by Brianna Karp
Negotiations were ongoing between ELLE and all the media outlets hoping for an exclusive. All I had to do was sit back, cross my fingers and secretly dream that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had nothing more important to talk about than a homeless chick. Fat chance, but a girl could dream.
Of all the shows that had contacted me, Ellen DeGeneres was my first choice—she was awesome, and I was a big fan of hers. But nothing was that easy, it seemed. E. Jean explained to me that there were more factors than that. They had to put me on a show and a time that would get the story maximum exposure. They had already turned down the Early Show because the producers wanted to air the interview on a Saturday morning.
“Saturday morning! Ha! We don’t do Saturday morning, darling. This is a major story,” E. Jean sniffed. “Nobody’s awake on Saturday morning.” I had absolutely no idea about time slots, TV shows or media strategy, so I figured I’d take her word for it.
It turned out, in the end, that the Today show won out. I was excited, and also terrified. The producer informed me over the phone that I would be on the 10 o’clock hour with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb.
I assumed that they would fly Matt to New York with me. So did he. I mean, he was such a huge part of the story, and the reason that it had spread so far. Didn’t these shows usually let you bring a guest with you, anyway? I’d be in New York City for less than twenty-four hours, but I was dying to run around with Matt and see the sights. I’d been there once, for a few days, with my family a couple of years back. They were visiting Bethel, the Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters in Brooklyn. But Matt had never been to the Big Apple. New York City was one of my favorite places on the planet, and I wanted so much to share that with him.
Nothing doing, though. They were only willing to fly me in, not Matt. My pleas and cajoling fell on deaf ears. Even E. Jean gave it a shot, to no avail. It frustrated me and depressed Matt.
“I don’t want you to go alone. I should be with you. I’ll miss you. I don’t want to be without you.”
“Baby, I’m trying. I can’t convince them. I’ll be back in thirty-six hours—you’ll barely miss me. But if you want, I’ll tell them no. Even if it makes everybody mad, I’ll back out.” I meant it, too. I hated seeing him depressed, or feeling as if I was leaving him behind. I didn’t want him thinking I was getting an inflated ego, or that I’d ever step all over his feelings just to advance things for myself. We were a team, the us was what was most important to me.
“No, you can’t do that. You need to go. It’ll blow this story out of the water. But I’ll miss you. And you shouldn’t be talking to all those agents alone. I’ve heard about what they’re like. They’re vultures, and they’ll try to take advantage of you. You’re too sweet and innocent to fend them off.”
I had resisted one earlier pitch from a literary agent to write a book because I was still anonymous at the time and I wasn’t yet comfortable with the idea of telling my story. But now I’d had so many agents contact me since the story broke that I was losing count. My name was public now, after the Associated Press story, and my family was well aware of my blogger identity and the changes in my life. The bridges there had already been pretty much burned a few months earlier, when I introduced Molly to Matt via gtalk as my future husband. I had hoped that perhaps she would attend our wedding, be my bridesmaid. Despite everything, I wanted to somehow salvage a true “sisterly” bond before it was too late.
Chapter Sixteen
Molly had grilled Matt as only a fundamentalist zealot knows how to grill. She was passive-aggressive and preachy, and I thought that, for the first time, he was realizing just how deep the nuttiness ran. I hadn’t been exaggerating. He was polite to her, and chose his words carefully. She told him, as if she were trying to warn him, that “Brianna can be so headstrong and independent,” as though those were dirty words.
“To tell you the truth, I’m glad she’s marrying a man so much older than she is. She needs somebody who knows how to handle her and keep her in check.” Horrified, Matt assured her that my independent spirit was just one of the many things that he loved about me, and that he looked forward to entering a marriage with me as his equal, and spending the rest of his life making me happy.
“Why do you love my sister?” Molly demanded.
“It’s hard to explain love, isn’t it? I guess the most honest answer I can give, even if it sounds corny, is that she makes my heart sing. She makes me glad I’m me.”
