Banished : Surviving My Years in the Westboro Baptist Church (9781455518470)

by Drain, Lauren; Pulitzer, Lisa (CON)

  I loved sports and being athletic, so the fact that physical fitness was a priority in the church was great. The pastor demanded that we respect our bodies like temples, as stated in the Bible. At one time, the pastor had been overweight himself, but he had overcome what he’d seen as a weakness of character and was now a health nut who insisted everybody in the congregation partake in an exercise program of some sort, although I noticed that different people interpreted this regulation differently. As evidenced by the range of body sizes among church members, the fitness program was self-administered, not official.

  Megan and I frequently exercised together, from practicing in front of an exercise/belly-dancing DVD in her bedroom to running a five-mile loop from the house to the high school football field and back. If we didn’t have much time, we’d do laps on the track in the yard, where sixteen laps made a mile. We liked to run every day because we were cross-country runners on the high school track team. We traveled with our teammates on the school bus for the meets. Nobody bothered us about being Westboro members, and we didn’t try to incite controversy unless we were picketing. Sometimes I’d run five to ten miles on my own, loving the freedom of just being out of the house for a while. As long as I carried my cell phone, Mom allowed it. The pastor, Fred Jr., and Shirley’s husband, Brent, were marathoners. Fred and Brent would take anyone who was interested on cross-country runs in the park areas of Topeka on the weekends, sign us up for local races, and help us keep fit.

  Except for the girls on the track team, Jael, Megan, Bekah, and I associated only with one another at school. This had an upside and a downside. I liked having a close circle of friends, but I still felt they treated me like an outsider in many ways. The fact that they were all related to one another but not to me left me feeling their loyalties didn’t lie with me.

  Another thing that made me really insecure was when I found out that members of the church had been meeting for group Bible studies that excluded the Drains. Those times that Dad, Mom, Taylor, and I had been meeting for family Bible studies, the rest of the church members were having community Bible studies, but nobody had taken the initiative to include us. I didn’t know if it was just an oversight or a deliberate lack of goodwill, but my insecurity had me leaning toward the latter. It felt kind of mean to me. Certain older members of the church never warmed up to my family; they just ignored us, even on Sundays when we were in the sanctuary.

  We were the only family that had ever come from a distance. In fact, we were one of the only outside families to ever arrive. The feeling was that we would probably be the last. Two other Topeka families, the Hockenbargers and the Davises, had joined in the early years of the church. Everyone else in the congregation was a child of Fred Phelps, a spouse, or one of the pastor’s forty grandchildren, including my friends Megan, Libby, Bekah, and Jael. The Phelpses had resigned themselves to the belief that no one else was coming. On the other hand, we were the chosen ones, predestined for God’s kingdom, so whoever else was on the outside, let them be damned. God’s tree had been shaken, and all the bad leaves had fallen off.

  Eventually, after the congregation trusted that we were sincere, most people accepted us. We started going to the church-wide Bible studies in addition to our regular family Bible study. I joined the community group without any resentment about not being invited sooner. I didn’t want to raise the issue that I’d felt left out, because I didn’t want to be criticized for being envious. Besides, I really enjoyed the group study. A whole bunch of us would get together according to age. The young people went to Sam’s house on Wednesday evenings after dinner. Sam, Shirley’s oldest son, was a cool guy with his own house, so that was fun. Megan, Jael, Bekah, and I joined the other young people in his living room and discussed passages from the Bible. The oldest male in attendance was always the first to read, then we’d go clockwise around the room with every person reading a chapter. Sometimes, Sam would serve us snacks, but usually, we just studied the Bible.

