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

by C. A. Wittman

  An hour later we were no closer to our destination. We caught another bus and then got off, aimlessly walking the hilly streets, looking at the different buildings.

  Another hour went by. The buildings looked rundown. The people wore shabbier clothes. Cars whizzed by. We pulled closer together when an emaciated man in greasy, ragged clothing staggered by, his red watery eyes fixated on us. On the other side of the street, two tough-looking men with bandannas on their heads strutted ahead of us. The neighborhood appeared more desolate than the streets near the pier.

  Tired and grumpy, Lacy suddenly whipped around and ordered me to walk faster. The cold air stung my cheeks as an ashy twilight descended. Drivers turned on their headlights. I ducked my head, counting the wide cracks in the sidewalk to distract myself from the nagging thought that we might remain lost. What would we do now that it was almost night?

  A horn blared, catching our attention, and a car pulled up alongside us just as we were about to round a corner. Three muscular black men with shiny bald heads sat in the vehicle grinning at us. Although their heads were shaved, we knew immediately that they were not from our community. They had a casual demeanor and exuded a kind of foreign vibe that all non-Synanon people exhibited. The passenger rolled down his window, and the driver leaned over to talk with us.

  “Hey, aren’t you Synanon kids?”

  “Yes,” Melissa said.

  “What are you doing out here in the Tenderloin? Are you lost?”

  “No,” I said. We didn’t know these men, and I thought it was stupid to confide in them. Although we had never had any training in Synanon about the possible dangers of interacting with strangers, my feelings and response rose from instinct.

  “We are lost,” Lacy corrected, glaring at me.

  “Well, hop in,” the driver said. “I know where the Synanon house is. I’ll drop you kids off there.”

  Melissa and Lacy headed to the car, but I caught hold of Melissa’s arm. “We don’t know them.” I tried to keep my voice low so the men couldn’t hear us. “He might be lying.”

  “Just a minute,” Melissa said to the driver. She gestured to Lacy to come over to where we stood and we huddled together. “They seem nice,” Melissa said. We glanced at the men, who were watching us.

  “We’ve been lost for hours! Let’s just we go with them,” Lacy said. She gave me a hard look.

  “If they kidnap us, we won’t be able to get away,” I argued, wondering how Melissa and Lacy could jump in a car with strangers just because they said they knew we were from Synanon. All three of us turned to look at the men again. The driver’s smile grew wider and he waved us over. “I promise I’ll take you kids right to your home.”

  “I’m going with them,” Lacy said and went to the car. Melissa followed seconds behind her.

  “No!” I called out.

  Lacy came back to me, her irritation exploding into full anger. “If you don’t come with us, then you can just stay here by yourself and find your own way back!”

  I watched them get in the car. Night had crept up on us, and there was no one on the street, just the cars whizzing by on the road. The men in the car could kill us and no one would ever know, but if they all left, I’d be by myself on the street in the area the driver had called the Tenderloin.

  “It’s okay,” the driver coaxed. “We won’t hurt you. I’ll take you right to your doorstep.” Being left alone seemed even worse than getting into the car, and so after a minute of indecision, I climbed into the vehicle, squeezing in with everyone else. As we pulled away from the curb, I gripped the arm of the door.

  It was not a long ride. Within ten minutes the driver had pulled up alongside a massive, but very familiar building.

  “That’s you, right?” he said, pointing at our San Francisco headquarters. The other men laughed at our apparent relief. After thanking them, we got out of the car and I waved goodbye.

  The driver yelled from his window, “I told you I’d get you home safe, Synanon kid.” I watched the car speed off down the street, the red taillights winking in the night.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Ray

  My eyes blinked open in surprised response to a hard poke in my chest. A demonstrator hunched over me, hissing for me to get up.

