Angela J. Latham
God Bless the Child

Twenty-two seconds. I replay the grainy video again, spreading its murky image with my fingertips. I visually devour this being, this mysterious swaying creature who is the beginnings of my grandchild. His delicate arms flutter as he floats within the encompassing black void.
“Sheez!” My son’s voice in the background.
The plum-sized figure tips forward in the watery darkness, bowing then gracefully righting himself.
“My, oh my!”
My usually articulate son is at a loss for words. His wonder and elation are palpable these several states away where I sit at my card-table desk fixated on the phone I hold. Ephemera of my comparatively ancient life lay about me––old photos, letters, court documents––all but trifles now. This tiny dancer pins a new location on my map of memories. The narrative shifts. Ours is a coalescence of stories in all tenses. My hand grasps tightly the hopeful tale just beginning to unfold. My heart loosens its grip on the sad, untold story whose pain, at last, I have outlived.
I spot my “personal primary sources” file on the floor next to my wobbly table. It’s the kind of file you maintain if you are equal parts historian and packrat. As I pick it up, scraps of paper covered with my handwriting fall out and scatter across the carpet. These bits of collected wisdom from poems, plays, and stories were the breadcrumbs that marked my path, guiding me from one difficult place to another and eventually, to safety. I pick them up carefully, setting aside the ones that meant the most to me. The ones that reverberate still in this telling.
Two colorful brochures within the file stand out from the remaining papers. I place them beside each other for comparison. Each is an attempt to sell a point of view, a way of looking at a world changing in bewildering ways, as it always is. Their adjacency highlights the stark contrast between them and sparks a conversation. No, an argument. One that reveals the historical context in which they were created, but also the enduring nature of the argument itself. As injurious in its particulars today as it was when I placed these peculiar keepsakes in the dog-eared folder that preserved them all these years.
In bold, red, three-quarter-inch font, a shout: “You Can’t Fool Mother Nature.” A stop-sign icon just below: “STOP ERA.” The other pamphlet features the silhouette of a bird in flight against a giant sun setting over rippling water. The background color is a soothing blue-green. The small, italicized font, a whisper: “Free Indeed––The Fulfillment of our Faith.”

***

“What’s that on your arm?” my husband asks, pointing.
“Funny you should ask,” I think, but don’t say. I stir the makings of our Sunday dinner and glance bemusedly at the fingernail-shaped indentations on my upper arms. I hadn’t even noticed the marks until I walked out of church and let go of the vice-like self-embrace I had maintained throughout the service. At least it worked. I managed not to bolt out of the pew and flee the premises.
Now I feel the rage rising in me again. One more sermon on a husband’s God-ordained authority in marriage and I will start screaming in the middle of all that sanctimony.

“Yes, when you led me back to what you called the path of duty and obedience––when you praised as right and proper something my whole soul revolted against as an abomination––then I began to look closely at the stuff your
teaching was made of. I only wanted to unpick a single stitch, but once I’d got that undone, the whole thing unraveled.”
Henrik Ibsen, Act II, Ghosts, 1881

I don’t remember who gave me the Stop ERA pamphlet. But I do recall how alarmed adults around me were about what “libbers” like Gloria Steinem and her ilk were up to. Those particulars––also in red lettering––are clearly enumerated within the tri-fold piece. I was too young and cloistered then to understand the item listed that became and continues to be the foremost issue to politically galvanize evangelicals and other religious conservatives:
“ERA will deprive state legislatures of all power to stop or regulate abortions at any time during pregnancy. ERA will give women a ‘constitutional’ right to abortion on demand.”
Not much has changed in this colossal debate since the mid-1970s.
The good country people of my church weren’t yet willing to talk explicitly about such delicate issues. Pamphlets were one thing; open discussion was another. Besides, the Catholics were in charge of this one. Still, consensus was growing within our ranks. Morality was crumbling before our eyes. The cause was complicated, but at least it was easy to spell: E.R.A.
I grasped it all in simple, storied terms. Everything went off the tracks because of Eve’s sin in the garden of Eden. Now everything is awful again because of sinful women––especially Ms. Steinem––who won’t accept their rightful place in God’s hierarchy. Women who don’t get it that there are certain ways for them to be, and certain other ways for men to be. We are meant to be separate and unequal. God planned it that way, and it’s a beautiful thing.

