Beyond Belief (21 page)

Nothing about this return to Flag was panning out as I had envisioned it. My living situation, my routine, my courses, and my friends: none of it fit the picture that I’d created mentally, or the experiences that I’d had in the past. During all three of my previous trips to Flag, my enjoyment had stemmed in no small part from having access to my mom’s lifestyle and leisure. Now, suddenly without that, I found myself at a loss, unsure of where I fit in and whether this was even where I wanted to be. In the past, Flag had reinforced my desire to join the Sea Org; now it was making me question if the CMO was what I wanted. Maybe I’d been wrong. I was twelve and making decisions that would impact the rest of my life, and there was no margin for error.

The course work was a source of anxiety because it was over my head. I did anything I could to get away from it. I preferred hiding in the bathroom stall or pretending I needed to look something up in the library.

One day at lunchtime, Aunt Shelly, who had just come into town with Uncle Dave, sought me out in the dining room and told me to come with her to the executive dining room. In the hallway on the way there, she asked what my days were like. I told her that I mostly studied, then hung out with the galley crew during mealtime and in the evening before bed. At that, she seemed appalled, but clearly recognized that I didn’t know any better.

“You know, Jenna,” she said, shaking her head, “you never should have come to Flag in the first place. From now on, you will be hanging out with CMO and CMO only, going to CMO musters and being a part of that group. CMO staff does not hang out with galley staff.”

I took her words to heart. After the meeting, I was also pulled aside by Don’s wife, Pilar, who was charged with getting me back on the rails. She told me point-blank that I looked like crap in my uniform, and that I needed to get one that fit. Right after my reprimand, she gave me a few of her own Egyptian cotton shirts, the special ones only for executives. It was a little confusing how she could be so mean one minute and so nice the next. Even though the shirts were hand-me-downs, they were coveted because they were considered to be the best, so I knew how lucky I was to have them. After those two meetings, I started going to CMO musters after each meal, just as Aunt Shelly had ordered. I was assigned a place at one of their tables, taking the pressure off me to find my own seat.

O
NE DAY, NOT LONG AFTER
I
ARRIVED IN
C
LEARWATER, THE NEWS
that Don Jason had “blown” swept through morning muster. Blowing was taking off and deserting the church, a scandalous act equivalent to Scientology treason. Nobody had heard from him, and like those around me, I was completely shocked. He was one of the highest-ranking executives at Flag. I had just spoken to him in his office a couple of days earlier, and he seemed completely normal. He had relayed that my mother wanted him to check on me, which I thought was really nice.

The flap this news created was enormous. It made me want to call Mom, knowing she and Don had been friends, but I didn’t have permission to use the phones at the base. The phone system at Flag required a special code, which I didn’t know, so I had been using my own system when I wanted to call home: I’d sneak into Tom and Jenny’s apartment to use theirs while they were still at work in the evenings. I’d ask a Sea Org member who was in charge of the berthing for the master key, then let myself into their apartment. He trusted me because he knew me from my previous visits to Flag, having seen me with Mom, Sharni, and Valeska. He also knew I was in the CMO, so he thought that I was using the key for something like the laundry. Tom had once said offhandedly that I could use his phone any time and I knew I was really stretching this, but I didn’t know what else to do.

The night we heard about Don’s blowing, I sneaked into Tom’s apartment and phoned California, reaching Mom through the RTC Reception. I only told her I desperately wanted to come home. She seemed to already know about Don. I told her how sad I was at Flag, and that I was unprepared to be in CMO. Mom was surprisingly sympathetic and said she would book a flight for me to come back to California at her first opportunity.

Two days later, on Wednesday, I got word from Mom that a flight had been arranged, so I packed and got ready to go. I sneaked into the galley, and with help from my friend, who was a galley cook, we made a special cake for me to bring to Mom. I had already said goodbye to my other steward friends and was waiting in the kitchen for either Tom or someone else to pick me up and take me to the airport when my friend’s phone rang.