  I could hardly think straight as I stumbled out of bed, still half asleep. My roommate and I were ushered roughly to the closet to grab our shoes and told not to bother changing out of our pajamas. Just barely getting my shoes on, I was prodded to the hallway and left to stand, cold and baffled, with some of the other children, who looked as sleepy and disoriented as I felt. The demonstrator went to the next bedroom.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered.

  “We’re going to the Shed,” one of the girls said, keeping her voice low.

  “Hurry up! Everyone out into the hallway!” I heard other demonstrators calling from the various rooms. More girls came out, some with their eyes half closed, others complaining.

  “Why do we have to get up? It’s two in the fucking morning.”

  “What’s wrong? What the hell happened this time?”

  “Someone probably stole some money. We’re probably all in trouble.”

  “I bet they’re going to make us play the game all night.”

  I closed my eyes, exasperated at the idea of waking up at 2 a.m. to sit and scream at people when we all should be asleep.

  “I hope we don’t get our heads shaved again.”

  This last statement brought on a collective dismal silence.

  After bustling through the hallway, we filed down the stairs and met up with the boys. A demonstrator opened the front door, and a cold gust of air washed over us, prickling my skin through the thin material of my pajamas. I followed the other children into the dark morning, no longer tired. More kids from other bunkhouses joined us and we fell into our usual social groups, conversing in low voices.

  “. . . can’t find her.” I strained to hear one of the older girls walking some feet ahead of me. “She ran away, I think.”

  Someone ran away? Who? I walked a little faster to fall in step behind Donna, the girl I had heard.

  “Did they find her?” Donna’s friend Janine asked.

  Donna shrugged.

  “Who ran away?” I asked.

  Donna glanced over her shoulder. Seeing me, she made a face and picked up her speed to put some distance between us.

  “It was Sara.” Sophie sidled up to me. In the bouncing glow of the flashlights, I saw a smile straining to break forth on her lips, her round eyes jumpy with the excitement of the scandal. Though Sophie and I shared the position of school pariah, she always seemed to glean facts and gossip quicker than anyone else I knew.

  “Did they find her?” I asked.

  “I think so. But I hope not,” she added quickly.

  If Sara were still on the run, how far would she have gone by now? I imagined her walking in the hills, feeling her way in the dark through grass that was sometimes shoulder-height, stumbling on dips and crevices. Did she even know where she was going?

  Three years older than me, Sara occupied a social position on the lower rung of the popular crowd and was especially good at making trouble for herself. She was usually beginning or finishing some punishment, amongst them an afternoon scrubbing pots in the kitchen or several days of the silent treatment. A latent rage bubbled just below the surface of her temperament. Her mother, who had left the commune when she was small, never came to see her. She’d been told that was because her mother didn’t want her.

  At one point Sara and some of her friends had started a gang, calling themselves The Baldies after a movie we had seen called The Wanderers, about an Italian gang in the Bronx during the 1960s. The imitation Baldies were mostly girls and a few boys who put Vaseline in their very short hair and slicked it back. They roamed as a pack during free time, practicing being surly and giving all of us “murder-ones,” as we kids called their mean, slit-eyed look. They talked back to demonstrat
ors and roughed up a few of the kids to engender fear.

  The Baldies gang lasted a week or two until they were squashed by the real masters of intimidation, the Imperial Marines, a fascist Synanon youth group that was being trained as a kind of mafia-like entity, a burgeoning army for the holy war Chuck was threatening to wage against outsiders who caused problems for Synanon. In any case, The Baldies was a flash-in-the-pan manifestation of delinquent behavior.

  As we approached the Shed, I noticed quite a few adults also making their way to the building. After depositing our shoes in the vestibule, we continued into the main part of the mammoth dining hall, squinting in the glare of fluorescent lights.

  The demonstrators circulated among us. “Sit down,” they hissed.

  There was nowhere to sit other than on the floor, and kids who did not obey fast enough were shoved down. A frisson of hostility bristled from the older children, commingling with the swift, panicky submission of the younger ones. All of us wondered what we’d done wrong. Why were we being punished?

