I'll Be You(90)

“I wouldn’t know.” I registered the disapproval in her voice. “So…Dr. Cindy and I were discussing you today. July is the month of our annual upper-level retreat in Ojai. We really think you should attend, for a long weekend at least. We don’t want you to lose your momentum.” She hesitated. “Frankly, Dr. Cindy is a little upset. She feels like you don’t appreciate the work that she’s put into you, that you’re choosing to abandon us now that you’ve got what you wanted out of the program. And she had such high hopes for you.”

I imagined Dr. Cindy’s disapproving eyes fixing on me and felt a little shiver of panic. I remembered my confession, hidden away God knows where. I didn’t want Dr. Cindy to be angry at me.

“I swear, I didn’t abandon the program. I’m still totally committed.”

“Then you’ll come to the retreat? It’s a guaranteed way to jump a level, maybe even two if you stay long enough. You’re so close.”

I glanced down at Charlotte, who was trying to wedge a violet ball of Play-Doh into her nose. I gently pried it from her fingers, tossed it in the sink. A few months back, I would have jumped at the opportunity to go to Ojai—that mysterious sanctum, only for the anointed—but now I felt a coil of undefinable dread.

And yet, Iona was right. I’d already invested so much into GenFem. Almost half a million dollars, plus a year of my life and every relationship I valued. How silly it would be to quit before seeing it through to Level Ten, when everything might finally get easy again. “I’d love to go. It’s just…what would I do with Charlotte?”

“That’s what grandparents are for!” Iona crowed. “For God’s sake, give yourself a few days off. You’re a mom, not a saint. Don’t let motherhood obliterate your sense of self. In fact, that’s the whole theme of this retreat: taking control over yourself by learning how to let go when it matters.” She paused, I heard her flipping through papers on the other end of the line. “Look—this retreat is going to be so special. We’ve got dozens of women flying in from the Toronto and New Jersey centers, women who we really see as the future leaders of GenFem. All the top Mentors will be there. I’ll be there—we can even carpool! And I really think it would be good for you right now to remind yourself that you’re part of a loving, nurturing community.”

Community. This plucked a chord in me. Charlotte and I had been cloistered in the house for months. We hadn’t joined the local mommy-and-me playgroups or taken baby music classes or organized playdates with neighbor kids. When we left the house—for a hike, or to go to the playground—it was always at odd hours, when fewer people were out and about. Because what if she was recognized? The case of Missing Emma Gonzalez had never quite made the national news—I suspected, with dismay, that this had something to do with her Latino surname—but with just a few clicks on Google I’d found the articles in the Arizona newspapers and the Facebook page with her photo. All it would take was some eagle-eyed transplant from Scottsdale to get too close on the playground swings.

I kept telling myself that it was just a matter of time until we could breathe more easily—already, she was a different child from the one I’d picked up off the lawn just a few months back, and soon she would look different again. But until then, being in public made me feel panicky.

If there was any safe place for me, it was GenFem, where my secret was already being held without judgment. Where I was seen as a “future leader,” not despite what I’d done but because of it.

Maybe Iona was right, I thought, and I’d abandoned the very community that I needed the most. Maybe it would be good to remind myself of the support system that had validated my choices, to recommit myself to the Method, the movement, to Dr. Cindy Medina and a future as a Mentor.

Eleven days later, I was in Ojai.





32




THEY CUT MY HAIR on the very first night.

We had assembled for dinner in the great hall of the main lodge, a cavernous room with spiderwebs drifting from the beams overhead and nails in the wood paneling where decades of Christian summer camp photos once hung. The table where I sat was pitted and scarred with children’s initials, hard coins of gum embedded in its underside.

There were nearly two dozen women on the retreat with me, mostly strangers but also a few upper-level Neos that I knew from the Santa Barbara center. One of the latter was Ruth, a mother of four in her late fifties whose husband had dumped her for a Peloton instructor. She had proceeded to gain sixty pounds in a year, a rebuke to her husband and his hardbody girlfriend, which of course just made her more miserable. Since Ruth joined GenFem, Dr. Cindy had given Ruth Sufferance after Sufferance, almost all of them calorie restrictions, in order to teach her self-control. She’d lost much of the weight, but this state of semipermanent starvation had a somewhat detrimental effect on Ruth’s mood. As we sat there, listening to a parade of Mentors tell us about the retreat’s activities, Ruth grumbled under her breath to me.

“No massages, huh? No hot tub? Not even yoga. Some retreat.”

“There’s daily morning exercise,” I offered helpfully. “But I don’t think it’s that kind of retreat. They never said it was. It’s mostly about workshops and learning, not relaxation.”

“Sure isn’t. Did you see that pool? It’s got a foot of dirt at the bottom. ‘State-of-the-art headquarters,’ my ass. I wonder if they actually have a plan to upgrade this dump. God knows they have the money.” She adjusted the neckline of the dress they’d given us to wear during our time at the retreat: white for Level Eight, red for Level Nine, yellow for Level Ten Mentors. “And what’s up with this shroud we have to wear? I think it’s giving me hives.”