Beyond Belief: The Secret Lives of Women in Extreme Religions

by Cami Ostman

  “I don’t cower to demons,” he scowled.

  Rehearing this in my head cuts deep in my soul. I keep picturing a giant zipper running the length of my body. No matter how much I will myself to do so, I just can’t seem to open the zipper and crawl out.

  The agony of this gargantuan weight in my gut begins to make running impossible. I slow to a walk, heaving, crying hysterically and loathing myself.

  The demon isn’t in me. The demon is me. I’m a demon. No wonder it won’t leave. It’s not a separate entity. It’s me and I am it.

  Tears stream down my face as the full impact of this realization takes hold. I don’t exist. There is no me. I’m a demon, posing as a human, existing in a human body.

  I sit down, take off my shoes, find a sharp rock, and use it to scratch my feet until I see blood. Bleeding is the only thing that makes sense to me—letting all the bad blood pour out.

  STEVE, SILENT AND TENTATIVE, parks the car and we disembark once again. Brock has agreed to see me, but not alone. He has something important planned for all of his devotees.

  I push aside the turbulence in my gut at having to share this experience with all of Brock’s “others” and hold Steve’s hand as he knocks on the door. I ignore Steve’s worried expression and remind myself that, if I refuse tonight’s moonlight baptism, I could miss my healing.

  “. . . These people are programmed. They split at three years of age and grow up fragmented and susceptible to the forces of darkness . . . ” Brock ignores Steve and me as we enter. He’s already addressing the crowd of twenty or so unfamiliar faces in his living room, and he doesn’t look up to acknowledge me. I feel my heart cinch at the rebuff.

  He reads a few Bible passages, then launches into the evening’s agenda—his latest idea about how to heal us all. “When we get to the creek, it will be dark. The moon will be straight over us. Each woman will take communion. This is when we’ll begin the baptism, keeping each one under the water until she begins to panic and flail around. Then we’ll hold her under a little longer until she stops. This will reverse the internal split and heal her.”

  While Steve stands with the rest of the group, I hover in the back. All these people make me nervous.

  I suppose I should be “readying myself” through prayer, but I’m tired. Brock’s experimental healing methods haven’t helped me so far. I don’t have the energy to pray. It would be easier to just go home, and yet I also feel that if I don’t comply, I might miss my healing and be cursed with a legion of demons for the rest of my sorry life.

  As the crowd heads out to their cars for the drive to the creek, I walk over to Brock and ask him if he’ll ride with Steve and me since I haven’t seen him in a while.

  “I’m riding with Gena,” he tells me, then looks at Steve. “Gena’s worried that someone is going to kill her.”

  Once we get to the creek, I can see Brock and a few other men who have already arrived. They’re standing in the current, looking at me, waiting for me. As I slog through the waist-high water toward them, I can’t help but feel like this is just so freaking stupid. I’m mad that Brock won’t pay any attention to me and that Gena, obviously a drama queen, is a higher priority to him.

  The moonlight shimmers on the surface of the water and the smell of algae takes me back to my childhood and my father’s terrifying swimming lessons. But I’m not a child any longer, and the feelings of anger and rebellion nix the required contriteness I know I should muster for this sacred event.

  Brock is saying something, praying maybe, I’m not sure. I’m hovering above myself, deafened by my own insubordination as I ruminate on how pissed off I am.

  Without warning and with the communion bread still in my mouth, a bevy of hands plunges my body into the icy water. Instantly, I’m a little girl again, learning to swim, frightened by my father’s violent methods. Fueled entirely by involuntary reflexes, I flail and fight, my panic causing a torrent of splashes and bubbles, magnified a hundredfold under the water. And then the adult me finally realizes I was totally unprepared for the distress that Brock’s latest procedure is intended to cause.

  Finally my panic wins, or the men figure I’m hopeless. They let go and I reemerge, filling my lungs with precious night air. I cough. Water drips off my nose and I rub my eyes as I trudge my leaden body toward the shore. I’ve got to get away.

