Of Children and Cults
I once asked my father what ‘BC’ meant. I came across it in a large historical atlas that I found in my school’s library. The book had the scent of both wood and vanilla, and it reminded me of walks through Ithan Valley Park near Villanova, a suburb of Philadelphia where we once lived. My father always took his time before answering a question. I loved how calm, deep and composed he was. He had wavy black hair, and wore round glasses with a golden frame. Sometimes I would ask him a question just to observe him pause, and then carefully respond. I had memorized his mouth, the way his lips pressed against each other, then parted, and his voice arrived, deep, deep enough so you would know that whatever he was saying, it just had to be true. Lies and mistruths could not live at such depths. Besides, lies don’t have the smell of menthol, and my father always carried a strong scent of mint.
Years later, BC lost the meaning my father once attached to it. It wasn’t a Christ marker separating history, it was instead a marker separating phases of my own life. From my birth and until my father died when I was eight, this was life before the cult, and from then and until I finally left home for good at the age of twenty-three, this was life after the cult. Since my departure, my life no longer has a historical reference, it doesn’t need one. I live in a time that does not require definition. Definitions are dangerous. All cult survivors know this. Everything evil begins with a definition.
The first thing my mother defined was why my father died. He died, my younger sister and I were told, because he was a sinner. At eight, ‘sinner’ to me sounded like it had something to do with dinner. For a few weeks, I believed that my father died because he was in the habit of arriving late to the dinner table, and only put down his evening book after mother had repeatedly announced that it was time to eat. Sin was the second idea my mother defined. She said, as she tucked my younger sister and I into bed, that sin was when you did things that made God angry. My father didn’t really speak about God. I knew he was something really big and important, but that was about it. We only started going to church after my father had been dead for around a year. That’s when all the changes started. I would lie in my bed and try to figure out what ‘sin’ my father was guilty of. My hunch was that it had to do with reading too much. He spent too much time reading, and this made both mother and God unhappy.
On the first anniversary of my father’s death, I packed away my books in cardboard boxes. The Jungle Book, Little Women, Charlotte’s Web, The Secret Garden, Anne of Green Gables, Alice in Wonderland. My mother didn’t ask me to do this, but so scared I was of the sin of reading that I could no longer sleep in a room full of temptation. And since I had no wish for anyone else to meet my father’s fate, I left the books by the dustbins early in the morning. By the time I came back from school, the boxes were gone, and my shelves were stripped of their seduction, and Mother seemed happy. God must be pleased. Seizing upon the emptiness in the room, if not in my young life, my mother bought me an Illustrated Children’s Bible. It had a hard clothbound cover in an austere blue. It was second hand, and I remember it’s scent, the sharp smell of mothballs. That, and the picture of Samson. My poor beloved Samson. Blinded eyes raised heavenward petitioning, hair cropped, ankles shackles, pushing with the last of his might against the pillars of the temple. Delilah nowhere to be seen.
Mother said we mustn’t stare at boys. The eyes were the windows to the soul and we must not let strangers in, for they would corrupt us. Chastity began with modesty of the gaze. Look at what happened to Samson. He was betrayed by his ungodly lover. Lust was a sin, she told us. I didn’t know what ‘lust’ meant, but I knew we must not stare at boys. And so I looked at Samson.
On the back of the door of our guest bathroom was a world map. Not your average world map. Instead of the land, it mapped the sea. All known areas of the ocean floor. Maps were my father’s specialty. Ocean maps his profession.
“Oceanographic cartographer. Oceanographic cartographer. Oceanographic cartographer.” I memorized the words carefully so I could tell my friends at school with pride exactly what my father did. It sounded as grand as I saw him.
My father always knew when I was sad. “Shall we go exploring?” he’d ask and he’d take my hand, lead me into the hallway between the front door and the kitchen, switch on the soft light of the guest bathroom and perch me on his knee. As we sat on the lowered lid of the toilet, I’d tell him where I’d like to go, and he’d adjust his golden frames on the bridge of his nose, and tell me all about the hidden depths of the seas wherever I would point. The Mariana Trench, my father told me, was the deepest point of any ocean. You would have to travel twenty-seven miles down to touch the bottom. Even if you stood Mount Everest in the gap, its peak would not touch the ocean’s surface. Even sunlight could not reach that far. I’d ask him what lives down in the Mariana Trench.
‘Sea cucumbers,’ he’d reply. And I’d giggle, and forget why I was sad.
In the year after my father died, I would creep into the guest bathroom in the middle of the night, turn on the soft light, perch on the toilet seat, and stare at the map. Some nights I would sit there for hours, tracing the landscape of the deep with my eyes, finding all the underwater volcanoes, summoning the smell of mint. I’d find the Mariana Trench, located near the island of Guam in the Pacific Ocean. I’d remember the sea cucumbers, and feel the sadness settle in deeper. When Mother joined her church, she took down the frame and threw it away along with all father’s work. She would draw the maps from now on. She didn’t know that there were nights when I would still sit in the bathroom, and stare at the back of the door.