Moll had expressed approval of this answer. Then she tried to convert him by offering to send him JW literature, a handbook on family life that would show him how to maintain his God-bestowed position as the head of the family in a proper Christian household.
“I’m not sure about you, but if I’m going to take anybody’s advice on how to have a happy family life, it’s going to be from the creator of life and the family unit—Jehovah!”
He hastily changed the subject, and after a little bit more chatter, told her he had to go, but it was so nice to speak with her, and she had no idea how much Brianna loved her, and how much it meant to me to have her attend the wedding.
After getting rid of her, he shuddered. “That woman is never allowed to be alone with our children.”
I wholeheartedly agreed, although I felt sad saying it. Molly very (very) occasionally evidenced some cognitive dissonance that gave me hope for her escape from the cult. It was rare, but when it happened, it would amaze me. One day, just before she moved to Arizona, she had called me and, during what I had thought would be a routine phone conversation, brought up a childhood experience that even I hadn’t thought of in many years.
“Bri, do you remember that one time, when we were playing in the pool, and we got in a fight and both called each other a bad word?”
“Um, not really.”
“Mom made you drink soap.”
“Oh. Right. Yeah, I remember that.” How weird. I hadn’t thought of that in years, and was surprised that Moll remembered it. I had been given the choice between eating an entire bar of soap or drinking an entire jumbo mug full of Dove dishwashing detergent. I chose the detergent, thinking it would be over quicker, since I wouldn’t have to chew it. The actual consumption was over quicker, but I then spent the next thirty-six hours retching and spitting up bubbles into a Tupperware container.
“Well, I never told you this, but after she made you drink the soap and sent you into the house, I knew it was going to be my turn, and I was afraid. But then she just gave me a stern lecture never to say dirty words again, and told me I could go back into the pool. I was confused; I didn’t understand why we both said the exact same bad word, but you got the painful punishment, and suffered for days because of it. So I asked her why. She said that you and I were different people and learned in different ways. ‘Brianna sometimes doesn’t learn things just by being told. She questions things. She needs pain in order to learn, whereas a lecture is enough with you.’”
I barely realized it, but I had begun to tear up. My sister had never before acknowledged that there had been any difference in how we’d been treated. I had always known it was a survival mechanism—go with the flow, disappear into the wall, do what she was told, even if she knew it was wrong, and escape punishment. I tried not to fault her for it, but it stung all the same.
“It’s something that really stuck with me,” she continued. “Even then I knew that she was abusing you. I knew that drinking a mug of dish detergent might hurt or even kill you. And that day stuck with me up until now. You’ve already forgotten it because it was just another day that she hurt you, and it was something that you became used to. But I remembered it each and every time she hurt you, and I didn’t speak up. I can never tell you how bad I feel about that, that I watched her hurt you for so long and never spoke out against it. You were the big sister who taught me to read when I was nine and all the teachers and Mom and Dad had given up, and even Hooked on Phonics didn’t work because I got frustrated and threw it against the wall. Y
ou were the only one who kept trying, and in return I was afraid to say anything when I saw her beat you or humiliate you or tell you that you were worthless. Sometimes I even allowed myself to believe that it was true, that she was only hurting you because you were a worse child than me and you deserved it. But on that day I realized that it wasn’t the case, because we’d done the exact same bad thing, and you were the only one who got a hateful punishment. For some reason, she hated you and hurt you and I let it happen. I hope you can forgive me.”
Now she had started crying, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and toughened up. Besides sadness, I felt an overwhelming wave of relief. So many years I’d worried that perhaps I was crazy or wrong, because nobody acknowledged or believed that what my mother was doing was abusive. Not even the people who lived with me could see it, I thought. And now I was hearing that Molly had known the whole time. I wasn’t crazy. This was different than hearing it from my therapist. It was finally acknowledged by a firsthand eyewitness.
“Of course I forgive you. I understand why you did it. It wasn’t your fault—you did what you had to do. You were a kid and you didn’t want to get in trouble, too. Now, don’t worry about it. We’re adults and we’re out of there and we’re moving on to greater and better things.”
