There is no voluntary resignation in our organization, Covington told a jury in the Moyle case.

For years after I left Bethel, I dreamed that I was back in the antiseptic halls of the Watchtower residence, fighting to find a way out. At each EXIT sign a Witness stood, smiling, barring my way: "There is no way out.' The dream was trite; my fear was fresh and vivid and palpable.

Since my departure, I have had a series of strange encounters with Watchtower elders, each one puzzling, each one a walking version of the stale nightmare.

On Christmas Day, 1968, a member of the Watchtower headquarters staff rang my doorbell and asked, "Are you Connie Grizzuti's daughter who used to be associated with the Lord's sheep?" I leaped at once to the conclusion that something had happened to my mother. I had thought that I we. 'killing" my mother by leaving her religion; the appearance of that man one Christmas—the holiday we had regarded as devilish and abominable, the holiday that had drawn my mother and me together in sisterly mutual defiance of the world—triggered the guilt I had never been able to expiate. My mother is dead, I thought; I really have killed her.

The reality, less awful, was quite odd enough: "It has come to our attention," the man said, "that in 1963 you were observed making obeisance in the Shiva temple in Warangal, India. You are also known to have made the sign of the cross while passing a Roman Catholic Church in Guatemala City. These are grounds for disfellowshipping. If you can prove, before a group of elders, that you are innocent of the charges, disfellowshipping charges will be halted. If we remain convinced of your guilt, you may be reinstated in the Lord's organization if you beg forgiveness. If we judge you guilty and you do not confess, you will be disfellowshipped. If you refuse to appear before the elders, you w ill be automatically disfellowshipped."

Odd indeed. There was this silly, but somehow sinister, man underneath my Christmas tree (in itself proof of perfidy), and there were my children, looking no less startled than if Santa Claus himself had popped out of the chimney. And there was I, feeling menaced, understanding the absurdity of such feelings, but nonetheless frightened.

I said, "Wouldn't it be redundant to disfellowship me? After all, I left ten years ago of my own accord." He said, "But you can't leave. You can never leave us. We can expel you. But you, having been baptized into The Truth, are one of us until we say you're not."

I declined—I did not have the reporter's avarice for collecting facts or experience then—to appear before the elders. And I was frightened. (I did rather mischievously offer him some Christmas punch, which he waved away with a shudder of distaste.)

They did not disfellowship me; I don't know why. A friend who once worked in the "Service Department" of Bethel, which handles disfellowshipping procedures, suggests that some technicality may have gotten in the way. Perhaps somewhere along the line, a technical procedure had been violated. In any case, I was left to wonder if they had spies who followed former Witnesses around the world to collect evidence.

It was not until 1974 that I was paid another official visit.

Years before, I had converted a young Brooklyn girl who had later married a Bethelite. They had been assigned to circuit-overseer work in Alabama. Lee and Donald, having returned from their assignment, came to pay me a "friendly visit." I had fond memories of them both. I remembered Lee as a spunky, sweet, feisty kid, not overly serious, given to easy laughter. Donald, twenty years her senior, had had impressive reserve and movie-star-perfect good looks. He was serious about everything. We'd had, before he met Lee, a couple of dates. He was courteous, contained, formal. We went roller-skating; he was austere even in a roller-skating rink. (I liked him.) He did nothing casually; I should not have been surprised when he said, in firm, measured tones—spacing each word to give it weight—"I'd like this relationship to deepen beyond friendship." But I was taken aback by what seemed, even for a repressed Bethelite, to be an overly calculated approach to romance. I made one of those hopelessly inadequate, awkward speeches that begins, "I like you too much to encourage you...." Still, I had been flattered, and I could not but regard him with affection.

I had not seen either of them for close to twenty years. The years had added dignity to Donald's almost-too-regular features; he was, if anything, more handsome than ever. Tomboy Lee had taken on some of her husbands coloration; she too now spoke in firm, measured tones, and I missed her careless spontaneity. She was dressed in what is called a matrons "ensemble," everything matching. She took in my cluttered living room with a swift, practiced glance and said, "It looks like a writer's house." (I took that as a reproach.) There was perfunctory conversation.

