Seductive Poison

by Deborah Layton

  Father squeezed my shoulder and added, “Be thorough in your recollections …” Then he took a deep breath. “It’s important to me that you and Maria work out your misunderstanding. It troubles Carolyn as well. I believe it’s some ridiculous jealousy the two of you have over Carolyn. Perhaps it’s because Carolyn was your sister-in-law first and then became Maria’s surrogate mother.”

  I nodded. I didn’t care. My foot itched.

  “And now you better find your work crew. They’ve lined up for breakfast.”

  I hurried to put on my boots. I would do as I was commanded. Being trusted again was imperative for my own survival. I would have to be thorough in my recollections. My heart sank. This was a harder test than I had had in a long time. Father knew something and I had better not lie. Teresa would be able to defend herself, disagree with my assessment. Little did I know at that point what the consequences of my betrayal of Teresa would be. Because of me, her loyalty would be questioned for months and she would risk the severest punishments after my defection when she was ordered into Jonestown to face Father. Even though Teresa escaped with her life, she refused to ever see or talk to me again.

  I felt I had no choice. A growing sense of danger was clouding my conscience and my vision. All I could see was that I was in jeopardy of losing everything I had gained and worked so hard to achieve in the last six and a half years. All I knew was that I had to make every effort, give everything, sacrifice everything, to avert a disaster that was surely pending.

  I ran toward the breakfast line, feeling miserable. And then the nauseous smells from the kitchens assaulted me. What was that strange odor in our food?

  I knew from the schedule that I was to work the sugarcane patch along with several others, and looked around to find my work crew leader.

  “Yo, Debs, over here!” Lee called to me from way down the food queue.

  I walked as delicately as possible to keep the itch demons at bay. “I’m really not hungry, Lee. The smell …”

  “Listen, girl. The work’s hard. You need to eat. You’ll get used to the smell. It’s iodine and some other stuff to protect us from the various jungle plagues.” His head was covered with a red bandanna, pulled tight and tied in back.

  My foot felt hot, like a flame burning into my flesh.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  I looked up, miserable. Lee rubbed my head as if shining an apple.

  “Save our places,” he told the guy in line behind us and pushed me out just a few feet from the others. “Who do ya think you’re talkin’ to, Debs? I know how yer feelin’. I been there, too. You’ll get over it. You gotta drink lots and eat as much grub as you can if you want to make it. Then, if you act cool, work hard, an’ don’t complain, you’ll be fine.” He gave me a mighty pat on my back, spun around, and reentered the food line.

  I stood there, pushing back the tears, telling myself that I could do it. I pressed the heel of my boot onto the top of my other foot to briefly deaden the overwhelming itching. Then I joined him in line.

  “You tellin’ me you got bites on your feet, too?” Lee laughed with understanding. “Didn’t anyone tell you to keep your skin covered at night?” He shook his head in disbelief. “They get ya on the soles of your feet, too?” His eyes flashed a twinkle and I realized that my predicament could be worse.

  The day was too new to be warm, but there were early morning bugs already up and casing the joint. I reached the head of the line and received a thick slice of cassava bread with brown syrup on it. I gave a wan smile, coughed a quick thanks, and trudged over to Lee and my new workmates. Lee was standing over the table, shoveling spoonfuls of rice and syrup into his mouth. He seemed completely unaware of the large reddish-brown insects that swarmed up as I arrived. Two out-of-control beetles dive-bombed into my breakfast and got stuck in the syrup. No one seemed to notice, much less care. I stared aghast at the duo standing on my bread as if on a runway, slightly off balance, flapping their wings, trying to take flight, but unable to free their legs from the sweet glue. I watched them struggle, sickened by their quiet commotion, as they battled for their freedom. They continued to fight, working themselves even deeper into the thick brown sauce.

  I looked around for a garbage container to throw out my bread, but Lee was ever watchful.

