The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess

by Jeff Wheelwright

  Christianity historically has enmeshed itself with state power, but the Jehovah’s Witnesses operate a theocracy that ignores the powers of state. Having withdrawn from the world as far as they are able to legally—they do not vote, or hold military or political office, or acknowledge national or religious holidays—they have made a facsimile of the world inside the Kingdom Hall, where, cut off from daylight’s cues, you have the slightly dizzy feeling that the new system has come down to earth already. If Armageddon were raging outside, here in their hermetic company you’d be safe.

  Marianne once remarked that people who are drawn to the Witnesses tend to have bad pasts. She would count as elements of a bad past the racial slurs she suffered growing up in Alamosa, or the beatings Joseph and his siblings received from their father when he was drinking. A bad past is a past that persists and grates. Witnesses try not to get emotional about their faith because strong emotions are scary—passionate feelings rip the scabs off cuts that should be left alone. Wanda’s husband, Bill, spoke of himself as physically and sexually abused. I had a sore spot on my heart, he said, and he meant an actual sore from the abuse. For people whose hearts are bruised, the Kingdom Hall is a refuge and the end times may not come soon enough. In the new system, they believe, their hearts will be healed and restored to them eternally.

  But Shonnie, the radiant young adherent, who was tutored in the faith and was baptized at seventeen, belongs in a different category, doesn’t she? Life may have wounded her parents, but they repaired themselves and protected Shonnie from the same harms. True, they could not prevent her being molested by her uncle, a sorry little man she later forgave, nor block her inklings about dying young. Still, Shonnie had a golden childhood. Her bad past, if she had one, was symbolized by the morada, with its showy and shallow secrets, its dalliance with pain and death. It was simple for the child to let go of Catholicism. Her family had hardly any Catholicism left. If culture provides the atmosphere for identity, Shonnie assumed a Witness identity as naturally as she breathed.

  What’s more, inside the Kingdom Hall the racial history of New Mexico no longer rankled. Shonnie was postracial, to use a term not then in use. A defining characteristic of a religious sect is that the differences among the members are outweighed by the group’s differences with outsiders. By the time the Medinas joined, the Jehovah’s Witnesses had evolved into a tolerant, multihued organization, claiming one million members in the United States and seven million worldwide. There is the same type of personality of Witnesses the world over, Iona noted. She and her husband were close friends with Witnesses in Australia. Everybody’s equal, Wanda said, citing the mixed marriages in the congregation. Marianne Medina credited the Witnesses for softening her hostility toward whites.

  Besides holding a Sunday meeting at the Kingdom Hall for Bible study, the local Witnesses meet during the week for what they call Theocratic Ministry School. This is to go over techniques for interacting with the public and improving their door-to-door preaching. Tonight, a Tuesday, Joseph Medina was scheduled to offer his insights. He was one of the three male elders (there are no clergy or female elders) of the little congregation, about two dozen Witnesses in all. He wore a charcoal suit with wide lapels and full-cut trousers. His wife and daughter were among the dozen or so in the audience. Marianne, demurely wearing glasses, had her hair up, and Iona was regal in a long black skirt and white blouse. Bill and Wanda were there too, Bill fidgeting and fingering his Bible.

  Joseph went up to the stage. His head didn’t reach far above the lectern. Use your gift, was the theme of his soft-spoken talk. We want to reach people’s hearts. Listen and respond. We glorify God as we help others. It was hard to imagine Joseph as a zealot for Jehovah without Marianne standing beside him. The other two elders, named Brother Rivera and Brother Alonzo, had a more polished manner. Passing the microphone between them, they thanked Brother Medina for his contribution and sought feedback from the others on what they had learned about going door-to-door.