  The adults sat around and above us in the chairs used at the dining tables. There must have been a hundred of them, and at that moment they did not look human. With their shaved heads, grim faces and hateful eyes, they were like a pack of robots. My gaze darted around the room, searching for Theresa, but I didn’t see her.

  “Are they all here?” one of the men asked.

  It was then that I noticed Sara off in a far corner, squeezed among the adults. Someone grabbed her arm and yanked her to the middle of the room. She kept her gaze cast down toward the floor, her hands folded neatly in front of her. A deep blush scorched her neck and spread in an angry rush to her cheeks, smothering them in blotches.

  Hushed conversations circulated among the adults before suddenly dying down. A quiver of energy snaked through us kids, drawing us closer together. From the recesses of the unlit part of the dining hall, a man strode toward the center of the room where Sara stood.

  “How dare you try to run away from Synanon!” His words seemed to blast through her small form, but instead of being cowed, she lifted her head and I could see the disgust and defiance on her flushed face. Here was the truth that so many of us children felt, displayed clearly on her features.

  Her accuser was not prepared for this small act of rebellion. He began to yell louder, pushing his face into hers. “Not only did you run away, but you inconvenienced everyone. We all had to stay up and look for you! We had to call your father from the ranch so that he could come over here and deal with you!”

  Sara’s eyes widened.

  “Ray!”

  Ray stepped out from the pack of angry, bitter adults. His hair, just growing in from a recent shaving, stood in little dark indignant spikes all over his head. His stubbly face carried a greenish hue under the lighting. His brown eyes squinted into a hatred that his daughter did not deserve. Like many of us, Ray still wore his pajamas. He practically ran up to Sara, carrying a grossly large wooden paddle.

  “You’ve inconvenienced everyone! I was awakened in the middle of the night to drive all the way out here because of you! I’m fucking angry. Tonight, I’m ashamed that you’re my daughter.”

  Sara’s chin quivered, but her eyes never left Ray’s face, as if she were trying to understand something once and for all. He grabbed her arm, almost pulling her off her feet and proceeded to beat her with the paddle. The force that he used would have knocked her to the ground if he hadn’t been tightly grasping her arm beneath the shoulder. At first she did not cry. We heard only the loud thwacking sounds that echoed through the building.

  All of us kids had received paddlings at one time or another. Once, I, along with a group of other children, had been required to witness Gloria’s spanking. The demonstrator had stripped her of her pants and underwear, forced her to bend to the point where we could plainly see her vagina and beat her until she spurted pee.

  Sara’s lack of tears or cries encouraged her father to strike harder. Thwack! Her body flew forward with each hit of the paddle, forcing her to dance in place. When she still refused to make a sound, the blows came harder and faster. Finally, after what seemed like a full minute, she let out a small whimper. Ray gave one more final strike, and a guttural sound of anguish shot from her mouth as he let go of her arm and she fell to her knees.

  Ray stood hunched, his chest heaving, his anger spent, the paddle hanging limply at his side. He scanned the faces around him, looking lost. One of the younger girls who sat next to me leaned in closer, her shoulder pressing mine as if I could protect her. The original announcer came forward and took the paddle from Ray’s hand, patting his back before motioning for him to sit down.

  “Stand up,” he said to Sara.

  She rose to her feet, her face absent of color, gaze darting about the room. The man smiled and lifted Sara’s arm high as a statement for all of us to witness this official conquering of her spirit. A thunderous applause arose from the empty pit of silence, triumphant applause from the adults that grew louder and louder, followed by shrill whistles and whoops of approval that emanated from every corner. The man dropped Sara’s hand, and her arm flopped to her side as, leering down at her, he joined in the boisterous celebration. “Long live Synanon!” the applause seemed to say. It died out as quickly as it had come.

  “Let this be a warning,” the man said. “Any of you thinking of running away, it will be worse the next time. This is nothing.”

  It was over.

