sort of freakish memory. Other than many flashes of Martha Hammond, I remember nothing of this. Hammond had her master’s in writing and taught it at Mississippi College. She told me the story after my mother tried to. Somehow, Martha Hammond saw a writer in me, though I stubbornly refused to read. Between my Momma, Madora McIntyre, Ware Conner, and Martha Hammond, a broken kid who couldn’t read became a writer.

At the kitchen table, I nursed my whisky while Libby poured another glass of wine.

“Momma told me that Pappa (my great, great, grandfather) found the man from the buggy ride, shot him, and hid the body. Momma, with her whisky, nodded her head; she agreed.

So…

The first lesson of forgiveness is complicated. I feel sure the story won’t be like you expected when we started. The first point is that you’re not always obligated to forgive. My Papa, whom I never met, shot a man. I want to say he’s the only one in the family to shoot somebody, but no. It happened a few times. The Scots are violent people. If somebody (anybody) rapes your eleven-year-old girl-child, you can shoot them, and owe not a living soul an apology. He was never caught. He was never punished. It’s my hope that, had he been caught, the State of Mississippi would have shown him a level of mercy and forgiveness.

In the second point, my Aunt Babe loved me. She was one of the sweetest, most gentle creatures I have ever known, but she was getting older. Her eyesight and her hands weren’t what they used to be. She gave me an almost unnoticeable wound on the spot where the Lord made me a man, but it bled a lot. My parents and Martha Hammond forgave her instantly. She was forgiven because she was innocent, even though I cried.

The third is something you may not have considered. I came into this world remarkably broken. We didn’t seek out Martha Hammond. She just happened to be our backdoor neighbor. We didn’t seek out Madora McIntyre; she just happened to be the teacher I was assigned. Though I was deeply broken, I was innocent. Not only did love and forgiveness find me, but they just happened to be people who could help repair my brokenness. Without that, who knows what would have happened to me? Like Babe, I was forgiven because I was innocent, and God sent me aid.

The next lesson in forgiveness is complicated, too. I apologize in advance. Despite what psychologists, counselors, songwriters, and movie producers tell you, you don’t find love. It finds you. It falls on you like rain. Sometimes, it’s warm Summer rain. Sometimes, it’s bitterly cold winter rain. You didn’t seek it. You just realized you were wet one day, and it was too late to stop it.

Here’s the controversial part: love is never reciprocal. You may love me, and I may love you, but if it becomes a matter of, “I love you BECAUSE you love me, well, that’s a transaction. Transactions are never love.

Going through my pictures of the women in my life, Erin, The Everything Kid, remarked, “You have a type, don’t you?”

Of that, I’m pretty guilty. Except for Katie, Laurie, and Susan (who looked like larger versions of my sister), all the women I ever really loved look like sisters. This is true of my wife.

I met her at Scrooges. Considering how much time I spent there, the odds that I might fall into actual love, instead of a weekend thing, were high. I called the woman who would be my wife and said, “Are you going tonight?” She had just finished a rough divorce, her second. She’d just begun going out again. That’s when I found her. Excusing herself for a trip to the ladies, my dear friend Skip (one of Jackson’s best lawyers, raconteurs, and drinkers) said, “Uh, you know that Carla, she’s kind of…”

“She certainly is.” Was my reply. He was testing me in the secret code men have. Was I claiming dibs on this woman? Oh, yeah, Baby.

Meeting somebody at a bar, like meeting somebody at a coffee joint, is a perfect, early, non-comital date. It’s how you talk and learn about each other. Talking at Scrooges, I realized we literally knew all the same people. Five years older than me, there had been scores of near encounters, but we had never met. The icing on the cake came when I found out that her father was one of my favorite people on earth, and her uncle-in-law was too.

Despite what you might glean from my stories, I make an effort to be a gentleman, no kissing until the second or third date, and no actual intercourse until the fifth or sixth. On our third date, we left her car at Scrooges and explored Jackson in my truck, including my office downtown. We hadn’t kissed yet, but the eye-play was getting intense.

In my office, in the middle of the night, sitting on my desk, we may have skipped a few steps. I fully intended to keep to the no intercourse rule, but there’s an awful lot you can do without that—if you’re creative.

Here’s where it gets complicated. I loved her, and I absolutely believe she loved me, but we had very different motives, hopes, and expectations from the relationship.

Teachers make almost no money. Very quickly, I began supplementing her income and paying some of her children’s expenses because their dad could be uncooperative. At the time, my company was growing almost too fast for me to keep up. There was money everywhere.