  “We don’t waste food here. It takes too long to find it, plant it, grow it, then cook it. Just wait till the bugs get tired, then pick them out.”

  “Pick them out?” I could barely look at them much less touch one. “Lee, I’m not hungry.” I extended my plate toward him. “Here, you eat it.” Both my intruders were now still.

  “They’re dead, girl. Flick ’em off …”

  I hated bugs, dead or alive. They had probably defecated into my syrup, I thought.

  “Lee, Please?”

  He snatched my plate, rolled his eyes, and ate the bread and syrup, beetle-doo and all.

  “Mmmm, good cassava bread.” He grinned. “Life ain’t gonna be as easy for you here,” he exhaled.

  So far it hadn’t been, but I was only going to be there for two months. I could handle it for that long. I was there just until I got Mom settled in, then I’d be going back to the States to help close down the California operations and transfer the remaining funds and folks to Jonestown.

  My forehead was wet with sweat as we walked the few miles down a dusty jungle road to the sugarcane field. I was thirsty and my mouth felt like a sand dune. I thought about Lee’s words. I was completely unaccustomed to hard labor. My experiences in our all-night meetings in the States seemed tame by comparison. It was 8 A.M. and I was already puffing and sweating from our hike. We would not stop until 6 P.M. and we had many more hours to go before our lunch break.

  As my crewmates bent down to pull at something near the sugarcane roots, I tried to imitate their movements. I couldn’t identify what they were doing and I couldn’t think. My thoughts were too busy with fantasies of sucking moist, wet, dripping sweet sugarcane.

  “Phew, I guess you didn’t know you could sweat like this, huh?” Matt, a former heroin addict from Chicago, looked over at me, his face dripping with perspiration, his T-shirt wrapped around his blond hair like a turban. “Girl, you ain’t never worked in dirt ’fore now. Guess you didn’t get no gardening lessons in finishing school?”

  Embarrassed, I shook my head. The hardest work I’d done recently was trying not to get my passport stamped by the Swiss airport officials when I entered and left Zurich. I wondered why, with millions in a Swiss bank account, we were struggling in the rain forest, hot, thirsty, and foraging for food.

  “I should have worn deodorant.”

  “Oh no, you shouldn’t,” Matt bellowed. “Every insect here would swarm you. Sweetness lures ’em from miles to suck your pretty-smellin’ skin. You thought breakfast was awful, what if you’d whiffed of hibiscus?” He was wheezing with laughter as my other crewmates joined in.

  “Okay, guys, let’s get serious,” Lee interrupted. “Guards are watching. Let’s stay off the Learning Crew.” I thought about the punishment I had almost sentenced myself to. How could one possibly do everything at double time, work even faster, run everywhere, keep separate, not talk or smile? I thought of Mao’s cultural revolution. It was hard on the people at first, but over time they grew accustomed to their lives of selflessness. I had learned that this was the only way to grow altruistic. Monks in Tibet, priests in monasteries, nuns in convents, the citizens of Uncle Fidel’s Cuba, they all gave up comforts and became selfless. It was a comfort to think that pain was necessary for the greater good of mankind.

  Moving into the partial shade created by the sugarcane, I followed my crew as they worked on through the rushes, bending, looking, hunting. Pushing aside the thickly growing brown stalks, they hoed, pulled, dug. Lee instructed me which strands were food and which just weeds. Someone handed me a pair of muddy gloves and I learned through barks and laughs from Lee exactly what I was supposed to be doing. When we stopped to determine h
ow much more work was needed, my clothes were drenched, my socks were wet, and I felt as though I had just crawled out of a heated swimming pool.

  “Could I taste one of these?” My mouth began watering with the thought of splitting open a cane and sucking the sweet moistness. I might as well have asked someone if I could eat their scabs.

  Matt growled, “The food here is to be shared with everyone. If you ever took a bite it would be considered stealing. You’d be severely punished and assigned to the Learning Crew.”

  “But why? We’re thirsty and working hard.”