  Shonnie had been a born evangelist. She was very confident when ringing a doorbell because she was used to making a good impression on strangers. Hair, makeup, clothes, the works. Plus she had a light touch. Before she was married, Shonnie was paired for her preaching service with a woman named Claudia, who was a rather self-righteous Witness. The two would pull into a neighborhood, park, and, while freshening her lipstick, Shonnie would sing along with the radio, doo-wop music especially, the kind of songs her father liked. One day the older woman tried to bring Shonnie down a peg, saying, Should we be listening to that? Shonnie just laughed and said, Oh, Claudia, live a little!

  Witnesses who were in good standing kept track of their hours of service. If their timesheets showed they preached an average of ninety hours per month, they were awarded the status of Regular Pioneer. For seventy hours of service they would get to be an Auxiliary Pioneer. Shonnie made Regular Pioneer and hungered to do more. Alamosa, where she moved after marrying, was more fertile ground than Culebra, because it was bigger and had a less rooted population. On the weekends, after putting some meat and rice into an all-day cooker, Shonnie and Michael would go forth with their copies of The Watchtower and the golden answer book, What Does the Bible Really Teach?

  Everyone agrees that service was the highest priority in Shonnie’s life, after being a good wife. Even when she was sick, she’d go out, said Marianne. Even in the hospital or the clinic she had leaflets and books to give to the nurses and to the security guards. Her mother doesn’t remember anyone getting irritated with Shonnie when she preached, because she had charisma, said Marianne. Shonnie seems to have been a woman who was fully conscious of her charm and beauty without allowing it to go to her head. She acted as though she could shine her light on the people she met, and they would become beautiful too, but not by her reflected glow—they’d awaken and sparkle spontaneously. Use your gift, her father had urged.

  She’d take the energy and shine it out, her uncle Bill said. She was a person of innocence and wonder. She had a balanced way of being. She made life look easy, but she was humble too. Bill remembered how Shonnie always saw the good in everyone. She helped him particularly after he married into the family. Sometimes I felt demeaned, he said. Uncle Bill, I spoke up for you, she’d say. Things will work out. She was only fifteen. And if Bill was talking too much, getting agitated, Shonnie would give him a hug and he’d calm down.

  Admittedly, Shonnie is not so much a character in this narrative as an avatar, like Quixote’s Dulcinea. The words and deeds of others in her family could be tested by observation, but Shonnie’s character had slipped behind the veil of memory, refulgent and half-beatified. As her mother once put it, If there was a black spot or black mark on a white sheet of paper, she’d say, Look at the white, all the white around it. That was Shonnie.

  Since the time when Shonnie was active in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the benchmarks for service have been relaxed, so that just seventy hours a month of preaching makes you a Regular Pioneer. Iona was a Regular, and Marianne an Auxiliary, and occasionally they worked the small towns of the Valley together. Since they had covered the same territory many times, they knew which houses to avoid and which were moderately receptive to their message.

  Tonight, as a demonstration for the service meeting, Marianne and Iona acted out the roles of a model Pioneer and a typical householder, the person answering the door. Mother and daughter went up to the stage. The scenario was this: The householder, played by Marianne, was a young person who needed help with her science homework. She had to write a paper on astronomy. The Witness, who was Iona, steered the conversation toward the Bible and the remarkable harmony, said Iona, between the Bible and modern science.

  Iona, as she consulted her text, did most of the talking, while Marianne’s part was mainly to nod. The issue before the student was the shape of the earth, whether it was flat or round. The Witness commentary maintained that, although philosophers and scien
tists had long declared the earth round, no one believed it until the late twentieth century, when astronauts went to the moon and beheld the sphere of Earth with their own eyes. This reading of history greatly exaggerates the influence of the flat-earth lobby, a renegade minority for more than two thousand years. But Iona’s objective was to contrast the scientists’ uncertainty with the sure statement in the Book of Isaiah (40:22): “There is One who is dwelling above the circle of the earth, the dwellers in which are as grasshoppers.” In referring to the circle of the earth, the prophet knew that the earth was round—and so you see that the Bible had it right all along. Bill Kramer was not the only person fidgeting in the Kingdom Hall that night.