In the years After Dad, school became unbearable. It turned out one of the things that made God angry was the way women dressed. The way they adorned themselves, the way they pierced their skin with metal, and painted their nails. ‘Why would you want to embellish your natural God-given beauty?’ was the question. Or rather, commandment. And so while the other girls wore short denim skirts, and t-shirts with the slogans of their favorite bands, pink calf boots and jelly sandals, I wore dresses, always below the knee, always below the elbow. They were pretty, in an 1850s sort of way. I longed for a pair of shiny heeled sandals, almost as much as I longed for salvation. The type of sandals that made a sound when you walked in the playground. And I longed to wear them without tights. To experiment with the temporary tattoos my classmates swapped during recess, to plait beads into my hair, and wear a different pair of earrings every day. For a friendship bracelet, made of colored thread.
But of course I had no friends in school. All of them were sinners. That was obvious. And we could not mix with sinners. We could warn them. In fact, we should warn them, said my mother. Warn them of the consequences of earning God’s wrath. I did try. In earnest. When they would ask me why I was not allowed to cut my hair, why I was wearing tights in summer, or why I couldn’t join their sleepovers (to which they soon stopped inviting me), I would try to explain that they were making God angry. They didn’t understand, probably because I never really understood. Their curious enquiries soon became hostile glances. Possibly because they noticed me staring at their bare ankles. I had never noticed ankles, nor elbows, nor calves, nor earlobes, not before the age of nine. Suddenly, they were all I could see. I would lie in bed, imagining what it would be like to walk into school in a short denim skirt and a pair of sandals. How they’d all look at me then.
Of course I had friends in Bible class. The children of ‘good God-fearing parents’, as my mother would describe them. We would sing songs together and spend summers by the lake, learning Bible stories, making collages of quotations, playing team games, the girls with the girls, and the boys with the boys, of course. And I’d lie awake at night, trying not to think of the boys, who I saw across the canteen or the playing field, the ones with floppy hair, the ones with freckles, the older boys with calves like Samson, trying desperately not to think of their forearms, their dimples, the space between their eyebrows, trying desperately not to make God angry. On the nights I’d dream about them, I’d wake in terror, slide out of bed, and with hands clasped and eyes so tightly shut I thought I could see flames, I’d petition God’s mercy for my sinning, so easily seducible soul.
There were two indicators of God’s anger, I learned: Mother’s unhappiness, and ‘bad things happening’. Bad things happened because God was upset with us, and so to avoid bad things happening, we must strive to make God happy. And what made God happy was worship and obedience. These, it seemed, also made Mother happy. And so I learned that the two, Mother and God, were inextricably linked. Bad things would happen if Mother was unhappy. That’s why I kept my memories of my father a secret. And when I was sure I had made God happy that day, because bad things had not happened, and mother was in a good mood, I would unwrap the box I kept in my mind, unlock it, and take out my father’s memory. Bad things would usually happen the next day. Bad things invariably do. My father had been a sinner, after all. So, it seemed, was I.
Cults thrive on isolation. And insulation. When you’re inside, you’re safe. Unless you bring your own challenges, there’s nothing to challenge you. And the songs are fun, and your mother is happy, and there’s parties and food, and you’re spending time with people who look like you, dress like you, speak the same language. They don’t have earrings, so you forget you wanted them. They don’t question the fact that yes, the girls are encouraged to have careers, but the boys are still spoiled, that women are just as valuable servants of the Lord, but the man will always have the last word. That God is All Merciful, but only if you beseech it of Him, and even then you don’t deserve it, and He may punish you anyway, but you’ll learn from it, so really it’s a blessing. They don’t ask why God’s default is anger, why He would have created us only for us to have to serve Him, they don’t ask why He is a Him. They don’t ask. You don’t ask. But everyone else does. And that’s why you spend as little time with ‘everyone else’ as possible.
Questions are like insect bites. So long as you don’t scratch them, they go away. But once you scratch, even just a little bit, it becomes inflamed. My sister never scratched. ‘They just don’t get it. They haven’t been guided.’ And she’d pray for them. But I didn’t get it, and at night, I’d beg for guidance. For peace of mind. For forgiveness. I’d pray for myself. And then I’d scratch until I’d bleed.
