Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology Read online

  “I’ve got to tell you girls something,” Mom said. “Your dad and I are separating. I don’t want you to be upset. I’m okay, and we’re going to be okay.”

  I sat there basically without expression and looked at my sister, wondering if I should try to fake being more upset.

  George, my dad, was the classic paesan of Sicilian origin who used hairspray on his remaining three hairs, wore a rope chain and pinky ring, got his nails done, and kept his car—a Cadillac, of course—perfectly clean and smelling good with one of those scented trees that hang from the rearview mirror. And I was scared shitless of the man.

  He never hit me. (Nicole, on the other hand, would get smacked. “You are older. You should know better,” he used to say to my sister, as if she were going to college already, though she was just a year older than me.) What terrified me was the way my dad could annihilate you when he spoke, throwing around words like “idiot,” “retard,” “moron” at the drop of a hat.

  One time when we were little and pretending to make soup in the bathroom sink out of his Old Spice, Contac cold capsules, and most of the other contents of the medicine cabinet, I saw my dad at the end of the hallway. When he asked, “What the fuck are you’s doing?” I got hot all over and couldn’t say a word. After Nicole answered, “We are making a soup,” he spanked her. For some reason I always laughed when my sister got hit. I’m sure it was a defense against more complicated emotions. Or I was just evil as a kid and liked her getting hit.

  “Idiots,” he said. “Get into your room.”

  He was only raising us the way he had been raised, but anytime he was around, I was tense—even when he was trying to be kind. For example, one time when I came to the dinner table, I found a paper bag on my chair, so I didn’t sit down.

  “What are you going to do, stand there?” he asked, looking at me.

  What’s the right answer?

  I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, so I didn’t say anything.

  “Pick up the bag, idiot,” my dad said.

  Thinking this was some kind of a trick, I nervously picked up the bag and opened it. Inside was a doll. By the time I realized what it was, however, I was so wound up that I had started to cry.

  “What’s with you?” Dad started yelling. “Someone tries to give you a gift and you’re crying?”

  I couldn’t catch my breath to explain.

  I remember once when I carelessly shoved a box of cookies into the kitchen cabinet. My dad walked by, saw what I was doing, and said, “What kind of fucking animal puts cookies back this way?!” He grabbed the box and threw the cookies across the room.

  I responded by giving him the cold shoulder. An hour later I went into the living room to get a blanket, and there was my dad, sitting on the couch watching TV. He smiled at me and gave me a nod. Again, I ignored him.

  “What, you mad at me? You’re mad at Daddy? You’re not talking to me? Come sit down and watch a movie with me.”

  Before long my resolve melted and I sat down and cuddled up next to him. I fell for it every time.

  When he wasn’t yelling and calling us names, my dad could be charming, loving, protective, everything you would want a dad to be. Everything that would draw me in. He had a big personality, and when he was around, he would take over the room and everyone else would seem to disappear. Try as I might to resist him, time and time again I couldn’t.

  When it was just my mom, it was like a different world. Vicki was a fun, free spirit, kind of like a hippie. She didn’t believe in sugar, and she wore her hair parted down the middle with barrettes holding it back on the sides. But she always had a look, like she was a little bit of trouble. There were not a whole lot of rules with her.

  She was an only child, and her mother and father, who were Jewish, died when she was very young. So she was sent to live with an aunt, who made it very clear that she hated my mother. Because Mom didn’t have structure or a traditional mother in her own childhood, she never learned that role. Nor did she want to.

  Although she was a stay-at-home mom, she wasn’t a big cook. She didn’t make her own sauce like the Italian moms did, or rice and beans like the moms of my Puerto Rican friends. Dinner at our house was anything you could coat in egg and 4C Bread Crumbs and fry. That and salad with way too much vinegar.

  No one wanted to come to my house after school because we didn’t have Twinkies, Devil Dogs, Oreos, or anything else good to eat. Once, after playing Charlie’s Angels on the playground at school, I invited my friends over. But when they got there all I could say was, “Hey, anyone up for Wheat Thins? No? We have Tab…No? Okay.”

  That’s about when someone would suggest that we move on to hang out at my friend Roberta’s house.

  I didn’t blame them. Roberta’s apartment was everything that a household should look like, smell like, and essentially be. It came complete with plastic slipcovers over the furniture to protect it and a special case to house her mother’s Norman Rockwell figurines. I was convinced that this was what a home was supposed to be like. And this was definitely not how we were rolling.

  When I asked my mom why we didn’t have plastic on our furniture like Roberta did, she said, “You want your ass to stick to the couch?”

  Yes, and I wanted her to have the lemony smell of Pledge in the house. That’s right, the wood cleaner. All my friends had to Pledge all the wood furniture in their houses on the weekends, and I wanted to do the same. I also wanted my mom to iron my clothes for school, putting a crease down the middle of my pants like the other girls’ pants had. Instead, Mom showed me where the iron was, told me how to use it.

  I was obsessed with how I thought things should be and appear. I think on some level every kid wants what other kids have, but I was particularly status-conscious. It was in my DNA to constantly scan my surroundings, always observing, always making mental notes of the details that would make me “the right kind of person.”