***

I know the sermon text too well. A classic from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. It is the go-to scripture to secure female acquiescence: “Wives, submit yourself to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which he is the Savior.” Much is made of the analogy of Christ’s love for the church. How could that kind of “lordship” be anything but desirable? We all know it as Christians, right? Ipso facto, married women are doubly beloved. Just a little submission and voila, a savior! As usual, the pastor abundantly illustrates the truths of this text with misty stories about marriages, none of which sound remotely like my own.

“After your son was born, your husband was home and basically took care of him, did he not?
No, that is not true.
“Did he not take care of him at all during this period of time?
It was quite shared. I was only teaching part time.
“He was there all the time because he wasn’t working, isn’t that correct?
He started doing some work within the next month or so. I recall getting babysitting so I know there were arrangements that were varied. It was not all one, all me or all him.
“I am not trying to say he took care of him all the time, he was a significant factor in the upbringing of your son at that time, was he not?
I would say yes.
“And did he do a good job of taking care of your son as best as you can recall?
Sure.”

I pick up the blue-green brochure, noting again its calming exterior. Unlike the red-letter, bullet-point urgency of the Stop ERA piece, its interior content is dense and promises to be a time-consuming read. A lengthy summary of the history and purposes of the Evangelical Women’s Caucus International fills one panel. Next to that, an introduction to EWCI and a Bible verse. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherein Christ has made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Galatians 5:1” The scripture is one of thousands I memorized as a girl.
A handwritten query from Helen Garretson draws my eye. Am I interested in performing my solo show for this upcoming conference? The request dates to the period after college when I traveled to evangelical venues presenting the life of Susanna Wesley, known in these circles as the “Mother of Methodism.” Even among my people, who considered Methodists much too liberal, her writings and story reflected the undiluted “Wesleyan” tradition they embraced fully. I quickly search the rest of the brochure for the sentence within its otherwise plodding content that so startled me at the time: “EWCI as an organization takes no official position on any issue except for its endorsement of the Equal Rights Amendment in the United States.” A sentence that turned my delight at this prospective gig into a lump in my throat. And an obligation to take a stand.

Dear Ms. Garretson,

Thank you for your inquiry into my presentation of the one-woman play I wrote based on the life of Susanna Wesley. I have carefully read the program of the EWCI Conference. It sounds like a fascinating organization. I recently became aware of your Caucus, so it was a rather nice surprise to receive the program in the mail.
I need to know certain things before I can sincerely answer your question about whether my play would be appropriate at an EWCI Conference. My interest has definitely been sparked but, as I am sure you know, there are many degrees of feminism, even in religious circles. Doctrinally, many views may sound the same, but the particular emphasis given one point or another can make quite a bit of difference. For instance, I noticed that EWCI endorses the Equal Rights Amendment. Is this endorsement a major rallying point or more of an incidental political stand? It is important to me to know this because, rightly or wrongly, I associate ERA not only with the valid argument of equal pay, but also with support of abortion. It would be hard for me present a woman who so committedly devoted her life to raising her 10 children to a group who, even indirectly, supported abortion.
Please understand that I am not accusing, only seeking to know. Having put so much of my heart and soul into presenting Mrs. Wesley, I have grown to really love her for her great strength and wisdom. Her character has been a tremendous help in my own search for answers in the issues of womanhood. I also feel, in a strange way, protective of her. I would never wish for her strengths to be used in support of any contradiction to her most vital life principles. In my opinion, she is one of the greatest models of womanhood we could hope to find anywhere or in any age.
I hope this is helpful. If you could provide me with a bit more information about EWCI, I could better decide about the appropriateness of my presentation for the purposes of your organization.

Very Sincerely,

Angela Latham

“The trouble is … that youth is given up to illusions. It seems to be a provision of Nature; a decoy to secure mothers for the race. And Nature takes no account of moral consequences, of arbitrary conditions which we create and which we feel obliged to maintain at any cost.
“Yes. The years that are gone seem like dreams––if one might go on sleeping and dreaming––but to wake up and find––oh! Well! Perhaps it is better to wake up after all, even to suffer, rather than to remain a dupe to illusions all one’s life.”  
Kate Chopin, The Awakening, 1899


My husband’s attorney breaks it all down for the judge.
“Angela prefers to be called Latham. So she will have a different last name than her son. She had further decided that she no longer wants to attend the church that she along with her husband and son attended. Identity of religion between parent and child is a significant and desirable but not exclusive factor in discerning best interest of child. The evidence in this case clearly showed that the minor child was raised in the Nazarene Church. The family attended the church regularly, and the parents even performed at the church. Angela has lately experienced problems with the church, so she now feels that her son should be exposed to other religions, all this being done without first consulting her husband.
Angela grew up in a strict and formal family, and for whatever reason, reached a point in her life where she wanted to change things. Unfortunately, she was married and had a child. However, this did not stop Angela as she wanted new experiences, basically taking care of Angela. She left the marital home, her husband, her religion.”
I sit silently listening on the cold, hard, wooden bench, arms wrapped tightly around myself.