After two divorces, my wife believed her life was defined by failure. I tried to get her to see herself the way I did, but it was a struggle. I bought a ring and asked her to marry me (my third time to get that far). My thought was that we’d stay engaged until both children were in college to get married. Since they were not my children, I thought the idea of a new step-dad should be approached slowly.

She still carried the name from her second marriage. She wanted to be Mrs. Campbell before the next school year to cast off the smell and film of her previous failures as soon as possible. I had serious doubts, so I prayed. Each time, the same thing came up. “Do you love her enough to do this? Can you make these vows as a gentleman and keep them?”

I called Father David Elliot and made an appointment for pre-marital counseling. In hindsight, I probably should have asked for Minka. I’d known David all my life. His middle child was in the Travelers with me. Sometimes you can be too close to counsel somebody. Minkah would have been more likely to tell me “no.”

As you’ve probably guessed, this was headed for disaster. It gets worse before it gets better. I wasn’t going to abandon her, even though it was killing me. I’d made a vow as a gentleman. If this were to end, she would have to end it. One day, her father, who loved me more than she, said, “Let’s find a way to take this off you, Buddy.”

I loved my wife. In her way, she loved me. It was not reciprocal, though. She wanted to wash away her past failures and remake herself as a Campbell. While I loved her enough to try, none of it was about anybody loving me, well, except David and Cecil.

I never felt that I should forgive my wife. There was nothing to forgive. I loved her. As a gentleman, that was my bond. I made a vow, asked God to bless it, none of this said “only if she’s good for me.”

For years, I wouldn’t tell this story, even to my family. I didn’t want to embarrass her. I figure she deserved that. When I chose to become a real writer, I decided to tell only the truth, even if I had to rearrange the details to make the story read better.

There was never a question of forgiving my wife. I love her just like I loved her that night on my desk. Loving her fell on me like a gentle warm rain. Being very wet, I struggled when the winds changed, and it got cold, but there was nothing to forgive. I loved her, and that was my bond. If I’m honest, she’s not the only one I’m bonded to that way. Big boy-big heart. Like Tennessee Williams said, “his heart was the size of a baby’s head.”

The third, and final lesson in forgiveness might be the most difficult. Sometimes, the stories about the things that hurt me hurt other people, even if it’s only in empathy. I apologize. My wounds are ugly. I don’t mind being ugly.

When I turned thirteen, two decent things happened. A girl said she liked me, and another gentle soul taught me boy-girl dances, which I only had the chance to do once with the first girl. Besides that, things turned bad quickly. The first girl died tragically and unexpectedly a year later. Here we go.

When I was thirteen, I missed my father very much. He still lived here, but he works like a demon, and the world needed him, so I never saw him. My other idol was my brother. He was like me. Intuitive, creative, hyper-active, not only willing to challenge convention, but addicted to doing it.

When I was thirteen, he lost his mind. He ended up at the hospital for the mentally ill, but not the Mississippi State Hospital for the mentally ill. Sister Josephine Therese Uhll asked my father to let the staff at St. Dominic’s take care of Jimmy. Friends with both my father and my namesake, Sister Josephine represented the Yankee part of the Campbell family that also happened to be nuns.

My first thought was, “he didn’t do this; the drugs did.” My brother would have never hurt me like that, but the drugs might. I blamed him for taking them. Then I did a very strange thing. I began using the very same drugs. I wanted to recreate in me whatever happened to him, but in a controlled way. I guess, in a way, I thought, if I could control it in me, I could control it in him.

There are several theories about what causes schizophrenia, especially the very vicious kind of schizophrenia my brother had. One is that it rests in the social, language-processing parts of the brain. My dyslexia, my ADHD, and my stuttering also originate in the language-processing part of the brain. I didn’t have a problem with reading; I had a problem with words. That may sound strange as words are now my closest friend, but when I was young, we were enemies.

Whatever happened to my brother could happen to me. Something else happened to me, though. There’s a theory that, in the extremely primitive neural stem, there exists something called the “God part of the brain.” It’s what makes you believe things will work out, no matter how fatal they look. Developing this, (the theory goes) allowed the language centers to establish, and monkeys became men. We began to believe in God.

People with chronic, persistent depressive disorder have trouble believing. We’re born with an eye toward the day we will die. Though I haven’t always dealt with it well, I have, in fact, learned to bend it to my will. The first step of that journey was admitting that, no matter how hard I fought it, I would always be agnostic. I’ll never say, “there is no God,” but I will admit that I just don’t know.