  And if I couldn’t be this right kind of person, with the right kind of things, I would be quick to criticize myself before anyone else could. And I would often bark out to my mother, “Why don’t we have this?” and “Why don’t we have that?”

  Collecting things, creases in my pants, plastic covers, Pledged dining room tables—this is how you are accepted, I thought. But I was never able to achieve or find the normalcy I craved. I felt subpar to all my friends. Even those friends who lived in the projects had moms who spent their days at home cooking delicious vats of rice and beans while I was left to eat a two-day-old bagel.

  Because of my obsession with appearances, I was skeptical at first of my mom’s boyfriend Dennis, whom she brought home when I was seven years old, after she had divorced my dad. In comparison to my dad, Dennis was a bit of a geek, with his glasses, pants belted high up on his waist, and mustache. But he was also very sweet and didn’t make me feel tense when he was around, like my dad did. Dennis immediately put Nic and me at ease when he gave us the speech: “I’m not trying to be your dad. You already have one of those. Look at me as a friend. I love your mother, and I will love you.” My sister and I liked his spirit, but we were going to have to work on his look, starting with getting a little Dippity-do into that hair.

  Dennis was easygoing and playful, just like my mom. They would do things like have water fights where they’d run into our room to use Nic and me as human shields while they tried to throw cupfuls of water at each other.

  Even though he was Italian, Dennis wasn’t anything like any of the other guys we knew. He didn’t seem to have man hang-ups or the macho mentality that most of the men I grew up with had. He was a waiter, and a great cook, and he always made us food whenever he was home. “Your mother’s not going to cook a decent meal, ever, for you girls,” he joked, “so you better be nice to me.”

  He didn’t dismiss us or try to shoo us away like everyone else in the neighborhood did; instead, he looked us right in
the eye and took everything we said seriously, even though we were just kids. Mom said it was because he was a Scientologist. I didn’t know what that meant—some kind of scientist, maybe—and I didn’t really care either. At least, not until my mother started going to the city by herself and not coming back until late at night.

  “Where do you go, Ma?” I asked one night over chicken cutlets at the kitchen table when it seemed like it had been forever since she’d been home for dinner.

  “I go to this church,” she said.

  “But aren’t you Jewish?” I asked.

  The only church I knew of was the Catholic one, that we often attended with my grandmother, my father’s mother, who lived in Little Italy.

  “This is the Church of Scientology. This church isn’t about God and saints. It is about helping you to live your life better. Like the course I’m doing now. I’m learning that if you do something bad, even if it’s little, if you’re a good person you feel bad about it. And what happens is that in your mind, that little thing becomes a big thing. And that leads you to feel bad about yourself, which then leads to doing more bad things. All these bad things, no matter how small, are called overts. And if you don’t get these overts ‘off,’ you will do worse things.

  “But if you tell the truth about what you’ve done,” she continued, “you kind of clear the slate, and then you don’t feel like you have to do more bad things. This is what’s called in Scientology ‘getting off your overts.’ Like confessing your sins, but more practical.”

  “That’s why you should tell me anything you girls have done that I don’t know about.”

  As soon as my mom said that, I thought about the operation I had come up with to feed my leg warmer addiction. After seeing Flashdance, I decided I needed leg warmers in every color (I was always about quantity rather than quality). I told the neighborhood boys I’d give a hickey to anyone who stole leg warmers for me from the Chinese vendors. At that time, hickeys were a big deal. It was a sign that you were up to some stuff. We practiced them on ourselves on our upper arms. (This way you could just pull down your sleeves and nobody would know you’d been practicing on yourself.) When it came to my trading hickeys for leg warmers, I was very specific about just what it was going to take to get me to put my lips on a boy’s neck—we’re talking a minimum of three pairs, preferably purple, purple with glitter, and light purple. It was a brilliant idea, if I do say so myself.

  So here I was, at the dinner table, wanting to do what my mom was asking—tell the truth. But if I did that, she was no doubt going to kill me.

  “Ma,” I said, “I didn’t personally steal anything…”

  “Leah. What did you do?”

  “I might have said I would give someone a hickey if they got me leg warmers from the Chinese shop.”

  “Ewwwww,” Nicole said.

  Normally I would have told Nicole to shut up, but I was steeling myself for the more important reaction from my mom. The reaction of most moms I knew would be a crack on the mouth. Who tells their mother the truth? No one, that’s who! All kids know this. I assumed I’d be punished in some serious way for the leg warmer–hickey racket. This was the test.

  “Thank you for telling me,” my mom said.

  I waited for the catch, but there was none. Instead, she showed me the precepts about stealing and said, “I know you know the difference between right and wrong, and I just want you to make better decisions for yourself.”

  What is this magic happening before me? I looked at her, looked at my sister, back to my chicken cutlet, back to my mom, back to my plate, hoping the carrots disappeared, but they didn’t…That was okay. A miracle was still occurring.

