Seductive Poison (4 page)

Voices on my car radio draw me back to the present. Armored vehicles are on their way to the Branch Davidian compound. I feel panic rise up inside of me. Oh God, I should do something. I should contact the FBI, warn them about their tactics. I know that their harsh, combative language will only entrench the victims further. Who in their right mind would flee to the “safety” of such intimidation? Hasn’t the FBI understood by now how the mind of a captive perceives danger? If only I could help. If only I could stop the insanity from happening again. But what would happen to me if I came forward? How would I protect my secrets? How could I spare my little daughter?

In my memory I hear more gunfire blasting up from the jungle. The howler monkeys won’t bellow their songs tonight. They sense the insanity around them. I race on in my mud-caked boots, past the tin-roofed cabins, past the wooden outdoor showers where we’re allowed our two-minute wash at the end of our twelve-hour days in the field. The cool air tries to invigorate my tired mind. Why again tonight? It seems every week we’re told we’ll die. Every week we’re ordered to drink some liquid, every week we’re promised death, a relief from this miserable life. I hope tonight is the last one. I’m so desperately tired. Perhaps death is better than this.

I wonder if my friend Annie will be in the Pavilion in time to avoid Father’s wrath. Is someone helping Mama up the narrow path from her cabin? I climb the fence near the podium and sit down close to Father. His big white chair has armrests, a seat pillow, and a back to lean against. Everyone else sits on hard benches or on the dirt floor. All of us assume our positions knowing that it will be many hours before we will leave the “safety” of the Pavilion.

White Night becomes day. Another night of lost sleep fades into dawn. My butt numb, feelings suffocated, reflexes stiff, the inside of my mouth raw and aching from biting it to stay awake, I continue to listen to Father’s ravings about our prophesied demise. When the sun rises and heats our exhausted bodies, the gunfire has ceased. The mercenaries, we imagine, are resting through the heat vacuum, an intense throbbing that sucks our energy and absorbs our very essence, then dries it like jerky. Automatons sit in the Pavilion now, hungry only because we are reminded to be by the whimpering of the famished children. We are shells of humans, waiting for our next instructions from Father.

Suddenly, Father informs us that we have been saved by a miracle: the mercenaries have departed and we are now free again to enjoy our lives. He dispatches a few of the kitchen staff to prepare a little sustenance for his entrenched warriors. Exhausted, we sip our rice-water soup and nibble on bread crumbs from an earlier meal. A new day hath arrived. Father begins to hum and the pianist begins her melodic accompaniment. He stands and sings, “We shall not … We shall not be moved. We shall not … We shall not be moved,” smiles and claps his hands. We all stand and sing. Once again, we have fought the enemy and won!

Since the destruction of the Branch Davidian cult, my mind has returned again and again to my past. It is brought back to this darkness because of the inquisitive questions of my six-year-old daughter.

“Mommy? Where is Grandma Nanni buried? Why can’t we visit her grave?”

The tightly wrapped secrets of my past are being cautiously opened. Secrets handed down from my mother to me. Untruths that spurred us both, while looking for answers, into another deceitful world, Peoples Temple.

I thought I could keep the past hidden forever, the way my mother did when I was growing up, but that is no longer healthy or possible. I must return to the suffocating confusion of my youth to understand my sorrow, make sense of my shame, and integrate the secrets of my unclaimed history. I must break the pattern of well-intentioned deceit passed from parent to child.

“Why is Uncle Larry in prison? He isn’t bad … is he, Mommy?”

How can I explain to a child that my brother became a pawn the moment I escaped from Jonestown? My mother was dying of cancer; he was the only hostage Jones could use to try and coerce me back or force me into silence. My brother must have been severely threatened, perhaps in panic, when he followed orders to shoot at people. Why is he the only one held accountable for the insanity designed by Jones and unwittingly implemented by a thousand of us?

I was one of them. On my own, with no one to answer to, I have kept my shame locked in a small compartment just beneath the surface. But my daughter’s innocent probing has emboldened me to face the horror again, after twenty years.

“Why didn’t you just leave when Jim got mean?”

I’m not sure. What took me so long to comprehend and finally heed the danger signs? Was it my naïveté? Perhaps it was my childlike belief in my own papa’s goodness that kept me from grasping the truth. Being a good obedient daughter seemed incompatible with having questions and doubts.

“Couldn’t the children have refused to drink their juice, Mama? I would have closed my lips tight and not allowed them to do it.”

How can I make her understand what people are liable to do under extreme pressure or in a desperate need to please? How they can choose to take their own lives rather than disobey and risk an even more violent death at the hands of either the “enemy” or the armed guards of their own group?

I’m propelled by my daughter’s innocence to turn inward to my cavern of painful, frightening memories. But facing them requires that I first learn how to cope with the shame. I must face my acts of treason against my mentor and friend, Teresa B., whose trust I betrayed for my own survival. In order to prove my devotion to the Peoples Temple, I devoutly reported her secrets, condemning her to a purgatory from which she barely escaped.

