For seven years, Geneva Bell had dedicated her life to the Trinity United Church of Christ.
A deacon in the South Side church, Bell spent 12 hours every Sunday attending three worship services. She visited the sick, attended all church funerals, went to Bible classes and sang in the church choir.
But at the time she most needed the church, the church turned its back, Bell says. And the rejection left a wound that is just now beginning to heal.
In 1989, Bell found out that her 30-year-old son Jeffery, who was gay, had tested positive for the AIDS virus. At the time, homosexuality and AIDS were taboo topics in African-American communities, rarely discussed in public, especially in the halls of churches.
Though Jeffery–who also was very active at the Trinity church–slowly withered away, shedding 95 pounds in less than a year, church members sat silent, Bell says. For the most part, they avoided Bell and her son. Only the pastor, Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., reached out, she says.
“They knew Jeffery had AIDS but nobody had the courage to come up and say anything to me,” recalls Bell, 68. “It was a hush-hush thing. Jeffery’s death was staring them in the face and they didn’t want to talk about it because they were afraid to talk about homosexuality and AIDS.”
But five years ago–just months after Jeffery died–Wright persuaded Bell to share her feelings with other deacons in the church. During a retreat, she poured out her anger, shame and hurt. And she told church members she felt they had abandoned her.
“There wasn’t a dry eye left in the room,” Bell recalls. “They were shocked I went through this alone. There was a lot of healing that day.”
Bell is now trying to carry her healing message to a larger audience with the publication of the book: “My Rose: An African American Mother’s Story of AIDS.” Published by The Pilgrim Press earlier this year, the book is a personal journey of Bell’s relationship with her dying son and the struggle they endured without the full support of their church.
Bell, who works as the administrator of the Chicago Area Project, hopes the book will help other parents whose children are dying of AIDS. More important, she prays it will persuade African-Americans to talk more openly about homosexuality and AIDS.
“AIDS is killing our young people, and we are ignoring it,” says Bell. “I think we can prevent some of this if we could bring it out into the open and help educate African-Americans who seem to want to hide from the facts.”
The facts are frightening:
Though African-Americans account for 12 percent of the U.S. population, they represent 34 percent of all adults who have AIDS, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Black men comprise 31 percent of all AIDS-infected men. And black women comprise 55 percent of all AIDS-infected women, accounting for the single largest ethnic bloc.
African-American youngsters–most of whom are exposed to the virus before birth–represent 55 percent of all AIDS-infected youths younger than 13.
Despite these chilling figures, the African-American community has been slow to react.
“The reality is AIDS is an intersection of the things we don’t like to talk about: sex, homosexuality, drugs,” says Paul Kawata, executive director of the National Minority AIDS Council, a Washington, D.C.-based, non-profit group that provides services to 3,600 agencies across the country. “These are all the things that make us nervous as a society, and the black community is no exception.”
Bell concedes she harbored those feelings herself.
Though she long suspected Jeffery was gay, Bell and her son had adopted an unspoken “don’t ask, don’t tell” motto.
Since Trinity church members did not talk to her about her son’s deteriorating condition, Bell–whose husband had died–felt she had to deal with her grief alone.
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Every Sunday, the usually effervescent, deeply religious deacon walked into church with her dying son, her head hung low, her eyes avoiding the gaze of others.
“The church was not a safe place for me to talk about my reality,” Bell writes in the book. “Emotional support and Christian comfort were not available to either one of us. My wounded spirit could not be healed.”
It was Jeffery’s unwavering conviction that convinced Bell to remain in the church. And, after he died, she helped start an AIDS ministry at her church that has since grown into one of the largest in the city, with more than 80 members.
“For so many years I questioned why God took my child and left me here,” Bell says. “But now I think I know that God left me here to tell Jeffery’s story because no one else will talk about African-Americans dying of AIDS.”