Seductive Poison (6 page)

With three little children under the age of four, she was washing diapers and sheets by hand and hanging them outside on a clothesline to dry. She was weary, having to manage without servants and without the loving support of her own family. Her isolation grew when she could no longer share her thoughts with her German friend Annelise, as it was forbidden to communicate with anyone in an enemy country. Finally, when the war ended, Lisa excitedly wrote to Annelise. But the reply was devastating: Annelise and her baby had been killed in a British bombing raid. Lisa’s only remaining lifeline to Hamburg and her past was severed.

As a child I was mostly unaware of my parents’ troubled marriage. If my mother was a mystery to me, I completely knew my father, or so I believed. There was never any doubt in my mind that my father was fiercely proud of his little “Bugsy,” his nickname for me, his small and energetic youngest child. I was sure of what pleased and annoyed him. I loved sitting on his lap and reading aloud to him on Sunday afternoons. I knew that Papa was a scientist and the smartest man in the world. I hung on his every word, knowing it was gospel. Papa eased the confusing world I tried to share with Mama, making it clear and black and white. I never had any doubts about what I should do, think, or say when I was near him. He made me confident by boasting of my accomplishments, my creativity. I had meaning in my life when I pleased my papa. Looking back now, I can see that learning to please in this way became a dangerous liability when I met Jim Jones. On the other hand, it was because of my father’s unwavering belief in his little Bugsy that I would, at a critical moment, find the strength to flee Jim Jones and escape to safety.

In 1957, Papa accepted a position in Albany, California, where he commenced research on allergies. In our spacious home in the Berkeley hills, my older siblings huddled around me, lavishing me with eager attention, coddling and protecting me from myself. In
return, I idolized, adored, and entertained them, reveled and blossomed in their attention, and became accustomed to unconditional love. There was so much noisy commotion around me that my parents often didn’t get a glimpse of me all day.

Papa encouraged my love of drama and ballet. At age five, I was performing my own interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s
Swan Lake
at dinner parties in our mansion at 670 San Luis Road. There were always adoring whispers as my swan pirouetted across the hardwood floor, my tutu’s ruffles gently rising and falling with each graceful landing. Afterward, Mama would hug and kiss her ballerina and we’d head upstairs, hand-in-hand, for my good-night story.

Still, I was aware that I was not a part of the intimacy that Mama shared with my older siblings. One incident, when I was six years old, brought home the realization that I was excluded from my mother’s world. My sixteen-year-old brother, Tommy, and Mama were sitting together on the front porch. They were talking, but I saw a thin trail of smoke rising over my mother’s shoulder. I knew that couldn’t be, as Papa had forbidden anyone from smoking—it was trashy and only uneducated people did it. I also knew that what I had seen was a secret, which I faithfully kept to protect Mama.

I longed to join Mama and Tom in their secret time together and would later wonder why Annalisa and Mama always talked behind closed doors. What could my fourteen-year-old sister be talking about with her? What on earth could be so private? By the time it was my turn to sneak behind the door with Mama, she seemed exhausted. She never shared with me the secrets of growing up. She never even told me the scary facts of how my body would change.

In 1960, however, my dreamworld still glistened with sibling adoration. I continued to garner applause for my tomboy feats such as the double flips on my parents’ bed and the twenty-five stitches on my head I got from crashing into the corner of their headboard. My favorite time was evening. Papa would discuss his research, then ask us about our days. Most often the discussion would center around the book Mama was reading and planned to discuss at her regular afternoon tea, hosted at our home. My live-in baby-sitters, Tom, seventeen; Annalisa, fifteen; and Larry, fourteen, still chased me around the house in the evening. When we played “Evil Tooth Decay,” Tom and Larry would hunt for me behind couches, in closets, and under beds until I was found. I screeched with delight as they looked for me, then chased after me as I fled. Finally, I had to brush my teeth while Tommy, “Mr. Evil Tooth Decay,” growled and tried
to prevent me from brushing and Larry, Bucky Beaver, protected me.

When Annalisa had her high school sorority’s monthly evening meetings at our house, I was their mascot. I would proudly sit on the table, ring the bell for the meetings to come to order, and play waitress to serve them refreshments. My siblings were always there to smooth the sometimes rough relations between me and our parents. They allowed me to remain the center of attention, the twinkling star.

My father continued to write and publish his research, travel and give lectures in America and Europe. I never understood why my mother refused to accompany him when he lectured in Germany. I begged her to go and take me, too, but she would look far into the distance and softly say, “I will never go back.” Her refusal to explain herself made me feel left out, frustrated, and furious at her.

Then suddenly one summer Tommy disappeared, deserting me for the University of California at Davis. Annalisa remained behind and although I remained her high school sorority’s mascot, at nine years of age I was becoming a fading star. Around this time I started to tell really interesting stories to my friends. I believed these stories myself—I really was an Indian princess who had been adopted and taken away from my tribe. Annalisa scolded me for lying but was unaware of how much it was becoming the fabric of my being. I earned a rather unpleasant reputation in the neighborhood and became known as “Liar Layton.” Then Annalisa deserted me for Davis, too.

