Synanon Kid: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

by C. A. Wittman

  In the playroom several chairs were lined up, each with a demonstrator standing behind it. In their hands were electric clippers. I sat quietly, though my stomach felt like a cage of fluttering winged insects.

  The ceremony was interrupted by high-pitched screams and sounds of struggling. Donna and Carlene had been caught. They were both part of the popular crowd, with their stylish Wrangler jeans and halter-tops they’d bought with their allowance. In their record collections, they had the cool albums like Saturday Night Fever and Abba’s Dancing Queen. They even smelled cool, like Hubba Bubba bubble gum and Dr. Pepper-flavored Lip Smackers.

  Carlene’s blond hair had grown into soft curls around her ears, giving her a more feminine look compared with the spikes she sported when her straight hair was only a few inches long. Donna’s thick beaver pelt had grown into a pageboy look, which she was able to feather in the front.

  They flung back their lithe bodies, digging in their heels. Waiting demonstrators ran to help their colleagues, wrestling the girls toward the chairs. Carlene’s small body buckled into the seat, the chair almost flying backward from her spasmodic motions.

  Donna was going for the face as Carol had. With her fingers curled like claws, she charged one of the demonstrators. The woman jumped back just in time and the distraction was sufficient to allow someone else to grab Donna and secure her with a silky cloth rope that was wrapped around her upper body, pinning her arms at her sides.

  “Look at Celena and how quietly she sits,” one of the demonstrators said.

  “Fuck her! Fuck you!” Donna yelled. Her face filled with blood, seeming as if it might burst as a demonstrator held her head still against her will. Carlene had given up, breaking into sobs. Watery mucus dripped from her nose.

  The buzz of the clippers rang, and I felt the comb vibrate over my scalp as chunks of hair fell onto our shoulders and laps. It took only a few minutes to have our hair shaved to a quarter of an inch.

  The demonstrators passed around oval hand mirrors, seemingly oblivious to our distress. This was “act as if” at its finest.

  “Take a look at how beautiful you are now,” a demonstrator said to me.

  I couldn’t stomach looking in the mirror. I avoided mirrors whenever I could. I already knew how I looked: a narrow skinny head with big, dark, haunted eyes.

  In my dresser drawer was a knitted hat I’d tucked away for these occasions. Every moment that I was allowed I would wear that hat until my hair grew back to some semblance of normalcy. For days we girls skulked around, startlingly odd-looking with our newly shaven appearances until time wore away our timidity and awkwardness and we were once again ourselves.

  A few days after the mandatory haircuts, a group of us girls were rounded up again.

  “Come, come!” two of the demonstrators beckoned.

  The summons was for a special tea party at the Big House. A large, white, plantation-style home on the property where Chuck and Betty had once lived was now a museum of sorts. I was given a shiny, poufy dress the color of pale pink frosting, which clashed with my dark skin and reddish undertones. The fabric, stiff and unyielding, caged my boyish muscular body and long neck. I was freakishly eye-catching wearing this princess attire while sporting my newly shaven look..

  I joined my peers on the dirt road, each bedecked in her own spectacular atrocity. We followed the demonstrators, who were also queerly dressed, with their cheeks carefully rouged and eyes enveloped in giant, spidery, fake eyelashes.

  We walked up a hill to the plantation home, climbed up to the wide porch and went into the main parlor, where we were led to small round tables dressed in gossamer white tablecloths and set with fine china.

  We sat, stuffed into our chairs, sipping tea from delicate, rosebud-decorated cups while we listened in resignation to talk about our status as the daughters of Synanon: beautiful girls with lovely bald heads and healthy bodies. After tea we were made to walk back and forth across the room with our heads held high. Each of us was guided to a full-length mirror, where we were instructed to gaze upon our “extraordinary beauty.”

  After two excruciating hours we finally said goodbye to our hosts. When we filed out of the building, the sun sat low in the sky. “Wait, wait,” the demonstrators called, gathering together our rapidly dispersing group. “We’re going to take a group picture before you return to the dorms.”