I learned that my head was the most dangerous place in the cult. So, I spent most of my time trying to escape it. Prayer, distraction, worship, good deeds. I’d go out with my mother to the soup kitchen at the weekends. Every weekend. Without fail. Even Christmas. In fact, especially at Christmas. Christmas was when people were lonely, desperate, more open to the Word. I’m not sure now what that Word was exactly. We seemed to say a lot of them. “The Lord loves you and wants to save you, sir. The only way free from the Fire is the Way of the Lord. Join us and join the Light.” Sometimes they would. We’d invite them into our home. Feed them with food and fear, smuggled in amongst the potatoes, gravy, and promises of heaven and a home. Sometimes they’d stay. Other times, once they’d digested what we fed them, they’d thank us and leave. I pitied them. And envied them. And then I’d get angry at them, who were they to turn away from God’s invitation? Their departure was an insult, an ingratitude, a challenge. A question.
In the year 3 AD, I began violin lessons. The Heavenly Symphony, or cult choir as I later renamed it, needed a violinist. I had always loved music, and I was only too keen to serve the Lord. It certainly seemed to make Mother smile. Mrs. Dobson, my violin teacher, was a cult member, of course. Cheerful, filled with the Light of the Lord. She made wonderful cakes. She wasn’t steely like my mother. She seemed to have soft edges. Smiled freely. Sang often. Spoke of God as though she knew Him personally. I heard from one of the girls at camp that she had been an air hostess before she’d found the Way. Before she became a teacher. I tried to imagine her in a bright red skirt suit and heels. I couldn’t. I blame Mrs. Dobson for the longevity of my cult experience. How is it possible that someone so harmless could believe in something so harmful? It can’t be all that bad if Mrs. Dobson lives by it. But I do have her to thank for the music. She taught me well. She provided me with my one reliable form of escape.
In the moments of music, when I connected bow to string, when the music would flow and I along with it, whatever was within me translated, transformed into notes, I was free. Such was the concentration needed that I didn’t have room for any other thoughts. That I played in church, and at cult Christmas concerts, camps, weddings, funerals, didn’t bother me. I no longer heard the words of the songs that irked me, because I was listening to the melody. I played my anger, I played my grief, I played my momentary moments of happiness, I played my rage and resentment. It was the only time my body and head were united. And no one could accuse me of dissent, because only I knew what the notes meant. I may be serving the symphony, but I played for myself. Not for God. In those moments, I escaped Him.
Music was how I escaped, and music was how I would eventually depart. A scholarship so prestigious and generous that not even mother, not even God, could say no to. I had not realized when I purchased it that my ticket to New York would eventually become my ticket out of the cult. I had not intended to leave, it had never crossed my mind. Not consciously. Contemplating sins, I was capable of. But contemplating life outside of the cult, that was far more than sin, that was spiritual suicide. The parameters of the cult were ringed by a fence of intense fear, a fear that not even at my deepest moments of grief I was capable of overcoming.
There are a number of antidotes to fear. One is anger. When my niece was born, in my second year at Manhattan’s School of Music, I was angry. My sister was sweet, her husband kind, they were both good natured, simple people, never had a question crossed their minds. And that’s why they were dangerous, and that’s why I was angry. Here they were, two unquestioning creatures, bringing a person, an entire human existence into a world she hadn’t chosen, into a world in which she would have no choice. Mother’s cult. In the moment I met that new-born child, I knew I had been afraid. And I was furious.
In the Bible, Samson is a devout Nazirite, endowed with extraordinary strength which he uses in the service of God to defeat the Philistines. It was a tradition, in ancient Israel, that those wishing to dedicate themselves to the Lord would abstain from ingesting any intoxicants and would not cut or shave their hair. Samson is seduced by Delilah, with whom he finally shares the secret of his strength. While he is sleeping, Delilah cuts his hair. She is paid one thousand one hundred silver coins for her pains. Bereft of his strength, Samson is captured by the Philistines who gouge out his eyes and imprison him. Blinded and weakened, Samson is made to serve his captors, and perform for them. He is taken to the temple where some three thousand onlookers are gathered to watch him. Samson asks to lean against a pillar to rest for a moment. Feeling the stone pillars with his hands, Samson, with all his human might, heaves. He brings down the temple, crushing his captors, killing himself.
In the moment my niece was born, I felt the stone pillars against my hands. And I wondered if Samson had been afraid all that time. The next morning, I cut my hair.
The thing about fear is that there is no antidote. Fear is not a poison, it is a habit. A way of seeing. When I looked up at my reflection in the hairdresser’s mirror, a cold wave of terror broke over me. I had violated a law of the cult. Not only had I cut my hair, an act only those women not dedicated to God engaged in, I had cut it short. I could hear the hairdresser cooing as I recoiled inwardly from my reflection. I could hear my mother’s voice like breaking glass in my head. I looked ‘like a man’. I had blurred the line between male and female. I had violated the black and white. Mother would be beside herself. And so would God.