  “Give it up, them’s the rules. One of the teens on another crew made that mistake and really got his butt kicked.”

  “What happened?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.” Lee turned back to his work.

  “Didn’t you bring a water thermos or is it still packed with your face cream and rose-water facial toner?” smirked Matt.

  “I’m just here for a couple months, then I’m going back,” I defended myself.

  Lee closed his eyes and shook his head back and forth a few times. Drop it, guys, I could hear his gesture say.

  “This is done, let’s head over to Lorina’s crew and help them clear.”

  My mouth was too dry to moisten my cracking lips. Why couldn’t the truck drop off water containers? How come everyone was so afraid to ask? Why was no consideration given to the field hands?

  Across the road, up a small embankment, Lorina’s crew had just finished clearing an acre of land for a burn: downing trees, ripping out vines, then stepping onto the road to watch as the guards set fire to the debris. Burnings were supposed to level the harsh land and render it workable. Once the smoldering subsided, the thick black smoke fading into mustard-colored mist, the field crew trudged back in. The workers tied wet bandannas over their mouths and noses to alleviate the labored breathing that came with the hot, malodorous air. Hoisting tools upon their shoulders, they marked their work area and began to hoe and pick, turning and preparing the soil for the seeds and bulbs of indigenous plants. So far we had had little luck cultivating the ground for agriculture, I soon learned. The jungle had her own rules about what would and would not grow and had fought each of our clearings, discouraging our success, making our intrusion into her virgin land a hardship we would never overcome.

  Turning away from the smoke, I followed Lee, Matt, and the others back out onto the road into the hot, draining sun. We made our way further down the road, away from Jonestown. It was the same road we had taken on the flatbed truck. The dust from our boots floated up and into our eyes and noses. My mouth was even drier now and we had at least another hour before lunch.

  From the road, it was more apparent how tall the trees were. They towered hundreds of feet into the sky. I tried to calculate how long it had taken us to get this far and how much farther it would be to Port Kaituma. The entire ride on the flatbed truck must have been two hours. How long would it take to walk? Would it be possible to sneak out at night through the jungle? Calm down, I told myself, no need to worry. You’re going back in seven weeks.

  I soon discovered that assignments in the most distant fields were the best. Even though the work, clearing new acres, was usually harder, it was out of earshot of Father’s continual amplified diatribes. But I quickly lost the hope that it might be possible to escape while out in the fields. The jungle was full of unknown threats. A few steps inside her depths could mean being lost forever. She was alive with underbrush, roots, vines, enormous insects, lizards, snakes, beetles, mosquitoes, spiders, and varmints. In this foreign and forbidding place it was impossible to have a sense of forward or backward. Everything looked the same—green, brown, and dense. I came to realize that the jungle green served as our prison bars, a barrier we couldn’t penetrate.

  Nevertheless, in these distant fields, far away from Father’s manifestos, I found that I could breathe and think, even under the watchful eyes of the armed guards. I mused about the life I had turned my back on, the family I had grown distant from and missed: my big brother, the professor; Annalisa and her two little children; gentle Larry; and Papa, who I hoped hadn’t forgotten me. I thought of Mama and her loneliness here without Lynetta. She had been so brave in her effort to quell my anxiety, but I had seen her disappointment. At least I could be thankful for the friendships of Mary and Dahlia and their sincere affection for “little Lisa.”

  In the coming weeks, I realized, I would have to hide my misery and exhaustion from Mama. I already felt desperately guilty and knew from my experience in the States that my sense of responsibility to her would gradually suffocate me if I didn’t pull away. Even in those early days in Jonestown I was conniving and maneuvering, becoming hard and disconnecting from the only person who could possibly keep me from running for my life, Mama.

  12

  Dark Days—White Nights

  It had been several weeks since our arrival and by now I was accustomed to the unusual smells in the food and drink. I was even unaffected by the rice weevils and other strange bugs we ingested daily. Now I, too, ate enormous mounds of rice covered in gravy.