  I looked up to all the Phelps girls, even though I was sometimes uncomfortable when they overemphasized their status as the pastor’s grandchildren and became boastful and entitled. As a strategy, I tried to model my behavior after theirs, figuring that would be a good way to keep myself out of trouble, but some of their actions perplexed me. For example, Megan and Jael both dressed more provocatively than I thought was allowed, which confused me. If they hated boys, and they hated attention, then why were they wearing such revealing clothes? Megan would wear tight, low-cut shirts and then get upset about the reaction. “Some boy called me hot today,” she would complain. “I hate when boys do that. It’s so nasty.” Sometimes Jael would wear tight pants and heels to school. The church didn’t have a dress code, but modesty was the operative word. Some of the clothes the girls wore might not have seemed inappropriate to other people, but they weren’t modest.

  My mother took it to the extreme, considering anything tight to be immodest. My shorts needed to be at least to my knees, my pants needed to be baggy, and if something I was wearing showed even an inch of skin or revealed my figure, my mother would throw it out. Church people would complain about certain outfits they saw us wearing. Sometimes it was Megan. Sometimes it was Jael, and sometimes it was me. My mom would freak out if people commented about me. She needed me to be perfect.

  Meanwhile, Megan would talk about her body and the size of her breasts. She was always working on her abs. At school, she was quite the exhibitionist, wanting to exercise in the hallway in some tiny exercise outfit or show off some of the belly-dancing moves we had learned at her house in front of our classmates. Sometimes, I’d join in at her urging. She would also walk the line by wearing low-cut or snug tops, and she was always fussing with her hair. The church mandated that we were not supposed to be focusing on our outward appearances, so this seemed to me like a pretty flagrant violation, but she got away with it. It always struck me as unfair that she pranced around worrying about her looks and being on television, either caught on camera at a picket or at a scheduled interview. Maybe I was jealous of her. She told me once that sometimes she felt competitive with me because we were the same age, both ran track, and took the same classes.

  Megan and I liked shopping for clothes together, and we shopped at the same stores, Target and Walmart. At Megan’s urging, we bought a lot of matching short skirts and tops. She’d spend a lot of time in the dressing room, sizing herself up in the mirror. I loved Megan, but I was beginning to think she was a little vain. One time, she wanted us to wear wedge heels and identical shorts to school. She had picked them out at the store and bought them for us. Shirley found out about it and came to me very upset, telling me I was such a bad influence on her daughter. She said Megan would never wear anything like that without my encouragement.

  Shirley didn’t seem to think a kid of hers could ever do wrong, so if we were wearing something inappropriate, it had to have been my idea. Megan knew her mother was scolding me for something that was her fault, but she didn’t step in to take responsibility. For once, my father defended me. “It’s not that big a deal,” he told Shirley. “They’re wearing shorts, but they are not that immodest, as long as they’re covering everything.” But Shirley would have none of it and still blamed me.

  This favoritism was really starting to bother me. Shirley didn’t seem to have the capacity to humble herself enough to see faults in her own children. Every kid got reamed out by her, except her own. She would rip me up in public and in private, telling me to be less vain, more humble, less conceited, more obedient, less selfish, and more worthy. She’d accuse me of wanting guys to look at me. Meanwhile, her daughter’s cleavage would be sticking out of her blouse as she flirted with guys who approached her at pickets. I kept my issue with it to myself, deciding that I would most likely be scolded for being jealous if I said anything.

  Soon, Mom and Dad both started cracking down on me. No spaghetti straps, no push-up bras, no tank tops, no shorts. My mother was still throwing away clothes that she
didn’t like, even sometimes hunting in my closet for forbidden items. She’d make sure I saw what she had taken by leaving them at the top of the wastebasket in my room. It was so unfair. Taylor’s wardrobe was safe, because Mom bought all of her clothes, but the one last thing in my life I could possibly control was my wardrobe. I couldn’t cut or style my hair, paint my nails, date boys, or have any time to myself except on my runs. My clothes were all that was left, and my mother took that away from me, too.

  My parents monitored everything: my e-mails, my Internet use, even my cell phone history. Every single second of my day was monitored. Any time I drove anywhere, I had to carry my cell phone so my parents could call me. If I wasn’t at school, I was doing chores for the church or my family. The chores increased substantially after my brother Boaz was born.

