Jesus Land (44 page)

Even then, it didn’t seem real. It was just a stone, just words. It wasn’t my brother.

I believe my parents had good intentions when they adopted my brothers, but good intentions go awry, as with missionaries bent on saving souls who obliterate entire tribal cultures in the process. Or former juvenile delinquents who find Jesus and decide to start reform schools.

I thank my parents for bringing me David, but not for the life they gave us.

“Figures he wasn’t wearing a seat belt—rebellious to the end,” was my father’s sole comment to me on his death.

My mother told me she suspected David suffered from the attachment disorder syndrome prevalent among children adopted from Dickensian orphanages in Russia and Eastern Europe. For that reason, he’d “failed to bond with our family,” she confided.

I know this is not true.

In 2001, I returned to Escuela Caribe to gather information for this book. I walked over the basketball court David and I dug in the hillside (which had since been paved) and stopped by Starr. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the girls were on their hands and knees like so many Cinderellas, scrubbing the same tile floors I’d spent so much time polishing sixteen years earlier. They’d failed house inspection and were spending their free day cleaning. I recognized the despair in their faces and longed to offer them some words of encouragement—“After surviving this hellhole, you’ll survive anything”—but the housefather lurked at my shoulder and I wasn’t able.

The staff considered me an outstanding alumna—I’d gone on to get an M.A. in Journalism and had worked for the
Los Angeles Times
—and introduced me around.

“What’s the most important lesson you learned at Escuela Caribe?” one of them asked me with a smug smile.

“To not trust people,” I answered without hesitation.

They changed the subject before I could tell them the other important lessons The Program had taught me, but perhaps they’ll read them here:

—To believe in people over dogmas.

—To not turn the other cheek, but to master and subvert the rules of the game.

—To strive to find small joys even in the bleakest of circumstances.

If The Pastor were still alive, I’m sure he’d still consider me a filthy little sinner. But I can no longer have blind faith in creeds, because I am no longer blind. As Bruce used to scold, I’ve learned to “pay attention, really
think
about what I’m doing.”

It’s taken me twenty years to grasp the truth of what happened in Jesus Land, as well as losing my brother, excommunication from my church, and leaving the Midwest for good.

David continues to accompany me in dreams. In the years following his death, I’d have recurring dreams where I tried to save him from plummeting glass elevators and other dangers, or where I dug his grave alone as people streamed by me, indifferent to my anguish. There was also a repeated and macabre dream where I was in the car with him during his final seconds; we held hands and smiled serenely at each other as our heads shattered the windshield.

Nowadays when David appears in my dreams, it’s to comfort me. I’ll be standing in line to register at a new college, friendless and anxioius, and he’ll materialize out of the crowd to give me a bear hug before walking away. Or I’ll be stressing over a story deadline, and he’ll appear in the newsroom as a colleague and offer to make some phone calls.

Sometimes when I see a picture of a black man with glasses who has David’s same features in a newspaper or magazine, I’ll cut it out and put it in a box with his photographs. I like to imagine what he would have looked like at the ripe old age of thirty-eight, and what he’d be like. I bet he’d still have his slapstick sense of humor. I know he’d be a great uncle, or dad.

I wonder what it would be like to walk with him down the streets of my adopted hometown of San Francisco, California. If we’d finally fit in here, in this mix-raced metropolis, or if we’d still draw stares.

Most of all, however, I’d like the chance to sit down with my brother and talk everything through, to go to a bar and say “remember when” over glasses of
agua de coco
. Then I’d finally be able to say all the things I wasn’t brave enough to tell him when he was alive.

David, I love you.

Sometimes happy endings are delayed.

After
Jesus Land
was published, I began hearing from other Escuela Caribe alumni. We discussed our shared trauma and recurring nightmares, and as we networked, we found out a lot of damning things about our alma mater. We learned that in the 1970s, several newspapers printed exposés on child abuse at Escuela Caribe, and as a result, Michigan and Illinois stopped sending wards of the court there. We also learned that the U.S. Senate held hearings on Escuela Caribe’s practices of beating children, keeping them in extended solitary confinement, and censoring their communication with the outside world.

But none of these actions closed the school. Congress was powerless to intervene; the school operated outside U.S. jurisdiction. And to distance itself from bad press, the school simply changed its name—from “Caribe Vista Youth Safari,” to “Caribe Vista,” to “Escuela Caribe.”

Enter the internet.

In today’s hyper-linked, hyper-sharing world, where it’s possible to track down childhood friends in three keystrokes, browse newspapers from the 1800s, and blog about bowel movements, it’s hard for places like Escuela Caribe to hide. Such places rely on secrecy and shame, and when you peel away those constructs, their true, abusive nature emerges and damns them.

One of Escuela Caribe’s more ingenious maneuvers was to prevent any sense of solidarity among students by encouraging them to rat on each other, which, in program speak, was considered being a “helpful and positive influence.” If you stubbed your toe and yelped “shit!,” for example, I could tattle on you for cursing and score points toward my release and perhaps a free soda pop at dinner. You, on the other hand, would get your points thrashed and be forced to run up the long, painfully steep campus driveway once, or several times. Never mind trying to commiserate with fellow students about how miserable we all were, how scared, abandoned, and hopeless we all felt. You masked your feelings with a rictus grin or risked getting punished for negativity. There were no friends at Escuela Caribe; there were cellmates who wouldn’t hesitate to nark on you if it they could benefit from it, and vice versa. Getting OUT—as quickly as possible—was all that mattered.

