The demonstrator did not reply right away. I watched her thinking over what I’d said. My lack of fear and refusal to be the victim in their bullying behavior had interrupted the usual script.
“Some of you kids were screaming and being disruptive outside of the dining hall,” she said.
“Yes,” I replied, “but I wasn’t one of them. Most of us were being quiet. It was just a few kids making all the noise, but we’re all getting punished, having to sit like a bunch of criminals. I won’t eat like that anymore.”
The demonstrator tilted her head and then nodded. “You’re right. We overreacted. I’m going to lift the ban. Come back to dinner.”
Surprised by her acquiescence, I didn’t move at first. She reached out and took my hand. “Come,” she coaxed. “Let’s go back to dinner.”
It was during a game that I finally reached my limit with the unbridled authority in the hands of immature adults. A demonstrator in her early twenties sat, smugly attacking my mother’s character and intellect.
“Your mother is a stupid woman,” she said with a smirk. “She is slow. Dimwitted, in fact. I doubt she could survive at all on her own. She needs Synanon, but Synanon doesn’t need her.”
The circle had grown quiet. No one backed the demonstrator’s play. Her mean-spirited attack crossed an invisible boundary we children had with one another. It was an unspoken rule that we did not hammer at each other’s parents. I stood up, leaving my chair and walked over to the demonstrator.
“You need to go back to your chair,” she said, her gaze darting around the circle, looking for support. No one uttered a sound.
My hand closed into a fist, which I shoved toward her face. I imagined my knuckles pushing up hard into the soft underside of her chin. Her gaze stopped roaming, and her eyes locked with mine, her shame and guilt, the wrongness of her attack growing in her widening pupils. I wanted to crush her round, soft face.
“Say one more word about my mother,” I threatened.
She said nothing.
“I don’t care about the rules,” I said, bringing up my fist so that it was inches under her chin. “You bring up my mother again and I’ll hurt you,” I hissed through gritted teeth. My throat felt swollen and it was hard for me to talk. I watched her swallow, a flush of red flaming her cheeks and shooting down her neck, but she remained silent. I left then, opening the door and slamming it behind me.
As I strode down the hallway, someone yelled, “Celena.” I turned to see Charlie, my old tormenter, standing at the door. The usual malice wasn’t there. Something had replaced it. Pity? I tucked my chin and walked on.
“She shouldn’t have done that,” Charlie called after me. “She had no right.”
I picked up my pace. If I walked fast enough, maybe I could beat the tears.
In another game, much larger than the usual group of ten or twelve, thirty of us sat in a circle. Verbal attacks, swift and brutal, shifted like an ill wind in no particular order from one person to the next. When it was my turn to be in the hot seat, twenty-nine kids screamed at me. I didn’t care. Instead, I went into observation mode, noticing everything in acute detail. Some kids perched at the edge of their seats, pointing accusingly at me; others pounded their fists into their palms; a few held tight to their chairs as if they might jettison away. Twenty-nine kids telling me what an asshole I was. Twenty-nine kids screaming for no good reason. I smiled at the absurdity. Then I began to laugh.
“Hey, shithead, we’re talking to you.”
This recrimination only made me laugh harder. My peers grew angrier. All at once they closed in like a cloud of hornets, but I couldn’t stop laughing. The more they screamed their frustration and insults, the funnier it all was. My stomach muscles contracted, squeezing the breath out of me. I wanted to stop, but the laughter kept coming, the weight of the manic humor pressing on my chest. I slid down off my seat and tried weakly to push myself back. I rocked in silence; sound left me as I tried to suck in air. Looking up, I saw that some of the other kids had started to laugh too. The virulent humor produced a hard, discordant sound that erupted out of us in wads of spit bubbles and drool. The demonstrators didn’t know what to make of it, but soon they caught the humor bug and laughed too. We laughed for several minutes straight.
The laughing game, recorded as all games were, was later broadcast on the Wire. Upper management liked the session so much it was played over and over again. Theresa received congratulation for having such a super kid who really knew how to play her game.
