cult – Bethany Leger

I Forgot I Had a Sister-in-Law

This isn’t really about my sister-in-law. It’s also not clickbait. Until a month ago, I literally forgot she existed.

The last time I saw her, she was wearing a wedding dress and exchanging vows with my brother. That was almost ten years ago. They settled on a small reception at a friend’s house. Guests drank champagne in a living room that looked like it was decorated by Laura Ashley herself, while I excused myself to sneak shots of tequila I had stashed in the fridge behind a fruit tray. They cut the cake (I didn’t eat it.) The majority of the time I hid in the kitchen, pacing in front of the fridge like I was guarding a moat. “Is something wrong with you?” my mother asked under her breath, not so much out of concern, but irritation. “I’m just tired.” Only, I had a sneaking suspicion this was the last time I would see any of them ever again.

Being raised as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was very lonely. That’s not the case for everyone. Some come from large families. Even if they, too, are indoctrinated from birth, they still have siblings to play with. They have cousins in the neighborhood, and Grandma lives two blocks down. My father’s side of the family were “believers”, but may as well have not existed. They lived a few hours away in West Texas and made their one token visit in the eighties (frankly, I think it was an aberration.) My mother’s family were New Yorkers, none of them Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the ones who were lived on the other side of the Atlantic and talked shit about us in German at the dinner table.

What does this have to do with my sister-in-law? I had decades of practice detaching myself from people. As one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was taught to avoid my classmates, coworkers, and yes, even blood relatives who didn’t “serve Jehovah.” That left me with a small pool of forced associates at the Kingdom Hall, and an estranged brother whose neck I would hug for the last time on his wedding day. I don’t blame him. It couldn’t have been easy being a 16 year-old guy with a sister in kindergarten. The age gap didn’t help, but the Jehovah’s Witnesses managed to drive the final wedge between us, removing what little semblance of normalcy I had always longed for.

My hunch was correct. I never saw them again, because I flew back to North Carolina, realized I was in a cult, and left shortly after. This is not what I want. No one wants this. But these are the rules: you leave, you’re dead. My brother’s wedding day was the last time I saw my mother, eyes bloodshot from orchestrating the day’s festivities, but relieved the wet blanket was going. I said goodbye to my father, stomach rotund and content. And, I said my final goodbye to my sister-in-law, beaming and beautiful on her big day. I can’t save her now.

Painter, Pianist, Persona Non-Grata

My father is a pianist. He plucks each key with care and precision, and could tune a Steinway using only his sense of smell. I don’t play piano, but I’ve enjoyed painting for over fifteen years. I may not boast a sprawling loft in Soho, but as a fun hobby, it helps scratch the itch.

I inherited my father’s creative streak. Unfortunately, my father is also a devout Jehovah’s Witness, and the same proclivities that make him such a talented musician and craftsman are the same qualities the Organization has found a way to exploit. In the name of faith, my father has put the same sweat and toil he puts into his piano business into working for people who tell him he can’t speak to me.

My mother and I have a complicated relationship. It’s a mother-daughter thing. But my father was simple: he bought me the junk cereal I wasn’t supposed to eat, and when asked if I wanted to see Babe, a movie about a talking pig, or Clueless, he laughed his ass off watching a bunch of teenagers make stupid decisions. “How could you take her to see that?” My mother was not amused. As if!

My father has been an elder in the Jehovah’s Witnesses for over fifty years. These are the pastors or priests of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, church officials responsible for leading the congregation. Since the Organization doesn’t have paid clergy, my father has devoted decades of his life to this role without receiving a penny. My father has inspired people, and at times, been thrown under the bus by his own cohorts when he followed his conscience rather than the consensus. I can respect his hard work and ethical compass. But, I also wish I could just watch my dad play the piano.