  Huddled with my peers before the majestic facade of the Big House, I squinted into the light of the setting sun, focusing on the hills that hugged the property. Orange and gold spilled across the great expanse of earth, setting the long dry grass afire with liquid color melting into darkness.

  A cold breeze ruffled my dress..

  “Smile! You are Synanon girls!”

  Hearing the click of the camera, I closed my eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Wildlife

  I slapped the cow’s backside, her bony shanks rising up from her deep sway back.

  Her head swung around and she gave a low moan, pushing air through her large nostrils as she turned in my direction.

  She was too slow.

  I’d already jumped out of her reach, laughing and dancing before her.

  She charged toward me, her groaning moo more angry. She’d taken only several steps when one of the boys ran up behind her, slapping her rump. This brought her to a halt and then a change of direction as, disoriented, she ran toward no one.

  We howled with laughter, calling out to get the cow’s attention. She was an older, dimwitted animal that sometimes wandered through the courtyard of our dormitory buildings. Often she was slow-moving, but sometimes she broke into a hot rage and began charging us. We’d dash to one side then the other as she swung her neck, mooing and running a few steps here, a few steps there. We’d tease her until the demonstrators caught sight of us and put a stop to this cruel activity, shooing us inside.

  One day the mad cow disappeared. Perhaps she was put down for our safety.

  A large variety of creatures lived on the Walker Creek property: horses, cattle, sheep, pigs and a small zoo composed of rabbits and chickens, which we were allowed to keep as pets. There were two blue heelers, Bob and Jody. They were often engaged in activities required of working ranch dogs, such as rounding up sheep and cattle.

  There were scores of cats, most of them feral, a few tame enough for petting.

  Amphibians and reptiles, especially snakes with sleek colorful bodies, fascinated me. In the process of capturing a snake, I’d put up with the tarry poop it ejected, accepting that my hands would smell like burnt rubber for several days for the thrill of keeping it in a makeshift terrarium I’d made out of an old fish tank.

  I placed a small frog in the terrarium with the snake and watched the gross and bizarre scene as the snake slithered up to the frog, which remained very still. The snake opened its mouth and fastened onto the frog’s backside. As it swallowed its prey, the snake stretched its mouth wider and wider until it became just a mouth with a long body.

  The frog’s eyes popped as it disappeared bit by bit until all I could see was the bulge of its body, expanding the snake’s neck and looking like a huge abscess. The bulge gradually worked its way down the length of the reptile. Later the snake vomited up the skin, which I examined with equally intense interest.

  I often ambled down to the high banks of the creek bed on my own, fascinated with the wide swath of water that cut through the earth. I slogged through some of the boggy natural pools, the mud sucking at my feet. If I squatted and plunged my hand into the water and muddy bottom, I could feel the lumpy bodies of bullfrogs resting there. Sometimes I’d yank out a frog and watch it blink its astonishment in the light of day. I thought these frogs were adorable, and I would kiss their clammy cold mouths before I put them back in the mud or stuffed them in my pocket to take home. In the spring when I swam in the creek, I could usually cup up a handful of tadpoles, the tiny creatures in various stages of development.

  Once I caught some baby salmo
n and stuck them in a shallow, plastic, compartmentalized dish. When I returned to my room later, I found the fish had jumped free of their prison and dried up on the carpet.

  I climbed trees to look at baby birds in various cycles of growth in their nests, knowing not to touch them, while the parent bird flew around in circles, shrieking its distress.

  Sometimes I was lucky enough to discover a litter of kittens left by the mother, who was no doubt off hunting for their next meal. I would spend an hour or more petting and snuggling the kittens, returning again and again to see how well they had grown and thrived.

  I also collected and studied bees, spiders, ants and other insects. I did not consider it boring to sit for long stretches of time watching a web being spun or ants in their endless toil, marching to and from their underground colony, collecting bits of leaves, food, larvae and other dead ants.

