In the short space of six months, the church had become their family, their landlord, their life.
TWELVE
Family Affair
My Mother
is different from any other
In her smile
Once in awhile
She’s as quiet as a mouse
When she cleans the house
The rest of the time
Watch out
Her eyes are like the moon
Just risen in June
And I love her
Because she’s different from any other.
STEPHAN JONES, 1971
Through the years of her marriage, Marceline Jones tended to cry often, but kept her troubles to herself. Her family realized that the problems revolved around her husband, but the nature eluded the Baldwins until the late 1960s. When Marceline’s sisters visited her in 1968, they found that Jones had moderated his message of love. He preached about physical love as well as emotional love—and encouraged his members to cast aside selfish, exclusive relationships and share their love with others. In essence, he urged his congregation to have sex with different people, married or not, young or old, beautiful or ugly. He talked about the uplifting and unifying experience of free love.
Though disturbed by the changes in the church and her brother-in-law, Sharon felt helpless to do anything. She broached the subject one night before dinner with her friends from Indiana, Harold and Loretta Cordell. But Loretta defended Jones, and they quarreled. Jim Jones somehow had conditioned churchgoing fundamentalist Christians to embrace free love and free sex. Sharon could not bring herself to confront Marceline about the matter, yet she was tempted to ask Jim. One evening as they talked alone in the parsonage living room, she came close to challenging the preacher she had once considered a big brother. Yet Jones’s domineering, confident personality muffled her.
As Jim Jones became more than a minister, his idyllic country church changed by increments into an instrument of his personal goals, a mirror of his turmoil. On occasion, he wrestled with the children on the lawn or shot baskets with the boys on the sideyard court. But the fun—the carefree times when he strolled around the sunny parking lot after services, chatting and joking with Temple people—vanished. He was too busy; for the sake of the organization, he had begun to lose sight of the people, even his own family.
The flourishing church occupied Jim Jones day and night. Dinnertime phone calls increased in frequency, and the preacher often chatted with local politicos and church leaders while his family ate. Only rarely did Jones pack his family in the Toyota for a family outing. They sometimes dined at modest restaurants where the frugal preacher tipped little but loaded his kids’ pockets with free mustard and ketchup packages. As always, moviegoing remained a true family production, though Jones—feeling some guilt over pleasures he encouraged his followers to forgo—now pretended he went only for the sake of his family.
The “rainbow family”—Jones’s living symbol of brotherhood—was cracking. Jealousy and rivalry kept the children at odds. As the natural son, and the only white, Stephan was often at the center of spats. But he nonetheless took pride in his blood lines, when his mother called him her “little Indian,” when people compared him to his father.
Stephan loved his dad and bragged about him. But the hoopla and ecstatic yelling in church offended the boy. Stephan savored the quiet times, their intimate moments together, when he knew his father loved him more than anyone else.
One night, after a particularly bad day at school, Stephan dropped face down on his bed and cried, overcome with persecution feelings, self-doubt and confusion. His fifth grade teacher had accused him of being nasty to other children. His father heard him, walked in and sat down beside him. “What’s the matter?”
“She said I was crazy. Maybe I am crazy,” he sobbed.
“What time is it?” his father asked him. When Stephan told him the time, Jones noted that their watches were only a minute or so apart. “See?” Jones said. “You’re not crazy.”
With his arms around him, his father lay with Stephan on the bed until the boy pretended to drop off to sleep. Falling for the act, Jones got up and tiptoed carefully out the door. Before he was gone, Stephan called softly, “Good night, Dad.”
Jones turned and smiled. “You little shit,” he said good-naturedly.
Those few minutes of tenderness reinforced Stephan’s belief in a psychic link between his father and him, a telepathic system that allowed them to peer into each other’s minds. His father was truly a great man, he thought, and they were a special pair. Jones used to tell him, “There are only two people, you and I, in this world. There is nobody else like us. We are unique. We’re very close genetically.”
When Stephan was nine or ten, Marceline’s chronic back problems temporarily worsened to the point that she could not work. In terrible pain, she was confined to bed and placed in traction. While she lay helplessly on her back, Carolyn Layton, the dark-haired French teacher, began taking the Jones children on outings, with their father’s blessings. Though she acted reserved and inhibited around them, Carolyn tried to get Stephan, Lew and Jimmy to enjoy themselves. Even the young boys sensed something lurking in her mind that prevented her from loosening up. She began to telegraph messages with decreasing subtlety. Finding that circumspect hints about a relationship between her and their father did not work, she sat them down in a little park in Willits one day for a heart-to-heart talk. But she could not spit out blunt enough words. She was very close to their father, she said. The boys did not catch her meaning.
Jones had started to bring his natural son on drives up Highway 20, through the mountainous country, toward Potter Valley. They arrived alone at the little cabin Carolyn Layton—now separated from her husband Larry—shared with a couple from the Temple. The picturesque drive suited Stephan, and he liked the rustic cabin, though it lacked a TV. Carolyn fussed over him and tried to make him feel at home. She seemed a nice lady, and intelligent; but he could not figure out why she pampered him or why they visited this place.
