Incredible: Chapter 4

Give and Take

Thank you for your patience, folks. I continue the memoir with unnecessary details removed and some events altered, deleted, or shifted in time to protect the innocent. The events themselves are true.

A black labrador hauling a log out of the surf

What followed was a slow process of reeling me in. Elena would be warm and loving for a few days, and then she would turn cold and reject me for no discernible reason. Had I said or done something? I would try harder. I would return to her favor for a while, then unexpectedly I would be on the outs again. 

This pattern repeated at irregular intervals. I never could tell what to expect. My sense of well-being started to revolve around her opinion. I placed all the blame for Elena’s hot-and-cold behavior on myself. She wasn’t the one at fault. All I knew was that for the first time I was part of a group that wanted me. I had a friend who loved me (I thought) and I was now desperate to keep her.  I was a recent convert, only about 5 years along. I knew some things about the Christian faith, but not all. This I knew: Jesus said we had to be holy, as his heavenly Father was holy. Elena said we were to be holy, set apart, a special group meant to preach to the world. The things she said attracted me–they scratched me where I itched.

 As time went on, though, she told us that no one not a part of our little band could be trusted. Even more than that, they could not be saved, because they did not have the truth. I should have asked “What truth?” but didn’t. It didn’t even cross my mind.

Elena said that we were the elect, we had secret knowledge, and everyone not part of our group was there to support us. Unless they joined our group, there was no salvation for them. 

Writing that now gives me chills. Any group that claims to have the truth and that everyone outside the group is damned is clearly wrong. Why did I not see it? This went against everything I had learned as a Christian. 

I remember spending hours reading the Bible and searching for answers. "Show me the truth, Lord," I would pray. I remember being really taken by Romans 12:2 "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect." (Romans 12:2). Unfortunately, these verses could be read both ways. Elena was not conformed to this world. But was she good and acceptable and perfect? That was the question I needed to answer. Was she holy?

Slowly Elena convinced me that we really were a chosen group who had the truth, and no one else could be trusted. It took about a year. 

I see now that her technique was very sophisticated. First she drew me in with warmth and acceptance, and then she turned off the  flow and rejected me, usually for unknown reasons. I was in anguish because of the rejection. So I set out to regain her affection, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.. I became more and more dependent on her approval, like a junkie. And yet, something inside me knew this was wrong. 

I would leave every morning, drive to work, and then spend 10 to 20 minutes in the bathroom because my body was so distressed. I didn't have anyone outside the group to turn to that I trusted. My parents were out of the question. They didn’t understand my conversion, so why would they understand. this? My old Presbyterian church was not the answer either. The pastor there didn’t like me. I had no friends, because we had moved so often growing up, and I knew no one in New Jersey except my coworkers and the Nazarene church. They would know I was crazy or worse to even consider Elena’s story! Besides, asking someone not part of the group for help would cause immediate banishment. I would be betraying the group. Even though I knew at some level that Elena's words were extreme and would be rejected by others not of our group for obvious reasons, I was so dependent on her emotionally that I couldn’t follow through with that thinking.

 The only reason I know these things is because I kept a journal after things ended in which I wrote down to the best of my recollection what had happened. 

At one point in the journal I stopped and wrote  "I need to record some of the positive things that Elena did for me." So I listed a paragraph of positive things she did.

The journal reports she encouraged me to find out what my hopes and dreams were. She helped me become freer, less inhibited. She said I needed to accept my womanhood. All these things are potentially positive, but as you will see, they can also be used to ill effect. That's it. In an entire journal’s worth of description, I devoted one paragraph to what Elena did that made me so attached to her.

Perhaps the short shrift given to Elena's positive behavior is because by the time I wrote that paragraph, the actual history was already over, and things had already taken place that were deeply wounding. I am not sure that is correct, though. I have no memory of those positive conversations, just a blank space where they should be. I would not know of them at all without the journal to tell me. In any case, the kind of support mentioned above hardly seems to justify my utter devotion.

Eventually, the tensions in the house were too much to bear. Elena, Nancy, and Susie left for California, and I decided I should go back to school to get my Ph.D. in marine biology. I moved to California (hmmm) to establish residency and apply to Scripp's Institute of Oceanography.