She looked a bit worried as she handed it to me. I instantly recognized the voice of Mr. Sondra Phillips, a high-ranking officer in CMO. She said I needed to come over to the WB immediately. When I explained to her that I was about to go to the airport to catch a flight back to California, she said there had been a change of plans, and I was to get over there right now.

Annoyed and worried, I dragged all of my bags down the block to the WB, went upstairs, and found Mr. Phillips, who took me into a small office and shut the door behind us. With her face bright red, she started screaming at me at the top of her lungs, spraying spittle in my face. I couldn’t even believe this was happening. She yelled that I was unethical, or “out-ethics,” as they said a horrible student, individuated from the rest of the group, and not abiding by the rules. She ended by saying there was no way I was going home, and that I needed to toughen up, because I was a Sea Org member now.

All of this had come out of nowhere. Just when I was about to give her a piece of my mind, Tom’s wife, Jenny, came in and told Mr. Phillips to get out, that she was going to handle this. Jenny had been promoted to Commanding Officer of CMO Clearwater, and I was sure she was going to sort everything out. She would undoubtedly help me to get to my flight.

Instead, to my horror Jenny also told me I was staying and I could tell she meant it.

“Why?” I asked her, completely stunned.

“You just are,” she said dismissively. “You came here to become an auditor, and so we are going to train you to be one.”

I tried to protest, but she shushed me and proceeded to read me a quote from LRH’s policy titled “Keeping Scientology Working.”

“When somebody enrolls, consider he or she has joined up for the duration of the universe—never permit an ‘open-minded’ approach. If they’re going to quit let them quit fast. If they’re enrolled, they’re aboard, and if they’re aboard, they’re here on the same terms as the rest of us—win or die in the attempt. . . . We’d rather have you dead than incapable. . . . The whole agonized future of this planet, every man, woman and child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depends on what you do here and now with and in Scientology . . .”

As dramatic as this sounds now, at that moment, I really believed that the future of the planet rested on my twelve-year-shoulders. Much as I wanted to protest, there was no arguing with her words. Begrudgingly I accepted, and my fate was sealed. I was not going home to see Mom. I was stuck here.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

MOM

T
HE SUDDEN CHANGE OF PLAN THAT HAD ME STAYING IN
C
LEARWATER
was frustrating, but more upsetting was the fact that, in the days that followed, I couldn’t get in touch with my mother. In the evenings, I’d use the master key to get into Tom and Jenny’s apartment to try to call her at the RTC, but whoever answered the phone would say she was unavailable. Despite my asking when I might be able to reach her, the answers were always vague and unhelpful. Finally, my father called me. He told me I needed to stop calling the RTC Reception to reach Mom. When I asked him why, he said it was because she was on a special project that was keeping her busy. Even he wouldn’t say what she was doing.

I was beginning to worry that all of the secrecy meant that she had been sent to RPF, Rehabilitation Project Force. The worst punishment the church dealt out, RPF was a type of reprogramming to bring people back in line. Often, they went to a segregated location on the base, usually for at least two years, but it depended on how fast they did their rehabilitation program. I couldn’t imagine why she would have been sent to RPF; after all, Uncle Dave had recently promoted her to Lieutenant Commander and praised her in front of everyone at Sea Org Day. Still, she’d never been so inaccessible. I struggled to think of another reason for her absence.

The day after I spoke to Dad, an RTC Rep named Sophia Townsend pulled me out of my course room. When someone from RTC came for you, it was almost never a good thing. RTC was the most senior organization in the church hierarchy and played a huge role in enforcement of rules and standard application of LRH policy. Mr. Townsend took me into a room upstairs for what she called a “quick session” with me. When I asked her what she meant by a quick session, she said, in a very unfriendly tone, I’d have to wait and see.

She did the usual procedure of asking if I was tired or hungry, and if there was any reason not to start the session. I responded “no” to all the questions.

“This is the session!” she half-yelled, staring.