  Potato bugs disgusted me, though. Large and ugly with their fat heads and abdomens, they seemed to come out only after a good rain and to me they were good for nothing other than getting themselves squashed underfoot into a disgusting mess. But that was not the worst of it. Out from their ejected insides would come stringy, wormy, black things that took on a life of their own, growing in size before my eyes. For some reason there always seemed to be plenty of massacred potato bugs oozing their guts before the entryway to our dining area. The sight of them never failed to ruin my appetite.

  Wildlife abounded in the surrounding hills. Deer, squirrels, raccoons and opossums were the creatures we most commonly saw. One evening as I walked from the dining area back to my bunkhouse, I had a prickly sense of a presence near me that made my body hair stand on end. Several feet ahead of me in the inky darkness I barely made out the shape of something big, its eyes reflecting the faint light of the stars above. I stopped and stood still, straining to make out what was before me. The animal had not moved, and as my eyes began to adjust, I realized I was gazing at an enormous predatory cat.

  Terrified, I remained frozen, holding my breath as I gazed into those penetrating, glowing orbs for what felt like long slow minutes. When the creature moved, terror streaked hot through my body, but swiftly and silently the cat turned and disappeared into the shadows of the trees, the cloak of night rendering it invisible.

  I ran so fast and hard to my dorm that it seemed my heart might burst, and my lungs collapse. I didn’t confide in anyone about my encounter that night. Over a period of days I wondered if I’d imagined it. Then I decided to ask some of the other kids if they knew anything about large cats on the property.

  “Yeah,” someone told me. “There’s mountain lions.”

  Unsettled, I asked someone else about the possibility of mountain lions.

  “Yes,” came the answer, “but they’re rare to see. Usually they stay farther up in the hills.”

  So I hadn’t imagined it. Yet I told no one.

  I found the ginger-colored kittens while I was trekking through a field on my way to yet another abandoned building on the property where we kids sometimes played. This building had busted-out windows because some of the boys used the space as target practice, stoning bullfrogs they had captured. Often they missed their mark and broke the windowpanes instead, leaving large shards of glass intact within the frames. Likewise, some of the walls were splattered with frog guts from successful shots, the dismembered amphibian body parts and pieces of glass littering the floor under the windows.

  Old furniture stacked in a disorganized fashion throughout the building made it hazardous to walk through. Once, when I’d been hanging out there with several girls, a giant velvety black moth flew in through one of the windows and attached itself to the neck of one of the girls. She beat at the thing with frantic hands, but it clung to her, unmoving with its enormous furry legs curled against her skin.

  The rest of us tried to help her, but she would not keep still and hopped about until she fell over a stack of chairs and box springs, dislodging the moth, which glided aggressively toward the rest of us while we screamed and tried to shield our faces. It flew over my head and found its way back out through the window.

  The ginger kittens I stumbled upon were hidden in a bramble of bushes not far from the building. I heard their mewing before I saw them, a mound of squirming little bodies under the protection of the scraggly branches. The mother was nowhere in sight, but that wasn’t unusual. I’d come across kittens before, and if I came back to their hiding place often enough, eventually I’d see the mother.

  These kittens were newly born. Their eyes hadn’t opened yet. Their ears were still flat against their heads. I stayed for a while, watching them and then went on my way. I came back a few times, but never saw the mother. On one occasion I sat a little ways away and waited, hoping to see a mother cat, but I never did. I wondered how long they had been on their own.

  Knowing they would starve to death, I gathered the babies, scooping them into my t-shirt, and went back to my dorm, where I ran into several other girls, who oohed and aahed over my find. Happy to commiserate with others, we immediately planned a feeding schedule. Within an hour we’d scrounged up some doll bottles and filled them with milk. Adapting instantly to our new mama roles, we snuggled their tiny bodies and fed them, watching their tiny pink tongues lap at the droplets of milk.

  One of the girls had an end table with a small cabinet that the demonstrators never inspected because she usually kept nothing in it. The cabinet was big enough for two shoeboxes, in which the kittens lived when we were away from them. Over several days they finally opened their eyes, which seemed too big for their little, furry heads. They looked around in wonder.

