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

by Drain, Lauren; Pulitzer, Lisa (CON)

  Aside from Mom, I was still Faith and Boaz’s main caregiver, despite my parents’ reservations about me. I tried to schedule my classes around their needs. I’d come home right after my last class of the day and be on duty, which meant my only downtime was on the drive home. Being in charge of a toddler and a newborn was exhausting, but they were honestly the best part of my day. When Boaz started school, I’d take him there and back every day.

  If I had class, Boaz and Faith went to day care. I set my college schedule so I would be done with all my classes by 2 or 3 p.m. I went to campus on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so I’d dedicate my Tuesdays and Thursdays to them. Sometimes I’d get annoyed with my parents, who rarely relieved me when they got home in the evenings and would get upset if I asked for a little time to study. Taylor helped some, but she was in school five days a week, so she could lend a hand only after school and on weekends.

  Boaz and Faith made a great team. Once they were a little older, Boaz loved dressing up in superhero outfits and running around in the yard, which would prompt Faith to dress up in one of her princess dresses and chase him down. Faith was really smart. I taught her shapes and colors when she was one. She adored Boaz and wanted to copy him: if he was doing a puzzle, she would pick it up and master it. She loved singing and animated movies, especially Finding Nemo and Shrek, and I bought the two of them practically every film that Disney made. Boaz loved to read, so Faith begged me to teach her to read, too. She never wanted to be left out.

  Boaz and Faith were outdoor kids. We’d go to different parks for walks, and once in a while, we’d stop at the toy store for a treat on the way home. I had pretty horrible eating habits at that time, and I might even take them to a Wendy’s to complete the afternoon. It was easier to take them on outings than to stay at home with them. When we were at home, I’d have to play with them or they’d get into mischief. They were all over me. When they got sick, I got sick, but I still had to watch them.

  Jael and I both babysat at the church day-care center when we had time, which at least allowed me to make a little money when I took care of Faith and Boaz in that setting. I was expected to pay for my own college tuition, and every little bit of income helped. Thankfully I had earned a partial merit scholarship. Paying for school had nothing to do with my punishment. Fiscal responsibility was very important to the church, which meant it was important to my parents. They had opened a credit card in my name when I was eighteen, which I was supposed to use frequently to establish credit. To my surprise, the big items purchased on my credit card were stuff for them. Dad wanted a new $1,000 refrigerator for the kitchen he had just installed. He also wanted to replace our old couch in the living room with a fancy red wraparound one. I paid the $300-a-month installments on the big-ticket items to improve my own credit with the bank.

  I was supposed to pay my tuition in full at the beginning of each semester, as well as pay for all of my textbooks. Any debt for things not “necessary for life,” even student loans, was frivolous and evil. Paying taxes, maintaining good credit, and spending wisely were three values I learned early. On top of tuition, I had to pay tithe to the church and give money to my parents for household bills. By the second semester of freshman year, I had finally earned my nurse’s aide certification, so I could earn substantially more money. Even though I was paying for my own clothes, my mother expected me to get really inexpensive stuff, so she allowed me to shop only at Payless, Walmart, and Target.

  I was already twenty when I was given permission to go clothes shopping by myself for the first time. I took Taylor with me to Forever 21, and I came home with three really great shirts that had cost me a total of $100—a little more than I usually spent, but fantastic bargains nonetheless. When I shared my receipts with my mother, she was disgusted with me and didn’t allow me to keep a single one, telling me that I needed to stop fanning the flames of vanity. That was the last time she allowed me to shop for clothes without her.