It does not help to explain that all of us were taught to spy and report on each other—our families, our loved ones, our friends. Loyalty to Father required it. Any longing for friends or lovers, any expression of love for our family, was a breach of that loyalty. “Thou shalt have no other God before me.”

I never dreamed of reporting on my mother. The only alternative was to withdraw. It took all my strength to hide my fear for her. I worried that she might put herself into grave danger by being honest, by confessing to Jim her fears and misgivings about Jonestown. Mama’s secrets remained safe with me. And yet, I am still haunted by the fact that I saw no other choice than to forsake her. I knew the pain my slow withdrawal caused her. She was afraid in Jonestown, sick with cancer and desperate for my companionship, but I was unable to give her the love and affection she needed. When she needed me the most I escaped and left her behind. I abandoned her in order to save myself.

How could we do such awful things? Why were we unable to see the corruption, call Father’s bluff, stop it before the end? We had embarked on a peaceful exodus into a “land of freedom,” only to see our lives in the Promised Land turn into a dreary prison camp existence. Our dreams evaporated into twelve-hour days of hard labor, watched by armed guards from morning to night. We hardly got enough food to sustain ourselves and many of us fell sick from malnutrition.

Sundays meant standing in a long line snaking from the radio room, where Father sat in the doorway, down the wooden walkway, past the kitchen huts, and onto the dirt pathway. The line of a thousand of us moved slowly as Father spoke personally to each resident, handing out the special weekly treat of a sweet cassava cookie. Finally, I, too, would stand before him as he lovingly bequeathed the delicacy to me.

“Debbie, my little warrior,” he would sadly smile, “it has been a tough week, but toughest on me. I carry your hopes and dreams upon my shoulders. It is I who worries about you and your future while you sleep. Here, my child, enjoy my offering, my treat. The kitchen staff made it for you even though the ingredients are too expensive and we can’t afford such a luxury.”

“Thank you, Father.” I would lower my eyes respectfully and walk away, allowing the next residents their moment with Father, keeping my thoughts to myself. But as I walked away, I wondered why we didn’t have enough money when Teresa, Carolyn, Maria, and I had deposited millions of dollars in Panamanian bank accounts. Teresa and I had flown to England, France, and Switzerland to open even more accounts. Carolyn and Jim had said we needed to do this so the government couldn’t take it away from us and that Jim would use the funds for the people when the time came. Why was Father acting as though we had nothing? Why, with so many millions of dollars abroad, could we barely exist?

It makes my heart ache to think how bravely and how desperately we endured. Only very few people were lucky enough to have been elsewhere when the suicide command was given. Those in the capital, some 250 miles away, refused to take their lives when Father’s orders came over the radio. Just that little bit of distance allowed them to think for themselves … and they chose to live.

Those of us who survived are left with the task of making sense of the losses suffered by so many. The survivors, whether they lived in Jonestown or were only associated with Peoples Temple in the United States, must live with a quiet and dull vibration that agitates our conscience. We have compartmentalized our shame, despair, and fear, struggled to disentangle ourselves from our own misconceptions of who we were.

In order to find answers for my daughter, I must find answers for myself. For the welfare of us both, I must descend again into the darkness. Although I am fearful of what I may find, I must remember.

1
Secrets and Shadows

My mother was a mystery to me. Beautiful, often quiet, she secretly sketched portraits of women, closing her portfolio whenever I came unexpectedly into the sunroom. I often felt I was intruding on someone unfamiliar and interrupting something quite private. She seemed like a shadow, her silhouette casting a haze on my imperfect form. Always gentle and kind, she coddled me and continually asked after my thoughts. I sensed that she was worried about me and desperately wanted to protect me, but I had no idea from what. In return, from a very young age, I felt protective of her.

Every evening she would lie next to me and read aloud. I loved the sound of her voice, soothing and warm. My favorite poem was Walter de la Mare’s “Sleepyhead.” The way in which Mama pronounced each word lulled me into a trance. I begged her to read it over and over again, especially one segment:

“
Come away,
Child, and play
Light with the gnomies;
In a mound
Green and round,
That’s where their home is.

“Honey sweet,
Curds to eat,
Cream and frumenty,
Shells and beads,
Poppy seeds,
You shall have plenty.”

But as soon as I stooped in the dim moonlight
To put on my stocking and my shoe,
The sweet sweet singing died sadly away,
And the light of the morning peeped through
…

After the fifth reading, when we’d finished saying the Lord’s Prayer, I’d plead with her not to leave me. When she finally rose and kissed me gently on the cheek, then closed the door behind her, believing I was asleep, I would cry. She seemed so sad, like a fairy princess in a moated castle, and I grieved for her.