Helen Zuman - Mating in Captivity - A Memoir

SITTING CROSS-LEGGED ON carpet the color of eggshells, my back against the wall, I snuck glances at the other sellers on my crew and let dread build in my chest. Cayta, our leader, had summoned us to the plush living room of our host’s swank bachelor pad as soon as he’d left for his Saturday-morning workout. It was August in Chicago. August 2000. A few months had passed since my visit to Brooklyn. As the humidity rose outside, a purring cooling system pumped stale gusts throughout the gleaming high-rise. Air-freshener discs littered the apartment. I mouth-breathed to fend off their scent of orange Starburst.

My crewmates, also on the floor, faced me in a loose half circle. Riven chewed a fingernail. Toba straightened the CDs and magazines in her patchwork shoulder bag. Taridon crossed and uncrossed his outstretched legs, trying to get comfortable without kicking the coffee table. Owen, bony shoulders bent forward, studied a worn copy of “The Affirmative Life.” He and I had gone on a couple dates in the past month. On Wednesday night, we’d stayed up late in the kitchen, letting the buzz of flirtation power us through the last few hours of road prep. But I didn’t expect him to help me now. He stood no higher than I did on the Zendik pyramid.

Cayta, squarely across from me, locked her eyes on mine.

“So. Do you want to take the bus home?”

I squeezed my thumb. My knuckles blenched. I stared at my lap to hide my panic.

I’d heard about taking the bus home.

Back in May, the girl who slept next to me in my new dorm, the Old Music Room, had returned from a blockbuster festival in Memphis via Greyhound. Frenzied with penitence, she struggled through sobs to explain what she’d done to deserve expulsion from her selling crew. Her story was messy and blurry. I couldn’t make sense of it. What I did get, all too clearly, was the horror of this form of censure. Those who received it stood one step from exile.

Against my roommate’s torrent of shame, I’d thrown up a psychic dike. That , I’d thought, is not going to happen to me.

But my dike had not repelled the wave of “input”—criticism—that had swelled with each selling trip I’d gone on since Mardi Gras. In Charlotte, the girls on my crew had accused me of riding an “ego jack” over my “apprentice attitude.” In Pensacola, I’d had “no push”—I hadn’t been “righteous” enough about demanding people’s money. In Atlanta, I’d been “a loner,” “running my own show.” The day before, in Evanston, a suburb north of Chicago, I’d been “competitive” and “unconnectable.”

We called it input because, like data added to a map, it was supposed to help us find our evolutionary coordinates and chart a path forward. But really it was ammo in our battle with each other for a share of Arol’s favor. We Zendiks were not innately petty or nasty. We were scrambling for belonging in a scheme that made it scarce.

Cayta repeated the question, her voice a steel rail. “Helen. Do you want to take the bus home.”

What I really wanted was to ride the elevated train all day, staring out scratchitied panes at trees of heaven shooting up through dying buildings’ iron skeletons. Alone with my thoughts. Alone but with others. Still but in motion. A couple years earlier, at home in Brooklyn during my year off from college, I’d quit a dead-end job one morning, then spent the rest of the day riding the F train back and forth from Jamaica to Coney Island, reading E. Annie Proulx’s Accordion Crimes and letting a mind beyond words mull what came next.

“No,” I said. “No, I don’t. But I feel like maybe if I could go off on my own for the day, I’d be ready to come back tomorrow—”

Cayta cut me off. “ What? You wanna hang out, do whatever, in a war zone ?” She leaned toward me, eyes molten. “We don’t have time for that. It’s either sell or take the bus home. You decide. Now. I’ll give you sixty seconds.”

She didn’t have a stopwatch. It didn’t matter. She’d yell, “Cut!” when she chose.

Riven and Taridon nodded. Toba stared past me, down the hall. Owen shoved “The Affirmative Life” into his back pocket, then straightened his back and folded his legs into lotus. Was he soothing a sympathetic panic? Warding off my chaos?

My mind lurched for a thought and went sprawling. Knocked flat by the surge of no time .

My gut, sensing a tsunami on the way, grabbed Cayta’s looped rope.

“I want to sell!” I said, my plea breached by sobs I couldn’t stop. “I wanna go out today and do better.”

I didn’t want to do better. I wanted my power. What passed as tears of penance were really tears of rage.

A month later, back at the Farm, on a weekday morning, I watched from our own familiar living room floor as a dozen Family members filed in from the kitchen and filled the couch and chairs we’d left clear for them: Zar first, then Rayel, Swan, Prophet, and the rest. I breathed deeply, savoring the cinnamon-citrus scent of ripening persimmons. A thrill quivered in my throat. Impromptu meetings like this usually signaled a big shift.

I happened to know what had triggered the meeting. I’d been up in the Addition the previous afternoon, discussing the dinner plan with Shure, when I’d overheard Arol ask Zar and a few others why the vibe on the Farm had been so heavy lately. Though I hadn’t sensed the weight myself, I trusted she was onto something. What could it be? Hovering in the office doorway, heart pounding, I risked a guess—which Arol received with a nod and a smile. But she wasn’t in the room now. Up the hill with the kids, she’d left Zar in charge.

The late-September sun blazing through the picture window made his pale hair a halo. Knees thrust wide, he leaned forward. “Okay,” he said, “let’s get this over with. There’s a lotta bitching around here about ‘Zendik isn’t doing it right.’ It’s time to clear that shit out. We’re never gonna win this revolution if we’re divided in the ranks.” He clenched his jaw. The groove of the knife scar on his right cheek deepened. “What we’re gonna do here is we’re gonna go around the room and everybody’s gonna say their complaints, so we can get them out and get on with it.”

The thrill in my throat fanned out through my chest. Zar’s pitch fit a pattern I’d first perceived ten years earlier through William Blake’s poem “A Poison Tree”: “I was angry with my friend;/ I told my wrath, my wrath did end./ I was angry with my foe:/ I told it not, my wrath did grow.” Before Zendik, I’d found that sharing wrath with those I cared about could clear our sphere for warmth. At Zendik, I’d seen that wrath mimicked gravity: it flowed down the pyramid, only. This was my chance to let loose at least a trickle of the rage I’d dammed in Chicago.

As Zar spoke, Rayel ducked away from her spot up front to hand me a pen and a spiral notebook. In a whisper, she asked if I’d write down what people said. I nodded, eager to be of service. She returned to the couch.

Zar jabbed his chin at Estero, standing by the kitchen door. “You first.”

Estero admitted he’d always doubted a revolution could succeed without violence. Rook, another Kore member, said he had a hard time believing a woman could lead the world. Luya said she felt frustrated by her lack of access to Arol: the Family acted like a phalanx of vice presidents keeping her from the chief executive. Out of about forty-five lower-level Zendiks, only two—Kro and Toba, speaking from a dim back corner—claimed no complaint.

“I feel like my life is finally set up so I can go,” Kro said. “Like I’m ready to reach my potential.”