I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • Tinabeth Says No (from Deep in the Heart)

    Tinabeth Says No (from Deep in the Heart)


    My first book, Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing, was published in 2007; in the sixteen years since its publication, I’ve been thrilled to reconnect with a number of Texas family and friends mentioned in the book. When Pretty and I had a home on Worsham Street in Montgomery, Texas from 2010 – 2014 we were only eighteen miles from Richards, the setting for Part 1 of Deep in the Heart. Two of my first visitors in our home were Tinabeth (ty-nuh-beth) and her mother Vivian, the main characters in the piece featured here today. They lived next door to each other “out in the country” from Richards with Tinabeth’s younger sister Sarah K. living nearby. What a fun visit we had as Vivian entertained us with stories of her friendship with my paternal grandmother Betha Morris! Tinabeth and Sarah K. were mothers, grandmothers and Vivian a/k/a Bibby to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren reigned supreme. I was fortunate to have several visits with Vivian before her passing in 2014. Tinabeth and I remain long distance friends to this day – she represents a bond to the place I called home when I was coming of age.

    Hey, Sheila, where you headed? Butch Foster called. He was riding Prince, his Appaloosa pony, and came trotting up beside me on the hardened red dirt road that passed for a street in our little town of Richards, Texas.

    I was riding my shiny blue Schwinn Flyer bike but pulled over to talk to him. I’m on my way to see Tinabeth. We’re going to play at the school, I said.

    Yeah. You’re always in a hurry to see Tinabeth these days, Butch replied. Me and Rush had our secret club meeting today and voted you out. We got a rule, you know: No Girls Allowed. You’re starting to act pretty much like a girl. We don’t want you coming to the clubhouse until you get back to normal.

    Well, I guess I don’t care, I said. I got rules, too. And one of them is to play with girls. They don’t have stupid secret clubs with no boys allowed.

    Okay. Just don’t come around expecting any favors from me or Rush. Rush’s little brother Reed said he was coming to get you for seeing his girlfriend all the time. He likes Tinabeth and he’ll beat you up.

    I’m not afraid of Reed Wood. He’s got a big mouth and a baby face. He’s such a whiner, too. Why would he care if I like to play with Tinabeth?

    I don’t know, Butch said. Just don’t expect us to help you out of a mess.

    Thanks for nothing, I shot back at him. I can handle any trouble myself.

    With that I pushed off up the road to the McCune’s. Butch shook his head and rode off in the opposite direction. It was a cool autumn Saturday afternoon during my third-grade year at the Richards public school. I had on a pair of my best blue jeans with a red plaid flannel shirt and a cowboy hat and boots. I was riding my brand new bike wherever I wanted, and this day I wanted to see Tinabeth. I had discovered that girls were a lot more fun to play with than I had suspected. Actually, I was in love and on top of the world. Nobody could spoil my happiness on a day like this.

    Hey, Tinabeth, I said. She was sitting on the front steps of her house waiting for me. She was wearing blue jeans and a frilly white blouse. Her long brunette curls were wadded up in some attempt at a ponytail but still sticking out in all directions. She must have fixed her hair by herself. Her mother Vivian was probably under the weather. She had quite a few spells and took to her bed on a regular basis.

    Hey, Tinabeth said, smiling at me. She had the warmest smile and the softest voice. Mrs. Lee, our first- and second-grade teacher, had to ask her to speak up in class. Of course, Mrs. Lee was a little on the deaf side.

    You interested in going to the school to play today? I asked. This was my attempt to get her to go somewhere away from her house and her little sister, Sarah Katherine.

    Sure, she said. She got up and went to the front door and called to her mother. Mama, can I go to the school with Sheila Rae? Her mother’s muffled reply came from somewhere in the back of their house.

    Take Sarah Katherine with you, and be back to help me fix lunch. At this, the screen door swung open, and the tornado that was her little sister came blowing past us and down the steps. Curses, I thought. Foiled again.

    Hurry up, Sheila Rae. Let’s go, she said noisily and took off for the school.

    I’ll leave my bike here so I can walk with you, I said to Tinabeth. She lived directly across from the school playground, so we spent a lot of time there. I noticed she didn’t bring anything with her. I figured we would ride the merry-go-round or swing. Sarah Katherine was already climbing the jungle gym. Excellent.

