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

by Drain, Lauren; Pulitzer, Lisa (CON)

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment.

  —Lamentations 2:14

  December 14, 2007, started out no differently from any other winter Friday in Topeka. I got up before dawn, had a quick breakfast, and went to work. The hospital was getting quieter as we got closer to Christmas, since patients and doctors preferred waiting until January to schedule elective surgeries. Most of the floor was taken by emergency cases only, and patients in various stages of recovery.

  Jael was working the same twelve-hour shift as me, but she’d been acting very oddly since the shift had begun. Our coworkers noticed it, too. They knew how inseparable we were and how we synchronized our schedules so that we could work together. Being consummate professionals, Jael and I never brought up our religion at the workplace, so if any of them was offended by our affiliation with the WBC, nobody said anything about it to us. They called us the “Phelps girls,” even though they knew I had a different last name.

  That morning, Jael was in such a state, I thought that something had happened to one of her patients or that she had been in a fight with a cousin. It didn’t cross my mind that it had to do with me. Halfway through the day, she dashed off and ran into the nurses’ lounge looking visibly upset. A couple of my coworkers suggested that I check on her, so I found her sitting at a table in the lounge. I sat down across from her, but she didn’t say anything. When she finally looked up at me, she had tears streaming down her face. She gave me the kind of hurt, distant glare you would give somebody who had broken your heart. But she refused to say a word. I knew it must be a church matter, because we only got emotional when it had to do with the church. Judging from her demeanor, I also knew it had to be big.

  When she finally broke her silence, she said, “I’m just so disappointed.” She kept crying but wouldn’t say anything else. Although I wanted to comfort her, I was also beginning to feel really paranoid that my best friend was bidding me good-bye forever.

  She refused to say anything. She just repeated that she was disappointed, while crying into her hands. After about ten minutes, I left the lounge feeling confused and scared. Instinctively, I picked up my cell phone to call my parents, thinking they might know something about what was going on with Jael, but I noticed first that I had a voice mail from her, which I played on the spot. In the message, her voice was shaking as she said some of the meanest and dirtiest things I could imagine her saying about me. I heard my best friend say that I had shamed her and she didn’t even know me. She asked me to stay away from her and everyone else in the church, as well. She told me that no one wanted anything to do with me. My blood began to boil and I flushed from head to toe as I listened to her ranting diatribe. At one point, the coldness of her tone turned fiery. “You have shit on people and their good names,” she railed.

  When the message was over, I closed my phone, stunned and devastated. I doubled over in the hospital hallway, unable to move or think. I loved her more than anything. How could she say these things? I had to keep working, though, so I picked myself up and did everything I could to avoid her for the rest of my shift. Our coworkers could see the tension between us and must have noticed we were dodging each other. Because I didn’t know what was happening, though, I couldn’t enlighten any of them, and Jael certainly wasn’t going to, either. The shift was becoming interminable.

  Finally, at 7 p.m., it was time for me to head home. I gathered my things and went to the elevators, which, like in most hospitals, were notoriously slow. I was in no mood for a confrontation with anybody, I only wanted to go home and see if I could learn anything there. I pushed the elevator call button, and just as the doors opened, I saw Jael a long way down the hallway making a dash for the same elevator. I got into the car and simultaneously pushed the Ground Floor and Close Doors buttons, making sure she would be left behind. I was damned if I was going to let her have the last word. The terrible things she had said in my voice mail were enough for me.

  The fifteen-minute drive home from the hospital was torturous. I didn’t know exactly what I had done, or what to expect when I got there. I’d heard all of Jael’s nasty comments and seen her angry behavior, so I figured I was in some sort of trouble at home, but I had no idea what I could have done that was so horribly wrong. I inventoried some of my indiscretions from my recent past and came up with one quick swipe of mascara and the three moderately extravagant shirts. It didn’t go through my mind that it might be related to Scott. I hadn’t told anyone that I had started talking to him on the phone, and that he was even thinking about coming to Kansas to visit us and possibly considering joining. Even then, I didn’t think this was a behavior that would warrant anything like a banishment. On my drive home, I decided that if Scott was in fact the issue, I would admit my mistake and apologize. I would tell everybody I was going to work on being a better person. I figured at the very least, I would get a talking-to from my parents, and then I would just have to stay under the radar for a few weeks.

  I can still feel the physical sensations of that evening, the chill in the air as I parked my car on the street in front of my house and proceeded to walk quickly up the path to the front door, shivering. I can feel the warmth of the house and the smell of my mother’s dinner waiting for me on the stove.

  When I pushed open the front door, I could tell something was wrong beyond anything I had imagined. My parents, Taylor, Boaz, and Faith were standing around waiting for me, and I could tell they had been anticipating my arrival for some time. They each said “hello” without any sense of warmth, although I thought my paranoia might have been getting the better of me. I could see a plate of food my mother had left for me at the kitchen table, but I wanted to change and shower first. I kicked off my shoes and headed for my bedroom when Mom told me to sit down and have my dinner now. This didn’t seem like a time to argue.

