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Authors: Deborah Layton
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when my English Literature schoolmaster accused me of “bastardizing” Shakespeare with my accent, then expelled me from his class for chewing gum. Later that evening I punched my fist through a window. I hadn’t intended to sever three tendons, cut an artery, and get transported by blaring ambulance to the hospital. During my two-week hospital stay, with my reattached tendons healing in a plaster cast, a minister, a priest, and a rabbi were invited to counsel me. I refused to speak to anyone but Mark.
Soon after, I wrote in my journal what seems now to be a particularly telling passage:
Once and for all I push away the cloud from my eyes.
I can see misery and pain all about me.
Suddenly I am where I began,
Still too weak to help the underprivileged of our world.
My responsibility and what am I doing? Naught!
In the summer of 1970 my parents agreed to let me come home for the six-week term break. Just before my return I received a letter from my brother Larry. He wrote of his church, the Peoples Temple, and about a man who lived Jesus’ teachings and knew all about me and my troubles. He invited me to come visit and see for myself. I wondered if maybe Larry was on drugs. How could anyone know my difficulties?
3
Lost and Found
Back in San Francisco, in my father’s American car, I felt disoriented. Compared to the English cars I was now accustomed to, this one felt immense. Papa and the steering wheel were on the wrong side of the car and the traffic was streaming by on the wrong side of the road. I had finally come home and yet nothing felt right.
When Mama greeted me at the door, I struggled to remain composed. I wrapped my arms around her and choked down a cry, once again painfully aware of how little I knew her.
After I had my cast cut off and had the stitches taken out, I swam daily to strengthen my shriveled arm, lay in the sun to give it color, and sat outside on the front porch with Mama, together at last. Papa went to work in the mornings but came home early to spend time with me. On weekends we drove up to our land in Sea Ranch on the Northern California coast.
Although it was good to be home with my parents, by my fourth week I felt antsy, anxious to visit Larry and meet the man who knew everything. It was not easy, however, to convince my parents to let me go. They were troubled by my plan. Larry had been alarmingly uncommunicative since he had joined the humanitarian self-help group up north in Ukiah. In the three years he had been involved with the group, the Peoples Temple, Larry had visited our parents only once. Papa called him regularly but was always told Larry was gone, busy, or at work. Papa thought something was odd.
Larry had married Carolyn, his college sweetheart, in 1967. After their graduation the following year, Larry was struggling to obtain adeferment from the Vietnam War. He had requested alternative service work, explaining he was born and raised a Quaker. While waiting to hear from the Draft Board, Larry and Carolyn had moved north to a little community called Potter Valley, where Carolyn taught high school. She chose this location after listening to a sermon given by Reverend Jim Jones, a handsome preacher there who criticized the war in Vietnam, racism, and social injustice. She and Larry attended church services and found themselves in the company of many other college graduates. Jim took a special interest in the attractive young couple and offered to help Larry write the final appeal for Conscientious Objector status. Jones said it would be a miracle if Larry received it. In the spring of 1969, Larry was granted the impossible. A miracle.
Larry and Carolyn were impressed and they stayed on to work with Jones in his fight against prejudice and poverty. However, soon thereafter, Carolyn and the minister became close working comrades, spending more and more time together on important church matters and with her mentor’s help, she divorced my twenty-two-year-old
Soon after, I wrote in my journal what seems now to be a particularly telling passage:
Once and for all I push away the cloud from my eyes.
I can see misery and pain all about me.
Suddenly I am where I began,
Still too weak to help the underprivileged of our world.
My responsibility and what am I doing? Naught!
In the summer of 1970 my parents agreed to let me come home for the six-week term break. Just before my return I received a letter from my brother Larry. He wrote of his church, the Peoples Temple, and about a man who lived Jesus’ teachings and knew all about me and my troubles. He invited me to come visit and see for myself. I wondered if maybe Larry was on drugs. How could anyone know my difficulties?
3
Lost and Found
Back in San Francisco, in my father’s American car, I felt disoriented. Compared to the English cars I was now accustomed to, this one felt immense. Papa and the steering wheel were on the wrong side of the car and the traffic was streaming by on the wrong side of the road. I had finally come home and yet nothing felt right.
When Mama greeted me at the door, I struggled to remain composed. I wrapped my arms around her and choked down a cry, once again painfully aware of how little I knew her.
After I had my cast cut off and had the stitches taken out, I swam daily to strengthen my shriveled arm, lay in the sun to give it color, and sat outside on the front porch with Mama, together at last. Papa went to work in the mornings but came home early to spend time with me. On weekends we drove up to our land in Sea Ranch on the Northern California coast.
Although it was good to be home with my parents, by my fourth week I felt antsy, anxious to visit Larry and meet the man who knew everything. It was not easy, however, to convince my parents to let me go. They were troubled by my plan. Larry had been alarmingly uncommunicative since he had joined the humanitarian self-help group up north in Ukiah. In the three years he had been involved with the group, the Peoples Temple, Larry had visited our parents only once. Papa called him regularly but was always told Larry was gone, busy, or at work. Papa thought something was odd.
Larry had married Carolyn, his college sweetheart, in 1967. After their graduation the following year, Larry was struggling to obtain adeferment from the Vietnam War. He had requested alternative service work, explaining he was born and raised a Quaker. While waiting to hear from the Draft Board, Larry and Carolyn had moved north to a little community called Potter Valley, where Carolyn taught high school. She chose this location after listening to a sermon given by Reverend Jim Jones, a handsome preacher there who criticized the war in Vietnam, racism, and social injustice. She and Larry attended church services and found themselves in the company of many other college graduates. Jim took a special interest in the attractive young couple and offered to help Larry write the final appeal for Conscientious Objector status. Jones said it would be a miracle if Larry received it. In the spring of 1969, Larry was granted the impossible. A miracle.
Larry and Carolyn were impressed and they stayed on to work with Jones in his fight against prejudice and poverty. However, soon thereafter, Carolyn and the minister became close working comrades, spending more and more time together on important church matters and with her mentor’s help, she divorced my twenty-two-year-old
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