The exorcism

If I had any doubts about leaving the Christian College for Cambridge, the exorcism quelled them all. The whole dorm was abuzz about Christine, a usually quiet girl with good christian clothes and serious Christian hair. What was the matter with Christine? She wasn't quiet anymore. She had a look in her eye. She let her hair escape the bounds of her head and go all flyaway. her clothes looked slept in.

The whispering started in my dorm room. I shared with three earnest young women who liked going to chapel, even cute Kathy, who could date any boy on campus, but stayed true to her high school sweetheart, studying theology in another state. I don't remember them discussing it with me, but I heard them discussing it, like the three witches, from my top bunk. Above me was a bright yellow square of cardboard taped to the ceiling, in its center a small magenta square with a question mark. My attempt at abstract art.

I was the questioner. They were believers and I was spinning away from the well honed system. I heard them talking,"She's possessed of the Devil." "Yes, we have to do something." "It's so sad; let's pray."

They prayed, they did it in another room, having attracted a large following among the other students from our dorm, then from other dorms, then they brought in the teachers and preachers. There was going to be an exorcism.

Did anyone tell Christine? I never found out if she knew what was going on before it happened. I stayed in my top bunk and contemplated my question mark; it was early spring, the cherry trees were in bloom, the ice on the pond had long since made way for geese. I was busy composing the ad that would take me out of this holy madhouse and to the real world where I belonged, the world of hippies and folk music and civil rights.

The funny thing is I can't remember if they ever actually held the exorcism. I remember thinking "Isn't that a Catholic thing?" and "Maybe the poor girl needs a shrink, not an exorcist." And the movie hadn't even come out yet. When I think about Gordon College this is what I think about:

Ice skating on the frozen pond behind the school

Giving boys backrubs with the lights out in the small anteroom off the lounge in the student center, until they fixed the lights to be permanently on.

Getting my ears pierced by Vicki down the hall, who would later marry my old boyfriend Billy. She used a sewing needle and thread, and an ice cube.

Singing out for the weekend with Helaine Haaland who lived off campus, saying we were going to stay with her aunt and really going to Boston, where I first met Beatle and saw my first "art film" Wild Strawberries.

Getting caught sneaking into the dorm that same night because we didn't have anything to do after the movie and staying at the Y seemed dreary.

Shannon, my dream crush, who asked me out, but the day we were supposed to go on our date, it snowed so hard you couldn't get out of the dorm, and the next day he was sent away for stealing $200 from the tract box. He turned up two years later in Boston. (More about that in another episode.)

The exorcism and how it propelled me out of the school and out of the faith forever.

Flashback - to the Fifties

Life Lessons

So I was ten and gawky and shy but also pretty darned snotty, and when Anita Grintals and I got together we were naughty. Not juvenile delinquent naughty, but we liked to play pranks. We called drugstores and asked if they had Prince Albert in a can, then if they said yes, we’d shout, well let him out! And cackle like crazy.

But we didn’t stop there, we also did the is your refrigerator running, and yelled, well go catch it! Ha ha . And most fun of all, we’d dial randomly and when someone answered, one of us, the one not on the phone would shout out from the background “George. Get off of me!” That was a hoot. We loved that one, little snots that we were, until one day the person on the other didn’t hang up and the line stayed open and we were sure that he was having the call traced and the police would be at our door any minute.

We never did that again.

One day that year we were ten, Anita Grintals and I made fun of some teenage girls, heavy and coarse looking, three of them sitting on a wall near the school smoking. We probably said they were fat. We were ten, ok? Well, we ran off, thinking we were very clever, and oh, no, there they were, at the top of the hill, big, heavy girls, with sneers, ugly mean girls, they herded us back down behind the school, No one else was around. It was a Saturday. My house was over the hill, through the woods, a small copse actually, but who knew from copses in those days?

We were on our way home and didn’t make it. Lost ground, backed against the back brick wall of the elementary school. By three very large ugly mean, cigarette smoking teenage girls. The biggest meanest one took out after me. I knew she would kills me, she would smash me flat with her big meaty hands. Her friends would stand there laughing and Anita was helpless. The other two surrounded her; so big so huge and overarching were they, there wasn’t even room to take a breath. I’m lucky I didn’t pee my pants.

“What did you call us?” big mean no. one tough growled at me. I squirmed, looking for a way out, for a teacher, for the principal, a parent, another kid, anybody. There wasn’t anybody, not even a dog, I mean, who but us, would nag out by the elementary school on a Saturday?

“Well,” she was growing impatient. “Uh I don’t know,” Yes you d, you called us fat, didn’t you? You sad we were fat.”

The other two chiming in, their low voices menacing, “You’re a brat. You don’t know anything. We’re not fat. We’re big and hard and tough. We can beat you up.”

I think Anita did pee her pants.

We were cornered, alone in the school yard with the schoolyard bullies. These girls were way too old to be at the elementary school. Do they routinely hang around loking for little kids to beat up?

We were surrounded; we couldn’t run away, even if w weren’t so scared our legs turned to jelly. What would they do. The biggest one, the leader of the pack, the bully in chief, took pity on us, or so we thought, naïve little girls that we were. “Wait, girls,” she said to her pals, who were rolling up their sleeves to pound lumps on us. “Let’s let these kids go.” The other two looked really disappointed, like they were hoping to smash some prepubescent bones today.

“No,” the big one said, pinching my delicate little arm, “we’ll let hem go after this one,” she pinched harder, “kisses my big fat butt.”

Oh, gross, I thought, help, Mommy, let me out of here. Anita backed away; they weren’t holding her arm anymore. Another one grabbed me, as the big one turned around, bent over and then looking coyly over shoulder, said, ‘Well, I’m waiting. Or would you rather get beat up.” Why do these things always happen to me? I thought, giving up all hope of squirming out of this one. She spanked herself n the butt. “I’m waiting.” The other two were cackling like the demented teenage torturers that they were, as I took a deep breath and held my breath as I bent over and touched my lips, as delicately as I could, as if I was kissing the papery skin of my medicinal smelling grandmother, and vowed to wash out my own mouth with soap if I got home alive.