  I sat in my usual chair, and Mom pushed the plate with my food toward me. Everybody else had already eaten. Taylor, who characteristically isolated herself in the bedroom in the evenings, hovered around gawking at me as I ate. My mother stayed in the kitchen, too, but she was anxiously pacing around without actually doing anything. My father was coming in and out without talking to any of us. I felt like I was eating my last meal before an execution. The tension was too much for me, so I pushed away the plate and looked up at my family.

  My father stepped forward, as if sensing I couldn’t take the suspense any longer. He made no introduction, no preamble. In a strong clear voice, filled with the conviction and certainty of his words, he stated, “You have been kicked out of the church.” I was shocked and horrified, unable to think of anything that would make his statement untrue. I couldn’t figure out how or why it was possible that I’d been banished.

  At this very moment, I was being simultaneously disowned by my family forever. That part went without saying. Without the slightest hint of emotion, my father commanded me to pack my things. At exactly 10 p.m. on that cold winter night, he told me that I had to leave, that he’d booked a hotel room for me for two nights in order to give me time to find my own place. I looked at my mother, desperate for her to snap out of it and intervene. She was still pacing back and forth across the kitchen tiles, her eyes welling up with tears, but she didn’t say anything and didn’t stop my father. All I wanted to do was die, right then and there.

  I next looked to Taylor, expecting her to react, to protest, to at least show a little sadness. But all she did was offer to help me pack. In fact, she looked a little gleeful at the idea that she could expedite the packing process and get me out of the house even more quickly, as though I was some anonymous competitor in a race to the death, and I had just fallen off the cliff. Boaz and Faith climbed around in the living room, staying away from the kitchen except to peek in once in a while.

  I was completely numb as I packed. Taylor f
ollowed me down to my basement bedroom, as my parents had instructed her to do. Dad told me to hurry, as it was getting late, and he wasn’t sure how long the hotel’s reception desk was manned. Taylor helped me put my things in a suitcase and a couple of smaller bags, deathly quiet the whole time. I was silent, too, not wanting to cry. I thought maybe there was still hope. Maybe if I followed every instruction right now and kept quiet, this would just turn out to be a warning, the church trying to show me what could happen. I thought if I went without fighting, without showing emotion, maybe the bad dream would go away. I didn’t want to lose my family.

  I didn’t know how to begin to pack. I told myself I wasn’t going to need to take that much, since I would be back. I’d talk my parents out of it somehow—they’d have to come around. It wasn’t as if I had committed a sin like murder or fornication, not even close. Maybe in a week, maybe in a month, they’d allow me back. This couldn’t be it forever.

  I packed pictures of my family and church members, a few Bibles, picket songbooks, and some clothes. I looked up at the wall to the poster Jael had made me for my birthday a few years before. It was a collage of photos of a bunch of the church members holding white signboards that read WE LOVE YOU and HAPPY BIRTHDAY and had Bible verses. Jael and I had always made each other extra-nice personalized birthday gifts. I took the poster down off the wall and rolled it up. I wanted it with me.

  I finished packing everything I thought was important that could fit into my suitcase. And then, it was time to go. I tried to convert my shock and sadness into an emotion that would make me feel stronger. I took a long look at my two precious babies, Boaz Abel, who was now five, and Faith Marie, only three, standing sheepishly in the kitchen. I had helped raise them. I remembered all the afternoons I had spent looking after them, making their snacks, reading to them before putting them down for naps. I wanted to hug them as if it were the last time I would ever see them, even though I didn’t believe it would be. However, I had seen what happened when other people were disfellowshipped, and my parents were behaving like this was really the end. In fact, they even refused to let me touch them. At that point, the loss was just too much to bear, and I left the house without a fight.

  My mother didn’t come outside, so Taylor and my dad helped carry my bags to the car. The fifteen-minute drive to the hotel was surreal. The two of them were chatting away in the front seat about a lot of little things, laughing and carrying on. I was in the backseat, feeling like a criminal in the back of a cop car who was being taken to a remote place and dumped.

  When we arrived at the hotel, my father and I went to the reception desk, while Taylor waited in the car. By now, I was feeling disgusted with myself for my transgression, even though I wasn’t absolutely certain what it was. My father had not even hinted at a reason. I was just ashamed of whatever could merit this kind of punishment and humiliation. I thought the receptionist must know how vile I was, and that I had been rejected by the people who were supposed to love me the most—my family.

  I was surprised when my father made up a story about why I was staying a couple of nights. He told the clerk a long, overly detailed story about how a flood in our basement had damaged my bedroom to the point where it was temporarily uninhabitable. I could not figure out why he went to such trouble to create the story, but maybe it was to show me just how little regard he had left for me, or maybe he didn’t want the clerk to disapprove of him for disowning his own child.

  Dad, Taylor, and I got my things from the trunk and went up to my room. They dropped what they were carrying on the floor and left without saying anything. That was it. I shut the door after them and sat down on the queen-size bed. Now, I was completely, undeniably alone. The first thing I noticed was how cold I was. I was exhausted from my twelve-hour shift and the traumatic showdown at home, but I still couldn’t sleep. I called my mother when I knew Dad and Taylor would be en route.