  We were all in love, naive to think we could keep five kittens hidden and quiet all the time. An older girl, Gretchen, soon learned of our secret pets from one of the younger girls. On the fourth day, Gretchen burst into my room, her gaze roaming my space.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  Her nostrils flared as she focused her attention on me. “Did you actually bring kittens here?” she demanded.

  “They would have died,” I said. “Something happened to the mother. She never came around.”

  Gretchen crossed her arms, her lip curling up slightly. “Where are they?”

  “In Jane’s room.”

  Gretchen turned on her heel and I followed her, speaking to her back. “We’re taking good care of them. We found a good way to feed them.”

  Gretchen didn’t bother knocking on Jane’s door, either, but instead flung it open and stood for some seconds, silently taking in the scene. Jane and several other younger girls held the kittens, feeding and playing with them.

  “We’re taking care of them,” I said again, hoping Gretchen would calm down when she saw what a good job we were doing.

  When she turned to face me, hatred glazed her blue eyes to a fine polished marble, the pupils inky pricks of black. “You stupid, stupid, little bitch. You’re a liar and a baby snatcher!” Her meltdown rendered the other girls silent. She shoved me out of her way and marched back down the hallway.

  “Here, put them back in the boxes,” Jane said quietly, pulling the shoeboxes out of the cabinet.

  The other children did as they were told, gently placing the cats in the boxes, but Gretchen was already back with a demonstrator, who strode into the room, her gaze sweeping over the cats in the shoeboxes.

  “Where did these cats come from?” the demonstrator asked.

  Gretchen pointed at me, her other hand on her hip.

  I was beginning to hate Gretchen.

  “Pet cats are not allowed,” the demonstrator said. “You can’t keep them.” She did not elaborate, but instead left the room followed by Gretchen telling her the situation was my fault.

  Other children who had overheard the exchange wandered into Jane’s room to look at the kittens. “They’re so cute,” they said, their remarks laced with regret.

  The small group of us who had been housing the kittens knew we were in some sort of trouble, and a pall s
ettled over us while we petted the cats and wondered what would happen.

  “No! Please don’t!” It was Gretchen’s voice. I’d been sitting on the end of Jane’s bed, and I sat up straighter, bringing the cat in my hands instinctively toward my chest.

  The demonstrator returned with Gretchen pleading and crying behind her. “Please don’t! Please don’t!”

  “Take all of the cats, and go and meet Buddy outside,” the demonstrator said blandly, ignoring Gretchen.

  Each girl took a kitten, and we trailed behind the demonstrator and Gretchen, who had given up begging and just sobbed.

  Buddy, our physical education teacher, stood outside the dorm with one of the boys who held a container of ammonia. “Okay, come with me,” Buddy said.

  There were five of us girls, each holding a cat. We followed Buddy to one of the public restroom facilities, which had several toilets in a row. When I saw what we were going to be made to do, I put my cat in my pocket. My heart beat with such force that it seemed to pulse into my hands.

  The boy who had been picked to help with the morbid project unscrewed the container of ammonia and poured splashes into each of the toilet bowls.

  “Okay,” Buddy ordered. “One cat per bowl.”

  The girls began to scream, and I took a step back, scrunching my clothes to hide the lump of the cat sleeping in my pocket. I let my arms hang by my sides.

  Buddy pried open each girl’s fingers, wrestling the kittens from their grip. One by one the cats were handed to the boy whose chest rose and fell rapidly, his face unreadable as he dropped each baby into the ammonia water.

  I watched their small bodies writhe until Buddy was standing over me. “That’s all of them,” I told him. “There were only four.”

  His gaze swept my body. Satisfied that I did not have a kitten, he sent us all outside. Trusting no one, I went to the Shed in search of a box, my hand inside my pocket curled around the sleeping cat. Willing myself not to cry, I searched the back kitchen area, pretending I had some business there. I found a medium-sized cardboard box, picked it up and took it back to my dorm, where I lined it with a blanket before I struck a path into the hills.