At bedtime, she made up a sofa bed for Stephan in the living room. She and Jones drifted into her bedroom. With his head practically against the wall, Stephan could not help eavesdropping. He could hear conversation, and when the talking stopped, he heard noises—movement, panting, sounds of passion. In the middle of it all, he heard Carolyn reciting poetry and singing. Stephan did not know exactly what was transpiring behind the wall, but he understood that his father and Carolyn had a secret, illicit relationship. The mysterious physical act of sex did not concern him as much as his father’s betrayal of his mother. The boy knew fathers, especially his father, were not supposed to behave that way. He sensed that telling his mother would hurt her too much; so he buried it within himself and did not even tell his brothers or sister.
One day while talking to his bed-bound mother in her room, he found there was no reason to keep his secret any longer. In bed, strapped in a traction contraption, she languished in deep emotional pain. Having nowhere else to turn, she confided in her “little Indian.” She said that his father had told her about his liaisons with Carolyn. Stephan could not believe his father would confess something so cruelly—not until his mother gave him a telltale detail. Carolyn, she said, quoted poetry and sang at the most intimate of moments.
As his mother cried, Stephan cried too. Confusion and disappointment overwhelmed him. In his pain, he blamed his mother first, thinking: how could such a great man have gone astray unless his wife somehow caused it? Maybe it was true, as his father bellowed from time to time: “Your mother, she’s a beautiful woman, but she always manipulates guilt.” Stephan was bewildered. “Why are you doing this?” he thought resentfully about his mother. “Why are you breaking up my family?” He could not look at it in the open: the bond of the “rainbow family” had fractured like glass in the sun. He ran out, hurt and in tears.
When Carolyn Layton’s parents learned that she and Larry had sepa
rated a short time after joining the Temple, it surprised them little. Though their increasingly remote daughter provided no real explanation for the separation, they attributed it to Larry’s problems—perhaps drugs or his overall weak character. Perhaps Carolyn had tired of carrying the heavy load in the relationship. Because of their isolation from their daughter, Rev. and Mrs. John Moore really could not have imagined the role of the minister.
Carolyn’s absence on Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays had disturbed the Moore family, because such events always had provided a special family unity. It was painful—particularly for Carolyn’s younger sister Annie, who someday would find herself in a similar situation—to see Carolyn wedded to Temple ideology and to Jones’s personality. The Temple had replaced the family. Still the Moores kept open lines of communication and resisted temptations to criticize, both because they feared forcing Carolyn to make a choice and because they endorsed in principle the Temple’s humanitarian aims.
Larry Layton’s family knew even less of the collapsed marriage. He had not written or accepted phone calls from his family since joining the Temple; he had eliminated his kin from his life. They remained unaware of his marital difficulties, of his drug rehabilitation inside the Temple. The almost unfathomable extent of his loyalty to Jones would not become known to them for years, and then, in a new tangle, more Laytons would join him.
Shortly after Marceline’s confidences to Stephan, her sister Sharon phoned the Jones house long distance from Texas. Jones would not allow Sharon to speak with the invalid: Marceline was in a very bad way. He told Sharon not to worry and assured her he would not send Marceline to an insane asylum. Sharon fell into the trap; frightened by the implications of Jones’s disavowal, she encouraged him to get Marceline professional help. Through trickery, Jones got Marceline’s own sister to endorse psychiatric treatment that could help him later commit his wife to an institution.
Marceline, stranded in bed with her husband philandering and plotting behind her back, needed allies, not a psychoanalyst. Jones realized she would turn to her parents for help, so he got to them first. Reaching Mrs. Baldwin on the phone, he first explained Marceline’s illness, saying she had a herniated disk and would need to remain in traction for some time. This did not surprise Mrs. Baldwin, because Marceline’s job entailed much driving and that aggravated her back problem.
But Marceline had more than a physical problem, Jones went on. “Marceline’s been tearful and depressed. As much as I hate to, I think we’re going to have to put her in an institution.”
Mrs. Baldwin was shocked—Marceline previously had always accepted physical ailments without ever becoming preoccupied with herself. “What’s wrong, Jim? Tell me.”
“I suppose I might as well tell you that a young schoolteacher in the church has an attraction for me, and I for her. She claims she was my wife in a former life. It’s very difficult for me under the circumstances.”
“Jim, we’re coming right away,” Mrs. Baldwin said excitedly. For the first time Mrs. Baldwin genuinely feared what Jones might do to her daughter. This was not the same minor, ill-concealed animosity Jones had shown years earlier. She could read between the lines well enough to see that he wanted Marceline out of the way.
After four straight days of driving from Indiana, the Baldwins pulled into Redwood Valley. Marceline was still in traction, still in an emotional state. At a church service before the Baldwins really had a chance to talk to their daughter, Jim took them aside and told stories designed to convince them Marceline had suffered a breakdown. She had tried to take her own life, he said, as several church members confirmed.