My father made the “choice” to dedicate himself to the Organization at 10 years old. Before my father hit puberty, he committed himself to a religious ideology that would slowly strip him of his humanity, and drive a wedge between him and his only daughter. When I told my father I was revoking my membership from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, he made it clear that he would “remain loyal to Jehovah and His earthly organization.” His response was immediate and rote, like turning on your blinker at a stoplight. And just like that, our relationship came to a screeching halt. No more Chopin. No more Rustle of Spring filling the house while my mother cooks. Well, maybe so. I just won’t be there to hear it.

Maybe I wasn’t meant to have my parents forever. Maybe my mother was supposed to feed me, clothe me, and give me a strong voice. Maybe my father passed down some artistic gene that would make me appreciate the visual arts, a skill that would help me get through strange and difficult times. Whatever the magical reason is for why this all happened, I no longer use art as a diversion; an escape from the brewing tension in my brain. I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not just to make others comfortable. And that’s music to my ears. Thanks, Pop.

Eat Sh*t and Die: How My Mother Explained Christmas

The holidays were in full swing as my teacher strolled up and down each aisle complimenting a bunch of first graders on their crappy construction paper Christmas trees. As one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, I wasn’t allowed to celebrate Christmas, so I clumped a handful of cotton balls into the shape of a snowman. A borderline heretic, I then slipped my glue-encrusted fingers through a random pair of craft scissors and carved out the shape of an Evergreen. “Aren’t you going to decorate your tree?”, asked Ms. Ridinger, hovered over my desk. No, I responded, instantly riddled with guilt. I just want to admire its natural beauty.

If I ever see a child sitting in the mulch on a sunny day, and this child tells me they don’t want to swing on the swing, or slide down the slide, they ‘just want to admire the architecture’, I’m going to hunt his mother for meat. It’s not that I’m against a budding Frank Lloyd Wright, or even a future horticulturalist. But, a child’s instinct is to play and explore, and my teacher was entirely justified in the silent eye-roll I guarantee she did in her heart. Who the hell are this kid’s parents, and why don’t Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrate Christmas?

After bringing my bare, not-Christmas tree home, my mother sat me down to explain why we refrain from engaging in the festivities. She placed a glass of water in front of me. “Look at this clean glass of water,” she said. “Now, imagine I put a teensy, weensy drop of poop in it.” I waited for the inevitable punchline that was going to teach me why I can’t have a normal childhood. “Most of the water looks clean, but that one little drop contaminated the whole glass.” Christmas might look beautiful and harmless with its twinkle lights and presents, she reasoned, but its origins are tainted by pagan traditions.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are technically not wrong about Christmas. The Romans co-opted Christ’s birth as an excuse to get wasted during the winter solstice, and today, we watch Will Ferrell on December 25^th while exchanging material goods we most likely don’t need. And, if our recent decade of marinating in extreme political correctness taught us anything, it’s that you’ll be put before a firing squad before you brazenly assume someone celebrates Christmas, as opposed to Hanukkah or Ramadan, or worships their garden gnome. But, there’s a problem with my mother’s logic. When I performed this same purity test to trace the origins of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I found my fair share of shit: thousands of cases of child sexual abuse that were never reported to law enforcement. Charles Taze Russell’s fascination with the occult. The Watchtower Organization’s ties to the United Nations. The fact that the Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrated Christmas even after claiming they were cleansed from pagan practices in 1919*. The math wasn’t mathing.

“Would you want to drink the water after you knew poop was in it? Eww,” she made a yucky face, satisfied with her argument but blind to her own hypocrisy. I could ask my mother the same question. Would you want to align yourself with a group that has sketchy roots and a history of systematically abusing the most innocent among you? “If we don’t stay faithful to Jehovah,” she warned, “we could lose our life.”

Drink up, Ma. I have a tree to decorate.

*For more info about Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrating Christmas, check out JWFacts.

Disfellowshipped: The First Time I Talked to a Dead Guy

He wore a tan suit that looked like it came off the clearance rack at JCPenney. When he didn’t respond, I poked him again in the shoulder. “Hey, it’s me!” I waved my magic marker-stained hand in front of his face. But, his gaze fell downward, blank. I backed away slowly and shuffled over to my mother who was seated on the opposite side of the room. “Mama,” I whispered. “I said hi to Jamal but he didn’t talk to me.” My mother, draped in her auburn scarves and garnet earrings, craned her neck around. I watched as her eyes tried to locate him in the crowd. Then, leaning in towards me, she lowered her voice. “He’s disfellowshipped.”