I awaited my punishment. Sinners were punished. Usually when they were least expecting it. My logic was, therefore, that if I expected it at every moment, I would not at least be caught by surprise. I would rather see it coming. I looked three times every time I crossed the street. I unplugged all my sockets at night. I checked the gas stove before I slept. I checked my breasts for lumps, my urine for blood, I googled every ache and pain. No punishment came. I became angry. That night, a month after I cut my hair, I went out and bought a bottle of whiskey. It had been my father’s drink. I had always marveled at the cut glass of the decanter, and how he would always put two ice cubes in his glass, never more, whereas my sister and I would cram our tumblers with ice whenever we had the chance. “It’s traditional,’ he’d say. Well, here’s to tradition, Dad. I snatched a glass from the shelf in my kitchen before I could change my mind, grabbed two ice cubes from the tray in the fridge, and sloshed in the amber liquid. It burned the back of my throat and made my eyes water. I coughed violently. I raised my glass to the ceiling, the sky, the heavens. I drained the glass. I awoke the next morning, surprisingly. I had not died in the night, as I had expected. My face was stuck to the keyboard of my laptop. My head pounded, as though my conscience was hammering on my skull trying to get back in. I wiggled the mouse to wake up the screen. I had been looking at maps of the ocean. That night, I told my mother that work was heavy this semester, and that I was auditioning for another music scholarship to cover additional tuition materials. She seemed pleased. I wondered if God would be happy. I went back to looking at maps.
Ten years later. It was my thirty-third birthday. The age of Christ when he was crucified. I had told my mother I was away for a recital so I couldn’t come home. I’d wanted to say goodbye, to tell her I wish she’d been the mother she could have been, and allowed me to be the daughter I could have been. I wish she’d allowed me to love her. I wanted to tell my sister I was sorry, sorry that I couldn’t protect her, sorry that she didn’t seem to even want protecting. But they would have been suspicious, so I told them I’d see them at Christmas.
I thought about my sister as I sat on the side of the boat, my back and oxygen tank facing the water. I thought about my niece who was now ten years old, whose hair reached right down her spine, whose ankles never showed. I fixed my diving mask over my face, leaned backwards, and looking up to the heavens, allowed myself to fall.
The Ancient Greek word phōs means ‘light’. It is from this word that we get photograph, photon, photosynthesis. The word phōs is used over eight hundred times in the Old and New Testaments. God, it is said, is the Light. The ocean, my father told me, can be divided into three layers, rather like a birthday cake. The uppermost layer is the euphotic zone, sunlight penetrates this layer which reaches around 200 meters in depth. Beneath this is the dysphotic zone, sunlight rapidly decreases as you go deeper through this level. Sunlight cannot reach beyond 1000 meters. This is known as the aphotic zone.
I had trained for the past ten years to dive beyond two hundred meters. Most divers never break the 40 meter mark. At this depth, the list of dangers expands rapidly. Nitrogen narcosis, arterial air embolism, oxygen toxicity, high-pressure nervous syndrome, dysbaric osteonecrosis. Not to mention ‘the bends’. Decompression sickness happens when divers ascend too quickly to the surface after a dive. It leads to bubbles forming in the body’s tissue, the result of which can be paralysis or even death. It’s why the Guinness World Record holder’s dive of 305 meters took only 12 minutes to reach, but 15 hours to ascend from. It was the one condition I was not afraid of, I did not plan to ascend.
The Mariana Trench is twenty-seven meters deep. That’s 43,452 meters. I did not intend to reach the bottom. Only the point past which light does not penetrate. I checked my dial, 115 meters. It was getting dark. The yellowing light from the setting sun above came through in waves from the surface as watery beams. I swam deeper. 198 meters. There was still an eerie blue glow. I could hear nothing but the sounds of my oxygen tank and the pounding of my pulse. 205 meters. 218. 230. It was still. Quiet. Dark. Lightless.
I stopped swimming. I couldn’t see the surface. And I couldn’t see the bottom. They say if you’re buried under an avalanche and you’re not sure which way is up, you should drop something. Gravity will let you know. Underwater, you follow the bubbles. My rebreather equipment released no bubbles. I was entirely directionless. Suspended.
“You killed my father for far less.” There was no answer. There never was.
I fiddled with the equipment to allow some air out of the tube attached to my mask. The bubbles floated upwards. I dived deeper. 245 meters. The pressure against my suit, my skin, was intense. My pulse pounded louder.
“You want to know my greatest sin, God? I’m not even afraid anymore. I’m not afraid!”
I screamed the thought into the deep. Into the darkness. Into the lightless void. And I waited. The light on my wrist flashed indicating I had two minutes before I should head up to the surface.
It was so still. So quiet. So dark. And I was so ready. And I was waiting. In the furthest place from the light. For God to deliver His final blow. It would make no difference if I closed my eyes, there was nothing to see.
Nothing except the sudden arrival of a spectrum of rainbow hues.
A ctenophore.
Out of the depths, a creature, only about as big as my hand, glided past me. Pulsating.
Ever so gently glowing.