“Did you discover at some time that something unusual had occurred regarding the locks in your house?
The locks were changed.
“Do you have then access to your own home?
No.
“Are you aware of any Court order giving your husband authority to do that?
No.”

Lately I’ve resumed contact with my best friend from girlhood. We’d had no falling out; just went our separate ways after college and built new relationships that eventually crowded out our own. Even after so many years’ absence, the foundation of friendship we built as girls turns out to be rock-solid.
We catch up on recent life events, of course. What our now-grown children are up to. What it’s like to be single at our age. But we spend time filling in gaps from the past too––from when we thought we knew all there was to know about each other. We recall boyfriends, our budding sexuality, the religious proscriptions of our church by which we measured morality.
“I decided that if I let a boy get me pregnant, I would kill myself before I’d ever tell my parents. The thought of not only losing my virginity before marriage, but having everyone find out because I got pregnant? That would have been the end for me. I could just imagine the look in my dad’s eyes. The disappointment.”
I laugh joylessly. But she is startled by my admission. Her coming of age, though mostly overlapping with my own, was distinct in important ways, not least of which was that her childhood faith was chosen. Not parented, not presumed. Hers was a conversion. Mine, a legacy.

“Does the phrase “spiritually abused” mean anything to you?
Yes, it does.
“What does it mean?
I don’t feel qualified to totally answer that but my understanding of it was more to do with a system that imposes rigid standards on people that are based on religious ideas. I am not a theologian. I don’t feel qualified.
(The Court): “Not what it means to theologians, what it means to you.
To me it means using religious meanings and maybe interpretations of the Bible and those religious things to make people conform, you know. That’s probably not a very good––that’s the best I understand it. I think that is what I understand it to mean.”

I am reeling by the time I hang up the phone. As much as I try to prepare myself for such things, the tirade by my youngest older brother, an avowed “Jesus Freak,” caught me off guard. His response to my hopeful, benign comment about a COVID vaccine was overblown and, to me, preposterous. Someone in his information circuit has sounded the alarm: vaccines come from aborted babies. He will have no such blood on his hands. My response, a dumbfounded silence, is one I immediately rue.
The memory of him, wry grin on his face as he strides casually into our father’s wake, comes unwittingly to mind. He approaches me where I stand grief-stricken alongside my teenage son, the inconsolable, much-beloved grandson of the complicated, gentle man whose body lay in the casket nearby.
“He’s in a better place!” my brother says, almost jubilantly.
I cringe. He is oblivious to our sorrow. Or maybe he is trying to staunch his own. Later, he apologizes. This Jesus Freak is mostly kind, like Dad was. I forgive. I know that he and Dad shared an understanding. They were both in on the joke. Death is but a portal to eternal life, so dry your tears and wait your turn. But my son and I mourn the man we do not expect to see again. The man whose great love for us lets us love ourselves, even as we seek our uniquely difficult truths, so different in their specifics if not in spirit from his own.
“He’s not wrong exactly,” says my son, by now only too familiar with the exigencies of invitro fertilization. “Unused embryos sometimes end up in experiments.” Of course, this makes sense to me. I am aware that there are many ways in which experimentation with human tissue of all kinds has led to discoveries that have prolonged countless lives.
My mood turns dark as I consider the vast divide between my brother and me in our beliefs about that intricate and glorious spectrum we call “life.” I reflect on how our understanding of life’s origins shapes our definitions of it, and all the rest from there.
In light of my admission, or just within the natural flow of our ongoing review––old creeds revised in light of lived experience––my friend and I discuss abortion.
“It’s taken me years to even try to explain how I feel about that one,” I say.
“It’s a personal choice!” she exclaims.
“Yes. But I couldn’t get there right away. Not until I seriously studied history, especially patriarchy. Its focus on legislating bodies. And the correlation between that and so much that is wrong in the world––violence, racism, poverty, injustice of all kinds. Before I made those connections, I couldn’t imagine permission to choose abortion or, really, a lot of things. I wasn’t taught to think that way. I had to learn how first.” “Ohhhhh.” She lets this sink in. And as I hear my own words, their implications finally register within me too. I feel a cramped place open wide inside me.