  We were ecstatic to welcome him into the family. Dad, Taylor, and I were in the hospital room throughout Mom’s labor and delivery, so we were part of Boaz’s birth experience. Dad was so excited to have a boy. I always thought he wanted me to be a boy, since he had signed me up for every sport possible, he taught me to be supercompetitive, and he wanted me to be interested in all the guy stuff he loved—rock and roll music, construction, basketball, softball. If he liked it, he wanted me to like it, too, but now he had Boaz. I wasn’t jealous in the least—instead, I was more happy for my father that he had finally gotten his boy. My baby brother looked exactly like Dad from the moment he was born.

  Not long after we brought Boaz home from the hospital, we had to put down our dog, Buddy, who’d moved with us from Florida. He was getting senile, and he was snapping at Boaz. Nobody else in the family wanted to be in the room with the veterinarian, so I volunteered to be by Buddy’s side to comfort him while the doctor gave him the injection. It was a pretty emotional day, and I was sad for a long time afterward.

  Taylor and I loved having Boaz around. He was a really funny kid and he never whined. My mother used me as her main caregiver, which was really stressful for me. The moment I picked up Boaz from the church’s day care, I was on duty. He had a delightful disposition, but he was really active, so I had very little down time. I had to feed and change him while I was doing my homework.

  Taylor wasn’t expected to help as much as I was because she was younger. She spent most of her after-school time in our bedroom reading or watching television. During the week, I couldn’t expect much relief with Boaz when Mom and Dad came home from their jobs, either. Dad was now a vice president at his firm, and after his long workday, he’d want to head straight to his editing suite to work on church videos, which he considered to be a relaxing pastime. Mom was always exhausted, so if I tried to have her take Boaz, she’d get offended. “Why don’t you want to take care of him anymore?” she’d ask. “Why are you annoyed?” I wasn’t annoyed, really—I was simply overwhelmed.

  On weekends, too, Mom wanted me to take care of Boaz’s needs. One time, when Boaz was a toddler, he came down with the rotavirus. He had been suffering from extreme diarrhea and dehydration and was hospitalized for two days. He became so dehydrated that he needed IV fluids and medication. He was pale and weak, but I knew he would pull through. I stayed by his bedside for hours, rubbing his arms and back, and trying to make sure he felt comfortable. I brought him a DVD player from home so he could watch movies. I was helping the nurse, answering her questions about how he was doing right up until he was released.

  I was still coming up short in my struggle to win my parents’ approval, and this overwhelmed me with anxiety. I was babysitting Boaz while doing the household duties, running errands, and doing the grocery shopping. Every two weeks, I was given $300 and a list. I’d go to the local Walmart where all the church members shopped, a fifteen-minute drive from my house. My route to the store was determined by my parents, and I could not deviate from that course in the slightest. I had a time allotment, and if I ran even five minutes late getting home, I would get a phone call asking where I was. If I took a left instead of a right, I was steering into evil.

  I loved having Taylor with me on these shopping trips and took her as often as I could. In the store, she and I would load up the cart with everything on the list but nothing else, no impulse items. My purchases could not exceed $300, so I focused on generic store brands and sale items. We had to be so careful. Taylor and I spent an entire hour just shopping. When we got home, Mom would review the receipt and the purchases. If I forgot a loaf of bread, it had been a failed mission. “I can’t count on you for anything,” Mom would say. “You didn’t check the list. We printed the list for you, and you still didn’t bring home bread.” If I brought home a jar of mayonnaise, she’d say, “We already have mayonnaise. Why do you think we need two jars when we already have one?” She’d always focus on my mistakes instead of praising me for the things I did right.

  I couldn’t seem to please my father, either. He gave me more positive feedback than my mother did, but usually only when I did things for him and the church. Taylor and I helped him a lot with his editing, spending countless hours working with him on his videos of the pickets. I also helped him design and build the picket signs using Photoshop. On top of that, I apprenticed with him for his remodeling projects. I would get a sense of pride from our accomplishments, but he was often backhandedly critical. “That’s helpful, but this is how I would do it,” he’d say, shortchanging me. “You take twice as long as I do” or “This isn’t up to par” were two more direct complaints I’d hear from him. I couldn’t impress him, no matter how much I tried. “Why can’t you pick it up? Why can’t you just get it?” he’d scold.