Let me break this bullshit down for you: Jamal* was 17 years old. When he was a child, he lost his father in a tragic accident. Then, his mother suffered a traumatic brain injury. Jamal was my brother’s buddy, and was one in a handful of young Jehovah’s Witness men in town. No one cared about Jamal. His mom was kooky, and his younger sister was obese. His family didn’t bring any clout—or money—to the congregation. Then, Jamal got into some trouble and was excommunicated. At 17, a fatherless boy was ostracized by the only people he knew, and left for dead.

No, Jamal was not dead, but he might as well have been. I wish this were an exaggeration, but no one would know Jamal’s whereabouts unless they smelled the body weeks later. Through the naïve eyes of a child, I couldn’t comprehend why a bunch of grown-ups would do something so cruel. Whatever Jamal did, he didn’t deserve to be ignored in a room full of people, people who were supposed to love him and have his back.

Then, it happened to my brother. Like Jamal, my brother was “dead” for two years. “How’s your brother?” they’d ask me, knowing damn well they exiled a young man. Their smirk was a knife to my seven-year-old heart, and they took me for stupid. But, the funny thing about seven-year-olds is they don’t stay seven. They get older, they remember, and sometimes, they become writers.

My parents are devout Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I’ve brought them shame for speaking out against the Organization. But if I don’t say something, I teach them that shunning is okay. The Jehovah’s Witnesses traumatized Jamal, my brother, and continue to traumatize thousands more with their inhumane shunning policy. Jamal and my brother may be grown men now, but their wounds will never heal. They were forced to hang up their skateboards, dreams, and their dignity, their memory forever ossified as Prodigal Sons who crawled their way back into God’s good graces.

By the way, I’m dead now, too. I revoked my membership from the Jehovah’s Witnesses on New Year’s Eve, 2017, because I could no longer align myself with an Organization that has ruined countless lives. However, I’m only dead to my parents and former friends. In all other respects, I’m alive and well. The sun still shines on the wicked!

If you’re reading this, and you’re currently dead, I want you to know it gets better. Yes, it’s shitty for a while, but it does get better. And, if you decide to go back, I understand. Your family has put you in an extremely difficult position. But. I hope you’re honest with yourself as to why you’re going back, because anyone who would do that to you sure as hell doesn’t love you.

If you’re dead, welcome back to life.

*Not his real name.

Resources about disfellowshipping and shunning in the Jehovah’s Witnesses:

Jehovah’s Witnesses call disfellowshipping a “loving provision”:

https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20150415/disfellowshipping-a-loving-provision/

A shunned Jehovah’s Witness mother kills her family, then herself:

https://www.freep.com/story/news/2018/05/18/keego-harbor-murder-suicide-lauren-stuart/620709002

Jehovah’s Witnesses pressure families to not communicate with disfellowshipped family members or friends:

https://www.jw.org/en/library/magazines/w20130115/let-nothing-distance-you-from-jehovah/

Check out JWFacts for more information and updates about Jehovah’s Witnesses’ shunning practices.

I Hope You’re Choking in Heaven

The Bible says, “look after the widows.” (James 1:27) Gladys* was an 82-year-old veteran Jehovah’s Witness. In the span of forty years, she completed several holy tours, preaching throughout multiple states and countries. After retiring from missionary work, she smelled like cat food and watched soap operas from her recliner. Gladys was a widow, and I quietly wondered how many years I’d get if I pushed her down the stairs.