Chapter Thirty-One
Leaving Synanon
Several years earlier a squeeze had begun to push undesirable members out of Synanon. The squeeze consisted of a series of radical changes that included the forced vasectomies, mandatory abortions and changing partners. Chuck’s ever-increasing demands that community members either consent to whatever he threw at them or “get the fuck out” had been a large part of why the population steadily dwindled.
Theresa’s husband, Ray, lost status by the day. In 1978 he had been among a group of individuals sent to the slug camps. He’d toiled in the cold and wet of winter, performing required hard labor twelve to sixteen hours a day, then sleeping outside in a tent. His unsavory reputation for embracing metaphysical beliefs created a condition called a jacket. Once someone was labeled as in a jacket, it was difficult to get rid of the metaphorical constraints.
Having had a chronic asthmatic condition since childhood, Ray contracted pneumonia two weeks into his punishment. His illness led to his early release to receive medical treatment and rest in his bunkhouse.
Being with Theresa lowered his reputation further, and in the latter part of 1981, he and Theresa found themselves on a list of members who were being sent to work outside of the commune. All the money they earned was to be rolled back into the community as payment for letting them stay. Theresa, surprised to find herself on the list, as it mostly pertained to old-timers, wondered about her job caring for Gwyn. Nobody wanted the job, and Theresa thought her position granted her immunity from working on the outside.
Theresa and Ray also had been gamed aggressively for corrupting Melissa and me with their unacceptable and weird spiritual ideas when we spent an hour visiting with them in their bedroom.
In the commune, an adult’s bedroom was akin to one’s own small home. In Ray and Theresa’s room, a low table stood in the corner as an altar. It displayed a small golden bell with intricate patterns, a book of prayers and chants arranged by color, and a wooden incense burner. The last held a burning stick of incense, the thin wisp of smoke filling the room with a musky, sweet fragrance. A framed drawing of a man with long blond hair and a smudge of red on his forehead decorated the wall above the altar. Ray served Melissa and me piping cups of hot Mu tea, a sweet herbal therapeutic Japanese tea with high notes of licorice and cinnamon.
“Who’s that?” Melissa asked, pointing at the picture of the blond man.
Ray scratched his beard and pulled his feet over his thighs, unwinding the cross-legged position in which he sat on a hard round pillow. Melissa, Theresa and I sat on similar pillows.
“Maitreya,” Ray said. “He is a being of light who carries the Christ energy. Actually, Maitreya was Jesus’ guide.”
Melissa shot me a snide smile, but Ray didn’t notice. Warming to the topic, he said, “We’re entering a new age, and soon Maitreya will appear to all of us to spread the message of love and light.”
I listened politely, studying the picture. Maitreya looked exactly like Jesus, except for the red mark on his forehead, which reminded me of the Hindu pictures of enlightened beings in the Bhagavad Gita. At ten years old I reasoned to myself that Ray’s story of Maitreya coming to enlighten humanity was unlikely.
“Whatever you are doing, wherever you are, he will appear before you to bring his message,” Ray continued. “If you are watching TV, he will come through the channel to talk to you.”
“Isn’t that far out?” Theresa said.
I nodded while Melissa smirke
d at her tea.
“They’re crazy,” she said once we were outside their dorm. Because I admired Melissa, her words were cutting, and I felt a flash of shame. Later, she complained to one of the demonstrators about Theresa and Ray, saying that they were trying to push religion on us. Synanon did not tolerate religiosity. The only devotion Synanon members were allowed was devotion to Chuck. Melissa’s complaint prompted another ban on my spending time with Theresa and discussion among the demonstrators about whether she and Ray were mentally fit enough for children to be around. An official complaint was made to management. Ray’s things were confiscated, and he was sent to work camp for a week.