She asked me several questions that were standard at the beginning of every session and pertained to whether I was upset or had my attention elsewhere. After a brief discussion of what was on my mind, namely everything going on with my mom, she moved on to the heart of the matter and the reason we were having a session in the first place.

“Has a withhold been missed?” she asked me. She was trying to uncover whether I had done anything bad that I didn’t want people to find out about. After confirming with the E-Meter, she looked at me expectantly.

“No,” I said, as this seemed like a reasonable response.

Mr. Townsend didn’t like that answer. I tried to think of minor withholds I was guilty of, like the fact that I was using Tom’s phone to call home without telling him. But I didn’t want to tell Mr. Townsend that one, because she would tell Tom, and I would no longer be able to make calls from his place.

“No,” I said again. Apparently the needle still indicated I was lying. For a third time, Mr. Townsend asked me about a “Missed Withhold”; again, my response was “No.” I could tell she was getting really annoyed.

“Okay,” she said, “have you robbed a bank?”

“What!” I asked in disbelief. “No! How in the world would I do that?!”

“Okay, did you kill somebody?”

The questions were preposterous. “Are you serious right now?” I asked.

“Yes, I am,” she said with a hint of annoyance, even as she delivered the next question. “Did you have sex with your father?”

“What are you even talking about?!” I yelled back.

“Well, let’s take a look, because you have something here.”

“No, I don’t,” I insisted, adding I couldn’t believe she would think that I could do any of these things.

Mr. Townsend wasn’t quite done. “I will repeat the question, has a withhold been missed?” she said robotically.

It went on like this for hours—an interrogation for something, but for what I had no idea. I couldn’t understand why this was happening or what it was all about. Did it have something to do with my mom? What did I do wrong? Finally, when it was clear that we weren’t getting anywhere, I simply refused to talk to her. She said we were ending the session, so she could turn me over to “Ethics” for “no report,” failing to answer questions that the E-Meter determined I knew the answer to.

“Fine,” I said, relieved to be out of the room, but also aware that I was in big trouble. I next went to the examiner, protocol after every E-Meter session.

“Thank you very much, your needle is floating,” he told me, as he always did. A floating needle was supposed to indicate that you were happy and relieved, but nothing could have been further from the truth—I’d never felt so on edge. Mr. Townsend told me to wait in the auditing room until someone from the Ethics Department could pick me up.

From there, I was escorted to the WB while being given a scolding for not cooperating with Mr. Townsend. Soon we arrived at the WB, where, in a few minutes, I was met by another more senior RTC Rep, Anne Rathbun. I knew her because she had worked in Uncle Dave’s office for several years and was married to Marty Rathbun, Uncle Dave’s top lieutenant. She told me that Mr. Townsend’s session had been too harsh, and another auditor was going to administer a new session.

The next auditor, Mr. Angie Trent, also an RTC Rep, was much friendlier. She asked a series of questions from a prepared list, and if the E-Meter responded, she looked at me for answers. This session went much better. When it was over, she promised she would help me get some information about my mom’s whereabouts.

Difficult as it was, I tried to settle back into my courses. Providing some comfort was the fact that I had a familiar face to help me. Claire Headley had been one of my supervisors at Int when Justin and I had been twinning, and even though I’d struggled, she had always been upbeat and encouraging. She was older, but soon we had become good friends. Since then, she had been promoted to RTC, had come to Flag as part of the team to enforce the new Golden Age of Tech, and was now referred to as Mr. Headley. Despite our friendship, I had to call her “sir,” because she was now an RTC Rep who was to be respected and feared.

Still, she helped to get me back on track in my studies and calm me down. As weeks went by without news from my mom, Mr. Headley assured me she was really working to get information for me. One Saturday morning during “Clean Ship Project,” the time allotted to clean our dorms, Mr. Headley came to my room and told me that she and I were going to take a flight that morning back to Int to find out what was happening with my mother. I was shocked but happy. Mr. Headley was going to have a chance to see her husband at Int, so she was excited, too, as they had been separated when she was sent to Flag as part of the RTC Rep team.