Gladys was an asshole. She spoke over you and had a condescending stare as if she were waiting for a punchline. She was more Estelle Getty than Jesus; which would be awesome if it were her job to make people laugh for a living. (Not the case, pussycat.) Instead, Gladys believed she belonged to a select few destined to live in heaven with Jesus after they die. The Jehovah’s Witnesses refer to this VIP group as the “144,000”, a number they plucked from the highly-symbolic book of Revelation to support their skewed interpretation of the End Times. If Jesus were President, the 144,000 would be his administration; executives who vow to help Jesus rule over the humans. Gladys longed for heaven, so she could literally look down on everyone else.

When it comes to cranky old people, I’m of two minds. First, I don’t know what they’ve had to endure, so I should show compassion. The other half of me says, if you’ve managed to isolate yourself from everyone with your Bible-beating and inflated sense of self-importance, well, karma’s a bitch. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other far-right evangelicals, are stocked with cranky old widows like Gladys, because this environment validates and reinforces their narcissism. Of course, there’s something to be said for making it that long, for having a sage perspective that comes with decades of life experience. The catch is, if you’re going to come full circle and insist on behaving like an entitled toddler, no one’s going to stick around to change your diapers.

Yes, I’m going to be a widow one day. I’ve tried to force my husband to sign a pact that says we die together, holding hands in conjoined hospital beds. But, being that he’s ten years older, he reminds me that the odds are not stacked in my favor. Maybe this prospect scares me and I, too, end up cranky and distressed. Maybe I end up needing a home health aide. Maybe I wind up on a park bench talking to pigeons. At the very least, I don’t harbor some delusion of cohabitating with Christ to boss around future generations.

Gladys used to eat a pudding cup in the afternoons. One day, her tired granddaughter, who I happened to adore and who had an appointment she couldn’t get out of, asked if I would watch her grandmother for a few hours. Once we were alone, Gladys demanded I drive clear across town in rush hour to pick up more of her favorite pudding cups at the one grocery store that still carried them. I said, no.

“You’re a real piece of work,” she said, rolling her eyes. Then, she turned her back to me and headed downstairs to the finished basement where she lived.

Later, I heard a commotion somewhere in the house. I followed the sound to the top of the staircase to hear Gladys choking. Oh shit, I thought. I hoofed it down the stairs and stepped through the door which was already partially open. “Are you okay?” Before responding to me, she regained her composure and placed her pudding cup by the phone. Someone was on speaker.

“Hey,” she yapped into the receiver. “Let me call you back.” The other person didn’t hear her.

“I’m with you Gladys—” said the voice on the other end, “—she’s an idiot.”

Gladys died a year later. I’ve met my share of pious curmudgeons over the years, but Gladys takes the cake (or, pudding). In honor of Gladys, I raise my spoon: I hope you choke on it.

Amen.

(*Her real name. That’s how much she sucks.)

I Don’t Drink, But I’m Trying to Start

I did a lot of solo travel in my twenties. Bored on the home turf, I networked with other Jehovah’s Witnesses to expand my social horizons. I want to check out Chicago, I’d say. Anyone have a cousin in San Francisco? Boston? I was beginning to close my eyes and fling darts at a map. At one point, I became obsessed with the Pacific Northwest. Dallas was a concrete jungle, hot and unrelenting, and Seattle was the home to Seasonal Affective Disorder. Sign my ass up.

The family I stayed with on that first trip was fun and generous. The wife was in real estate, and the husband was a photographer. As Witnesses go, they were very well off and had property on the Puget Sound. I had hoped to visit every summer as a respite from the Texas heat, so when they eventually asked me to housesit while they went to Central America, I hopped on a plane faster than you could fling a fish across Pike Place Market.

As planned, I looked for the local Witnesses. During the first week of what was supposed to be four, let’s just say, I would’ve received a warmer welcome sharing rusty needles near a dumpster fire under the I-5. I got stank-face immediately from married 19-year-olds; they were on their starter marriage, and feared I was moving in on their husbands whose facial hair was still coming in. Then, I met a modern-day Judas, a depressive frenemy who offered to show me Seattle landmarks only to talk trash behind my back to other girls in the congregation. One was especially sweet. “Why are you even here?”, she snipped. I dipped into my purse and offered her a Prozac, but the gesture was lost.

