Episode 1: Jesus Doggystyle

"Release what's in me. Besides the Henny, it's eyes that seen plenty..." Nas, Shootouts

It gives me no pleasure to write this - but I don’t care about my sister. As I type this right now I’m in her city and have no intention of seeing her. By the time you finished reading this I could have driven the short distance to her house and could be enjoying a cup of coffee with her on her porch. But I won’t be having that cup of coffee with my sister on her porch because I don’t care about her.

I care even less about my brother. People I run into that know my family will invariably end up asking me how my brother is and I’ll answer "he’s great!" I might even say that I saw him recently, he’s doing well and feign some brotherly affection. But that would be a lie. I don’t know how he is other than the random and infrequent texts because I actually don’t care how my brother is doing. I suppose if I heard something tragic happened to him I might say “Damn! A cauldron of hot oil? That must’ve hurt. Alia – can you please pass me the remote?”

This “fuck 'em” gene as I call it that I have for my brother and sister specifically and Jehovah’s Witnesses in general is born out of self-defense. A self-preservation mechanism I’ve developed and perfected over 30 plus grueling years. 

It hurts to leave home at 17 years old and know your brother and sister don’t care about your whereabouts, if you’ve eaten or if you have any money. It hurts to not be invited to your brother’s wedding. It’s embarrassing to be asked questions about why you’re not going and to be told there would only be “Witnesses and family there.” It’s painful when you hear your niece or nephew were in town but you find out only after they’ve left or you see pictures posted online. 

So fuck 'em. 

It leaves you less vulnerable. It’s not a question of love but of survival. And I just don’t say this to sound flippant or to shield my pain: I really don’t care about these people.

My mother hasn’t developed the fuck 'em gene I constructed over 30 years ago. After 44 years she has stopped being a Jehovah’s Witness and at 71, she’s now going through the things I went through at 17. The irony in numbers. My brother and sister have stopped talking to their mother. She no longer exists to them. In 2009, my mother was visiting New York and stayed with her sister, my aunt. When I went to my aunt’s house to take my mother to the airport my aunt didn’t come to the door because she was in her bedroom crying - too distraught to see her off. Now that same aunt no longer speaks to her sister. I also have two other aunts, an uncle and countless cousins that no longer speak to her.

What kind of perverse religion would have you not talk to your own mother? Your own sister? And why would you even go for that if you were told to do it? My mother raised the three of us as a single mother with no help. Would already be out of the house by the time we woke up, working on the Throgs Neck Bridge at 5AM selling newspapers to car drivers before heading to the city to work 9-5 as a receptionist in a law firm. You’ve seen her struggles and know what she’s done for us and now she doesn’t exist to you, why? Now you can no longer let her grandchildren call her because of what? Now her great grandchildren will grow up never having known her because of your religion? Who’s your God, Jehovah Trump? Only a small, petty, feckless “God” of a religion with no honor would allow families to be torn apart in His name. Taking something as beautiful as the message found in the bible and twisting it into a Sherwood Anderson “Grotesque”.

Do you know my sister, despite me knowing her icy relationship with our mother in the name of her religion, still sends me a text asking me to go to some Jehovah’s Witness event?

Perverse obliviousness.

But the Stockholm Syndrome I’m exhibiting defending my mother doesn’t escape me either. After all, it was her home I was forced to leave at 17. You never really know how young and stupid 17 is until you have your own young and stupid 17-year old. It was my mother who defended my brother’s decision not to have me at his wedding. Now I look at her with stunned incredulity as she asks me “Do you believe that my son and daughter don’t speak to me?”

Yes, I do believe it.

“Can you believe my own sisters won’t answer my emails or calls.”

Again, that would be affirmative.

I put Jehovah’s Witnesses and Trump supporters in the same box. And then I take that box and put it way over yonder until I need to go open that box. But the thing about it is – I will never need to go open that box. Why? Because I don’t give a fuck about Jehovah’s Witnesses or Trump supporters.

Fuck 'em.

But my mother isn’t in that place yet. And while she’s been blessed with good genes and slow to age, pain will age you. I see it in her gait; her disposition. Her waiting for the calls that will never come. The visits from grandchildren that won’t happen. And witnessing this brings up pain and anger from your childhood that you forgot about and you feel vulnerable again because someone you love is hurting so much and there’s nothing you can do but watch. She can’t hide with me behind my wall, she has to build her own. But I fear at 71 she won’t have the time or sheer will it takes to build it.

I’m actually in Seattle this week to meet with my mother’s lawyer because she wants me to be power of attorney over her will. I know this has only come about because this whole situation is killing her. But like she told me as I was leaving home at 17: you have to sink or swim.

Tough love.

So you have to develop the fuck 'em gene and somehow keep on moving because this is the only life you have.

Even if the Jehovah’s Witnesses are right and Armageddon actually happens and then their God brings about a New System, mom and I won’t be invited to live with them forever on their paradisaic earth. But you know what I have to say about that? Who would want to live on an earth full of Jehovah’s Witnesses anyway?

Fuck 'em.