    I saw you talking to Butch Foster, she said. I love Prince. He’s such a beautiful pony. Where’s your horse?

    We already took her to the farm for the winter. Would you like to ride her with me? We could get my daddy to drive us out there some time. She needs to be ridden every once in a while.

    The farm was three miles from town, and my favorite place. The thought of taking Tinabeth with me to that special place was an intoxicating fantasy. I could visualize it then and there: riding my horse with Tinabeth behind me and her arms wrapped tightly around me so that I could protect her from falling; she was whispering how strong I was and how she never would be afraid to ride as long as I held the reins.

    Could Sarah Katherine come, too? Mama wouldn’t let me go without her, she said. The fantasy was rudely shattered, but I recovered gracefully. Of course, I said. We couldn’t think of leaving Sarah Katherine behind.

    I told her to get on the merry-go-round and I would push it for her. She rode and laughed as I pulled and pushed. Then I jumped on next to her. We went faster and faster, spinning out of control. Her eyes were bright and excited. We kicked the ground together now and then to keep the momentum going, but suddenly my hat blew off. We started dragging our feet to slow down and gradually came to a stop. I was out of breath.

    Sarah Katherine came running up with my hat. I rescued your hat, she said. I didn’t want you to lose it.

    Thanks, I said. Would you like to wear it for a while? She nodded and appeared pleased. You can wear it if you go play on the swings. Deal?

    She put on the hat and rushed to the other end of the playground. We heard her singing Happy Trails to You, like Dale Evans.

    She likes you a lot, Tinabeth said. You’re always nice to her.

    I couldn’t tell if this was good or bad. I chose to believe it was good. Do you like me, too? I asked. Where was I going with this? I couldn’t stop myself. I thought about her all the time. Every day at school I waited to see her at recess. Last year we had been in the same room, and I was miserable. One day Mrs. Lee had thrown an eraser at Daniel Moriarty, who sat in front of me. He hadn’t been paying attention, but he saw it coming. He ducked, and it hit me squarely in the head because I had been hiding behind him to stare at Tinabeth.

    I like you. You’re funny, she replied. You make me laugh. We don’t laugh much at our house. Mama isn’t herself all the time.

    I know, I said. We sat there in silence. Tinabeth wasn’t a big talker.

    Well, I guess we need to get back to the house so I can help Mama with lunch, she said with an air of finality.

    Wait, I said in a panic. Don’t go yet. There’s something I need to ask you. Something I’ve been thinking. It’s this important question.

    She looked at me with mild curiosity. I froze. What is it? she said.

    It was now or never, I thought. My heart was pounding. My mouth was dry. When we grow up, will you marry me? I asked.

    She looked stunned. Not happy. Not unhappy. Not upset. Puzzled. We can’t do that, she said with a bewildered expression. Who’d be the daddy?

    Without hesitation I answered, I would.

    She stared at me then with an understanding and wisdom beyond her seven years and said simply, No. Then she called out to her sister, Come on, Sarah Katherine. We’ve got to go. Give Sheila Rae her hat. We have to help Mama with lunch. She turned away from me and began to walk back to her house. Sarah Katherine was jabbering to me while we walked, but I didn’t hear her.

    When we got to their house, I mumbled goodbye and picked up my bike. It didn’t look nearly as shiny, and seemed heavier to push. Something fundamental changed in me that day. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I knew I would never be the same. My heart had been broken, an innocence lost forever on a merry-go-round that would be my life with little girls who said no.

    ****************

    Slava Ukraini. For the children.

  • then sings my soul – the end (from Not Quite the Same)

    then sings my soul – the end (from Not Quite the Same)


    Two roads diverged in a tumultuous roller coastal relationship between Janie and me for seven years from 1969 – 1976, from singing in the choirs of a Southern Baptist seminary in Fort Worth, Texas to singing duets in the Pacific Northwest to the music we made together working in our leadership roles in Columbia, South Carolina where Janie worked for the Women’s Missionary Union of the South Carolina Baptist Convention and sang in choirs I directed in two different Southern Baptist Churches in the area for four years. From the west coast to the east coast and Texas in between, we tried to find a place where our guilt over our sins of “unnatural affection” could be absolved. No matter where we rode to, we always found ourselves there; and Janie didn’t like what she found. She needed to find a place of forgiveness for the life we shared, redemption from the guilty feelings that plagued her. We lived, sang, laughed, cried, and loved not only each other but also our families. But after seven years of agony and ecstasy, we each took a different road.