  But with only a few more steps to dry land I stop myself. No, I can’t leave. I can’t miss my healing. I turn and wade back to Brock and the other men. I’m prepared now, I tell myself. I’ll do it right this time. I don’t even look at Steve, who stands at the edge of the crowd.

  “Just let me . . . catch my . . . breath . . .” I beg.

  But the second time is no different than the first. I fail once again. We might as well go home.

  BACK AT THE CAR, I shiver in the backseat, completely undone, humiliated. Steve starts the engine. I can’t look at him, but I’m sure he’s exhausted from years of watching my devotion to Brock destroy me.

  As Steve drives, saying nothing, I have time to evaluate the night.

  I’m sure Gena performed flawlessly, but I just don’t have what it takes. God is disappointed with me. I lack the faith I need to get healed. And I’m too rebellious. Brock has told me this many times. Now he’s got proof.

  I try to make sense of my fucked-up life. I’m addicted to Brock in the worst way, but I’m also a free spirit. And the two don’t mix. I’m ashamed of my flawless ability to sabotage myself, and I’m helpless over this crazy, forbidden draw toward Brock. I don’t have the slightest idea how to escape my conundrum. Are there twelve-step programs for people-addicts? I wonder. I can see that the person I’m asking to help me get well is the person who’s making me sicker. But I asked God for a confirmation and I thought I’d received it. I’ve tried to stay within God’s will.

  I think of what the Bible says about God being a jealous God. Am I being punished? Is God withholding a victorious healing because I’m placing too much importance on Brock and not enough on Him?

  YOU COULD CALL IT an epiphany or the final straw or the wakeup call or even the seven-year itch, but the end finally comes months later. In a moment of frustration during yet another unsuccessful healing session, Brock blurts, “You irritate me!”

  I wonder if I just heard what I think I heard. I irritate him? Seriously? Strangely, this is what it takes to break the spell.

  I irritate him.

  I don’t cry. I don’t come undone and write him another scathing letter with my blood. I guess I’m numb with the realization that I finally succeeded in destroying my relationship with Brock.

  I can only hope there’s another path to healing out there somewhere.

  Tilapia Mikveh

  Susan Tive

  I’m standing barefoot in the darkness. The light from the summertime stars flickers like crystals in the infinitely sloping sky. The gravel under my feet is cold and sharp. Somewhere out in the blind vastness small rivulets of water lap against stones. I can’t tell where the dark night above meets the equally black water below. The air smells fishy and alkaline, odd for the high mountain desert of southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley.

  Just a few moments ago I was inside the overheated double-wide of the pond’s owner, Eileen. Her trailer smelled like Lysol and meatloaf and she was excited about having visitors. I sat quietly, embarrassed, as my husband, Geoffrey, explained to her that we would visit only a few times during the summer, after dark, and wouldn’t need to stay more than half an hour. She didn’t ask questions. “I ’spect all religions,” she said, and without hesitation granted me permission to take my monthly soak in her artesian pond full of tilapia fish.

  Eileen doesn’t care that her pond, filled by water that flows freely and naturally into it, meets all the stringencies of Jewish law to create a perfect mikveh, or ritual bath. For centuries Jewish women have gone to great lengths to immerse each month in mayyim hayyim, the living water that makes us clean after our menstrual cycles have f
inished.

  Eileen also doesn’t care about the battery of personal hygiene chores I have completed in order to dunk myself in her tilapia breeding pond and emerge from it “purified.” I’ve trimmed my nails, scrubbed my soles, and cleaned my belly button. I’ve combed and untangled all the hair on my body including my pubic hair, run Q-tips around my earlobes, and determined with one last internal check that I am no longer menstruating and haven’t shed blood for seven consecutive days. I do all this because I am obligated to make sure my body is completely unobstructed: When I immerse, the water will reach every part of me.

  Eileen doesn’t care about any of this, and I don’t blame her. I don’t care much myself. As I sit on the faded orange sofa in her fake-wood-paneled living room I teeter between anger and exhaustion. Let’s get this thing over with already. That’s what I wanted to say to Geoffrey as we drove away from our summer farmhouse hours ago, leaving the kids with a sitter. On and on into the night, we passed one obscure valley town after another until finally Geoffrey took a left at the ALLIGATOR FARM FIVE MILES AHEAD sign. Apparently, Eileen’s pond wasn’t the only commercial or tourist enterprise taking advantage of this artesian-rich part of the valley.