During the evening hours when Theresa and Ray were alone in their room, they began to discuss their growing dissatisfaction with Synanon and the possibility of leaving. To leave the community was an undertaking that seemed insurmountable to many of the residents. Living in such an insulated society for so many years and being told regularly that it would be almost impossible to survive outside of Synanon made many people afraid to leave. To leave meant severing ties with close friends and sometimes children if one parent left while the other stayed. There were also restrictions against taking money or items of value.
Synanon management purposely made leaving difficult, thereby quashing any incentive to start a new life and inciting fear of the world outside of Synanon . Management wanted community members to see leaving not as a positive beginning, but a punishment. Even with the squeeze, it was still hoped that the Synanite would make the right decision and do what was necessary to remain in the commune.
Ray and Theresa had had enough. They talked to each other about how disreputable Synanon had become in their eyes. While the majority of community members lived by strict rules of austerity, a select group of VIPs lived a different life at the Home Place in Visalia, a life of unbridled luxury, with gourmet meals, regular spa treatments and personal servants. Shocking pictures of Chuck, his wife, Ginny, and daughter Jady boozing it up on a beach in Italy circulated through the community. Many of the VIPs had stopped cutting their hair and sported longer tresses while the rest of us maintained the military hairstyles.
The rise in violence and Chuck’s increasingly sordid demands upon community members finally pushed Ray and Theresa to admit, if just to themselves and each other, that Synanon had become corrupt. My mother also missed seeing me on a regular basis; she missed being a mom. I was growing up, and while she spent the majority of her time with Gwyn, she saw little of her own child.
A Sunday newspaper prompted Theresa and Ray to action when Ray discovered a small ad placed by a community called University of the Trees in Santa Cruz, California. The ad stated that the community was looking for new members. Bolstered by this inkling of hope, a decision was reached.
“Congratulations. I just heard,” one of my peers, Sue, said to me.
Her greeting stopped me in my tracks. “Congratulations for what?”
She scrutinized me, then her eyebrows shot up. “You mean you don’t know?”
“Know what? What are you talking about?”
“You’re leaving Synanon.”
Her words seemed to hang in the air. Was she putting me on? We stood next to some picnic benches, which were semi-protected by a canopy of thick plastic. She leaned against one of the aluminum pillars, watching me, waiting for my reaction.
Leaving Synanon was a dream for most of us kids and had been a fervent wish of mine since my arrival. Many of us couldn’t wait to get out of the place. Being told that you were leaving was akin to winning a million dollars in a lottery, it was that exciting.
Sue smiled so wide that her face looked like it might crack open.
“How do you know this?” I asked. My heart sped up, knocking wildly against my chest, but I still didn’t trust her news.
“It’s all over the place. Everyone’s talking about it. You and Sara are leaving with your parents.”
I took off at a sprint for my stepsister’s room. She had moved to a cluster of smaller, wooden, cabin-like structures, each offering a rare private space and large enough for one or two residents. Many of the older kids lived there away from the larger dorms.
Sara’s door stood open and I found her in the midst of packing, which consisted of grabbing whatever she saw and throwing it in a box. Several other boxes were already filled with her belongings. When I burst into her room, she glanced up and our eyes locked.
“It’s true!” was all I could think to say.
Sara walked to me in two strides and grabbed my hands.
“We’re leaving!” she said.
We threw back our heads and screamed. Then we laughed and screamed some more while we jumped around like kangaroos and then danced all over her room. I did not know what to do with myself. Hysteria, exultation poured from my lips and my limbs jerked and flapped every which way.
“Come on,” Sara said. “I’m all packed. Let’s pack your stuff.” We jetted out of her door, sprinting all the way to the dorms. Once we arrived at my room, we realized that we had nothing in which to put my things.
“I’ll get more boxes,” Sara offered, darting back out while I dumped everything I owned on the floor and bed.
In less than an hour all my belongings were in the boxes that Sara brought back, but our packing was premature. We didn’t leave that day nor the next. Instead our parents were stuck in games in which they were scolded, berated and denigrated for their plans to depart.