  Meanwhile, my parents were still bickering over their own budget. Unnecessary expenditures of any sort really bothered Mom. Dad would say he wanted to buy a new, expensive camera, but my mother would tell him they needed to first pay down his student loans, which still amounted to more than $100,000. The church didn’t bother him about debt he had acquired in his past, but my mother sure did. Instead of listening to her, though, Dad bought enough equipment to set up a whole new editing suite. He would tell her his purchases were items that served the church, so they were worthwhile, good, and “necessary for life.” He would reason that Shirley was going to reimburse him for some of it. I always respected my father’s request that disputes in the family stay in the family. I wasn’t so sure other families didn’t have their own share of secret arguments, either. With so many Phelpses already all over me, I didn’t think bringing up those kinds of shortcomings in my family was going to improve my status. They were either going to call me a liar or, even worse, throw us all out. My father had moved us to Kansas to save my soul, and I didn’t want him to lose everything he had worked so hard for.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  But the king covered his face, and the king cried with a loud voice, O my son Absalom, O Absalom, my son, my son!

  —2 Samuel 19:4

  Megan’s high school graduation received the same picketing treatment that Jael’s and mine had received a year earlier—​thirty of us outside the Kansas Expocentre ringing cowbells and pumping our FAG CHARGERS signs high in the beautiful May sky. Jael and I were particularly excited, because Megan was going to be joining us at Washburn in the fall. She was going to be in the business program, not in nursing, but at least we’d all be on the same campus. Bekah still had one more year at Topeka West before she would be joining us in the nursing program. For now, following the tradition Jael and I had started, Megan was in her cap and gown proudly declaring to the families of her classmates that they were going to hell for disobeying their Lord. Minutes before the pomp and circumstance processional began, we all went inside to cheer Megan on.

  The graduation picnic that took place in Shirley’s backyard wasn’t as festive as it might have been, but Megan’s accomplishment deserved to be celebrated, and Shirley wasn’t going to cancel it. Megan’s eight younger brothers and sisters were helping their mother with the platefuls of cookies that had been brought for the occasion. Sam, Megan’s oldest brother, was there as well—but Josh, the second oldest, was noticeably absent. He had defected in the middle of the night.

  When Shirley had gotten up that morning, she had found a letter from Josh, explaining his decision. In it, he ranted against the church, saying it was too judgmental and too harsh, and he didn’t want to be there anymore. He had met a girl at his part-time job at Sears, and he didn’t want to be attacked for it. He finished the letter by saying he wanted to stay in touch, but he knew that wouldn’t happen. Shirley had run downstairs to his room, where she saw that he had packed up and taken all of his belongings. He had used the family truck to move them to a friend’s house but had managed to return it before anyone woke up.

  Shirley thought Josh’s timing was a deliberate attempt to sabotage the graduation celebration. Megan was extremely angry that her brother had stolen her thunder, but she was fairly resigned to his departure, and I wondered if she had even seen it coming. “I always knew he wasn’t as into the church as I was,” she said.

  After the picnic was over, the pain of Josh’s departure finally sank in. Shirley had never had a child walk away, and she was a mess. I had never seen her so upset and torn apart. She was completely beyond composure, bawling insanely and blaming herself. “Why me? What have I done? Why did he leave me?” she asked desperately. Looking very weak and drawn, she was inconsolable for at least a week. Nobody was assertive enough to say, Shirley, stop, this is not how we react, so we simply coddled her, trying to make her feel better.

  The Sunday after Josh’s departure, the pastor delivered a whole sermon about how “that grandson” was a lizard and a snake, not refer
ring to Josh by name, but chuckling at each clever insult. He said he was glad to be rid of him. Shirley had to sit there and listen for thirty minutes while her father condemned her son to hell.

  Bekah cried, as usual. “That was my brother,” she lamented, before Megan started mocking her for her emotions. “You are crying because you are weak,” Megan replied coldly. In a couple of days, Bekah came around. “I know he was evil,” she said without conviction. She said she was angry with herself for being upset when he left.

  Everyone in the church was entitled to mock Josh now that he was gone. In fact, you were called into question if you didn’t mock the departed and agree that he or she hadn’t belonged. Even I had to step it up. We were practically duty-bound to celebrate the loss of an unworthy sinner, especially someone who had thumbed his nose at us.

