Helen Zuman - Mating in Captivity - A Memoir

Toba nodded. “I feel the same way.”

Maybe Arol had recently commissioned Kro to write the Wulf section of the Zendik website; maybe she’d just given Toba full charge of the kids’ education. Or maybe not. In my memory, a stone cloud of stoicism weights the air around them. Maybe—having spent more time in Zendik’s orbit than the rest of us—they knew better how this would end.

When my turn came, I repeated my plea to Arol from a day earlier: How were we to create a new culture, with no time set aside for reading, writing, brainstorming, art making—for shaping it first in our imaginations? I snatched moments for such things from the crush of constant demand.

Then, wanting to stretch this rare chance at comment, I added something I hadn’t told Arol: I wished I had an overview of the Farm’s workings, a sense of the design guiding our outlays of energy and time. Without that, I felt like a serf, trudging along behind decisions made in the Addition.

Once we’d all spoken, Rayel retrieved my notes. The Family filed out the back door and up the hill to see Arol. The room erupted into happy chatter. I, for one, anticipated praise for my insights. Better yet, I saw all our thoughts swarming to form a new order. What if we collaborated to chart our common course? What if we turned the Addition office into open space for sharing plans and visions? What if we parlayed our freedom from the nine-to-five grind into joyful rhythms of fulfilling work and renewing play?

We were poised for a great leap. I could feel it.

When the Family returned, Rayel was in the lead. Nervous perspiration plastered hanks of dark hair to her forehead. She took Zar’s place before the picture window. Standing, not sitting. When she turned to face us, she looked torn between killing and crying.

The room fell silent.

“We were up in the Addition, talking to Arol,” she said, “and I realized I had to come back down here and tell you how this meeting made me feel.” She bit her lip and cut the tremor from her voice with a sharp breath. “I moved to Zendik Farm when I was eighteen. I’ve lived here for thirteen years. I’m giving my life to this revolution. And it pisses me off to hear you guys shitting on all the work Wulf and Arol and the rest of us have done to make this incredible place for you to be.” Her eyes glittered with outrage now. The threat of tears had passed. “If that’s how you feel about Zendik, then you should get out.”

Rayel retreated into the line of Family. One by one, those standing with her echoed her anger.

I felt as if I’d unwittingly tripped the latch on a trap door in a hot-air-balloon basket. One moment I was soaring above treetops, seeing farther than I’d ever seen; the next I was flat on my face in a bramble, my world curtailed to the anguish of thorns.

So long as the Family was haranguing us all, as a group, I could handle the anguish. Yes, I’d transgressed. But, with just two exceptions, so had everyone else. Retribution borne by a group could pierce only so deep.

I’d forgotten the notes I’d taken, at Rayel’s request.

Moments after the Family had finished, Arol appeared in the kitchen doorway.

Outside, a dog barked. Car tires crunched on the gravel drive. A visitor? A neighbor? No one moved.

Her upper lip twitched, then curled into a sneer that bared her canines. She shook her head. “When these guys showed me the complaints you guys were making, I was shocked . We feed you and clothe you and give you this beautiful home and this lifesaving philosophy, and in return you bitch about these nit picky little things.”

The sneer crept from her mouth to her eyes, which locked on Luya’s. “You. You think Swan and the rest of them are keeping you away from me? Maybe if you pulled your head out of your box and quit mooning over what’s-his-name, you’d come up with something I’d wanna hear. And you,” she snarled, whipping to Rook. “You think a woman can’t run Ecolibrium? Who do you think runs this farm ? Who do you think was keeping it together, even before Wulf died?”

One by one, she skewered everyone who’d done as Zar had asked.

When she turned to me, my bladder clenched in dread. Still, I met her eyes. “Weren’t you up in the Addition— where all the decisions get made —just yesterday ? You want rules, classes, worksheets. You want someone to set things up so they’re just right. Well, get over it. This ain’t college. Here, you make your life happen.”

Thinking she was finished, I dropped my eyes to my lap. I was wrong. She had one more spine to drive in. “But no. You’re too good for that. You’re always hanging back, judging— taking notes —instead of throwing in. Getting real. I’m sick of your snotty, superior, intellectual bullshit.”

She moved to her next mark. I shrank inward, cheeks burning. If only I’d kept my mouth shut , I thought. If only I’d known those were stupid, petty things to say.

When Arol had finished, Swan, standing at her shoulder, took over. “It seems like people have a lot of resentment about the levels. Like you guys blame Mom and the Family for your lives not being perfect.” She paused. Her accusation drifted out into the room and settled on us, like soot. “So from now on there are no levels. It’s up to everyone, equally, to make this revolution happen.” Her nostrils flared. Her rib cage rose. Her eyes narrowed in challenge. “From now on you’re either a Zendik or you’re not. Step up or leave. Right now. I want a show of hands. Raise your hand if you want to be a Zendik. If you don’t really want it, don’t raise your hand. We need a core that’s committed, not a crowd of hangers-on.”

Ten years earlier, in an interview for the Zendik magazine, Swan, age fourteen, had said, “There’s some people that are never going to learn to become Honest, and those are the people we call Incorrigibles. And that’s sad ’cause they can’t ever be really happy.” A year later, in another interview, she’d been asked “how anybody might go about… being honest all the time.” She’d replied, “Join Zendik Farm.”

Swan had grown up in a stockade made of stories. Inside dwelt truth and the possibility of pleasure. Outside lurked lying and pain.

Raise your hand if you want to be a Zendik. In my eleven months at the Farm, I’d built my own fortress—not as strong as Swan’s, but strong enough. What if I don’t raise my hand? I’d be out on the highway by nightfall, adrift in a hell of cloaked figures whose lips, unbidden, twisted thoughts into lies.

What if I do raise my hand and I’m lying? Could I muster the depth of allegiance Swan demanded? Should I or shouldn’t I? How will I know?

I snuck glances at Owen, Rebel, and two other men who’d worn green with me and now, as I did, wore brown.

Owen raised his hand. The other three raised theirs.

I was at least as committed as they were.

Within one fraught minute, every hand was raised.

As the meeting broke up, I told myself we had advanced toward égalité , just not by the path I’d imagined. Maybe we’d find hive mind along a trail of snipped wristbands. But in my body I felt no burst from the Bastille. I huddled in my cell, still, awaiting communion.

In an essay that would eventually appear in the Zendik magazine, I cast Zendik’s harshness as a mark of nobility, and my desire for its regard as one I could satisfy by working harder: “I was not born a Zendik; I chose to become one. There is no illusion here of unconditional love. No bond not dissoluble, in a culture based on survival. None but the ones you choose to commit to.” I failed to note that commitments made to Zendik were not reciprocated.