  Jehovah’s Witnesses do not promote higher education. The time spent on campus might be wasted as Earth hastens to its upheaval, but more immediately, the university exposes a young person to selfish competition and materialism, to say nothing of drugs, alcohol, and the questioning of religious authority. Better for the student to take practical, vocational courses and let the Bible supply her higher education. Shonnie did well enough in high school to go to college and could have received financial aid, according to Marianne. But even before graduating she seems to have withdrawn from student affairs, eschewing a class ring and team sports and group outings. Shonnie liked riding, singing, reading, and of course her preaching, all of which she could do apart from school.

  After graduation Shonnie took a few courses at home by mail, looking to become an accountant perhaps. She also considered becoming an aerobics instructor. When she got a job at Maurices, a women’s fashion store in Alamosa, she discovered her secular calling. The skills she used in her Witness ministry proved very effective in selling clothing and makeup. Shonnie won sales awards from Maurices. She was so successful that the store managers had to limit her hours because other salesgirls complained that they were losing customers to her. Shonnie later became a direct retailer of Mary Kay cosmetics and won awards from that company also, not quite earning the fabled Mary Kay pink Cadillac for her sales, but close. Shonnie used to model Mary Kay products at store openings, fairs, and other events. Women thought, If I buy from her, I’ll look like her, said Marianne.

  The boys who pursued her bumped into an invisible shield, her chaste gloss, because if they weren’t Witnesses, forget about dating Shonnie Medina. Dating—there was no dating or kissing without the intention or goal of marrying. It’s not a game, said Marianne. Shonnie did not date until she met Michael. Their courtship wasn’t as scrutinized as, for example, an Orthodox Jewish shidduch, which involves a matchmaker and squads of relatives, but Shonnie and Michael always had chaperones, and when they went to the movies, they had to travel to the theater in separate cars. When she was a married woman in her twenties, Shonnie would take teenage girls under her wing and counsel them to act appropriately toward boys. They paid attention because the girls could see how boys looked at Shonnie. A friend of hers named Jackie recalls, I was still in the world when I started studying with Shonnie. Fortunately, I’d never committed immorality. She was firm. She was clear with me.

  To compare her circle of Jehovah’s Witnesses with fundamentalist Jews is apt. Ignore for the moment 185delAG, the genetic link between the Jewish people and the fated family of Culebra. In their preoccupation with scripture, their strict morals, their endogamous marriages, their wariness of wider society, their avoidance of blood in food preparation, and their lack of interest in the desires of the soul, these two religious minorities are more alike than any in America. Jehovah’s Witnesses constantly discuss the Jews, although not as Jews per se but as the original worshippers of Jehovah, steadfast in their faith, refusing to surrender their identity—in short, Jews as proto-Witnesses. Supersessionism, a venerable argument in Christian theology, holds that the Jews botched their covenant with God by failing to recognize Jesus, and that Christians superseded them as the chosen people. The Witnesses think they have earned the mantle of the Israelites. They think the Bible’s prophecies, from Genesis to Revelation, point solely to them.

  The similarities between the two sects break down when it comes to science, however, for even the most Orthodox Jews respect and encourage science. They do not take the Bible’s ban on consuming blood so literally as to refuse blood transfusions, as Witnesses do. They look upon God’s creation as a puzzle to be solved, not a holy mystery to be admired from a safe and trembling distance.

  The figure of Jesus distracts ultra-Christians from the composition of the world. Intervening between man and nature, Jesus blinds the faithful with his aura. Because of the supernatural exhibitions of Jesus, culminating in his rising from the dead, and because he also promised that he would come again at an unknown time, the strictest Christians keep their eyes on the horizon. If the world will soon pass away, they have less of a need to understand it and more of a need to know what will replace it. Jews expect a Messiah too, but, never having had a taste of him, they don’t let their vision of the Messiah interrupt their tasks on earth. Which goes to say, they don’t let faith get in the way of reason.