    As I approached thirty years of age, I began to look outside our relationship again for comfort and acceptance. I knew I was on a mission to preserve who I was, the same mission I had been on since my college days at The University of Texas in Austin. My days of searching for absolution, for forgiveness for being who I was, who I had always been, had to be over or I would be lost to a place where the flames of hell licking around me might never be extinguished. I resigned as the music and youth director of the State Street Baptist Church in Cayce in the Bicentennial Year of 1976, the year my fifty-one-year-old father died from cancer.

    My life with Janie ended messily, and I will regret forever my role in that painful separation for which there were no excuses to be made, no pardon to be found. To quote a country and western song, Hey, won’t you play another somebody done somebody wrong song? I did her wrong, much more than just lyrics to a song. Janie went back to seminary when our relationship finally shattered, this time in Louisville, Kentucky to another Southern Baptist institution where she graduated with a master’s degree in religious education and church music.

    We maintained our friendship over time and distance through infrequent phone calls, rare letters, brief visits when she came back to see friends here in South Carolina. In 1982, Janie realized a lifelong dream of serving God as a foreign missionary and was appointed by the Southern Baptist Mission Board to Zambia in Africa. She would go to the ends of the earth to find that place where her faith became visible to herself. On December 3rd, 1982, Janie wrote me a letter that gave insight to her life there. In her typically forthright manner, she described the struggles and contradictions that plagued her in those early months, the same ones that continued to haunt her for the next twenty years. She carried her songs and her faith across continents and over time to find her way home. Africa is my home, she once told me. My heart and soul are with the people there.

         “I’m so thankful for such a clear sense of calling. It’s all that has kept me here, at first. I really love Lusaka (Zambia), and I’m feeling very at home, most of the time. I’ve been homesick some, and I’ve been afraid. Armed robbery is a real problem. I have bars on my windows and doors, a dog, a night guard, and a wall around my house! At first, all those things just scared me more! But I’m feeling comfortable now…

    The music here is wonderful, Sheila. They sing 3-part harmony, with drums and shakers as their only accompaniment. No music – they couldn’t read it if they had it. You’ll love it when you hear it. I’ll send you a tape sometime...”

    **********************

    Janie’s birthday was June 4th., a day I remember every year to celebrate a remarkable woman whose music was the cornerstone of her faith in herself and all those she loved. I owe Janie for many good musical memories, but the greatest gift she gave me was bringing me to Columbia where I have remained for fifty years. I hope somewhere she’s singing in a touring choir with someone she loves.

     album we made when we came to Columbia – probably 1974 

    (I was 28, Janie was 27) 

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    Thank you to those who have followed this series. Please stay tuned.

        

        

       

  • then sings my soul – part 3 (from I’ll Call It and Not Quite the Same)

    then sings my soul – part 3 (from I’ll Call It and Not Quite the Same)


    Janie and I dropped out of seminary after two years, and I proudly took my new girlfriend back to the Pacific Northwest with me to recapture the magic that was the inspiration for my coming to the seminary in the first place. I was twenty-five years old, Janie was a year younger. I learned in my theology classes the Bible says it is more difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, or something like that. I’m here to tell you it is more difficult to recapture magic once you’ve given it two years of sabbatical than it is for that same camel to pass through the eye of a west Texas tornado. Snow-capped majestic Mt. Rainier still loomed over Seattle, gigantic evergreens welcomed us to the Evergreen state of Washington, the skies were as blue as ever – but two years can create a seismic change in magic.

    We both found jobs without difficulty, but neither had work related to our two years of sacred music studies which gave us both a nagging feeling of wasted time, even failure. Janie began working as a secretary for a private school which had tenuous connections to a nondenominational church while I was hired to be the assistant controller for a hotel supply firm as the result of my CPA background. Music was born again when we joined my former church family at Mercer Island Baptist where we became minor celebrities singing duets at the suggestion of the church pianist there which led to mini concerts in other Southern Baptist churches in the area, eventually singing at the Northwest Baptist Convention in Portland, Oregon which was a realtively big deal in Baptist circles. Our voices that separated us into the soprano and alto sections in the Southwestern Singers at the seminary blended together in rich harmony, but the other parts of our lives were filled with bitter discord the year we lived in Seattle.