Online, our alumni group was finally able to communicate without fear. We ranged in age from recently-released teenagers to folks in their 50s. We lived all over the country, belonged to disparate socio-economic classes, political parties, and religious groups. Few of us had met in person. But we shared a common goal: We wanted to prevent other children from suffering the brutalities we experienced as adolescents. Escuela Caribe left a deep scar in all of us; among our ranks, there was a high incidence of suicide, drug addiction, and failed relationships. The
supposedly “Christian therapeutic boarding school” was anything but. Many of us were now parents, and we considered it a moral obligation to speak out on behalf of the children confined at Escuela Caribe. We created a website, “The Truth about New Horizons Youth Ministries,” and dozens of alumni, using their real names, wrote testimonials detailing the abuse they suffered or witnessed at the school. While school administrators dismissed
Jesus Land
as an exaggeration and me as an “agent of Satan,” it was impossible for them to shrug off the scathing reviews of so many former clients. When people Googled “Escuela Caribe,” our website was the first result, above the school’s homepage. In 2007, a group of us travelled to Indiana to protest outside the school’s headquarters during its “Founder’s Day” celebration, and several media outlets reported on our struggle.

Student enrollment dwindled to the single digits.

And in December, 2011, Escuela Caribe went out of business. In a final message sent to supporters, the administration blamed a “challenging political environment.”

Halle-fucking-lujah.

I wish David were around to toast its demise. He was the victim of many injustices in his short life, but I believe the worst was the institutional abuse perpetrated against him at Escuela Caribe, because it was so systematic and multi-layered and inescapable. I think some of the staff truly did care for the students, but the fact that they witnessed child abuse and did not stop or report it makes them just as culpable as the perpetrators. I’ve never seen worse Christian hypocrites, and have no patience for those who would argue otherwise.

I believe the dead live on through our actions. My brother David died 25 years ago this month. He was only 20, just a boy. It’s hard to believe that he’s been dead longer than he was alive.
The wound is still fresh. I wrote
Jesus Land
for him. I fought to close down Escuela Caribe for him, too. Act Three of this book could be titled: Trust Your Outrage. Or simply: Revenge.

On a much sweeter note, David Scheeres lives on in a little girl named Davia Joy Rose-Scheeres, my daughter, born June 3, the day after David’s birthday. Now 3 years old, I still sometimes call her David by accident. (Lately, however, she’s told us she wants to be called “Squeezo.”) She’s got his same mellow personality, his love of horseplay and laughter. She will be as loved and cherished as he was. She will also be protected.

I’ve received thousands of emails from
Jesus Land
readers. Some say they’re writing to me in tears, mourning David’s death. I feel humbled by their response. Others try to lure me back to Christianity—those messages I just delete. Many readers say they also feel like outcasts in their hometowns, oppressed by religionists, racists, homophobes, or other pea-brained busybodies. The advice I give them is this: If you feel like a misfit in the place where you were born, move somewhere else. I did. I now reside in the most progressive town in the country—Berkeley, California. In the Kindergarten class of my firstborn, Tessa Liberty, families come in all colors, faiths, and configurations: black, white, Latino, middle-eastern, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Agnostic, Atheist. Parents who are gay, straight, divorced. It’s all-inclusive. Tessa dances hip-hop on the playground and sings the Dreidel song at camp. We live in harmony. Our family doesn’t practice a religion beyond the Golden Rule: Treat people how you’d like to be treated. It’s easy to remember.

As I type this, Barack Obama is president. Oh how I wish David were alive to see an African American become the most powerful man in the world. He’d be so proud.

Some readers are curious about my relationship status: I’m married to the best man on earth. It took me 35 years to find
the perfect mate, a man who’s even more of a feminist than I am, but I did. Our home is filled with music, children’s art, and laughter. An overgrown flower garden blooms out back, and our girls run barefoot through the grass dressed as fairies. Talk about magic.

Life gets better if you make it.

Peace,

Julia Scheeres

August 20, 2012, Berkeley, California

My big sister Debra, a stellar Catholic who listens without passing judgment and plays angelic flute music.

Laura, my middle big sister, a persevering friend who shares an appreciation for
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure
.

Tim Rose, for knowing best how to calm me down and for sticking by me on the machete-sharpening days. I love you.

Joe Loya, bank robber extraordinaire-cum-author extraordinaire, my primary cheerleader for this book.
¿Quiubo huevon
?

Colleen Morton Busch, fellow Hoosier and writer, for her critiques and mountain bike riding tips.

Planned Parenthood, for its tireless crusade to protect women’s reproductive freedom.

My editor, Megan Hustad, and my agent, Sam Stoloff, for getting this thing published.

What’s
Jesus Land
about?

It’s about my close relationship with my adopted black brother David, from our strict Christian upbringing in Indiana to our stint at a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic.

What inspired you to write
Jesus Land
?

David was writing about these things before he died in a car crash at age twenty. After his funeral, I found a green notebook among his belongings in which he was writing about growing up black in a white family, about our intolerant Midwestern town, and about Escuela Caribe.

Why did you write it as a memoir?

David and I were the same age. From the time he was adopted as a three-year-old to his death at age twenty our lives were tightly intertwined. We sat in the same classroom throughout grade school, joined the same church groups, and attended the same reform school. Memoir seemed the natural choice to
convey the intimacy and immediacy of our shared history. More than anything,
Jesus Land
is a love story. It’s a story about how racists and religious zealots tried to drive us apart, and we ultimately prevailed. It’s a story about a couple of misfit kids learning to survive in a hostile environment and the transcendence of sibling bonds.

What was the inspiration for the title? How have people been reacting to it?

I came up with the title years before the “red state” connotation entered the popular lexicon. I picked the title
Jesus Land
because the book deals in specious facades, like the amusement park. Beneath the much-hyped “family values” morality of the Bible Belt, you’ll find child abuse, intolerance and racism. Given the rise of the Christian Right in America, I think my book’s exploration of this sanctimony is timely.