Tori Amos: Piece by Piece by Tori Amos, Ann Powers Read Free Book Online Page A

while Grandma herself proclaimed to be a feminist because she had a college education in the early 1920s … all the while preaching that women should turn over their virgin bodies to their husbands and their souls to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Yes, Grandma was an ordained minister/missionary as well as a teacher. I would say to her, “Why do you have to bring Jesus into this, Grandmother? I happen to like the guy, so let's just leave him out of this.” “I can forgive you for your sinful words, Myra Ellen,” she would say. “I am just guidingyour father on how you should be handled. How you should be molded into a respectful Christian young woman. Everything we do we do because we love you.” Yeah, right. Barf. At around this time, as punishment, she had me in the corner, trying to pray the fear of Jesus into me after I “talked out of line,” because I spoke out against the horrifying decision that she had made to put my brother in a shoulder brace in the hopes that he would hold his shoulders back. I felt I just had to unravel the way she planted thoughts in people. Soul-destroying thoughts.
    The Irish side of my dad's family had been weavers, and that became my first clue into this. I made an oath in that corner: Grandma, I will weave myself into your ideology so I can hunt for the hidden codes of control that affect those around you who fear your judgment, even including, at times, my father. I will escape your grasp by holding your hand. And I will pray—take me to your God because this cannot be Jesus’ loving Divine Father, so take me to your God, this control freak who makes boys think that their John Hancocks will grow boils if they let themselves spill their seeds into shy but friendly thighs. Take me to your God, this control freak that has suggested that Satan, with barracuda jaws, lives inside the petals of a girl so that if you let a boy between your jeans, then guess what? Grandma will be waiting with Bible in hand. If she could she would pull you in front of the judges at the end of days, during their roast lamb dinner, and make you drop your jeans so that they can extract a sample from your love stains—to prove what? The need to control … The need to dominate by subjugating others so they believe in your God, in your way. Where is emancipation in this kind of spiritual bullying? At five I knew I was at war with my grandmother. As far as I was concerned, she was masquerading as a feminist while jailing the Feminine. If a woman wanting to choose her own path, sexually and spiritually, went against Grandmother's puritanical belief system, then she would be treated—
    I would be treated, or you would be treated—as a pariah. This made me close ranks within my Being. Close ranks so that my grandmother's methodology and orthodoxy could not filter the coffee out of this bean. The American Inquisition. It can be traced. And chased.
    So, this was the Scotch-Irish grandmother who instilled the fear of God in me, in a very negative way. Yet I respected the mental capabilities of this woman, because she did recognize something. She knew that I was not one of them. In a way, she gave me a huge gift. Because of her reaction to me, I began to understand my path. I was given a clue: I began to see the burn-the-witch mentality of strict Christianity, and I began to recognize that I really needed to search out my spiritual family. Because her ideology wasn't part of it. Behind the Christian love-your-neighbor-as-yourself facade, there was another story. There was not a lot of compassion there if you had been deemed a sinner. There was not a lot of support for who people really were. But I realize, now that I'm older, that the Great Mother even encompasses the adversarial Grandmother. From the Beginning, from the myth of Sophia breaking away from the ancient Creatrix to find her autonomy, the Great Mother was forming herself. From the ancient Inanna forcing herself to the underworld to visit her sister,