    Sometimes magic works against music and takes devious twists. My infatuation with the sultry Sherry, the volunteer music and youth director at Mercer Island Baptist, returned but this time I had an outright affair with her that I confessed to Janie who knew something was definitely wrong. She wisely left me to return to the seminary which gave me easier access to Sherry who then promptly moved back to a safer space with her husband and three children in Abilene, Texas where her parents lived. Well deserved heartbreak for me.

    I quickly found solace in the arms of another older married woman in the little Baptist church on Mercer Island – this time with the minister’s wife who was in her early forties. We were together one night in the parsonage while her husband was out of town when the phone rang. I was in the bedroom but overheard her talking to Sherry and understood their relationship had been an intimate one. When I confronted her, she revealed she and Sherry had had an affair for years. With Sherry in Texas she realized now she loved me and was ready to leave her husband to run away with me. I was twenty-six years old, in water far too deep with women who liked to play games with my emotions, and I couldn’t swim.

    Janie was my salvation. She called and told me she was moving to Columbia, South Carolina to accept a position for the Women’s Missionary Union of the South Carolina Baptist Convention. I had never heard of Columbia but knew I had made a mess of my life. I begged Janie for forgiveness for my sins and asked her to give me a second chance which she did. I resigned my position as the controller for the hotel supply company in Seattle, put gas in my faithful Buick Skylark, and began the 3,000 mile journey across the country by myself. I was ready for a different ocean and a different church.

        

  • then sings my soul – Part 2 (from I’ll Call It and Not Quite the Same)

    then sings my soul – Part 2 (from I’ll Call It and Not Quite the Same)


    The call came on a cold Sunday afternoon in February of 2004. It was Amy, Janie’s older sister. I knew immediately this wasn’t a good call because I hadn’t spoken to her in years. I’ve been trying to call you at home, but I decided to call your cell phone when I couldn’t get you, she went on slowly. I’m afraid I have some bad news for you. Is something wrong with Janie? I interrupted.

    Sheila, Janie died Friday morning in Africa. Her voice broke, and I felt her pain across the distance. We don’t know everything. Someone from the Foreign Mission Board called us Friday night, and said she didn’t come to work so her boss went to her house and found her. They thought it must have been a heart attack. That’s all we know. Her voice caught with the struggle to keep from being unable to talk. There was a silence on the line. Just the empty sounds of grief and loss.

    As I said goodbye to Amy on this bleak Sunday afternoon in February, I wept. Janie’s health had been a battle for a very long time. She inherited the genetic predisposition of her parents’ illnesses including diabetes that robbed her of her sight, heart attacks, breast cancer. Each time there was a crisis, she came back to the United States, was treated in Nashville and stayed with Amy and her husband Gary who took care of her. But she always returned to Africa. I visited her once in the hospital in Tennessee and begged her to stay at home for better medical care and the support of her family.

    Africa is my home, she said. My heart and soul are with the people there.

    *****************

    Janie and I became good friends the fall semester we enrolled at Southwestern Seminary in 1969. She graduated the previous spring from Carson Newman College in Tennessee, her home state, and grew up soaked in Southern Baptist doctrines and traditions. She was barely twenty-two years old, had already lost both her parents to illnesses but was very close to her two religious sisters. Her sisters had encouraged her to continue her graduate work in a seminary which led her to Southwestern because of its sacred music program offering a graduate degree, its proximity to her home in Nashville, and the size of the enrollment which fluctuated depending on the number of people feeling “called” to the ministry. Janie felt called to foreign mission service.

    The seminary had a touring choir known as The Southwestern Singers. This was a smaller auditioned group that made annual trips for two weeks each spring semester. The itinerary was different every year, but the chartered bus that carried us was uncomfortably the same. No complaints from me; I’ve always enjoyed a bus ride no matter the destination. Janie and I both were accepted into the choir and were excited to find our first spring tour would be from Fort Worth to Philadelphia. Along the way we stayed in the homes of the members of our host churches which improved the attendance for the concerts. We signed up as roommates for the tour.