  Much to my shock and embarrassment, my father went to Sears when he knew Josh would be working to beg him to come back. He told Josh he would be an enemy of Christ unless he returned. I thought my father must be trying to impress Shirley and the pastor with his power of persuasion. “I had a good relationship with Josh,” he told them. “He’ll come back if I let him know he’ll be forgiven.”

  Dad’s arrogant belief that he carried that much influence was appalling. Even Brent, Josh’s own father, hadn’t gone after him, instead saying, “Josh was useless,” and leaving it at that. Dad always liked being the best, front and center, on top and in the praise. His arrogance annoyed me, but I was powerless to say anything. Josh had heeded the long-standing advice of the pastor—if you wanted to leave, it was best to sneak out in the middle of the night or you’d hear it from him. My father was conceited and foolish, thinking he could change Josh’s mind or God’s will, and Josh never did come back. This incident made a few things painfully obvious to me. For one, members spent so much time passing judgment on everyone in the world, whether they were inside the church or out. For another, so many of their judgments were filled with hypocrisy. Members who were not in the Phelps family who wanted to stay in the fellowship were thrown out on their ears, and Phelpses—like Josh, who walked away—were chased down and begged to return. We had rules, which we honored obediently, and we had punishments and humiliations for the times we weren’t obedient. Yet the rules and punishments weren’t meted out equally—instead, they favored those with status or a Phelps pedigree. It was so arbitrary how atonement would be enough of a consequence for certain people, but not others. There were huge holes in the core of the WBC’s righteousness. Sometimes, I would wonder why I was in a church where blatant hypocrisies, two-faced double standards, and selective morality were rampant.

  A perfect example was the summer the pastor decided we had too many members who were overweight. A lot of news reporters at the pickets had been insinuating that if homosexuality was a sin, so was gluttony. They were referring to the overweight people in our group, which included Paulette and John, Jael’s parents; Teresa Davis, a longtime member in Shirley’s generation; and Abigail, Liz, and Margie Phelps. After the pastor’s announcement, everybody was supposed to combine diet and exercise, and report to Shirley’s basement for a weekly weigh-in. The basement had been outfitted with bathroom scales, and the wall had a poster with everyone’s starting and target weights. The weigh-ins went on for several weeks with mixed results. Certain members were not slimming down. Liz Phelps was still extremely heavy, and according to the chart, she had barely lost anything. I babysat for her son on occasion, and had noticed her pantry was full of fatty foods and cookies.

  Liz’s sisters weren’t dropping much weight, either. Abby and Margie had been diagnosed in the past with two different kinds of cancer, so slimming down and living a healthy lifestyle was the medically prudent course for them. Margie tried to be really healthy by making good food choices, but she was struggling. I couldn’t see any noticeable changes in Abby, whose progress chart in Shirley’s basement seemed to be lacking in data. Jael’s mother, Paulette, announced that she was pregnant a couple of weeks into the program, so she was exempted from the weigh-ins.

  Jael was really excited. She loved my little siblings, and having only brothers herself, she was hoping to welcome a baby sister into their house. As the months went by, and Paulette’s abdomen didn’t grow, it became evident she was never going to give birth to a child, and Jael stopped mentioning it. Jael’s father, John, failed to shed any pounds during the summer, either.

  In the end, nobody lost much weight. There were never any guidelines about weekly goals or how much leeway was in the target weight, nor was there any accountability. The intrachurch e-mails that were supposed to go to everyone with the results of the weekly weigh-ins never materialized. The only person who faced any consequence was Teresa Davis. She didn’t lose the weight, and she was kicked out. Other transgressions of hers were brought up at the disfellowship meeting—not paying her tithe and hoarding idols were both mentioned—but the weight-loss issue was the most egregious. Abby wasn’t censured or kicked out, nor were Margie, Liz, John, or Paulette. But Teresa was Chris Davis and Kay Hockenbarger’s sister, so the Davises were certainly done. There seemed to be one set of standards and rules for the Phelps family, and another for the rest of us.