As my trip dragged on and the already frosty reception took a biting turn, I apologized to my lovely friends down in Costa Rica and booked the first flight out. The evening before I left, I stood on their front lawn to watch the sun set over the water. It was bittersweet, knowing I was leaving behind a beloved slice of the world just to get some relative peace back home. Suddenly, I heard a voice from across the street. “Hey there”, she called out, maneuvering the sprinkler in her yard from one side to the other. “Are you the house sitter?” I gave a polite nod to the friendly neighbor. “If you want to come over for a glass of wine, we’d love to have you.”

Like any cult, it’s us versus them. But, what happens when you realize your people are not your people? Is it important, or lazy, to create these moral shortcuts? Is it possible that you might need to reassess your relationships? Your religion, or politics? Your desperate need to be right? I felt disappointed and isolated by my religious community, but if anything was going to drive me to drink, it was a nice stranger confirming my suspicions. The nameless neighbor across the street showed me more kindness with her invitation, the only invitation to someone’s home in the two weeks I was alone—and she wasn’t one of “us”.

A source later told me that two people cried when they heard of my early departure. Of course, they weren’t crying for me. They cried because their life sucked, and they knew it was easier to shit on me than perform any self-reflection. Call it insecurity, or a genuine chemical imbalance from a lack of sunlight, I don’t know, or care. Wine Lady may not have had the answers to life’s greatest questions, and I didn’t need her to.

Happy “Beth” Day: Eating Birthday Cake with a Clean Conscience

Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate birthdays because a long, long time ago, a drunk, horny King Herod dumped his wife, shacked up with his sister-in-law, requested his stepdaughter Salome do a creepy little shimmy for his birthday, then told her she could have anything she wanted. Apparently, the sadistic little shit and her mother ordered John the Baptist’s head on a party tray. So, considering the astronomical rate of beheadings that occur at birthday parties nowadays, Jehovah’s Witnesses naturally want to distance themselves from such revelry.

My parents secretly celebrated my birthday for years. On the morning of September twenty-first, my bedroom door would crack open, my mother’s grin peeking through the doorframe like Jack Nicholson’s stunt double: “Guess who’s one year older today?” For the record, I appreciate the effort. I knew birthdays were against the rules, and they were trying to find a way to celebrate their daughter in a way that still let them sleep at night. They came up with a clever solution: on my seventeenth birthday, my mother pulled an ice cream cake out of the freezer with the following words swirled across the top in cursive frosting: Happy Beth Day!

Yes, we acknowledged the absurdity of pretending we weren’t being rebellious—or, maybe we weren’t? It didn’t say “Happy Birthday” we reasoned, blue frosting smeared on our red hands. I find this even more humorous since my birthday fell on a Sunday that year; we had just returned from the meeting, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ version of church services. We spent two hours denouncing anything associated with mainstream society, then we went home and stuffed our faces with Baskin Robbins.

Coincidentally, my twenty-fourth birthday also fell on a meeting night. Afterwards, I made the mistake of mentioning it was my birthday to my brother’s then-girlfriend who was not a Jehovah’s Witness and was dumbfounded that I wasn’t out getting wasted. She promptly whisked me away to a dive bar where I was given a birthday girl shout-out and handed a flight of Buttery Nipples. It was awkward—but so is convincing yourself (and trying to convince others) that you’re not in a cult. If I was going to hang out with the heathens and consume three to six ounces of a smutty beverage, why bother with the whole religious act? Why walk the line? And why did my parents, two grown people, need to commit culinary subterfuge to celebrate the birth of their own child?

A lot of my Jehovah’s Witness peers never had the chance to celebrate their birthday growing up. Their parents gave them chili-bowl haircuts and beat the shit out of them. You had it good, they say. Your parents were awesome. Whether it was sneaking me a cake, a trip to the movies, or a wink-wink on my special day, my parents were awesome for pushing back—so far as I was willing to not turn them in.