  We got up and filed out of the building. The adults, having made their point, allowed Sara to join the rest of us. She would be put on contract for a week at the very least. No one would be allowed to talk to her, and she would probably have to wear a sign that said “I’m an Ungrateful Asshole” while spending her time at the sink, washing pots all day.

  She walked as if in a daze, tears falling uncontrollably down her face. It was her own father who had punished her. Even more disturbing to me, Ray had recently love-matched Theresa. At some point my mother and Andrew had separated, and Ray had stepped in as her new husband.

  I first became aware of Sara’s dad when he began popping in now and then at the school. He was a short man who always wore high-water overalls, the cuffs riding several inches above his sneakers. He liked to joke around with the kids, giving the boys wedgies and performing complicated handshakes that lasted as long as a minute, requiring turning in circles, blowing an imaginary substance off your palm and exclaiming “Pow!” at the end.

  I didn’t like him. I didn’t like his strange high laugh, a jet of sound that shot from his lips like that of the animated Woody Woodpecker, punctuated by a sucking in of air. I didn’t like the way his head swiveled all the way to the side of his body, his chin resting on his shoulder when he laughed or that his nose was so long he could shoot out his tongue and lick the tip of it. His beating Sara further soured my opinion of Ray.

  I learned from gossip in the coming days (and years later from Sara herself) that when she decided to take a chance on running, she hoped to find the family that hid runaways, but like many of her schemes and plans, this one fell apart for reasons that were entirely preventable.

  After the lights were out and her roommates asleep, she’d set about packing a small bag with a change of clothes and food she had hidden. Then for some inexplicable reason she went into her closet, ate her packed sandwich and fell asleep. When it was discovered during the nightly head count that her bed was empty, the demonstrator on duty checked the bathroom. No Sara. Other rooms were inspected. Maybe she had climbed into bed with another girl and fallen asleep. It soon became apparent that Sara was missing. The girls in her room were the first shaken awake and interrogated as to where she had gone. When they appeared only disoriented, more kids were awakened. Panicked, the demonstrator left the building to round up other adults to search. It was during all this mayhem that one of Sara’s roommates found her sleeping soundly in the closet.

  As we kids exited the Shed on the night of her botched escape a
nd public humiliation, three of her friends tore away from the pack, each grabbing a part of her body and encircling her in a soothing hug, whispering words of comfort. The rest of us fell back, letting them walk ahead, Sara clinging to the girls’ maternal warmth.

  For the first time I truly felt I was in some sort of prison, leading me to wonder again as I had countless times in the past how long I’d be at Synanon. I thought about the family who helped Synanon runaways, the family Sara had planned to find. I imagined their house, a small cottage somewhere in the middle of the hills.

  Watching Sara and the girls who embraced her gain more distance from the rest of us, I saw my stepsister in a new light. Regardless of her failure, she had had the courage to try to escape.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  A Physical Education

  “I was born dead,” Tim told me for the tenth time.

  “Yes, I know,” I said. I watched him bend over his shoe, retying the lace, contentment settled on his sleepy features. Tim was new to the community, and every day we kids were required to divide our time into two-hour slots to act as a sort of babysitter for him. He took immense pride in the fact that he’d been technically born dead, a fact that seemed to explain his mental retardation.

  Most of the adults humored him, holding out their hands to have him slap them five and often asking him how he liked living in Synanon. He always said, “It’s super!” which elicited the expected response, “All right!” This exchange was repeated all day, and Tim never tired of it. The demonstrators put Tim in as many school activities as he could handle and physical education.

  Physical education in the Synanon school had always been rigorous. Like inspection, it was performed military-style, and unless you were seriously ill, there was no getting out of the drills we were put through. After countless sit-ups, leg lifts, pull-ups and pushups, we ran a mile and a half to three miles, five days a week, in all weather. We ran in hailstorms, the small lumps of ice pelting our faces and bodies, and we ran in hundred-degree weather. We ran up steep hills, down the highway and around an enormous track.