Beyond Belief (35 page)

“Good, because you may need it today,” he muttered with a smile. I half smiled back, hoping that this didn’t mean that I would have another session.

Mr. Rathbun informed me that Ronnie and Bitty did not receive the news that I wanted to stay in the Church well. Mr. Rathbun and Mr. Rinder had been working on handling them, but it was not looking good. He said that my dad in particular was starting to get threatening, and he let me know that they could only do so much for me.

I told him I understood, but I was amazed that my parents thought they had any sort of claim on me after they had missed so much of my life. Sure, there had been moments when I’d relied on them, more often when I was younger, but also more recently when I’d called them in the aftermath of my first EPF punishment and there was no one else to turn to. And, even then, they couldn’t do much to help. Besides, I could count on one hand the number of times over the last four years that moments like that had happened.

Now, after all these years of leaving me on my own, forcing me to fend for myself, and being absent from my life, suddenly they thought they were going to start making decisions for me. Now they finally wanted to be involved in my life. Now that I was sixteen and finally growing comfortable with my role in the Church. Now that they wanted to leave and take me with them. I had only seen them four times since I was twelve. They weren’t strangers, but in some ways, they might as well have been.

“I can try talking to them myself, if that would help,” I offered. Maybe my parents thought the Church was making me stay against my will, and I could that get straightened out.

Mr. Rathbun left the room and returned a few minutes later, saying, “You’re going to be allowed to talk to them. I’ll be listening on the other line, so don’t worry.”

I wasn’t worried, but I realized when Mom came on the line that maybe I should have been. She was fuming and I could hear Dad in the background sounding much the same—polite but clearly pissed-off.

“Jenna,” my mom began, “what’s going on? We were told you were coming with us. What’s happened?”

Before I had a chance to answer, my mom continued. “They told me that even if you didn’t want to leave you would be leaving anyway. This just shows that they clearly don’t care about you or your feelings.”

Hearing this got me conflicted all over again. She could have said many other things if she wanted to convince me to leave; this seemed too simple to be a lie. Why would Marty and Mike have told my parents that I was going before they’d even spoken to me, then told me that they were trying to allow me to stay?

Answering my question with her own speculation, she continued, “Marty and Mike have tricked you into thinking that you’re going back up to Int and getting you all excited. What they really planned is dropping a bomb on you: you are just being thrown out. They are only playing with your head.”

Those words made me angry. I was pissed that Mom was acting like she knew anything about the way I thought. The fact that she thought I wanted to be at the Int base just showed how much she didn’t know anything about my life; I didn’t want to be at Int, I wanted to be at Flag. I believed she was using manipulative tactics and twisting things to make Mr. Rathbun and Mr. Rinder the enemies, when, in fact, she and my dad were the ones trying to make me leave. Finally getting my opportunity to speak, I held firm.

“I don’t know, Mom, maybe you’re the one who’s paranoid and assuming everyone is against you.” I also threw Scientology at her as well by informing her that her generalities were not accurate: one of the characteristics of an SP was that they spoke in generalities.

Right after I said them, I could tell my words hurt Mom, which made me feel bad. Her response was defensive and even kind of desperate.

In some ways, my wanting to stay in the Sea Org should not have come as a surprise to my mother; after all, I was learning for the first time during this call that she had been around my age when her parents had tried to get her to leave the Org, and she had refused. Hearing this, I realized just how little I knew about my mother. Now she was seeing her story play out in my life, only this time she was the adult who wanted out.

“You know Jenna, people like me who leave the Sea Org . . . we’re not . . . we’re not just dog meat.”

“I know that, Mom,” I said quietly, beginning to regress a little. I always felt responsible for my parents’ happiness. As much I resented them for wanting me to leave my friends and my world, I still felt guilty about making them upset. “I’m sorry, my life is here, and I want to stay.”

All three of us were silent for a moment, until I broke it.

“What is that music in the background?” I asked.

The whole time we were talking, weird Mexican music was coming in and out through their phone.

