Seductive Poison (51 page)

Meanwhile, more news about Larry fired in at us. He was indicted for murder, he would be tried, and if found guilty, he would be hung from the neck until pronounced dead. I steeled myself for more bad news. I was growing exhausted, distrustful, and numb. And still I had not mourned Mama’s passing.

While the world listened and watched in horror, my universe crumbled. My brother Larry, the sweet conscientious objector to the Vietnam War, was imprisoned. How could this be? I was just as guilty of conspiracy against the United States Government as he was. Why Larry and not me? Why my brother, out of all the innocent humans unwittingly caught in the ingenious machinations of a madman?

And as the months turned into years I made a pact with myself. I would never speak of it again. I would make it in this new world. I would make it on my own, by myself, and no one would ever know who I was …

I began to weave a cocoon of anonymity around myself. Like Mama, I, too, felt safer inside my protective shield. And from this place of safety I grew stronger while learning the ways of the “outside” world.

But I did not expect that my daughter would want to know, would need to know. For her, the losses from the Jonestown tragedy were manifold. She not only lost her grandmother, two aunts, and an unborn cousin, in many ways she also lost her uncle Larry, who remains in prison.

I once thought I could and should keep my daughter’s legacy a secret from her. Just like my mother, who had lost her grandparents in Auschwitz and her mother by suicide, and who innocently believed that not telling her children would make our lives easier. But it didn’t. Quite the contrary, in many ways, I suspect, the sense that I could never get answers from my mother contributed to my seeking out a person who promised to have all the answers.

When I began writing this book it was for my daughter, but as it grew I realized that I also had to tell this story for my mother, for her mother, and myself. I had to reveal the poisonous secrets handed down from mother to daughter. I felt compelled to come forward and confront my own guilt and shame in order to break the legacy of deception, of innocent, yet deadly deceit which had haunted my family for too long.

Mama died in Jonestown ten days before the massacre, with Larry never leaving her bedside. She died without pain medication because Jim had consumed it himself. For two months Larry watched our mother drift away from life without any relief from her agony until she finally succumbed to her lung cancer. She was buried somewhere in the jungle, near Lynetta Jones, but the location is unknown. I wish she were nearby, so that my daughter and I could visit her. She was sixty-three years old.

For years I would follow the backs of women who resembled my mother. I would walk for blocks trying to catch up with them, knowing that it was Mama, that she had survived and didn’t want anyone to know. It is only now as I write this that I realize I can no longer turn away and close my eyes. It is time to finally mourn the loss of Mama.

I continue to dream of her and what pains me the most is that she will never know her granddaughter. She will never sit on my daughter’s bed and read her to sleep …

Come away,
Child, and play
Light with the gnomies;
in a mound
Green and round
That’s where their home is.

Honey sweet,
Curds to eat,
Cream and frumenty,
Shells and beads,
Poppy seeds, You shall have plenty.

But as soon as I stooped in the dim moonlight
To put on my stocking and my shoe,
The sweet, sweet singing died sadly away,
And the light of the morning peeped through.
…

Epilogue

Looking back, there are a few things I have come to learn. People do not knowingly join “cults” that will ultimately destroy and kill them. People join self-help groups, churches, political movements, college campus dinner socials, and the like, in an effort to be a part of something larger than themselves. It is mostly the innocent and naïve who find themselves entrapped. In their openhearted endeavor to find meaning in their lives, they walk blindly into the promise of ultimate answers and a higher purpose. It is usually only gradually that a group turns into or reveals itself as a cult, becomes malignant, but by then it is often too late.

I hope my book will give my daughter some answers about how I got caught and how the Jonestown tragedy happened. I hope it will provide clues about the workings of a cult and shed light on the darkness of deceit. There are essential warning signs early on. Our alarm signals ought to go off as soon as someone tells us their way is the only right way.

When our own thoughts are forbidden, when our questions are not allowed and our doubts are punished, when contacts and friendships outside of the organization are censored, we are being abused for an end that never justifies its means. When our heart aches knowing we have made friendships and secret attachments that will be forever forbidden if we leave, we are in danger. When we consider staying in a group because we cannot bear the loss, disappointment, and sorrow our leaving will cause for ourselves and those we have come to love, we are in a cult.