  When I first got to Topeka, church members could still be in communication with family outside of it, if they so desired. Brent’s relatives, the Ropers, would come to visit once in a while. A few of the pastor’s nonmember friends would also stop by. But things changed when Fred  Jr.’s father-in-law died. Fred Jr. and his wife, Betty, had intended to go to the funeral, but they were told that the pastor forbade it. The pastor didn’t want us attending the funeral of anyone we didn’t think was godly and had gone to hell, even if he was a relative. We were supposed to be happy when people like that died, so we were not supposed to be in mourning. No members died when I was there, but if someone had, we all would have been happy and hoped that he or she was in heaven. If the person had gone to hell, we would have been happy, too, because that would have been God’s will. It was after Betty’s father’s funeral that the pastor decided we would no longer have any relationships with outside families.

  Mom was really upset by the new restriction, even though she pretended it was not a big deal. Up until then, she had been occasionally exchanging letters, e-mails, and holiday cards with our family back in Tampa. They knew we didn’t celebrate Christmas, and out of respect for our faith, they didn’t send us gifts. After the pastor’s announcement, Dad sent a really long letter on Mom’s behalf to my grandmother in Tampa, explaining why he thought their family was not good for her. His letter was typed, not handwritten like Mom’s always were, so they would know it was coming from him. He cited scripture and told them why they were all evil and going to hell. My mother contributed some lines to the letter, but Dad read it over and edited her parts. Grandma wrote us a couple of more times, but eventually she stopped. As for my mother, she would have put our entire family in jeopardy if she hadn’t obeyed the order and could have even been kicked out. I felt so bad for her.

  The world was getting smaller and smaller now that we couldn’t even communicate with our extended family. The pastor had already banned bringing new people into the church through marriage, and now we couldn’t communicate with our own extended families. I was wondering how I would ever find someone to marry. With Josh’s departure, the only viable candidate was Margie’s son, Jacob. I still couldn’t picture myself with him. I didn’t even have the ability to question if I liked him. I heard that he told one of the other Phelps boys that he had started thinking about me, and the boy told him, “Don’t think about Lauren. She hasn’t graduated yet.”

  Slowly, they were changing the rules. During a phone call I had with Margie, somehow we got on the subject of marriage. I figured this was the perfect opportunity to clarify the procedure for finding someone. “I don’t think there should be marriages anymore,” she responded. “I don’t think it’s appropriate. I’ll be God-damned if I ever sit in the pew and watch anot
her person get married.”

  I was shocked. When I asked her why, she said with the end of the world so imminent it wasn’t necessary for us to keep marrying and procreating. We could wait for Judgment Day with the membership we had, with, of course, those children born to members already married. She wanted me to know that it was better to rejoice in the fact we would never get married and have families of our own. After all, it was a privilege and a blessing to be able to focus on being obedient to God.

  For whatever reason, I took Margie’s declaration personally, especially when she said she had known for a while that I wanted to get married. “It is worldly lust to want to marry,” she proclaimed during the phone call. “You are so vain and selfish.”

  Margie tried to argue that the marriage ceremony was an American tradition, and just as the church no longer honored the Fourth of July or other American holidays, we’d stop celebrating marriage, too. I tried to challenge her on this point. “Where in the Bible does it say there shouldn’t be marriages?” I asked sheepishly. When she couldn’t find any passages, I began to cite verses that wholeheartedly endorsed my position, going so far as to say, “Marry or burn.” Margie was totally offended and told me I was being outrageous. However, she always had a way of spinning her own views to make them sound reasonable and shut down the conversation.

  Whatever my thoughts had been up until then, I was really angry at Margie for thinking that she could just invent a new rule on a whim. I wanted to obey the rules and to look for guidance when I wasn’t sure. But that marriage was no longer a possibility? That was ridiculous. I started asking the other members what they thought of Margie’s new “rule.” Some of them clearly hadn’t heard it yet, but by the way they reacted, they were beginning to put it together. Most of them took her side immediately and said, “How dare you try to preoccupy yourself with marriage and pregnancy?” I should be picketing instead, they told me.