It was the only time we’d ever spoken so honestly to each other, allowed ourselves to be that raw. It was also the only time I ever held out hope that perhaps she would one day figure out that she was too smart and strong for the cult she was raised in. I understood why, especially with how uncomfortable her conversion efforts made Matt and me, she would likely never be a significant part of our lives. And yet, I wished so much that there could be a Rewind button, that somehow we could one day be the kind of sisters who babysat each other’s kids and braided each other’s hair. That she could be the kind of sister I could recommend Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to, without her angrily calling me the next day, demanding to know how dare I tell her it’s a good movie, when it had seventeen F-words in it! She knew, because she’d spent the entire movie counting. The subtext of the film itself was completely lost on her.
A few days after the introduction to Matt, a family friend who had secretly “faded” from the Jehovah’s Witness cult, but was still considered in good standing among the congregation, contacted me. I got all the news on my family through this friend, since my parents didn’t speak to me and my sister barely spoke to me. My friend filled me in.
As I’d suspected, Molly had wasted no time in circulating vicious rumors about the dastardly, “worldly man Brianna met on the internet!” Cue the gasps. Good Jehovah’s Witnesses did not meet people on the internet. In fact, they were discouraged from using the internet much at all, as it was, they were assured, chock-full of apostates and demons. “This is nutty even for Brianna! I’m just so worried about her! She’s really gone off the deep end this time. I think it’s too late to save her, now.” I was, it was agreed by all, a goner.
This was when I chose to cut ties with my sister completely, and spent the next several months reconciling the fact that I could never expect to have a reunion or a healthy relationship with my family. I was finally over the mental block against writing a book on my family and my childhood. I found it hard to care anymore. Once the Associated Press story went public, my friend told me, it got back to my family, who promptly spent hours reading my blog and denouncing me as an evil, demon-possessed apostate. I had blasphemed Jehovah and, for my own sake, I must be punished and shunned. Strangely, that didn’t bother me as much as I might have anticipated. It was remarkably freeing. I no longer had to worry about pleasing somebody unpleasable.
I was still unsure as to whether I was capable of writing a book, of course, but Matt assured me that he believed in me, so I found myself believing in me, too. E. Jean and I had sifted through the agents and picked several of the biggest names to meet with immediately after the Today show. I’d be running nonstop while I was in New York. And now Matt was worried that I would be taken advantage of, without him there to take care of me. It was very sweet, but he needn’t have worried.
“Matt, I’m not all that sweet and innocent. I can take care of myself. Besides, you know I’d never agree to anything without coming home and talking it over with you first.”
“You mean that?”
“Of course I mean that, silly. You’re going to be my husband.”
“You know, I already consider myself your husband, and you my wife. We might as well be married already. I’m as committed to you and your happiness as any husband ever could be.” It was true, I believed. He’d already long been referring to me as his “missus” and “wifey.” Saccharine, perhaps, but I found it charming and lovable.
“I love you, and I consider myself your wife, too. So don’t worry so much. Again, no decisions until we talk it out. Every decision from now on is together.”
“I’m still going to miss you terribly. I always hated being alone in the trailer without you, even when you were at work for eight hours and I knew I’d be seeing you again any minute.”
“Take Fezzik for a few walks; chat with Sage. It’s only thirty-six hours. Back before you realize I’m gone.”
A couple of days before my flight to New York, a woman living in another of Thurman’s trailers on his lot was evicted. She’d stayed for six months without paying a dime in rent, and Thurman had finally had it with her. He was a curmudgeonly man in his seventies, with a third-grade education and a penchant for fixing up old cars and complaining loudly in his twangy Southern drawl that everybody on this ranch wanted something from him, all the time, and he didn’t have no time to be helpin’ nobody no more; his time was expensive, dang it!
His gruff exterior hid a heart of gold, of course, but he hated for anybody to realize that, so he did his best to hide it. Matt went through stages of being mildly afraid of Thurman, but I liked him. Anybody who helped so many homeless people by allowing them to live cheaply on his lot, at the risk of getting in trouble with the law for it, was OK by me.