  It was like the clouds parted and a ray of light came shining down on me. Even for someone as lenient as my mom, this was unheard of. On top of not receiving any kind of punishment for the leg warmer fence, I suddenly felt like I went from being a kid to being someone capable of making my own decisions. The sense of power and superiority was exciting. No, I did not have sugar cereals or arroz con pollo on the stove, but damn it, I had acquired some grown-up power!

  “Nicole is making out with boys when you’re not here,” I added.

  “I am going to kick your ass,” Nicole yelled at me.

  “Well, you’re not giving anything up. You have to be honest. I’m just saying.”

  “Okay, Leah,” my mom said, “you don’t need to give up other people’s transgressions. And stop with the bread. Eat your carrots.”

  I liked a religion where I didn’t get in trouble for stealing leg warmers, but I didn’t like that my mom was hardly ever home because she was at the church.

  “Does that book say anything about kids being home alone? About you leaving early in the morning for the church and not coming home until late?” I said.

  “Well,” Mom said, “if you don’t want to be here by yourself, come meet me in the city after school and check out the church.”

  She didn’t have to ask my sister and me twice. The next day Nicole and I met at the subway and took the B train into the city for the first time by ourselves. As we walked up the stairs to the elevated subway track, I was fearful. But I was comforted by having my sister at my side.

  On the train, I felt less secure. Graffiti was everywhere, and a guy was slumped in the corner. Everything was filthy. We hadn’t even arrived in the city yet, and already it was so different from Bensonhurst. There were no friends here, no Joeys or Frankies. Nobody was looking out for us.

  We got off at Times Square, which back then was basically the worst place in the world for two young girls. But we were headed to the New York Org, the main place where people studied and did other activities central to Scientology and where my mom was working on staff. By the time we arrived at the building on Forty-sixth Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues, we had passed so many leering men and XXX-rated places that the big building, which looked like a bank or theater and had a hanging metal awning that read, “Church of Scientology of New York,” really did seem like a church or a refuge.

  Despite how freaked out we were about going into the city that first time, Nic and I started going all the time: after school, on weekends, and all summer. We were “on course” at the New York Org, which meant we were doing one of the twenty Scientology Life Improvement Courses that deal with all parts of life, from finance to family. We were told that L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, developed “discoveries of existence,” which give you “the know-how to overcome ups and downs, to know who you can trust, to organize your life, to achieve your goals and much more.”

  My sister and I were twinning, which meant we took all our introductory courses together and teamed up for the drills you have to do on the course—and one of our first was a cornerstone of Scientology, the Success Through Communication Course. The point of the course was straightforward enough. It was going to teach us how to talk to people better. I was all for that. My mouth was always getting me in trouble. The drills that we did in a room with other kids and adults on all different courses were called “Training Routines,” or TRs. During the first one, OT TR-0, Operating Thetan Confronting (“thetan” in Scientology means “spirit”), Nic and I had to keep our eyes closed and sit there across from each other. We often used that as a chance to get a nap in, but our supervisor came over and told us that wasn’t the purpose of the drill. When we got good at that (sitting without moving or falling asleep), we moved on to sitting across from each other with our eyes open. If one of us moved our big toe or looked down for a split second, the other had to say, “Flunk!” Then we’d both start all over again. The goal was to be able to sit and confront another person comfortably without feeling the need to speak or do anything else other than look at the human being in front of you.

  Also part of the communication course is a Training Routine called TR-0 Bullbait, where the coach focuses on doing whatever it takes to get a
reaction from your “twin,” called “push the other person’s buttons.” The goal of the trainee is to not show any emotion or reaction at all, no matter what is thrown at him or her. If you speak, roll your eyes, cry, laugh, or even blush, you are met with a “Flunk!”

  Like most girls, I was always self-conscious about my appearance—whether I had a pimple, if my nails were dirty, you name it. Nicole, being my older sister, knew all this, and there was no one better at getting under my skin.

  “What is that on your face?” Nicole said during my Bullbait session. “Are you growing something there?”

  I instinctively touched my forehead.

  “Flunk!” Nicole said.

  Nic did it again and again until it no longer bothered me. Well, until not a trace of emotion showed on my face. It bothered me, but I couldn’t show it if I wanted to pass the drill and move on.

  My sister had it a lot tougher when it was her turn. A male supervisor, who was probably in his twenties at the time but seemed about fifty to me, tested her.

  “You have big tits for such a young girl,” he said to Nicole to see if she could pass the drill and “get her TRs in.”

  “Fuck you,” she said.

  “Flunk.”

  “You have big tits for a young girl,” he repeated.

  “I’m telling my mother.”

  “Flunk,” he said. “Learn to confront what’s happening in front of you and be above it. You are not a body, Nicole, you are a spiritual being.”

  He didn’t stop until Nicole, too, didn’t react any longer.

  Our being on course made Mom, who by this point was working full-time for the church, really happy. After school and on weekends Nic and I would do a course, which would take a minimum of two and a half hours a day and run on average for a week or two, but then we’d have to wait around for about seven hours until Mom was done working. So we spent a lot of time distributing church pamphlets (passersby would sometimes yell things like “You’re too young to be in a fucking cult!”) and running the streets, dodging in and out of random buildings, which sometimes got us in trouble.