I still climbed trees and played kickball, remained the best at handball and arguably was the bravest kid in the neighborhood. I could go out the farthest on any tree limb on the block—that the fire department had to be called to help me down was not a point against me either, I still knew that I had won. I was the biggest daredevil of all! If only my family were there to see me. But everyone was gone. I would have to use other means to catch someone’s attention.

I began to have conflicts at school. I felt completely justified in chipping the tooth of the boy who cut in front of me in the handball line, and refused to apologize to him in the principal’s office. I threw pebbles into the eyes of the girl who called me a liar. Some parents told their children to stop playing with me. I was too ashamed to tell my parents. Papa was not supposed to know that I wasn’t his adorable Bugsy any longer. I tried to hide from Mama that her little baby girl was losing her charm.

I still had one more sibling at home, Laurence, but he couldn’t take up the slack. He was focused on more meaningful things: philosophy, being president of the Berkeley High School Democratic Club, and doing his homework every night. Getting his attention was far more time-consuming and arduous than it had once been. I was forced to stand at his door calling his name over and over again.

“Laurency,”
I’d yell until he threatened to get me. Then his exasperated count would begin. He would warn me that by the time he reached ten, I had better be gone. When he reached ten, I’d run and hide, but he never came and looked for me. Then he, too, cast me aside for the ominous black hole in Davis that sucked up everyone important in my life.

I was ten years old and three of the most influential people in my universe had abandoned me. Absorbed by the pressing concerns of paying for three college tuitions, Mama began to work part-time at the University of California at Berkeley’s main library. Although she was only ten minutes from the house, I returned home from school to an empty home. I remember climbing our tree and sitting high over the front porch waiting for the postman, hoping for letters from my favorite people in the world. Few came.

My exhausted parents, clueless about how cunning I’d become, were left alone to deal with a spoiled pubescent daughter coming of age in the Berkeley of the tumultuous sixties. They had raised three perfect children, obedient, scholarly, and attentive. And now on their coattails came this wild, lonely, and angry adolescent. My parents were caught off-guard.

Papa became increasingly disenchanted with my tomboy behavior and publicly mourned the loss of his ballerina. When I transformed into a well-endowed teenager he continued to instruct me in what was right and wrong, who was good, the girls I could play with, how ladies should dress, how my hair should be combed off my face, and which people were not acceptable acquaintances. Life took on a bleak pallor in our empty mansion. Growing increasingly argumentative and surly, I pulled farther away from my enigmatic mother. I had so many questions and none seemed to be adequately answered. Why, I asked her, was she so bothered by my playing with Jewish girls? They didn’t seem any different to me. They also had pretty brown curly hair and their parents really liked me. But Mama was troubled. “Why do you like playing with Megan Hesterman and Carol Davis more than the other girls?” she’d ask. I didn’t know what Jews believed … how could I? I wasn’t one.

As Mama continued to fret and query me, I became more uncivil. “Why, are you a Nazi?” I’d shout. I began to argue constantly with the sweet, soft-spoken woman I had once adored, especially when she deferred to Papa about requests I had, like sleeping over at a friend’s house. “Can’t you make any decisions on your own?” I’d yell. I felt betrayed by her for reasons I did not understand and I was confused by my wild anger. I could tell when Mama had been crying after my tirades. She tried to talk with me. She would pack picnics and we would drive into the countryside, just the two of us, to talk, but the moment we were alone I would attack her again or refuse to speak, just shrugging my shoulders.

In 1968, my older brothers and sister were again causing distress for me. Tom had passed his Ph.D. qualifying exams at Harvard, Annalisa had married a biochemistry professor at University of California at Berkeley, and Larry was involved in an organization doing humanitarian work. I was unable to compete. I wasn’t interested in my classes and got poor grades. Unable and unwilling to emulate the achievements of my siblings, I was losing my status in a family of great achievers.

It had become almost impossible to please my father, so I learned to deceive him instead. Mama, on the other hand, was becoming wise to my cunning ways and confronted me on several occasions. I believed I was unfairly forsaken and began to search for attention elsewhere, at any cost.

2
Exiled

My perception that I was an outcast, the misunderstood underdog, began to shape all my actions. I took my uncontrolled anger about things I could not articulate outside my home.

Formerly the teacher’s pet, I suddenly found myself in detention classes after school, with the tough kids. I forged tardy slips and absence notes, cut classes and played cards with my new and more accepting friends, the Hell’s Angels, whom I had met through my boyfriend. I dyed my curly brown hair raven black and straightened it. I stole Southern Comfort and other hard liquor from my parents’ liquor cabinet and skillfully refilled what I had taken with water. While other kids experimented with smoking dope, I had already graduated to harder narcotics. With my lunch money I was purchasing speed, red-downers, and mescaline. I smoked opium with college kids at lunchtime and dropped acid in math class. My report card showed only D’s and F’s, but for my presentation to my parents I was able to modify the F’s into A’s and, with greater difficulty, the D’s into B’s. Before ninth grade was over, I had been suspended for forging a teacher’s name on a hall pass, I had run away, attempted to convince Papa that my gangster boyfriend needed our financial help so he could go to college, slashed my wrists, called a 911 suicide hotline (but hung up when I heard my parents trying to eavesdrop), and successfully persuaded several friends’ parents to let me come live with them since mine just didn’t understand me.