The woman trashed her trailer when she left (and broke into the communal coin-operated washer-and-dryer set that Thurman had brought in for everybody’s laundry needs, I assume to abscond with $23 in quarters). Thurman spent a couple of days repairing the damage, putting in new carpet, and Matt and I were offered the option of switching over. It was a thrilling prospect—this trailer was slightly roomier, and even had running water in the shower and a better-working swamp cooler! Summer had been killing us; our mattress was soaked through with sweat, so we happily accepted. When we began to move our belongings over to the trailer, we realized that Sage had spent who knows how long decorating it to surprise us. She had made trips to the 99 Cent Store and brightened things up with hippie-esque drapes and pillowcases, a few sets of colorful plastic, reusable plates and cups, and a bathroom wall painted a cornea-searing tangerine orange. We were going to feel cheerful, dammit! We were both floored by the generosity and the time she had put into it all.
Matt hadn’t showered in a couple of weeks. Sage kindly offered her bathroom for us to shower in, and I took her up on it—though I tried only to use it every three or four days, so as not to be a pest. Matt couldn’t be convinced, though. He either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain to me why, but he wouldn’t use her shower, or anybody else’s but our own. When the trickle of water in the first trailer ground to a halt and showering became impossible, he simply went without. He was like a self-cleaning oven, greasy for so long that he eventually looked clean again, switching between the same three T-shirt and jean outfits he had brought with him from England. It didn’t bother or repulse me, in any case—being homeless had lowered the standards for both of us, I guess, and a bit of grime was the last thing to worry about—but I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t want to use a running hot shower fifty yards away from the trailer, and he got snippy when I asked him.
“I just don’t want to, OK? Can’t we just leave it at that?!” So I did. I figure
d he was experiencing the same feeling as I was, not wanting to accept charity or donations on my website, or maybe feeling uncomfortable borrowing somebody else’s shower. It seemed to aggravate him when I pushed the issue, so I didn’t. In any event, the over whelming stench of livestock permeates the air in Norco and Riverside, so his being a bit stinky went relatively unnoticed. Our olfactory glands were obliterated. I shrugged it off, used Sage’s shower and let Matt be.
Now, we had a working shower, though it didn’t get hot water, only cold, and Matt was more than happy to use it as long as it belonged to us. Since it was a blazing-hot summer, the cold water didn’t even matter yet—it was refreshing in the unbearable heat. We’d worry about hot water when winter rolled around, if it came to that. If we played our cards right, maybe we’d be out of here and on to upstate New York long before then.
The morning before my New York City flight, I got a cell phone call from CNN.
“Hi, this is Ted Rowlands.”
“Um, wow, hi. I know who you are, yes.”
They wanted to talk to me and Matt. I explained that I was packing to fly to New York very early the next morning, but I’d be back within two days, if we could schedule it for then.
“We were hoping to get something earlier. Can I come by now?”
“Now? Like, right now???”
“Well, yeah, maybe around 3:00?”
“Um, sure.” I gave him directions to the lot and hung up. Then Matt and I called E. Jean to make sure it was OK, and wouldn’t interfere with the Today show.
“Ted Rowlands? Do it!” she commanded. Okeydoke. Worked for us. Matt was particularly excited—to him, CNN was the American version of the BBC.
We spent two hours frantically tidying up the trailer and trying to make my greasy hair look presentable. Finally, I pulled it back into two fluffy buns and tossed on a news-boy cap and a vintage green cardigan. I looked as exhausted as I was, and makeup didn’t seem to help, melting off in the heat as quickly as I put it on, so I eventually gave up. I was a mess, but it would have to do. All the media interviews and emails were beginning to blur together for me into one great big Twilight Zone-esque spiral. I could barely keep track of who I’d already spoken to, or what questions they’d asked. I was like a very sleepy shark for those few weeks; I only knew instinctively that I couldn’t stop moving until it was all over.