If there is any lesson to be learned it is that an ideal can never be brought about by fear, abuse, and the threat of retribution. When family and friends are used as a weapon in order to force us to stay in an organization, something has gone terribly wrong. If I, as a young woman, had had someone explain to me what cults are and how indoctrination works, my story might not have been the same.

For each of my friends and comrades, and for my family, the story has turned out differently.

Stephan Jones,
Jim’s son and my Offering Room buddy, had been assigned to Georgetown along with two of his brothers, Jimmy Junior and Tim, on another endeavor to impress the Guyanese government. Although they survived and are alive today and doing well, they lost their entire family and everyone they had ever known.

Lee,
my work crew leader, also lived, having been assigned as the chaperon and basketball coach for the last “presentation” games in Georgetown. He changed his name and lives with his family in California.

Shanda,
my friend, who showed me the ropes when I arrived at the encampment, died in Jonestown. At the young age of nineteen, Jim had her interned in the medical unit and kept her comatose after she bravely refused to continue in her role as one of his concubines.

Robbi,
my Offering Room comrade, who helped me with my workload when Mama was so ill, survived. After my escape I tried to reach her. I called the travel agent we had used to send people to Guyana, and explained to her what was happening in Jonestown. I had her call Robbi and pretend that Robbi needed to come in to correct a problem with the Temple’s ticket billing, but the San Francisco Temple’s staff were wary and refused to let Robbi go. Instead, she was immediately sent to Jonestown. She was one of the lucky few on assignment in Georgetown on November 18, but at the age of only nineteen, she lost her mother, father, seven siblings, and as many cousins.

Lew,
Jim’s eldest adopted son, his wife Beth, and their son Chioke died in Jonestown from cyanide poisoning. When their bodies were identified, Beth and Lew were holding each other and Chioke was lying between them. Lew and Beth were twenty-one years old.

Karen
Layton, vivacious and in love with Larry, was five and a half months pregnant with their child when she died of poisoning in Jonestown. She was twenty-nine years old.

Gentle and kind
Mary,
the sorceress of delectable treats and Mama’s gift-maker, died without her family, alongside the other 913 members. Mary was seventy-eight years old.

Annie,
her sister Carolyn, Maria, John-John, and Kimo died in Jonestown, in Jim’s house. Annie died last, after writing a letter to the world:

… Where can I begin—Jonestown—the most peaceful, loving community that ever existed, JIM JONES—the one who made this paradise possible—-much to the contrary of the lies about Jim Jones being a power-hungry, sadistic mean person who thought he was God—of all things.

I want you who read this to know Jim was the most honest, loving, caring, concerned person who I ever met and knew. His love for animals—each creature, poisonous snakes, tarantulas, none of them ever bit him because he was such a gentle person. He knew how mean the world was and he took any and every stray animal and took care of each one.

His love for humans was insurmountable and it was many of those whom he put his love and trust in that left him and spit in his face. Teresa, Debbie Blakey—they both wanted sex from him which he was too ill to give. Why should he have to give them sex?—And Tim and Grace—also include them. I should know.

I have spent these last few months taking care of Jim’s health. However, it was difficult to take care of anything for him. He always would do for himself.

His hatred of racism, sexism, elitism, and mainly classism, is what prompted him to make a new world for the people—a paradise in the jungle. The children loved it. So did everyone else.

We died because you would not let us live …

—
Annie—

Annie and Maria were twenty-four years old. Carolyn was thirty-one. John-John and Kimo were both under six.

It is believed that at Jim’s request Annie shot him in the head in the Pavilion, then made her way down to their cottage and wrote this note. She was found with a gun in her hand, a bullet through her temple, and enough poison in her body to make sure she would die.

I find it interesting and sickening that Jim, the “great revolutionary” who espoused “death and sacrifice,” was in the end too terrified to die by the agonizingly painful poison he so eagerly gave his disciples.

The saddest statement I can make about Annie’s letter is that I could have written it myself had I been there. The letter shows so clearly the state of mind of a person who cannot for a moment think for herself. Sweet Annie was an innocent, who never gained back the ability to reason, who, over the seven years of her involvement, like me, could only deny reality and idealize the person who demanded, then took, her life. What she did made complete sense in light of her beliefs. It is so easy to become our surroundings, our environment. Without clarity, we are our own deceivers.