“We’re living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico,” she said. I was in disbelief, although I quickly concluded it was obviously an effort by the Church to keep them off the radar, so that news that the brother of the leader of Scientology had left the fold didn’t become a PR issue.

After the confrontational tone of our conversation eased, I talked with my father for a while. He continued in the same vein as my mother, expressing his concerns, but also letting me explain why I wanted to stay. He was being careful about what he said about Mike and Marty, most likely because he didn’t want to alienate me, and he probably knew they were listening. Finally, both Mom and Dad agreed they would not put up a legal fight to make me leave, convinced I wanted to stay. Painful as it had been, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

When we said our goodbyes, we said we loved each other, but the one thing we didn’t say was the one thing we were all thinking: none of us knew when I’d see them again. They knew as well as I that whenever it was, it would not be for a long, long time. In fact, it would be forbidden now that they were out of the Church.

When I hung up, I felt both relief and guilt. I felt relieved that I had won, but guilty that I had hurt my parents. Mr. Rathbun seemed happy it was all resolved, even though he was defensive about my parents blaming him and accusing him of trickery for my desire to stay.

“So, where do we go from here?” he exclaimed, more of a statement of our current situation than an actual question.

“I don’t know,” I responded, hoping he had forgotten that I had mentioned I would be willing to do the RPF just the day before. I was sent back to the boardroom, where I waited a few more hours until Mr. Rathbun fetched me, saying we were going to do a metered interview.

He put on an intimidating sec-checker’s demeanor, which always brought out the opposite effect in me. I was not easy to intimidate. He asked me the usual barrage of session questions: was I hiding anything, what my true intention was for staying behind, how I felt about my family, my uncle, on and on for at least three hours. In the end, he could see that I wanted to stay because of my desire to be a Sea Org member, although he did discover that I had lied to his wife, Mr. Anne Rathbun, about having taken out my belly button ring, when in fact I hadn’t.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-T
HREE

MY CHOICE

I
WAITED IN THE BOARDROOM FOR SEVERAL HOURS BEFORE
Mr. Marty Rathbun finally returned, accompanied by two female RTC Reps who were now going to be my guardians. The good news was that I was not being sent to the RPF. The bad news was that, apparently, I was not going back to Flag, either. Instead, after completion of a program, I was going to be posted in CMO in the services division at one of the two L.A.-area CMOs, either at CMO PAC or CMO IXU. The two bases were only a few miles away from each other. Mr. Rathbun explained that I needed to keep a low profile, and that my new guardians were going to help me with that. He also made clear that I was not to discuss the situation with my parents or their departure with
anyone
; he was particularly emphatic on this point.

While he was detailing all of this, I was still stuck on the only thing he’d said that really mattered. “So, I am not going back to Flag?” I said, trying to clarify, hoping I’d heard incorrectly. He responded dismissively before he even realized why I was asking, “No, we can’t have this kind of security risk at the Flag base with everything that is going on there.” Then he seemed to realize that I might be upset by his words. “Don’t forget, Jenna, this was
your
choice,” he added, sounding a bit annoyed by my ungratefulness.

I sank down in my seat, crushed. It might have been my choice but I never thought I’d lose everything. It was one thing to lose my parents; fraught as our relationship was, I was prepared for that. But losing my friends and my family in Clearwater was not something I’d anticipated. I thought I’d be allowed to go back to Flag, back to my life. Instead I’d been labeled a security risk and was once again being taken away from all the people I cared about, making me feel completely alone in the world yet again.

Nonetheless, I said what I needed to say for the greater good: “Yes, sir.”

With that, he smiled at me, shook my hand, and wished me well, then I followed my new guardians, Mr. Laura Rodriguez and Mr. Kara Hansen, out the door. I knew Mr. Rodriguez from Flag, and Mr. H, walked in RTC, but I didn’t know either of them very well. We were barely to the parking lot when Mr. Rodriguez started ribbing me. “Hell on wheels!” she exclaimed. I looked at her a bit confused. At Flag she’d audited Justin—she’d been the one who’d told me he was a Rock Slammer so I already didn’t like her. As I looked at her face, I realized that she was talking about me and that “hell on wheels” must have been what the RTC Reps had called me. “We are going to keep you in line!” she told me with a grin as she dropped me off at my room for the night. Given everything that had happened that day, I wasn’t as amused as she was. She seemed to be personally offended by my lack of amusement.