  These nitpicking comments would make me so anxious that my mind would go blank, and I couldn’t absorb what he was trying to teach me. I would forget steps or just get them wrong. Of course, Dad would then call me flighty. “Where’s your head?” he’d ask me. “Your head is in the clouds.”

  I was always being compared to the Phelps girls. Both my parents required so many adult responsibilities of me, but they never complimented me or said thank you. Instead, my mom was constantly calling me rebellious, which made me resent her. She was a very passive person, except when it came to me. Like a lot of teenage girls, I could get upset at my mother more than any other person in my life. Sometimes, it annoyed me that she wasn’t stronger or more willing to show passion or an opinion. She never wanted to stick her neck out for me. She and Dad had moved me to Topeka, practically the dead geographical center of the United States, to save me, and she still didn’t give me credit for all I had done to save myself.

  “Why can’t you be more like Shirley’s girls?” she’d say. “You’re so vain, Lauren. You always stir up strife or look to start an argument.” All the while, she’d have nothing but praise for Shirley’s girls. “They are so obedient, and they love their mother.” I cried when I told her that I wanted to be as close with her as Shirley was with her daughters. Just as she wanted me to be like Megan and Bekah, I encouraged her to be more like Shirley, who really indulged her girls. She gave them first dibs for pickets and interviews, made sure they were financially set with everything, and bestowed them with praise.

  I couldn’t help but compare Mom to Shirley, who was the only person giving me the supportive kind of attention I craved. If Shirley was critical of me, she somehow ended her critique with guidance, whereas Mom’s takedowns were just plain hurtful. My mother lacked Shirley’s confidence and self-assurance, too, the qualities I wanted to emulate most in my own life. I started to feel that Shirley was more vested in my salvation than my own mother was. Shirley seemed to genuinely care about me, and we were becoming very close. She would talk to me about school, show a lot of interest in all my classes, and offer to help if I needed it. She managed the schedules of every kid in our generation, which meant she was responsible for about forty people. She knew where everyone was every minute of the day. She knew if I had an hour free, if I could help with lawn maintenance or the law office, if she could send me to a picket. But somehow, she found time
to know about everything going on in the world, including every event in the news.

  Mom was so busy she didn’t seem to mind my growing relationship with my new mother figure. The more Shirley treated me as if I were another one of her daughters, the more I respected her advice. Many people outside the church directed their wrath exclusively at her, but that was the price she paid for being the spokesperson for a controversial organization. Shirley always took it in stride. To me, it seemed like she loved it. When she did interviews on television, she was often criticized for smiling when she was talking about horrific events, but she said she was just misunderstood. She always responded with a line from scripture, and on the rare occasion that she raised her voice a little or engaged in the bickering, it was only because the question was so ignorant.

  Meanwhile, my insecurities were constantly challenging my self-confidence. No matter how hard I worked to convince myself that the Phelps girls considered me to be on their level, I still had lingering doubts about their sincerity. I tried to do little things I thought would endear me to them. I zoned in on a craft project that Shirley’s only daughter-in-law, Sam’s wife, Jennifer Hockenbarger-Phelps, had done. Jennifer had made a kind of doll out of metal. It was a flat metal profile of a person with its hands extended up, was about a foot tall, and was propped on a doll stand. It was holding a to-scale picket sign made of magnetic material so it could be stuck onto the doll’s hand and the messages changed out. Everybody admired it at Bible study one Wednesday evening, and Jael and I decided to see if we could make the dolls. I wanted to give one to each Phelps girl as a gift, customized with her favorite picket slogan. Megan’s had GOD HATES FAGS, Bekah’s read YOU ARE GOING TO HELL, and Jael’s said GOD HATES AMERICA. I made one for myself with my favorite sign, PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD.