The cover art for my new JW memoir! (page 2)

klydia

Thanks everybody! I'm so glad you like it, too! I also love how it kinda looks like Brooklyn in the background. Bethel is burning! Betterdaze, I'll try to find a good excerpt and post it, sure! I'm in the process of making a website for the book, too. - Kyria

klydia

p.s. If you're on Facebook, I made a group for the book, so I can post updates about it:

http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=518290543&ref=ts#/group.php?gid=64879220692&ref=share

klydia

Here's a little excerpt! Hope it's not too long.

I wasn't sure what to choose, but I think the "congregation nutjob" is something every ex-JW can relate to.

Hope you enjoy it!

Chapter 2: Rejoice! For The Dead Are Rising!

"Would you like to see a picture of my dead baby?" Sister Bailey asked me, already opening her wallet. "This is Jason. He died."

Sister Bailey did not look well. For one thing, surgical gauze was flapping off the side of her face. She had recently lost one of her eyes to cancer and didn't seem all too interested in getting it replaced. In lieu of a glass eye, she regularly covered her ocular cavity with a vinyl, flesh-colored patch. She held this in place with surgical tape, wrapped her whole head in gauze, then accessorized the entire dressing with a lunch-lady hair net.

"I'm sorry your baby died," I said. At ten-years old, I didn't know how to respond to an unrequested dead-baby picture. I'd merely been walking down the aisle of our Kingdom Hall, looking for my friend Michelle so we could play hide-and-seek under the coat rack. Now I was confronted with Sister Bailey's dead son.

"Don't be sorry, sweetie! He's only sleeping," she chided. "We'll see him again in the New System!"

One of my favorite Kingdom Melodies was called 'Keep Your Eyes on the Prize'. It told the story of how, after Armageddon, Jehovah was going to bring us all back to perfect health and resurrect our loved ones into paradise. Sister Bailey always punched it when we got to the line: when eyes of blind ones see again.

Someday, Sister Bailey would be able to see again. Jason would be reunited with his mother, and she would greet him with two wholly beautiful blue eyes. Still, I got the feeling that Sister Bailey might continue to wrap her head in gauze, even after paradise. It was her signature style, her single white glove.

Then, too, you'll see the dead arise. If you keep your eyes on the prize.

Jason was grey. He had white streaks through his face from having been folded and unfolded so many times. I asked what he died from.

“He just died,” she answered. “It was a long time ago.”

If I'd thought Sister Bailey was crazy before, this was definitive proof. I couldn't wait to tell my friends that Sister Bailey had shown me a picture of her dead baby, then wouldn't even tell me how he died.

"Sista Bailey smells like cat pees," was Michelle’s only reply when I finally found her. "Wanna play hide n' seeks?"

My mother had no patience for people like Sister Bailey. Most of our congregation had already had it up to here with her antics.

"She just wants attention," my mother said. "Well guess what? Don't give it to her." Mom stamped her feet and cackled a purposefully fake, slapstick laugh. This was her signature note of sarcasm and schadenfreude.

Sister Bailey was self-involved. Naturally. What other reason could someone have for refusing to get a glass eye?

It was hard to garner pity in our congregation, especially when Ida Wachohowitz had already been in a concentration camp. Michelle told me that Ida always drank her coffee scalding hot and in one single gulp. She'd gotten used to doing it that way under the Nazis and never quite dropped the habit.

"She had it rough," my mother sighed. "Real, real rough."

Unfortunately, she hadn't been locked up for being a Jehovah's Witness, which could have made her a congregation celebrity. Still, it was impressive. The point was, she'd been persecuted by Nazis and you didn't hear her complaining. Our congregation had a low tolerance for whining, but a high demand for a good story. And, frankly, Sister Bailey's missing eye had long grown boring.

Sister Bailey was just one of the large group of insane, elderly sisters for which our Kingdom Hall was slowly becoming infamous throughout New England. While every Kingdom Hall had at least one "eccentric" member, we boasted an entire coffee klatsch of mumbling, mothball-scented, silk flower-behatted widows with spotty memories for taking their anti-psychotics.

Sister Blanche was our very own Minnie Pearl, with price tags dangling from her clothes like a septuagenarian shoplifter. She believed the secret to longevity lay in the consumption of raw garlic. She swallowed her ambrosia in whole cloves, with a spoonful of honey, immediately before clutching a bible to her chest and shuffling off to the Kingdom Hall.

It became a game to my father to presuppose where "the garlic factory" would settle during any given meeting. Then, with all the drama of a high school cafeteria, he would make a big show of seating our family on the opposite side of the room.

Like all factories, Sister Blanche belched. She became increasingly huffy with each passing eruption. "Ex-CUSE me!" she'd exclaim indignantly, as if she'd had just about enough of these shenanigans and demanded to know exactly where this disruption was coming from.

"Jeez-Louise!" my father would not-quite whisper to whoever was sitting nearby. "Maybe if our sisters didn't eat an entire Italian restaurant before every meeting, we wouldn't have this problem."

Sister Dubin was our resident schizophrenic. She was only occasionally aware of what year it was and held the deep-seeded belief that house cats were actually demons in disguise. While Sister Blanche fell into "old bat" category, Sister Dubin was crazy for real. One Sunday, our congregation received a phone call from an irate neighbor claiming that someone from our Kingdom Hall had verbally accosted her kitty. Soon after this incident, Sister Dubin was privately taken aside and asked if she might not prefer to praise Jehovah in a more personal, silent way. For example, by staying home.

My father told me this was because Sister Dubin was "making us look bad," but I didn't understand how Jehovah could allow himself to look bad. Wouldn't his Holy Spirit stop that from happening?

"It did," Dad explained. "The Holy Spirit moved the elders to tell her to stop preaching."

Hortensia

very interesting except. I hope the whole book is in the same wry, funny tone, rather than anger and hatred toward the WTBTS. It's about time someone wrote a fun story of growing up JW. Lots of Catholics have written funny books about growing up Catholic.

klydia

Yup, it's all mostly in the same tone. I'm just presenting my personal experiences in a way that was fun for me to write and can also educate people about what happens inside the Jehovah's Witnesses.

I tried to be as honest as possible, especially about my own screw-ups. I have no ax to grind and I think my parents did the best they could with what they had. People can make their own judgments.

StAnn

Kyria--looks great, loved the read. One comment though. The girl on the cover is dressed like a parochial school student, not a Dub. Can they put her in a meetin' dress and give her a little bookbag to carry?

StAnn

shamus100

OMG, that is very weird. Yet it doesn't suprise me at all, strangely.

I hope you profit from your experiences well. It will show just how delusional those morons are.

misguided

Kyria--looks great, loved the read. One comment though. The girl on the cover is dressed like a parochial school student, not a Dub. Can they put her in a meetin' dress and give her a little bookbag to carry?

I thought the same thing...the skirt is too short...it needs to be past the knee, you know. I loved the read...and can't wait for the book.

leavingwt

Love the cover! Cannot wait to read the book. Keep us posted.

-Donny

GoddessRachel

The excerpt is so funny, and I can relate to the, um, interesting characters who are "drawn to the truth." LOL - thanks for sharing it with us! I'm glad this is the tone of the book as well, and I know I will DEFINITELY be purchasing a copy as soon as it is available.

Thank you!

Rachel

The cover art for my new JW memoir!

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