The next morning I was still sleeping when she busted into my room yelling, “Rise and shine!” She was carrying a pair of pliers and headed right for me. “First things first, we are going to get that belly ring out once and for all!” She demanded I stay put as she took the pliers to the stone on my ring, cracked it in half, and pulled the ring out.

“Ouch,” I said, more out of indignity than pain.

Next, she got out her makeup box and said that I was no longer going to be wearing my blue eyeliner, it wasn’t becoming of a Commodore’s Messenger. Mr. Rodriguez also wanted me to wear concealer in an effort to cover up my teenaged skin. It was highly embarrassing. I put on the uniform she gave me, dark blue pants and a bright blue shirt, and she told me I looked much better.

We met Mr. H outside by the RTC minivan that was going to take us to the Hollywood Guaranty Building for breakfast. Her “good morning,” was uttered with a sarcastic smile, as though she was not overjoyed to have me intruding on her morning routine. On the way to the HGB, the two women played a Harry Potter book on tape, which, although not intended for me, was a good reprieve from conversation. I really didn’t know how much more of Mr. Rodriguez’s ribbing I could take.

As I walked into the marble lobby of HGB, I saw two people I knew from Flag. Excited to see them, I paused to greet them. Mr. Rodriguez grabbed my arm and yanked me away, leaving them both standing there, looking surprised. “Move along,” Mr. Rodriguez said, urging me forward and scolding one of the people from Flag about butt kissing.

We took the elevator to the sixth floor, where the crew dining area was located. It was a large hall with folding tables, much uglier and smellier than the one at Flag.

At least five other people who knew me started to say hi, but I waved them off, silently implying that I wasn’t allowed to talk. With everyone looking at us, Mr. Rodriguez, Mr. H, and I sat at the big round exec tables, toward the back of the room. Executive tables were round, while the tables for the rest of the staff were rectangular.

As I looked around and saw people I knew at the various tables, I felt a little better about being at this base, though the reality was still difficult to accept. Knowing that I was with RTC Reps, most of them were smart enough to keep their distance.

“Miss Popular,” Mr. H commented, sardonically.

After a bit, a German woman came over and asked us what we wanted for breakfast. When my guardians ordered cereal, I did, too. I was feeling too shy to eat, but they told me I had to have breakfast, as I had to be “studentable,” an adjective meaning sufficiently rested and fed to study. I reluctantly ate a little as the two of them spent most of the meal chatting. Occasionally, they’d make a comment to me but I was so unhappy to be there, I was sort of disconnected from them. After breakfast, we went downstairs to the fifth floor. Mr. H led me into a suite with three auditing rooms. These were the RTC auditing rooms where I was to study, do conditions, and do anything else required of me. I thought all of this was over with by now, but, apparently, I was wrong.

My first session with Mr. Hansen was called the “Truth Rundown.” I was required to do this one on the grounds that I had challenged Mr. Rathbun on the morning that I had spoken to my parents. I had only questioned why they had ever been told that I would be leaving with them against my will, but the consequence of that was I now had to do a session of the Truth Rundown, a procedure to uncover the “Black PR”—the bad propaganda—that I had been exposed to during my conversation with my parents. I was going to be directed to the moment when I had believed what my parents had told me, and once I found that, I had to locate the overt I had committed just before that moment, which had led me to believe it. Looking back now, I see it was the ultimate brainwashing technique.

When I tried to insist to Mr. Rodriguez that my mother had most likely been telling me the truth, as indeed Mr. Rathbun and Mr. Rinder
were
planning to send me on my way, she wouldn’t hear any of it. Eventually, I made up some moment in time and its earlier overt and withhold, and we finished the session.