Believing my brother’s disease was under control, my parents admitted him to college in a limited capacity. He was actually a brilliant student, despite his troubles. In college, the drugs found him again. When the smoke cleared on this incident, my dad had the FBI investigate whether or not there was unusual drug activity at Millsaps. I’ve never admitted that before. “Unusual drug activity” covers a lot of ground, but the FBI said Millsaps was pretty normal for a college community.

My brother made friends with a boy who also liked drugs. We didn’t know it, but my brother was bouncing in and out of delusional episodes. Schizophrenia wasn’t as controllable then as it is now. My brother’s friend had an idea where they could get some money to buy drugs. The voices of John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix told my brother, this was a good idea. That’s not a metaphor or an euphemism. He heard their voices. He heard many voices.

Arming himself, my brother and his friend held up a convenience store near Millsaps. Obviously, not the best plan, as the clerk had seen them many times before. Once the clerk said, “You’re Jimmy, aren’t you?” my brother threw down his weapon and surrendered. His friend did not. As the police and the news crews showed up, it was gonna be a long night. I hadn’t yet turned fifteen.

My brother was one of the gentlest souls I have ever known. Some of the voices in his head were not. You can’t imagine what it took to get him home again. My mother always denied it, but Daddy spent about a million dollars trying to help my brother, and at the end of it, he was home again—with me.

It was my other brother’s turn to go to college. Jimmy and I were alone in the upstairs of our split-level, one street over from Eastover Drive, north-east Jackson home. All of this was pretty hurtful to me, but I tried to remember that it was more hurtful for my brother and my parents.

One night, I stayed up reading, trying to sleep. Needing to pee, I emerged from my bedroom. My brother crouched in the dark, covered in Winsor and Newton (expensive) oil paints, in his underpants. In the dark, he leapt on me with a machete in his hand. Defending my face with my arm, he hit me dead on.

Sharpened, a machete can cut through bamboo and jungle growth. Not sharp, a machete is just a hunk of metal. It didn’t break my skin. I was terrified, though. I responded with violence. The kind of violence only a kid my size could invoke. The attempt on my life ended with my brother weeping like a child, bleeding from his ears and nose, back in the corner where he hid to attack me.

My sister was on a church trip. Only my mother, father, and grandmother were there. Calling the police would mean an “assault with a deadly weapon charge” for my brother. Though he would end up at the State Hospital in Whitfield, he wouldn’t be home for a long time. My parents impressed upon me the importance of keeping this secret and lying for my brother. The ambulance came, and he returned to the psychiatry ward at St. Dominic’s for a while, but the police were never called.

Here’s the lesson on forgiveness part.

There was a tremendous red welt on my arm where the extremely dull machete hit me, but my body was not hurt.

My body was not hurt.

I knew, intellectually, that this was the right choice for my brother. The entire family struggled to make the right choices for my brother—but I could feel my soul in peril.

I was deeply, deeply wounded in a way that nobody, even my psychologist, seemed to understand. My brother, my idol, who I had lost to illness and drugs, tried to kill me. At school, I wore a long-sleeve shirt so nobody could see my wound. I wanted it to heal immediately, but it took a few weeks.

I’ve titled my autobiography “Sophie’s Other Child.” (I’m looking for publishers, if you know anybody) This was the moment. Sophie chose the other child.

For thirty-five years, I forgave nobody. Not my mother, not my father, not my psychologist, especially not my brother, not my friends who never heard my story, not the police, not my brother’s psychologist, not his lawyers, NOBODY. I built a wall between myself and the world, and not one goddamn soul would get in.

I went to college with my enormously powerful body, getting weaker and weaker. I ate and drank anything I could find. I was breaking. I was breaking. I would continue to break for thirty years.

I reached a level of detente with my father. He helped me plan an escape to Hollywood, but he died before we could pull the trigger. I wouldn’t forgive my mother until her final days in the hospital.

Not forgiving cost me my life. It cost me my family, my friends, and any hope I had of finding love, or achievement, or happiness. I became this broken creature, railing at the storm, fighting for a better world until the ten thousand wounds on me made me lose my grip on the Empire State Building, and I fell—not to my death, but perilously close.

Had I forgiven, even this very complicated, emotional event, I would have saved my own life, but I couldn’t see it. The blood in my eyes was my own. I was blind.

so…

I wrote this story for a single person and her child. If my mother were alive, I’d send it to her. If her mother were alive, I’d send it to her, but they’re not. You are the beneficiary of forgiving, not the person you forgive. It cost me quite a lot to understand this, but now I’m giving it to you, because I love you, all of you, even the ones who never read me, even the ones who hate me. Forgive.