Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing(55)

   When we do fall through the cracks, we’re more likely to get a second chance. As damaging as it was to me, I still got another chance. I probably couldn’t get a job at a day care, certainly nothing white-collar. But if I were to tell a potential boss I have an assault conviction, shrug and add, “Stupid lesbian drama,” I can get a job at a bar—no problem.

There are levels of privilege. Now that I’ve jumped a level, from blue-collar asshole, possibly crazy veteran with a criminal record, to writer who no one would suspect has a criminal record, or if they do suspect, they don’t care, I do have to talk about it. Or nothing will change. Because people still believe, despite all evidence, that cops don’t lie, that the system is just, that people in jail deserve jail, and, mostly, that it won’t happen to them. I can tell you solitary confinement is torture. I can quote the stats on who’s in jail, how many are serving serious time who haven’t been convicted of anything at all. But unless you understand it can happen to you, to someone who looks like you, that you can end up in solitary, guilty or not, and lose your goddamn mind, unless I can make you feel it, you won’t fucking care.

I wonder still about the voices. I haven’t heard them again. But I have a pretty good idea which voices were real. And I think about them sometimes. I wonder if the lady with the kidney stones made it home for her daughter’s graduation. I hope the woman who did sex work got clean. I hope Billie Holiday sings to her boys when she puts them to bed. And every time I read the news and it says a jail’s lowered its suicide rate, I’ll think of the girl in the elevator blanket who sang Aaliyah.





Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing


The first time I found others who’d been raised like me, I felt a little like Robinson Crusoe must have when he finally encountered another human. It was 2005. I was watching the news with my sister Ann and saw that the Family’s heir apparent was dead.

The words took a minute to sink in. I didn’t know him personally. To me, he was Davidito, the adopted son of David Berg, a hero in the comic books we read, the main character of the Family’s manual on raising children, the Davidito Book. He was a celebrity, a teen idol, like Prince Will or Harry, or Jonathan Taylor Thomas. The kind you grow up with, sort of—parallel lives. And you think you know them. The girls used to brag they’d grow up and marry him.

I was twenty-seven and hadn’t thought of him in ten years at least. But CNN said his name was Ricky. They said he’d tracked down one of the inner circle, murdered her, then shot himself. My first thought on the murder-suicide involving the kid who was supposed to grow up to lead us through the End Time, my very first thought, was Hey. Holy shit. We’re on CNN. My second thought on the murder-suicide, on seeing real-life Family members on the screen, those old stock photos—the faded black-and-whites, the grainy harvest golds leaking into the lime greens and chocolate browns of my youth, hippies kneeling in prayer with the hands raised to touch God, the beards and sackcloth and middle parts and chunky glasses, the guitars and twirling skirts and the kids—my second thought was Oh, fuck, people can see this. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Was that Dad?

   Ann said she didn’t think so. She said no one would recognize us. Then she said she’d met him once.

I said, “Wait. Davidito?” in the same tone you’d use if your sister told you she used to play soccer with the Obama girls.

She waited a beat and said, “Yeah. He was in the teen home for a while. We weren’t supposed to know who he was. But everyone did.”

“What was he like?”

“Quiet. Kind of nerdy.” She was playing with her phone like she should call someone but couldn’t decide who to call. Just clicking through the menu. “They were horrible to him,” she added. “It was like he’d been banished to come live among the peasants.”

I just stared at her. She decided to drop this now. Where I chose being affable, and lying about my past to fit in, Ann chose mystery. You’ll never know a damn thing about Ann she hasn’t decided to tell you. And you’ll still know only the half of it. Or maybe that’s who we’ve always been.

We watched the news, flipping channels during commercials in case another station was covering the story. We hardly spoke, our minds cycling through a blend of horror and fascination and nostalgia. Then someone she knew was on the screen. And I thought it would be cool to see an old friend. A face I actually knew. Wouldn’t that be something.

   I’d searched before, not for others, just the name itself—the Family, the Children of God—some proof we even registered in the social conscience. But even if social media had been as widely used back then as it is today, I didn’t know my old friends’ real names. I could barely remember my own Family names, much less what the other kids were called at any given time. Fun trick they played on us. Change the kids’ names. Change homes, new kids, new names. Change the fucking kids too. Wake up one morning, and there’s a Josh where Jen should be. Or was it Jules. Who’s to say. You’re not allowed to ask. So no, I wasn’t searching anyone’s name. For fuck’s sake, I thought the founder, our prophet, was named David Brandt. That’s what it said in the books. There was nothing to find except a notation in a listicle—“Top Ten Weird Cults.” We always make the list. Christ, that’s an odd thing to be proud of. But it was the only proof I had that any of it had happened at all.