  Christmas had come and gone without fanfare and I had acclimated to this new life of physical labor and late night agricultural meetings. I knew I had been here for at least three weeks because I had taken and passed three socialism tests.

  In spite of our isolation in the jungle, we knew everything that was happening all over the world because Father read us newspaper and magazine articles over the loudspeakers daily. He told us in detail how violent the United States had become and how his place in history, as a great leader, was being tarnished by the evil defectors in America. Whenever he read to us about the vicious actions being taken by our government against innocent people, I was relieved we lived here. I learned of a leader in Uganda named Idi Amin, who apparently was a great diplomat. Father said we should learn to emulate his “wild actions.” He said that when people acted like “crazy niggers,” the establishment would back off and leave them alone. He said this was how we would begin to act here, too. If we threatened various government agencies with killing ourselves or leaving the country in a mass exodus, we would get our way more easily. Everything, he said, was done for effect. He had to test how far he could and should push them. It never occurred to me that these tests one day would turn into ghastly reality.

  I still worked the fields but had been reassigned to Lorina’s crew as Lee had been pulled from the fields to oversee the construction of more housing. Father had announced an incentive program: On Sundays, the only day we had the late afternoon free, those people who wanted a relationship and had gone through the approval process, could begin to construct their own cabins. Within hours, the relationship list quadrupled. Mark came to me that same day and asked if I would like to live with him, but I had decided on my first day that I would not pursue this dangerous course. My excuse to him was that the Cause was more important to me than an egocentric relationship and, anyway, he was hardly ever in Jonestown. Although he had helped prepare the land and original buildings for our arrival, he was now becoming a licensed ship captain at Father’s behest. Father had decided that we needed to purchase a larger boat for our next emigration, to a more friendly country. The Six-Day Siege had deeply affected and deformed his perception of our safety and there were discussions of our moving to Cuba or the Soviet Union. On a couple of occasions, when I visited the radio room to ask Carolyn a question, I overheard small talk about visiting the embassies of socialist countries in the capital. Mark seemed discouraged, and it was hard to let go of such an old dream, but my decision was made. When I needed the secret relief of a fantasy, I thought about the nice Cuban doctor.

  Life was tough in the Promised Land. The physical labor during the day was grueling but it was nothing compared to the terror we experienced at night. Every night, someone was confronted. Every night, I was afraid I, or someone I was close to, would be next.

  During one emergency meeting I was perched in my cu
stomary place near Jim’s son Stephan, biting deeply into my cheek to stay awake, when I felt my head jerking backward.

  Had the guards seen me? I began to breathe in slowly and deeply, and started my self-preservation mantra: Look alert! Stay awake! I bit harder, drawing blood, fighting sleep, fighting to keep my body erect. I knew how dangerous it was to be found inattentive or sleepy, but it was getting harder every night.

  From somewhere in the crowded Pavilion came a rustling sound. Oh no! I thought. Someone’s fallen from the bench. Someone’s fallen asleep!

  “Stand!” Father bellowed over the loudspeaker. “Are you not afraid? Do you believe that you are different from the rest of us? Speak up and explain yourself,” he hissed.

  Charlie, a sixty-year-old father of five, stood up, brushing the dirt from his pants. “Father, I’m sorry. I did not mean to—” He was cut off by shouting. Everyone was angry. Someone always had to do this. Now Jim was furious, and we were going to have to confront Charlie and everything would drag on even longer. But no wonder Father was mad. If we were attacked now, Charlie would be our weak link. We must be careful, ever watchful of the weak one. Falling asleep proved that your head was in the wrong place, which made you more susceptible to committing treason.

  “So, you think falling asleep during an emergency meeting is easy? Let’s see how you fare with this. Put the snake around his neck!” One of the guards carried a ten-foot boa constrictor’s cage into the middle of the Pavilion and opened the door.