Paris: The Memoir(34)
I bolted out of bed in the morning and cleaned the room. If there was a hair on a pillowcase or a wrinkle in the blanket, the team leader would tear apart my bunk, dump my drawer, and tell me to start over. And then they’d tear apart Blanda’s stuff just to make her hate me. Sometimes they didn’t give a reason; they just tore up the room to mess with us and make us miss breakfast.
Working outside in stocking feet was unpleasant, but working inside was worse. Working inside meant scrubbing toilets and floors with creepy staff people hanging around smoking and leering and making menacing comments to girls who were down on hands and knees. Outside, there was cold, clean air, and carting rocks and logs up to the top of the hill gave me a better view of the surrounding area. It looked like miles and miles of nothing but trees, but every once in a while, I saw dust coming up from a gravel road or a wisp of smoke from a chimney, which gave me some idea of where the town might be.
I forced myself to eat the sort of food I wouldn’t feed a dog, because I had to stay strong. I tipped my head up and drank shower spray to supplement the inadequate water we were given after hours of manual labor.
Stay hydrated. Stay pretty. Be ready to climb out a window.
During “school” hours, we were required to write “dirt lists” and “disclosures,” owning up to all our “cop-outs”—sins, evil thoughts, bad things that we had done or that had been done to us. These confessions were used as ammunition during Rap. I refused to get in there and blow people away, so I was constantly on bans, but I never offered anything of substance on my dirt list, so they had only the limited information in my file to blow me away with.
These broken CEDU people practiced cruelty like a martial art: largely self-defense but lethal as needed. The person getting blown away would sit there with big, wounded, watery eyes, and, for the moment, it was tempting to pounce. You wanted to feel safe, and there’s a brittle shell of power in being a bully. But that shell of safety is weak and unstable, and what goes around comes around, so the bullies were more terrified than anyone else. The kids who did the hurting were just as damaged as the kids they victimized.
The nightly smoosh was just—ugh. Beyond. There was literally no escape from it. Thinking about it makes me want to fall into a tub of sea salt and hand sanitizer. We all did what we had to do to survive, and it left deep scars. I don’t know who those kids were or if they’ll ever see this, but it wasn’t their fault. Or mine. None of it. The cinder block of shame we carried out of that place was never our burden to carry. It belongs to the people who made that place.
After about a month, I was told I was going to my first Propheet. Basically, each Propheet has some theme, like the “I & Me Propheet” or the “Journey of Self Propheet” or “Whatever-the-fuck-ever Propheet”—it made no difference to me. You had to sit through several hours of lectures by team leaders and counselors, who read from voluminous scripts written by the great god of furniture sales, Wasserman himself.
There were bizarre exercises including one where a kid had to lie on the floor, a “trainer” shoved a towel in their mouth, and the kid had to bite down and try to keep their head on the floor, while the “trainer” yanked on the towel, fighting to lift them up. (And yes, this is as violent as it sounds. There were stories about people losing teeth and a girl whose jaw was so messed up she needed surgery.)
After that, there was a marathon mega-Rap that started in the evening and lasted until morning. You had to stay awake and continuously engaged in this ritual until breakfast time the following day—and that was the first food or water you were given during this whole insane event.
This was a huge group thing that mostly took place outside with a lot of physical activities, so—thank you, God!—they gave me shoes. I made sure I was sitting close to the perimeter. Two or three hours into the lecture, when everyone was supposed to stand up and chant, I nipped over to the nearby enforcers and said, “Hi, boys!” in a sweet, flirty way the paparazzi always liked.
One of them said, “Hi.”
The other one said, “Get back in your group, Hilton.”
“I really, really need to visit the little girls’ room,” I said with a giggle. “Just a quick tinkle. Pleeeeeease?”
The first enforcer smiled and glanced toward the front of the group. Everybody was waving their hands in the air, so there was no way the speaker could see us. The enforcer nodded toward the restrooms and said, “Hurry.”
I had scrubbed toilets in there many times, mentally measuring the window. It was small and high on the wall, but I’m tall, and I was super skinny from a month of hard work and inadequate nutrition. I got on top of the toilet, clawed my way over the sill, and dropped to the ground on the other side of the building. I darted across the yard, keeping to the shadows, climbed the fence, and ran like hell. Without looking back, I scrambled down a steep embankment, through thick underbrush, into the mossy forest.
People were always saying, “Don’t go into the forest. There’s dead kids in there. If you try to run away, they’ll kill you and hide your body in the woods.”
I didn’t believe that, and if I had, it would have made no difference. All that mattered was getting away from there. I don’t remember thinking anything other than run run run. I went in a generally downhill direction, just going on instinct. I saw a dirt road below me and ran parallel to that until I had to cross a little stream. I didn’t want to get my shoes wet, so I crossed the road and angled down the mountain until I found a paved road.