Despite my general emotional turmoil, I found a good job doing research at Scripps Institute Department of Biochemistry. I worked there for a year and then was  accepted at Scripps Institute of Oceanography to start graduate school the next year.

 I had a good-looking surfer friend, blonde with a sculpted form and blue eyes, and better yet, he was a sweet young man who was a new Christian. He was trying to wean himself off of surfing because he said it was an addiction for him. He was the librarian at my research institute and his name was David. 

We would sit outside in the sun during lunch and talk. He talked about the high he found in surfing, and his fear that it could become a God substitute in his life. It was very hard for him. I was no surfer, so I didn’t fully understand, but I knew we are capable of making idols of anything in our lives.

I would talk about my hopes and dreams. I didn’t mention anything to do with the cult.

The beach was right in front of us, with waves forever throwing themselves against the rocky shore. Seagulls spiraled overhead and a few people usually strolled by. It was not a swimming beach because of the force of the surf and the danger of the rocks. As we sat, a man was exercising his black labrador by heaving a log off of a rocky height into the surging water. It really was a log, not a stick, about 4 feet long and at least 4 inches in diameter. The dog would dash into the water, retrieve the log, and drag it back to his master. He would bark joyously until the man threw it again. I thought, what amazing devotion and joy in carrying out his master’s nearly impossible wishes.

 I shared a bungalow in La Jolla with another student. It was one block from the Pacific Ocean and three blocks from where the Scripps Research Institute Department of Biochemistry was at the time. I love the ocean, so to be able to see the waves crashing on the shore at work, and hear them from my bedroom at night was a dream come true. Such a gift I never imagined.  I had a new puppy. I had several friends. I was settling in. 

Then suddenly things fell apart or so it seemed to me. We had a party for graduate students from Scripps at our bungalow. There are two “Scripps,” the Scripps Research Institute, where I worked, and the Scripps Institute of Oceanography where I had applied and been accepted. I was to work with a professor who studied diatoms (diatoms are tiny plankton that swim in the water column. They have beautiful elaborate shells.)  At the party I talked to a male grad student from Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and told him about my plans. He deep-sixed them with two simple revelations.

I told him I wanted to go to sea. 

“You know they don’t allow women on the ships, right?”

“What?” I was shocked.

“They don’t have separate toilets and sleeping quarters.”

Given that I lived in a co-ed fraternity in college, this didn’t seem like a problem to me. But no, this was 1979,  early days for women’s lib, and apparently oceanographers relished their feminine-free setting.

He also told me that my professor was notorious for taking in grad students, working them to death, and not paying them, so they had to have an outside job to survive. That is a very difficult way to get a degree. It is not like college, when you only have to be in class 12-15 hours a week. Graduate students in science have to work full-time on their research, take classes, and sometimes teach. If you aren’t getting paid for your research or teaching, you have to have a regular job. It could take you twice as long to get a degree, something like 12 years instead of 6.

I must have panicked. All I know is this: I tracked down Elena’s number by asking Susie where she was and called her up. I asked Elena if I could join her in Montana. After a short pause, she said yes, but that I had to come NOW, and be prepared to give her everything. 

I said yes. I was thrilled.

What was going on inside my head, for heaven’s sake? This woman had created emotional turmoil for me. Her beliefs did not conform to Christian beliefs. I had struggled with this for a year. Yet I asked to go back!

Elena was asking me to leave everything behind and just go. This was a radical demand. Here’s the thing. I had always wanted to give up everything and follow Jesus, like the apostles. This invitation actually thrilled me, because it was a chance to live my dream, or so I thought.

So I quit my job and tossed away everything I owned (mainly textbooks) except my car, my clothes, and a few personal things. My friend David was concerned and tried to persuade me not to go.

"This is very sudden, Ann. It seems strange, maybe even wrong to just take off like this. Why does it have to be so sudden?" 

"I think this is what God wants me to do. You know how Jesus called the disciples and they left everything to follow him?"

"But she's not Jesus!"

"She does what Jesus tells her."

Despite disagreeing, he came and helped me toss my stuff in the trash and took the puppy I had recently gotten. I told my roommate there was a family emergency. At sunset, I headed north.

I continued for most of the night, stopping once to sleep in a motel for a few hours. My little yellow VW bug covered the ground steadily while I listened to music: Bridge over Troubled Waters, Hey Jude, Vincent, and the Beatles. I cried as I sang along. I was happy–I was living my dream.

