I'll Be You(93)

I lay there in the dark, acknowledging what I hadn’t wanted to see before. How had Ruth and I both ended up succumbing to our worst instincts? It would be easy to blame GenFem, I thought, but that felt like I would be letting myself off the hook. Yes, Dr. Cindy’s Method had unearthed the darkness within us, brought it to the surface, but we let it define who we were. We secretly wanted to be like this; GenFem just gave us permission. And now we couldn’t escape it.

GenFem was the punishment for the very flaws it unearthed.

“So what do we do?” I whispered.

“Nothing,” Ruth said bluntly. “I’ll be a Mentor soon and then I’ll get my cut of it all, too. That’s why I’m sticking it out. Top leadership has to be making mid six figures, don’t you think? I mean, Dr. Cindy flies private.”

Something in me protested at this. “But that’s not really the point of being a Mentor, is it? It’s about wisdom and self-knowledge. It’s about being the leader of a new women’s movement.”

Ruth snorted. “Movement. Please. There’s no real movement; we’re not changing the world. It’s just a concept that they spoon-feed us to get us to feel like we’re in the service of something bigger than ourselves instead of doing something that’s innately selfish.” She laughed softly. “I mean, the point of the whole Method is to get you what you want most, isn’t it? I wanted to lose sixty pounds, I wanted to be stronger. And I did. I’m skinnier and I’m not the emotional weakling that I was and I hate him instead of hating myself.” She paused. “I bet you got what you wanted, too, or else you wouldn’t be at Level Eight, right?”

I thought of Charlotte, the soft give of her cheek pressed against mine. “Yes,” I said.

“So, wasn’t it worth it?”

Suzy’s snore caught in her throat. I wondered whether she might be feigning sleep, listening in, eager to report on our conversation. Ruth, too—how was I to know whether or not she was a spy, spinning yarns to get me to admit that I wasn’t as committed to the Method as I should be?

“Of course it was,” I lied.

“Like I said.” She sounded triumphant. “So what’d you do? It’s your turn. No judgment.”

I turned to lie on my side, facing away from Ruth, so that I was staring into the blank void of the cabin wall. The night chill had seeped into the concrete floor, the metal coils of the bunk bed, until it penetrated deep into my core. I didn’t answer and I didn’t answer and eventually I heard Ruth sigh and roll over. I waited until her snores had joined Suzy’s before I let myself cry.



* * *



—

A bell woke us at dawn the next morning. Before breakfast, a Mentor from Toronto took us on a nine-mile hike up Matilija Canyon, through the poppy-strewn valley and past the scorch on the fire-blackened hills, then up into the mountains, until we reached a modest waterfall. The women chattered and perspired, sharing complaints about politics and the patriarchy and treacherous ex-husbands. We all seem to have exes. It was all reassuringly normal compared to the previous evening—just a women’s retreat!—which made it easier to convince myself that my conversation with Ruth had been a fever dream, nothing of great concern. Ruth was paranoid, that’s it.

The hike was followed by cold showers, and then a morning of workshops on subjects like “Summoning the Warrior Woman Within” and “Childhood Perceptual Distortions: Letting Go and Growing Up” and “Mastering Your Own Life: No Victims, Only Choices.” A light lunch was followed by reading and then one-on-one Reenactments with the Mentors. In the afternoon, we did Service, which was glorified camp upkeep: cleaning the bathrooms, walking to town for groceries, washing dishes in the kitchen. In the evening we had study sessions with Dr. Cindy, Confrontations, and a new exercise called Circle of Confidence where we all yelled trigger words at a member until she found her inner strength to scream back at us.

Despite everything, I found myself enjoying it. (Or: Maybe I am just my mother’s daughter, and the impulse for denial was still too strong.) I enjoyed the camaraderie of the other women as we combed through Dr. Cindy’s patented words in search of the secrets to a better life, as we sweated our way through our hikes and cried through our Circles and laughed over the near-inedible meals we were served. I teared up when Kelly—a Level Nine cancer survivor with alarming eyebrows and a gruff demeanor—was promoted to Mentor and burst out crying. I even started to feel tenderness for poor Suzy, who admitted in a Confrontation that her parents’ wildly unrealistic expectations for her had led her to self-harm. (But thanks to the Method, she’d finally stopped cutting herself.) We were all in this together, exhausted and dizzy with hunger and light with the freedom of letting go. I remembered that this was part of what drew me to GenFem in the first place: the camaraderie that comes from feeling seen and understood.



* * *



—

On my third morning, I was headed up the stairs to shower after the hike when Roni stopped me. She was nearly a foot taller than me, her back ramrod straight under her loose yellow dress, her hand cool and dry on my sweat-sticky arm.

“Iona told me about your house,” she said.

“What did she tell you?” And why was my house a topic of conversation? I wondered.

“That you think it’s just too much house for you right now.” She smiled knowingly. “She said you want to unburden yourself so that you can move forward in your life.”