“Did your husband cancel the mediation session after taking the child?
Yes.
“Were you then permitted to see your child?
No, other than––other than the requirements of being in the house not even in the front yard, only in the house with supervision.
“Were there times you and your family actually went to your house and only one person would be admitted?
Last Saturday my parents and I went to the front door of the marital residence and my husband’s mother met us at the door and said we would only be able to see my son in the basement one at a time.
“This was your own home?
Yes.
“And your own child you were permitted to see him in the basement?
Yes.
“Did you––were you ever presented with any orders or authority on that condition?
No.
“How many times have you gone to your house or called your house trying to see your child?
Oh, I would say calls and visits together close to ten times.
“Was your child ever physically restrained from running to you or hugging you?
Yes.
“Did you always receive legal advice never to breach the peace?
Yes.
“Did you ever physically grab your child and tug at your child?
No.
“Who restrained the child from going to you?
My husband.
“Are you asking this Court to enter some kind of order to protect you while this case is pending?
I would plead that that would happen.”

“She put her arms around me and felt my shoulder blades to see if my wings were strong, she said. The bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth.”
Kate Chopin, The Awakening

I sit on what could easily pass for one of the polished, wooden pews in my dad’s old church. This is no comfort to me. I’ve arrived early enough to claim the bench next to the door so I can enter the courtroom as soon as it opens. I stare out at the cavernous rotunda of the old county courthouse in Kankakee, Illinois. Today the scales of justice will weigh whether I or my husband will be granted sole custody of our little boy. Maybe this day will be the last of the proceedings, the last of this endless and excruciating process of dissection. It takes all my willpower not to cry, not to run outside for air or back to my car to hide. I must be strong. I have to do this for my boy. And for me. My heart is still in pieces, as it has been since the day his father took him from me. And I am so afraid. There are no soft places here, no hints of kindness. Just cold, hard marble walls and a cathedral-like architecture that commands my respect, my obedience. Somehow, I know already how little my story matters within the workings of this ancient structure.
I notice but try to ignore the arrival of my husband and his relatives. His mother and sister glance coldly at me as they talk in whispers to each other. My soon-to-be ex-brother-in-law wears his usual stoic expression, hands in pockets, and casts a side-long glance my way. It is nearly 9 am. Soon the courtrooms around the perimeter of this great hall and those on the floors above us will be abuzz with the business of justice, or what looks like such. In these rooms, decisive words will be spoken––stories told, secrets kept or pried loose, verdicts rendered. How those words are interpreted will, for many of us, mark the rest of our lives. All around me, suited lawyers with briefcases talk in hushed tones to clients. Confused and anxious-looking people crisscross, seeking designated chambers where their own cases will be heard, speeding tickets contested, bankruptcies processed, and all sorts of other miseries sorted out.
A cluster of about a dozen people enter through the courthouse doors to my right. I am surprised to recognize them in this place of mostly strangers. They are members of our church. Friends, or so I thought. A couple of them furtively look my way as they hasten past to join my husband and his family. Stunned, I wonder why they’ve come. What business is this of theirs? I watch them nod to each other, then jostle to form a circle directly beneath the towering central dome. They clasp hands and begin to pray aloud, voices overlapping but words clear enough that I can hear their fervent prayers lifted to God’s ears. Their righteous pleas to save my beautiful boy from the influence of his fallen mother.

“God be with the mother. As she carried her child may she carry her soul. As her child was born, may she give birth and life and form to her own, higher truth. As she nourished and protected her child, may she nourish and protect her inner life and her independence. For her soul shall be her most painful birth, her most difficult child and the dearest sister to her other children.”
Leunig, A Common Prayer

Scores of friends and family joyfully gather, forming a circle around us large enough for dancing. My son nods to the DJ, a dear friend he’s met along his pathway of resistance to the inequities of the justice system in the state where he now lives. The DJ smiles and nods back to him. The antique notes of a muted trumpet and a tinny piano fade in as Billie Holiday croons, “Them that’s got shall have.” My son takes my hand and we sway, reveling in the extraordinary love he’s found as well as in our arrival, together, to this place and time. This happiness.
“Them that’s not shall lose. So the Bible says, and it still is news. Mama may have. Papa may have. But God bless the child that’s got his own.”
I look up at him. He looks down at me and flashes that beautiful smile he got from his grandpa. All the hard days seem long behind us, for now. Today we dare to bask in this shining moment. We dare to dance to our bittersweet lullaby.