I arrived in the evening of the second day, having driven from San Diego to Seattle, and then across Washington and Idaho to Montana. When I arrived they welcomed me with open arms. I gave them my car, my cash, and my credit cards.

The new house was a white frame house, freshly painted. Inside there was no furniture. There must have been some dishes and cooking supplies, but I don’t remember them. We mostly ate in restaurants using my credit cards. No sheets, blankets, or beds either. I was to sleep in the living room and Daniel and Elena were upstairs. Nancy and Susie were gone. 

Elena had acquired a new boyfriend, Daniel. He was tall, much taller than she was, with brown hair, blue eyes, and a high-arched Roman nose. His hair was long, shoulder length I think, and he wore it pulled back in a ponytail. He was a graduate student in Chemistry, and a Roman Catholic. That’s when I found out Elena was too. We went to Mass together once, and Daniel gave a bow to the tabernacle, sweeping and genuinely devout, I thought.

Elena thought he was a reincarnation of St. Francis and she was St. Clare. Given the fact that he was so devout, I was surprised he stuck around. But he seemed to accept her unorthodox thinking without difficulty.

They slept upstairs and I was downstairs in what had been the living room. We slept on the floor in our clothes. 

If Elena wanted something of mine, I gave it. I had already sent Daniel my grandmother's diamond ring to give to her. They lost it in a vacuum cleaner.

 Finally, one night she told me I had to break off with my parents as a final sign of obedience. I was to write a letter saying I would not contact them, and she wanted me to list their multiple parental faults. I don’t have the letter, but the journal says I wrote I would contact them when I was able. I cried while writing it

Daniel was a smart man. He sometimes tried to place limits on Elena's ideas, but with little success. Even though he was a devout Catholic, he went along with her, like me. What hold did she have over us? 

Well, to start, she was gracious, graceful. Her favorite Afghani dress swayed with her steps—she could have been a dancer. When she smiled, the skin around her eyes crinkled into laugh lines. She was lovely, with auburn hair, a heart-shaped face, and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose. Her voice was low and musical, and her laugh was infectious. She was incredibly charismatic. Daniel loved her, and in a way, so did I.

 Elena sold my car and bought a school bus. I thought it unwise, but she wanted to be able to travel and live in the bus. Her dreams, her clothing, and the bus all seemed to sprout right from the 1960s flower children.

On more than one occasion she tried to use me as bait to attract a man she liked and wanted as part of our group. One time it was a Russian immigrant. I spoke a little Russian, so she had me use what little I had to speak to him. He was thrilled. He swept us into his house and played Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony, all the time talking about the horrors of World War II, in Russian. I understood maybe one word here or there.

The second time this happened it was with a young grad student, humanities I think, who came down for a visit. He also was a devout Catholic. He loved my red curls, and she saw it. She had us share a floor in one room that night, but he was too much of a gentleman for anything to happen, and I was not pushy either, much to Elena’s anger. 

He left the next morning and she accused me of spoiling everything. She and Daniel went off to try to bring him back. He refused, gently. I wish him well. When they came back without him Elena said it was my fault (again).

When we ran out of money we had to move out of the house. This was not hard to do since we had nothing. 

To see if he could get his position back in his old Chemistry department and earn some money, Daniel and Elena went to Calgary in the bus. They left Elena's three children with me. I rented a motel room by the week, and we ate in the restaurant across the street using my remaining credit card.  The children felt abandoned by their mother; so did I. They had no toys and nothing to do except watch TV.

 We were all distraught because we didn't know if they would ever return. Alberta in winter can drop below -20 degrees Fahrenheit. They could easily freeze to death. I prayed they would come back soon. (In fact, on their trip it got so cold overnight that in the morning, Daniel had to build a fire under the engine to warm it so it would start.)

When they did return from their trip to Canada, they immediately collected the kids. Elena gave me $50 and told me I couldn't come with them, without explaining. They left me standing on the doorstep, devastated. (I learned later that they were in a hurry because they had heard that Elena’s husband was in town to take the kids.)

Why was she leaving me behind? I couldn't see the truth yet. It was only in writing this memoir that I realized she probably only wanted me when I had money to give them.