mornings, roving bands of young men and women would wander the neighborhood with our shovels to clear sidewalks and driveways so the mothers wouldn’t have to work so hard to get their children to school on time. And throughout it all, we spoke openly of our struggles and triumphs, the state of our souls, the focus of our recent Bible studies and how these ancient lessons applied to current events and our own lives. “Communication is the key!” wasn’t just an incidental part of our culture—it was how a group of eighty people managed to maintain such remarkable unity in executing both the endless logistics of communal living and an astonishingly effective worldwide preaching campaign. Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.
This email marked the end of an era, though I couldn’t know it at the time. Since I wasn’t privy to the discussions about my mother’s behavior, all I could do was watch with trepidation as events unfolded in front of me. First there were the apology emails from my parents to the church: “Beloved of God—I have offended people over the years with a hard, undisciplined tongue. It is so very wrong and shameful. Please accept my apology and please forgive me. Self-justification is an amazing thing. Please pray for me that the Lord would take away the blinders and heal me of this most important of all illnesses. I love you. I’m so very sorry for the offense I have caused.” Then there was the response from an aunt: “We will do better to help you both because we love you dearly.” And then came the punishments.
My mother would no longer arrange the pickets in Topeka. She would not prepare the monthly events calendar. She would not orchestrate our cross-country protests. She would not coordinate childcare or media schedules. For the foreseeable future, my mother would not be allowed to give interviews at all. My father tried to defend her against the onslaught, to push back against the extreme penalties, but this only resulted in threats of further punishment: if my parents failed to submit to the judgment of the church, anyone over eighteen who was living in their home would move out and live with other church members. My parents would be shamed and ostracized by their own children.
That final threat was reported to me via a phone call from an aunt who spoke in a reassuring voice. I stood in the dark in the office I shared with my mother, staring out the window into the spring afternoon as my aunt explained that my parents were “in a very bad way.” That I shouldn’t worry, because the church was not going to let anything bad happen to my siblings and me. As if our parents were a threat to us. I was stunned listening to the sudden shift in how the elders spoke, their tender and heartfelt praise for my parents’ boundless dedication and sacrifice abruptly decaying into a noxious contempt. The rot had set in almost overnight. I’d kept quiet for days as I tried to understand what was happening, but when my aunt explained that they’d threatened my parents with removing us from our home, my response was visceral. I felt my lip curl as I nearly erupted in a menacing “Just you fucking try.” The thought shocked me into keeping my silence—had I ever in my life felt such a thing against the Lord’s church?—and a moment later my aunt ended the call.
* * *
We may have reached the age of majority, but I couldn’t bring myself to employ the term “adult” in reference to myself or any of the siblings now staring at me expectantly. I’d called them together as soon as they arrived home, two brothers and two sisters, all between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four: Bekah, Isaiah, Zach, and Grace. We stood in the back living room, and I closed the door so as not to alert our four youngest brothers, who were doing homework and playing video games in the next rooms. I looked around before opening our meeting: Isaiah and Zach wore stoic expressions, Bekah’s brow was deeply furrowed, and Grace—the only one already aware of our purpose here—was unsuccessfully attempting to mask her outrage. I tried to be neutral, but I couldn’t keep