    The intimacy of riding next to each other cross country on the bus during the day and spending every night together, often in the same bed, proved to light a fire that even I couldn’t extinguish with my mindless chatter, constant attempts to impress her. The physical closeness infatuated me – it was exhilarating, heady. As we rode hundreds of miles, I rarely glanced out the windows. Miracles do occur, and God works in mysterious ways. This is my testimony: when I was twenty-three years old, somewhere between Texas and Pennsylvania, Janie derailed my celibacy pledge. Thank you, God.

    Two years of seminary classes altered my perception of the clarity of my calling into the ministry. My vocal coach who was a really great coach, an accomplished soprano, encouraged me to pursue my accounting career because the Baptist denomination discriminated against women’s leadership in their congregations. CPA firms and the church both practiced random acts of unkindness toward women. I began to wonder if I had missed my calling and switched my major to theology from sacred music in the spring semester of 1971. If my singing was less than stellar, I could always preach on a street corner.

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    Please stay tuned for Part 3.

        

        

       

        

  • then sings my soul – Part 1 (from I’ll Call It and Not Quite the Same)

    then sings my soul – Part 1 (from I’ll Call It and Not Quite the Same)


    Since I knew from the age of five or six that I had what the Bible lovingly called “unnatural affections,” I also understood the threat of eternal damnation that could be my fate, unless God wrought a miracle and transformed me from my evil thoughts and desires. During my teen years I felt particularly wicked as I lusted after the girls in church and my favorite female high school teachers. In 1963, when I was seventeen and felt the flames of hell licking around me, I read a small pamphlet called a Statement of the Baptist Faith and Message. I thought I had discovered my saving grace, a distinctive Baptist teaching called “the priesthood of the believer.” While this doctrine produced volumes of theological intrigue, my simplistic interpretation at that point in my life was no one stood between God and me. What a relief. No need for confessions to a priest or necessarily to trust the ravings of Baptist preachers. I was redeemed. It was a doctrine that kept me tied to the church and allowed me to censor its bad tidings for more than forty years.

    It was a doctrime that carried me to a Southern Baptist Seminary where I rather ironically had my first lesbian relationship when I was twenty-three years old, a seven-year relationship mired in our mutual feelings of guilt and my infidelity. I first saw Janie in the fall of 1969 when we both entered Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. We were standing in line at the Registrar’s office, waiting to pay fees for our first semester. She had on a black dress with a white collar and black shoes with low heels. Her hair was a wavy fair brown color with blonde highlights. She was a couple of inches taller than my five feet one, heavier. Her size reminded me of my grandmother on my daddy’s side. Pleasantly plump. She was in an animated conversation with another girl in our line. She laughed a lot and seemed to be having a good time. I couldn’t imagine anyone enjoying registration. In addition, I expected the atmosphere to be a bit more serious and otherworldly in a seminary setting. This young woman seemed slightly irreverent.

    When classes began, I found I had every one with Janie. We both enrolled in the sacred music program and shared the basic courses including the Oratorio Chorus that was a requirement for every music student. We didn’t sit near each other. I was in the alto section, and she was a soprano. Janie loved to talk during rehearsals and entertained the rest of us. Our conductor, Mr. Burton, was less than amused.

    The introductory vocal class was taught by the dean of the music college, Dean McKinney.  Each of us had to sing a hymn for him in front of our class of twenty-two students. No piano or other accompaniment. A cappella – I remembered my first audition with Miss Pittman for the high school a cappella choir, the feeling of not belonging. I had sung solos in church all my life, but it was very different to sing in a classroom with other musicians listening. I was nervous. I don’t remember my first song or the choices of most of my classmates. We were adequate and eager to prove ourselves, but when Janie sang for the first time in class we understood that her voice was already where we all wanted to be: clear, rich tones that touched a deeper level within us. She was a soprano with a full timbre and no pretense, not the operatic colatura who tries to impress with shattering glass, but the potent strength of the mezzo who sings from her soul.

    I had never heard a more beautiful voice.

    I loved that voice, but it was her sense of humor and love of family that made my soul sing.

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    Please stay tuned.