  Geoffrey was proud of himself for having found the tilapia pond so that we could keep the laws of mikveh during our summer in Colorado, and he instantly declared it kosher. Five years after his Orthodox conversion in our hometown in northern New Mexico and our overnight adoption of the entire Orthodox rule book, our practice had devolved into a desperate mash-up of book learning, creative guesswork, and convenience.

  The fledgling Orthodox community that initiated Geoffrey had sputtered and then dissolved, one family at a time moving away to a larger, established city with a school, a butcher, a fancy mikveh. With the recent departure of the last in a succession of failed rabbis, our newly religious family was left alone to make do with the few stragglers that remained. In the summertime, living on our small farm in the San Luis Valley, we became even more exiled. There were no other observant Jews for hundreds of miles. Denver, the nearest viable Orthodox community and thus kosher mikveh was, at best, four hours away.

  In this vacuum of community Geoffrey quickly grew confident in his role as the final arbiter of our family’s Jewish practice. Even the occasional phone calls he used to make when he found himself over his head and needing to check in with a knowledgeable rabbi were no longer deemed necessary. But I was ill prepared to go it on my own, armed with only my good intentions, my Art Scroll prayer book filled with copious notes and helpful transliterations of all the important blessings, and a few years of observant life on training wheels. Without a sisterhood to teach and support me, the beauty and meaning of my practice was slowly being choked out by Geoffrey’s unilateral interpretation of the law.

  My job seemed simple—follow the rules: Care for the children, cook the proper food, keep the holy Sabbath, and go to the mikveh—but it turned out to be enormously complicated, with many details to abide by. A pot used for meat could not be used for dairy; the Sabbath began strictly at sundown, preferably eighteen minutes before the final rays disappeared beyond the horizon. Keeping the laws of mikveh required an entire week’s worth of daily inspections of the discharge on my underwear. It was mandatory to keep pinpoint, accurate track of any blight that might derail my “seven clean days” before immersion. Mired in the details and mildly obsessed about doing everything to the letter of the law, I posed no challenge to Geoffrey’s hours of Mishnah study, long sessions praying behind closed doors, and self-assured supreme confidence. I was dedicated, preoccupied, and worried Geoffrey would find fault with my inevitable slipups. His decrees stood unopposed.

  I SEE THE FAINT outline of the pond as my eyes adjust to the darkness. It’s about one hundred yards to the other end. I dip my feet into the warm, smelly water and hear the faint sound of a pump pushing water around the pond. Soft mud squishes up between my toes as I slide my legs through the water, testing its depth and the slope of the shore. Just how big are tilapia fish, anyway? Do they bite? I wonder as I walk out of the water and stand nearby.

  Geoffrey flashes on the headlights of the Ford Econoline. “Need some light?” he asks, jutting his head out of the van, where he sits smoking his pipe and listening to an Everly Brothers tape. The faint drone of harmony escapes out the open window, and I am angry. Even in this dislocated moment, Geoffrey, with his large black velvet yarmulke, droopy eyes, and well-worn cowboy boots, manages to look serious, pious, as if there were nothing ridiculous about being out here in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

  “No, it’s better without headlights,” I shout, trying to hide the irritation in my voice. “Maybe after.”

  The lights abruptly cut out, and once again I’m blinded to the nuances of the landscape. I stand in total darkness until my eyes readjust, more quickly this time. I have to stop thinking about going into the pond, submerging myself, and giving in to this ritual that I don’t believe can help me any longer or we’ll be here all night. “You shall do and then you shall know” (na’aseh v’nishma): These words from Exodus rant in my head, reminding me that it is not important whether I like mikveh, or even believe in it. What’s important is that I do it: follow the rules, and fulfill the commandments. The answers will come later, if they come at all.