But Jones’s plan backfired. In private talks with Marceline, the Baldwins found no signs of insanity or suicidal tendencies. She had been badly wounded by her husband’s infidelity. In a frank session, Marceline told her parents that their son-in-law had demanded she accept his philandering, that even during their visit he was brazenly sneaking away every evening, ostensibly heading to meetings but actually spending the night with Carolyn. Her parents resolved that they would not allow Marceline to be committed. Jim, sensing he would meet too much resistance, never raised the matter again.
Though he could not put Marceline away, Jones tried to restrict and define her role in the family, and replace her with Carolyn. In one breath he told the children Marceline was an insane and impossible wife, and in the next he praised Carolyn’s beauty and human understanding. He tried to substitute his mistress for Marceline on everything from weekend outings to vacations. Again, the rationale was suicide, only now it was Carolyn who was threatening to take her own life if she could not have Jim.
Jones had projected suicidal tendencies onto his followers for some time. During this crisis, he aimed his projection onto those closest to him, his wife and mistress. But Marceline knew this emotional blackmail all too well. Though she still loved him, the agony was too much. She decided, as she had almost decided in the first two years of their marriage, that divorce was the only answer. She recognized that she could not change Jim—and that he was out to destroy her. She resolved to escape, taking the children with her. Divorce papers could be filed later.
She enlisted cooperation from an unexpected quarter. Lynetta, who did not condone Jim’s affair, agreed to help with the getaway plans. Everything was set for the escape, but one of the children leaked the plan to their father.
Ever the strategist, Jones blocked his wife’s path with the one obstacle she could not ignore—the children. Gathering them together in private, he outlined the situation in his own terms, feeding them the line about their mother’s emotional problems, undermining her and coaching them. “Your mother’s going to ask you if you want to go with her,” he told the children. “You’re going to say no. Your mother loves you, but that’s not the best thing for you.” He portrayed himself as the upholder of the family bond; he knew that if he could keep the children from leaving, Marceline would abandon her plan. Under no circumstances would she abandon her kids. Her motherly instincts would outweigh her need to escape, he knew.
Then Jones executed the second stage of his divide-and-conquer strategy. When their mother was about to leave, the children were gathered in one room. Marceline entered, crying. “I’m leaving,” she explained. “I’m leaving your father and I’m leaving here. And I want you children to come with me. Will you come with me?” To her surprise, the children appeared unresponsive. Surmising they did not want to choose between mother and father, she assured them, “I won’t keep you from your father. You can see your father as much as you want.”
Nothing seemed to work. As the children watched her plead, red-eyed, tearful, distraught, it was not difficult for them to see the correctness of their father’s admonitions and warnings: their mother was crazy, she was falling apart. Under the circumstances, there was no alternative to following Jones’s orders, to making the decision that would hold the family together. “No,” they told Marceline. They would not budge.
At this point, Jones stepped in as conciliator and cajoled Marceline into staying. The children aside, she would have found it difficult to wrest herself away; she loved Jim as a leader, a husband and a lover. She forgave him and forgave him again, compromising herself as she accepted one aberration after another.
But Jim Jones, like a hardened piece of clay, did not change. He not only kept seeing Carolyn as a mistress; he chipped away at Marceline’s standing, alternately praising her and running her down in front of the children and church members. In his frustration and guilt over his affair, he would throw angry fits and become so hostile that she threatened again to leave; then he would beg her to stay, telling her she was the only one he loved. Sometimes he threatened to harm her and the children if they deserted him.
Stephan Jones loved his mother too much not to be affected by his father’s infidelity and violent railings against her. His initial confusion turned to certainty that blame lay with his father. Disillusionment and hostility set in; his mother’s pain becam
e his own. As the little boy listened to his mother’s confidences, he provided what comfort he could; through their conversations, they formed a rare relationship. He assumed part of her burden and formed an alliance with her, one that would strain his young psyche but last until the end.
While Jones succumbed to his own desires and psychological needs, he lost the respect of his son Stephan by degrees. The boy saw and heard enough to know his father was breaking his own rules and making up others to suit his needs. In a church that ballyhooed its drug rehabilitation work, Jones was shooting himself with what supposedly was vitamin B12, just as Marceline had injected him after his collapses in Indiana. After the shots, the preacher, curiously enough, could not converse; he became almost incoherent. Once, after taking an “insulin” shot, Jones screamed and carried on until Marceline came to the rescue.26 He reportedly had begun abusing drugs, taking stimulants, pain-killers and tranquilizers to suit his mood and purpose. Marceline became concerned about this new source of friction and psychological problems. It came to a head once when she grabbed the stash from his medicine chest and, while Jones struggled with her, flushed his drugs down the toilet.
Within a year or so, the emotional clouds enveloped Stephan Jones, and darkened. He felt hostility for his father, a man supposedly above reproach. He wondered whether he himself was crazy, out of step with the world. Finding a supply of Quaalude tranquilizers among his father’s drugs, he swallowed them one by one until they seemed to take effect. He took thirteen in all. Then, instead of quietly lying down and ending it all, he went to his mother and asked, “How many is an overdose of Quaaludes?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
Raven Page 19
