Beyond Belief (34 page)

One evening, after I’d been cleaning bathrooms for months, Mr. Rathbun came to my door to give me important news. As usual my CO was standing right behind her.

“You are done with your ethics program,” she said. “You have seen the error of your ways, and so, tonight you are going home.” The statement was off because I was already home, here at the Flag base.

“Where is home?” I asked, thinking maybe she was referring to a different berthing.

“Int,” she replied. With that one syllable I felt all excitement drain from my body. Flag was my home. My grandma, Aunt Denise, and my cousins all lived in Clearwater, so I finally had blood relatives nearby. All my friends were at Flag, and, perhaps most important, Martino was here. As much as I’d struggled here over the years, I’d also found a happiness that I’d never known before. Now they were asking me to leave all that behind, along with the hope that I might ever again be that happy.

“Am I coming back?” I pleaded. “Do I get to say goodbye to my grandmother?” I didn’t dare even mention saying goodbye to my friends, and I definitely knew better than to ask about Martino.

“We’ll say goodbye for you,” piped in my CO from behind her.

“Okay,” I said, stunned. I thought I would probably be back in a few days, so I took solace in that. Abruptly, the two of them came into my room and helped me shove everything I owned into some bags. I told them that I didn’t need to bring everything, but they said I should, just in case. I didn’t know what that meant, but it scared me. They hugged me as if we had always been great friends and said goodbye. Tom took me to the airport. I asked him to say goodbye to Martino for me, and he promised that he would.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
WO

L.A.

I
ARRIVED IN
L
OS
A
NGELES, MY EYES SWOLLEN FROM CRYING
throughout half the flight. Though I hadn’t seen my parents much in the last four years, I had made this three-thousand-mile flight quite a few times. However, I had never been this upset about it.

A woman I vaguely recognized picked me up at the airport and, on the drive into the city, I quickly became mesmerized at how vibrant Los Angeles was. Stuck in the mass of morning traffic, I saw huge fashion billboards everywhere, hills in the distance, and people in droves talking to each other or hurrying along the streets. I felt like I was in a different world.

I settled in for what I thought was going to be a brief pass through L.A. before picking up Route 60 East for our two-hour drive to Int. Instead, the car turned into a parking lot, its gate closing automatically behind us. We crossed the street and entered a huge building I did not recognize, the Hollywood Guaranty Building. The lobby had marble walls and a soaring ceiling with a mural around the top. I still didn’t know why we were here, but I decided not to ask, as the woman I was with was likely just a driver. There were other Sea Org members around, but they seemed different. They were in the old Sea Org blues, which we hadn’t worn in a while. The updated uniform was less navy style, with a different color shirt and scarf. Everybody in the dated Sea Org blues looked out of place with the rest of the Sea Org world, like I had stepped back in time.

We walked past a security guard who greeted my escort, then took the elevator to the twelfth floor, where I was led into a boardroom outfitted with a green carpet and a large reddish wood table with several chairs. When I looked out the window and had a chance to evaluate my situation, I felt as though I were in a bad dream looking down at an unknown world. Twelve hours earlier, I might have had Mr. Anne Rathbun to deal with, but at least I knew where I was and who the people in my immediate vicinity were. Now I had no idea what would happen next.

“Take a seat,” my driver instructed me. “Someone will be right with you.” I waited anxiously. Even though my hands were cold, my palms were sweating. I hadn’t slept, and I was tired, but I felt wired with worry about what was happening

Thirty minutes later, in came Anne Rathbun’s husband, Marty, accompanied by B. J.’s father and our old apartment mate, Mike Rinder, who was the head of the Office of Special Affairs. I was totally surprised to see them, but this type of twist wasn’t that uncommon in my life. They smiled and asked me if I wanted anything, and I said no.

Mr. Rathbun spoke first. “Look, Jenna, I don’t know how else to say this, other than to be direct. Ronnie and Bitty,” he said, speaking of my parents, “are out of the Sea Org.”