  Five years earlier the rabbi’s wife had handed me a slim hard-cover book and a black velvet pouch with a stack of small white cloths inside it. For months I studied the details of mikveh immersion, memorizing the minutiae of taharas mishpacha, or “family purity.” Weekly meetings with the rebbetzin were filled with the dos and don’ts of mikveh preparation and practice. At the end of each lesson, the rebbetzin always recited a few magical tales about the rekindled romances and marital harmony this ancient practice had spun for our ancestors.

  I learned the laws. While bleeding, I was tumeh, “unclean,” “closed,” and not permitted to pass the ketchup at the dinner table or remove a stray hair from Geoffrey’s shirt. Until bleeding ceased and an additional seven “clean” days passed, there were to be no words of endearment, no compliments, no goodnight kisses or hugs.

  Which was much like the rest of the month. At first, mikveh was my hope of reigniting the physical and emotional passion of a cooling marriage I no longer knew how to warm. This ancient set of rules promised to hold my family together as it had held the Jewish people together for centuries. It seemed worth a try. However, it didn’t take much studying to realize that the whole practice was mainly orchestrated to maximize the possibility of conception. My days of bleeding plus seven clean days conveniently added up to ovulation. At the moment when Geoffrey and I could reunite, I would be at my most fertile. And if, like a good Orthodox Jew, I used little or no birth control, the possibility of our union falling into the “be fruitful and multiply” category was not left to chance. Those crafty rabbis promised marital bliss and a “honeymoon every month.” What they were really after was double-digit offspring.

  I PULL DOWN MY skirt until it lies in a ring around my feet, lift up my shirt and bra, and toss them away from the water. Stepping out of my skirt, I roll my underwear down my legs and add them to the pile. In an ordinary mikveh, there is a set of stairs or a small ladder, not to mention a matronly mikveh lady who interrogates you before you are allowed to enter the water. Her job is to look you over for loose skin and recite the final checklist of tasks to make sure you’ve prepared your body properly. I walk to the pond and once again step lightly onto the sharp gravel that quickly gives way to soft mud laced with fish debris. There’s no one there but me. I wade out up to my calves.

  The pond is bathwater warm, and I can see steam rising up from the surface. I move deeper, shivering. The water, now past my knees, feels inviting as it envelops my legs. This plunge will change my spiritual status and purify me. I will become tahor, opened and cleaned and once again available to my husband’s touch. A touch I can no longer feel. Even though it’s July, the thin air of this massiv
e basin, trapped on all sides by the Rocky Mountains, feels unwelcoming. There are no clouds to keep in the heat of a full day’s blazing sun. No fresh-cut hay, honeybee, or flowering clover lingers in this thin air. The only sign of the season is the constellations, magnificent Leo at its zenith and Cancer arching forward. A zillion more stars make the sky a solid dome cupping the sunken valley. The mountains circle, their snowcapped peaks reach toward the incomprehensible, toward those twinkling lights, the whole world wrapped in the ribbon of the Milky Way. I see only three lights, the shining faces of my children: Ben and Joel and my baby daughter, Tova. Stretching my arms over my head, I hold my breath and dive farther out until the water reaches my shoulders.

  I immerse myself three times, as is the custom. Between each dunk, I stand up and wipe the hair away from my face. After the first dunk, I pause for a moment and recite the proper blessing. I thank God for commanding me to immerse. I ask Him to purify me, to wash away all my sins and sorrows, all my transgressions. I ask this even as I question what these are.

  Each time I sink down, holding my breath for as long as I can, I enter the silent and timeless world of the matriarchs, my mothers. In ponds halfway across the globe, in centuries long before I was born, Jewish women bared themselves in water much colder than this. These nameless, faceless women immersed, let themselves be surrounded, let themselves be opened up despite risks, poverty, bad marriages, too many children, famine, pogroms, persecution. Immersing with the strength of women to renew and repurpose again and again. The female body spins itself around in phases like the moon, sometimes full and giving like a ripened fruit, other times meager and hidden like a seed buried underground. I am a Jewish female body performing the commandment a Jewish female body is obligated to perform. This is the moment of purity. This is the moment in which I linger, floating in the darkness. The warm water lifts the weight of my body and the heaviness of my doubts off my bones.