  When Shonnie consented to marry Michael, her father took her aside and spoke to her about the importance of headship, another imperative that the Witnesses share with strict Orthodox Jews. It means that the husband is in charge of the couple’s decisions, which he will make after consulting and honoring his wife. With good reason, Joseph Medina was concerned that Shonnie would balk at the arrangement: Joe said I wasn’t docile, said Marianne with a smile, and Shonnie was headstrong like me. According to Marianne, there was a joke among the Witnesses that if the husband was the head, the wife was the neck (because one turns the other). That’s not funny, Joseph retorted. When the meeting at the Kingdom Hall concluded this evening, Joseph and Marianne stood for the final prayer. Holding hands, they tilted their heads toward each another until their temples touched.

  Shonnie and Michael entered married life resolving not to have children. The world was not suitable for children, they felt, and Iona and her husband had the same view. I don’t want to have them, Iona said. We both decided, we don’t want to raise kids in the system we have now. We’ll wait until the new system. Then I’ll have as many as we want, in a better world. Marianne, the tough-minded mother, said, Would you put your money into a business you knew was bankrupt? This system is going out of business. There’s no future for anybody in this system. It’s coming down—that’s why we don’t get involved in politics.

  But wasn’t that terribly pessimistic? To conceive of the world so darkly? It’s not the world that’s coming to an end, Marianne explained. It’s the system. Remember, there’s Paradise. . . . If you have a house with mice, you won’t burn it down, your house. You’ll get rid of the mice.

  The turmoil had already begun, thunder on the horizon from earthquakes and plague. When at last Jesus takes the field against Satan, the polluters, the wicked people of the planet, all will be destroyed, they believe. Witnesses do not sit on their hands in expectation of that day. They work to save others, house by house, neighborhood by neighborhood, but they don’t try to scare you. When they are not out proselytizing or in the Kingdom Hall studying, they are as relaxed and fun-loving as any people can be. Celina Gallegos, another friend of Shonnie’s, said, People focus on the destruction but there’s also the relief of Armageddon. All the crime, all the violence, these things which we know like the time of day—it’s over. Jehovah stops it.

  Shonnie would not know about the glorious circumstances of the end because she was suspended in a state of sleep. She was not dead, said Celina, she was asleep. When she awoke, her body resurrected, her beauty redeemed, she would want to hear all about Armageddon from those who had lived through it. For there will be survivors, Celina insisted. The potential is for any one of her family members to be a survivor, Celina said.

  While she lived, Shonnie in her windowless Kingdom Hall did not feel excluded from society but perfectly included, free to pick and choose from
the world’s transient offerings. She did not dismiss scientific medicine, but she was not convinced she should value it over any other kind of medicine. Her attitude about the doctors, scientists, politicians, and other secular authority figures was that they were standing on thin ice, centered on the wrong things. This opinion about the world was a received opinion. A large part of her identity was a group identity, which she augmented with the stubbornness of her father and the outspokenness of her mother. Like a penitente, Shonnie was not afraid to go against the grain, especially where the body and its treatment were concerned.

  Finally, it is worth stating that Witnesses do not believe in predestination or in the unceasing torment of the damned. Rather, they think the individual can and must take morality into her own hands, choosing the right way to live, and thereby escape death. So that was Shonnie just before she got sick: a Pioneer, a wife, a model, an unwitting BRCA carrier. Between the morada and the Kingdom Hall, forceful and trusting, traveling on her own free will.

  Chapter 7

  * * *

  THE DNA AGE

  After Watson and Crick discovered how the DNA molecule works, in 1953, many questions about life could be answered, along with a big metaphysical question. The dualism between mind and body, spirit and anatomy, soul and flesh, could finally be put to rest. DNA, the thinking man’s microanatomy, honed by evolution and sensitive to signals from the landscape, operated both the body and the brain without any metaphysical assistance.