His voice was blank and without emotion, and he waited for my reaction. It took me a few seconds to comprehend what he had said. I worked hard to conceal my own emotions.

“What happened?” I asked coolly.

“I can’t really get into the details,” he replied.

He started to talk about where things would go from here, and as he spoke, two things became clear. First, I realized that everything I’d just been through—the months of security checks, bathroom cleaning, the CMO EPF uniform, and separation from Martino and my friends—was not because of something I had done, but because my parents were leaving the Sea Org which surprised me, and pissed me off. All that time that I had spent basically confined to the bathroom, wondering what I had done to warrant such punishment had not even been because of something I had done. Second, I realized that the only reason I would have been put through all that was because I was being sent off, forced to accompany my parents wherever they were. I had been receiving a leaving staff sec-check, which is given to members
leaving
, and I hadn’t even known it. The stated purpose of a leaving staff sec-check was to help unburden the person leaving staff of their overts and withholds. But more likely, it was to collect personal information that could later be used against the person if he spoke out against the church.

I waited for Mr. Rathbun to finish before I asked bluntly, “So, now I am supposed to leave with them?”

Mr. Rathbun looked guilty, but he quickly affirmed my suspicions with a small nod. “You are going to join them. The plan is that you will do online Scientology courses, and when you are eighteen, you can come back if you want to.”

So much was coming at me at once that I couldn’t even think. I had just come out of a nightmare, but now I was supposed to leave everything I had ever known, all my friends, my whole life, to go be with my parents, whom I had hardly seen in years, whom I spoke to infrequently, and who seemed to know nothing about me. And all because
they
had decided to leave the Sea Org. They were going to turn my whole life upside down, right when I had just started settling in.

Mr. Rathbun and Mr. Rinder were trying to be very nice and watched me as I made an effort to think. Gentle though they were being, their approach set me on edge. Through the cloud of confusion, one thing stood out clearly: the situation was not normal. Sea Org members were not usually so forgiving to family members of departing Sea Org members. It didn’t matter who was to blame; leaving was not something that was looked upon kindly. I knew that my parents were likely going to be declared SPs, so I decided to be blunt.

“If I leave, I am in the same boat as they are, aren’t I?” I asked.

Mr. Rathbun smiled at my quickness. He’d said I could return when I was eighteen, but we both know that was a lie to placate me. He looked at Mike Rinder, who looked unsure, and then said, “Well, yes, to be honest.”

I looked away and thought about it more. I thought about Martino, and how Anne Rathbun had told me we could pick up where we’d left off and how I still held out hope that was possible. I thought about my grandmother Loretta. I thought about how things had been a few months ago before Anne Rathbun called me into her office, before I started getting the sec-checks, when, at long last, I’d finally been building a life. I thought about how strongly I felt in my commitment to help others and how I believed that doing that through Scientology was the mission I had been born to do. I thought how Mr. Anne Rathbun might have known this all along and hadn’t even let me say goodbye to anyone, and now I would never be able to speak to my friends again. I hated her, but none of her actions made me blame the Church; I simply blamed her and the way she was personally applying Church policy.

Then I thought of my parents’ leaving. I grew angry just thinking about how selfish they were, that they didn’t even consider or care that I had my own life now, a life that I’d been forced to create because of their choices for me. I thought about leaving all that behind. I thought about the prospect of going to a public school, and being called stupid and mocked, since I was so far behind. I thought about how I was all too familiar with being alone.

I knew I only had a moment to say what I wanted to say before these two men would start talking for me. I had to make a decision quickly, and I went with my overwhelming gut response. I looked right at them and said, “I don’t want to go.”

Tone 40. I was
not
going to take no for an answer.

They looked at each other in quiet astonishment. Finally, Mr. Rathbun spoke.

“What do you mean, Jenna?”