  “I really don’t know what to say” was all she had to offer. She told me to stop calling and to pray instead. I was too unnerved to stay in the room, so I walked to a CVS nearby and bought poster boards and markers to make myself a time line of my sins and some charts of “dos and don’ts” going forward. My plan was to hang the posters all over the walls of the hotel room to remind myself what my shortcomings were. I created a few before I passed out on the floor with an uncapped red magic marker in my hand.

  The next day, I called my father to see if he had had a change of heart. “Is this it, Dad?” I asked. “When can I come home? I am sorry, and I love you.” I tried to present him with a few options. “Can’t you just ground me?” I asked him. “Can’t you just say I can’t take care of the kids for a while?”

  I wasn’t sure why he took my call at all, but maybe he just wanted to be sure I unequivocally understood my fate. He was absolutely ice-cold. “Why are you calling?” he asked me, like I was an annoying telemarketer. “What’s the point? I have nothing to say to you.” He was serious. The church had decided, and there were no options left for me. His tone made me understand for the first time that I was dead to him. It was as if I had never existed.

  Over the next two days, I slept a few hours here and there, but for the most part I was on my knees crying or reading the Bible. I had the weekend off, so at least I didn’t have to pull myself together to work a long shift. Since I had never been invited to speak before the membership, I went to the library to use a computer and write a four-page letter of apology. I begged for forgiveness for anything I might have done to anyone. I cited stories from the Bible of other people who had done wrong and were ultimately forgiven, and I ended the note with a sincere request to attend church with my family on Sunday. When I e-mailed it to the list, it bounced back as undeliverable—the church had already blocked me. I sent it to my father instead, asking that he share it with them as soon as possible.

  I got back to the hotel to find that Dad had dropped off my black Toyota Camry in the parking lot and a note with my car keys at the front desk. His note instructed me not to call them, come over, or see them, even in a life-or-death situation. Later that evening, I got a terse call from him giving me permission to attend Sunday service as long as I went in the door for nonmembers in the front.

  Sunday morning was very cold and icy. I drove to SW 12th Street and waited on the slippery sidewalk outside the gate for at least twenty minutes before Rachel Phelps, the pastor’s daughter, finally came and let me in. She asked me if I was okay, but I didn’t know what she meant by okay. I didn’t join my family when I entered the sanctuary, sitting instead in a random chair that had been left for me in the back left-hand corner of the room. I left my jacket on with my hood up, feeling terribly self-conscious and embarrassed when everyone started snickering at me. My family was in the back right pew, where they always sat. Shirley came over to them and hugged each one of them, asking in turn, “Are you okay?” “Are you okay?” But nobody came over to me. I sat through the sermon without really hearing a word. When it was over, only Marge, the pastor’s wife, came back to see me. She hugged me and asked me if I would like to talk to Gramps. I was happy, but unsure. “Am I allowed?” I asked. When she gave me permission, I approached him near the pulpit.

  “I am so sorry,” I said to him.

  “Well, Lauren,” he replied. “You just have to get right with God.” With those ten words, he turned and walked away. No one else talked to me, so I left the same way I had come in.

  I tried to put my situation into perspective, but I was overwhelmed when I thought about it. Two months earlier, the pastor had had a judgment against him for a sum of more than $10 million. A week earlier, we were thanking God for nine violent, untimely deaths in a mall in Omaha. Today, I was ripped from God’s grace and my family’s love because I had talked to a boy. In the grand scale of the universe, I couldn’t even fathom that my transgression would be on it.

  Later that day, my mother called to tell me I was never to come to the church again. I asked her, “How will I know when I�
�m right with God if nobody sees me?” She didn’t have a direct answer, but she said I could listen to the sermons online if that helped. I couldn’t figure it out. I had been so respectful in the church that morning. I hadn’t complained or disturbed anyone. All I had done was sit quietly and show my obedience, but I was still denied. The only place left for me was the hot fires of hell.

  The more I thought about it, there was no way I would have been kicked out for talking to someone on the Internet. The transgression, the punishment, and the urgency to get rid of me without the usual disfellowship meeting really didn’t fit the crime. I was beginning to realize that Margie had made up her spy story to get the pastor on board with banishing me. She likely knew that Scott didn’t work for a media outlet, but she made him into a devil who was conspiring to take the church down. Once the pastor bought into it, everybody got behind the decision to kick me out. I had seen the church create other conspiracies to get people kicked out, but this was the craziest of all.

  I knew in my heart my banishment was the result of this plot dreamed up by Margie and probably supported by my father. In fact, my father often made a fool of himself tracking down defecting Phelpses, like Josh, begging them to come back. He wasn’t chasing me down; he was chasing me out. Ultimately, though, the whys of the situation didn’t really matter; one day everything was fine, and the next day it wasn’t. My parents had disowned me in every way.