“Are you crazy?” their peers demanded. How could they leave Synanon for the outside world that offered nothing? Nobody cared about you on the outside, life was tough, it was hard to get by. In Synanon they had everything they needed. All their friends were here. Just what in the hell were they thinking, taking Sara and me out of such a fantastic school and exposing us to mainstream society? They were throwing their daughters to the wolves. As time wore on and our parents worked on trying to make arrangements for themselves, the games became more aggressive.
A week later, Sara and I listened, wordlessly, to one of the men from upper management yelling about our family on the Wire. “Theresa and Ray can get the fuck out! But Celena and Sara stay! They are Synanon kids and Synanon’s going to fight to keep them.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Goodbye
It had never occurred to me that Theresa might leave Synanon without me. As Sara and I waited to hear our fate, my morale plummeted. I unpacked some of my clothes, but three or four boxes, mostly of books and writings, remained stacked between the twin beds of my loft bedroom.
Following the announcement on the Wire, Theresa was nowhere to be seen. I could not imagine being in Synanon without her, never to see my mother again, never to rejoin the world to which I knew I belonged. Would I remain in Synanon forever?
The demonstrators, not sure what to do, let me keep my belongings packed, just in case. I walked over to Sara’s cabin a few times every day to ask whether she knew anything I didn’t. She had kept her stuff packed, too, but had no extra information.
After several days, she said, “We might have to stay.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “Did you hear something?”
She shook her head. “It’s just that it’s been a while, and I’m guessing Ray and Theresa are probably going to cancel their plans, or maybe they’ll get thrown out. I don’t know. But I don’t think they’re going to let us go.”
“But they’re our parents.”
Sara’s dark eyes, ringed by a faint purplish shadow, met mine. Her face was pale and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days. “So, it doesn’t matter if they’re our parents or not. They can keep us here if they want, and Ray and Theresa can’t do anything about it.”
After a few hours, I left her room and wandered in a daze to a nearby play area atop a knoll, where a rope swing hung from a sturdy branch of a large oak tree. It was in use and several kids waited their turn. I stood and watched as the girl on the swing, Erica, flew high, whooshed back and zipped forwa
rd again in a wide arc. As she flew forward, she yelled, “Go away, Celena! We don’t want you here. We can’t wait for you to leave.”
The swing slowed, and another girl steadied Erica so she could jump off the seat. Erica was short for her age and had to stand on tiptoe to whisper into her friend’s ear. They both laughed and looked at me. I walked back down the little hill and to the dorms.
At night I lay awake, my thoughts spinning. I tried to soothe myself with the idea that they couldn’t really keep us. Then the soft whisper—yes, they can—would stir up the panic I was trying to keep in check. I’ll write to my dad, I thought. What can he do? I asked myself. I’ll find that farmer that helps runaways.
To the forefront of my mind appeared Chris Water’s face: that strange pinched look he’d had, his eyes full of a seriousness that had never been part of his personality. There were older kids who wanted to escape, but we were all trapped here. “Did you know that the entrances to the properties are manned by some of the Imperial Marines with guns?” My skin felt icy numb as I remembered our conversation.
I shifted my pillow one way, moved it another. They could come for any one of us and throw us into the slug camps. “No one tells you anything. You don’t know you’re going to camp, and just like that you disappear.” My mind wouldn’t shut off. I couldn’t sleep, so I stared at the slanted ceiling. I’d doze off a few hours before morning and wake up tired, moving through my routine like a zombie to get ready for inspection.
Ten days after the news that we were leaving had been broadcast, the dining hall’s outdoor speakers crackled to life as another announcement came through the Wire: “Sara and Celena no longer belong to Theresa and Ray. They think they’re going to take our kids. They’ve got another thing coming. Synanon will fight for them and they will lose. Don’t fuck with us. You want to leave, leave. The kids stay.”
The announcement played over and over. I went to Sara’s room and we held hands, listening to the final decision yet again. She walked over to one of her boxes and kicked it hard. I went back to my dorm and unpacked the rest of my things. We were staying after all.
Synanon Kid: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult Page 22