The Weeks of the Cult

A week before my junior year of high school I picked out the all-important first day of school outfit. The outfit that would set the tone for the rest of the year. Like, the effortlessly cool girls would look cool no matter what, but I really had to work at what and who I wanted to be. This outfit could make or break me.

It didn’t matter that I’d known almost everyone since we were little kids. There was still time to be someone new. Do something new. Find someone new. Would there be any new boys in my small town to crush on? Everyone dates everyone in a small pool until there’s no one left but the steady couples and a bunch of angsty kids who wish they lived in the city.

We went over to the city to shop and sometimes to play, but god help you if you didn’t catch the last ferry home so you could sneak in the back door well after curfew, hoping your mom was asleep, and don’t forget to skip that squeaky step on the stairs. If you missed the boat you’d spend the night sleeping in your car on the ferry dock for five hours until the first ferry of the morning slowly chugged you across the sound toward your doom and at least a month of being grounded. At least.

I went with a bright yellow pair of painter pants and a short-sleeved, white velour top splattered all over with different color paintbrushes like a crazy version of polka dots. It was 1980, in my defense. The joke back then was that Seattle was a decade behind New York City in fashion, and our little island was a several years behind Seattle. It was a daring choice in a school where dressing preppy was a bold statement in a sea of Levi’s and t-shirts. Things were going to be so different this year, I was sure. I had no idea how different.

The Announcement

I forget what the weather was like that day. It rains a lot in these parts, but as soon as I heard the news all I felt was sunshine, radiating deep into my bones.

“I’m going away for a few weeks.”

Three whole weeks of freedom and independence from a mother who took out her resentment at being a mother on the girls who made her a mother. Stifling the joy that threated to explode into a gleeful grin that would surely be punished, I asked why.

“There’s a retreat in Canada. I really need to go and I think I deserve it.”

Maybe there were things she did for other people that we didn’t know about and that merited reward, but I couldn’t think of anything she did for us that qualified. And who did she think she was kidding with that “retreat” bullshit. The cult was meeting up to spend a few weeks beating each other up emotionally and literally, in their bizarre search for enlightenment.

Of course, I didn’t say any of that. And it didn’t matter. Not really. I was going to be free!

The Backstory

The whole family learned Transcendental Meditation when I was 11 years old. My sister was 8. She got a walking mantra. I got the full version.

“If you’re initiated it has to be your choice. And when they ask, you have to say it’s your choice. I’ve told you all about it, so are you sure you want to do this?”

Like I was going to say no. Like I hadn’t been trained since the time I first formed a word to never, ever say no. I didn’t say that. At 11 I thought I was too old to spank or slap, but I didn’t really want to test that theory.

“Sure.”

That was enough. We all went all in. Only, it wasn’t enough for my mother. Catholicism hadn’t been enough, being a lapsed Catholic wasn’t enough, going back to the land and moving to the country wasn’t enough, and being a mother sure as hell wasn’t enough.

Someone in the TM movement claimed to have become enlightened – the ultimate goal – and left to form his own group. His own little group of sycophants and searchers and lost souls that would look solely to him for enlightenment. They were all far too enlightened already to call it salvation. Or a cult. He formed a cult. It was a cult, you self-deluded assholes, was what I always wanted to say. My mother fell right in. I was old enough to resist. It’s a little harder to compel a teenager with a job and a driver’s license. My little sister couldn’t, but that’s her story to tell.

The Repo Man Cometh

Things were fine the first several days. I fed the dog and cats and chickens and my sister’s horse. She had been sent to live with friends while mom was gone. I drove myself to school, and my first day outfit was a success. Or so I want to remember. I don’t, really. Remember. I bought cheeseburgers at Dairy Queen for my dinner every night. It was pretty glorious being on my own. No one to tell me I was a terrible, unlikeable person.

Then one day while I was at soccer practice – my happy, happy place – a teammate approached me.

“There’s a man on the sidelines who wants to talk to you.”

What the fuck? I looked and saw my mom’s boss at the real estate agency and walked over to him.

“Hi, Mr. S.” I was too young to know to ask if anything was wrong.

Apparently an off-island man (one of those things everyone in every small town knows) had stopped by the office to ask where my mom was. He was a repo man. I had to have Mr. S explain what repossession was. Oh. Shit.

Mr. S was a nice man who wanted to warn me not to park the car where it could be found.

I left my happy place and fell back into the world of my mother and father’s fuck-ups. I haven’t mentioned my father before now because he was even worse than my mother and re-living that horror isn’t worth the biggest prize in the world. Divorce day was a day of joy to me.

I drove home and parked the car behind the barn, where no city-slicker would ever think to look. In retrospect, he probably left the island as soon as Mr. S told him my mother was out of town, but I was 16. What the hell did I know about repo men. Or how to navigate a world of bankruptcies and messed up grownups.

I was terrified. I lived in terror for the next two weeks. Was he coming back? Would some other grown up bogeyman show up for some other reason? I didn’t feel safe in a house and time and place where we never locked the front door, and I didn’t even have a key for it.

I Came of Age in Fear

There was no sweet sixteen. There was a girl who was given a roof over her head, and food to eat, and who paid her way for everything else. She knew she was better off than some other kids, and worse off than most of the ones she knew.

There was a girl who made a vow to get out as soon as she could and to never let anyone control her life. She made a promise to herself, much like Scarlett O’Hara, kneeling in the dirt, swore to never be hungry again. Scarlett’s hunger was literal. Mine was not, but it was just as real.

“As God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be scared or abused again.”

I may not have shook my fist at the sky, and I may not have actually said Scarlett’s paraphrased words out loud, but those were the words I felt deep in my soul. Those were the weeks I grew up and turned pain and angst into resolve. Quickly.

I broke that promise to myself in the years ahead, but I never forgot it, and eventually found my way back to it. I am no longer scared or abused, and I control my life.

My mother left the cult some years later and found her way back to Catholicism, but nothing is ever enough. Still.