“I don’t want to go,” I repeated, adding for emphasis, “I would rather be on the RPF than leave.” Admittedly, I was kind of twitchy about that, because I certainly didn’t want to go on the RPF, but I wanted them to understand how serious I was. I wanted my response to be definitive.

They looked at each other again, half shocked and half amused. “Someday, you are going to be a huge asset to the Church,” Mr. Rinder said, beaming at me.

Both of them had to think about what this meant and if it was even possible. They told me to wait while they discussed it outside. After about an hour, Mr. Rathbun came in and gave me a fatherly look. He told me that they were dealing with church issues other than mine, and that they wanted me to use my waiting time to study
Volume Zero
, the church’s bulky administrative policy guide filled with strategies, rules, and orders, my least favorite course.

For the next several hours, I pretended to be reading it, but in reality I was just staring at its green print and thinking of my future, wondering if I was going to be allowed to stay and imagining myself in a public school if I weren’t. At least eight hours went by until, finally, Mr. Rathbun came back in looking flustered, accompanied by a woman. With regret, he said they had gotten tied up with some other stuff and had lost track of time, and had forgotten they had me in there. “Since it is one o’clock, we’re just going to have you leave now,” he said. “We’ll deal with this in the morning.”

He flashed a forced smile as I said, “Okay,” but there was nothing else I could do.

He introduced me to Linda, the woman with him. Standing there in her Sea Org blues with a sweater, she seemed nice enough. Mr. Rathbun told me she was going to take me to a place to sleep. She smiled, and I followed her out. “See you in the morning!” Mr. Rathbun exclaimed as he waved to us both.

We drove back to the same complex at the PAC base that my family had stayed at some fourteen years earlier when they were joining the Sea Org. It hadn’t changed, although I couldn’t remember where anything was. Inside, the Sea Org members who were still wandering around at this hour stared at us, especially me. We took the elevator to the third floor, where two women coming from the shower, wearing nothing but towels, walked by us, saying, “Hi, sir,” to Linda as we walked past.

The room I was staying in was at the end of the hall. Linda showed me in. “Oh good, this room has a shower,” she said. “I’ll meet you outside at nine tomorrow morning.” And with that, she left, as I stood there gazing at myself in the mirror, wondering why so many weird things always happened to me.

I didn’t know that having a shower was special, but my private shower had no soap or towels, so I couldn’t have been that special. I washed my whole body and face with the shampoo I brought and dried off with a shirt from my luggage. I ignored the large cockroach crawling along the bathroom floor when I came out, closing the door behind me rather than confronting it.

I sat on the bed, the dirt on the floor sticking to my feet. Someone next door was blasting music and more people were chatting loudly outside my door. When I tried to lock it, I found it was not possible—there was no lock. Even if there had been, security and a million other people would have a master key that fit all locks, so it didn’t make much difference. I opened the door to find a couple of teenagers looking back at me as though I were an alien, so I shut it as abruptly as I had opened it.

There was a window in my room that kept rattling. The bright light from the Scientology sign on the roof was shining through, but there was no curtain I could close. When I finally lay down on the bed, I left the light on because I was scared. I set the alarm clock and stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep. I didn’t doubt my decision or the Church, but I found myself picturing what life on the outside would be like. I considered what it would be like to have my own room with no post responsibilities and not having to work.

Despite those thoughts, I kept getting stuck imagining myself in a public school, having to tell them that I was behind and being mocked for my ignorance. I remembered movies in which they always called on someone to answer questions in front of the whole class, and I imagined how humiliated I’d be. Then I thought about being sent to the school psychiatrist and what I would do.

I cried until the light in my room went blurry and I finally fell asleep.

I
N THE MORNING, IT TOOK ME A FEW MINUTES TO FIND MY WAY
back to the lobby where Linda was waiting for me. We drove back to the Hollywood Guaranty Building and went into the same boardroom. Mr. Rathbun came bustling in, as though he had been awake for a while. “Hi, Jenna!” he said in a friendly tone. “Did you get a good rest?”

“Yes, sir,” I lied.