The first thing Donald said was that he hadn't come to "blackmail" or to ''spank," me. He spoke of the "rife immorality" in the world today and requested my 11-year-old daughter, who was finding all of this fascinating, to leave the room so that he could discuss rife immorality. I replied that there was not much that could surprise my daughter (who had meanwhile kicked me in the shins to signal her unwillingness to depart) and that I felt perfectly free to speak in front of her.

Donald: "Do you consider yourself one of Jehovah's Witnesses?"

B. H.: "Of course not. "

Donald: "What would you like the congregations to think of you?"

B.H.: "What they think of me is up to them, surely."

Donald: "When you were baptized into the New World Society you took up citizenship in a new order. Are you renouncing your citizenship?"

To that question I had no ready answer; it seemed preposterous that anyone should ask it.

Donald: "There are several reasons for leaving The Truth. One, you reject doctrine. Two, you have had personal conflicts with individual Witnesses or with the organization. Three, you have committed immoral acts and your shame keeps you away. Which of these reasons applies to you?"

I shrank from the inquisition. I had looked forward to seeing Lee and Donald—partly out of curiosity; partly out of a notion that, once friends, we could find common ground; and partly, I guess, out of arrogance. Perhaps if I explained myself, I might be able to dent their certainty. I did want to explain myself. My tentative efforts were impatiently received by Donald. He parried everything I said with Scripture. Donald seemed genuinely to believe that people's motives were always clear to them.

"Did you know what you were doing when you were baptized?"

"But I was nine years old!"

"But did you know what you were doing?"

(My daughter, Anna, said later that it was like a TV game show: Donald was the moderator—with all the answers and all the questions—and I was his contestant.)

Donald grew clearly weary (my answers tended to be long). "Let's concentrate on immorality," he said.

My daughter settled herself in with a pleased anticipatory sigh. She had spent much of the previous week airing her opinions on abortion (pro) and open marriage (con), and she was eager, I could see, to engage herself in what she assumed would be a freewheeling discussion of morality and mores.

Donald said to his wife, the tone of his voice straightening Anna's spine, "Lee, I'd like you and Anna to leave the room. I'm sure Anna would like to show you her bedroom."

Anna, a dutiful hostess, departed as gracefully as thwarted curiosity would allow.

"I have asked the girls to leave so that if you wish to confide your immorality to me, you can do so privately. I will pray over you, if you like, so that the Lord's spirit may return to you. "

When Anna returned, having stayed away for what she judged a decent interval, Donald was still discussing "rife immorality." Anna, grabbing her chance, offered, "Well, I kind of agree with you about immorality. I don't think anybody should fuck unless they really love each other."

Donald and Lee stood up to leave. Donald advised me that if I persisted in my course of action, I stood the risk of being disfellowshipped—like my friend Walter—"And then none of the Lord's people will ever be able to speak to you again."

Anna demanded, "You don't talk to Walter? But he's a good person. He's nice. That's not religion!"

Later she said, "They act pleasant. But they're not nice."

"Well, they're nice if you're one of them," I said.

"That's not nice," Anna said.

As Donald and Lee marched down the stairs, Donald called back over his shoulder, "Remember, we came here because we love you. We didn't come to spank you. We won't put in an official report on this. This was a friendship visit."

Three days later, Donald phoned. He proposed to visit with a committee of elders from the congregation to administer "spiritual discipline." I acquiesced almost hungrily. I had found my anger. And I wanted to know, What next?

I was convinced that this time they would inaugurate disfellowshipping procedures against me. I also felt that I needed protection, though I didn't know quite from what. I asked my brother if he would be with me when they came. My brother, though he wishes that I didn't feel compelled to write about the Witnesses, for our mother's sake, is absolutely decent and could not, furthermore, resist this "call upon the blood." He came and sat waiting, stern-faced, for whoever was to dare insult his sister. Donald came not with a committee of three, but with a single member of the headquarters staff. The agenda had been changed: no spiritual discipline, he said, just a talk. (Their motives and their actions were, and are, entirely obscure to me.) Donald asked my brother to leave the room. "Why do you need protection?" he asked. "What are you afraid of?"

My brother prevented me from having to answer. "I'm my sister's brother," he said, "and I'm not going anywhere. Anything my sister says, she says it to me too. Nothing she says could make me love her less. She's honest, she won't lie whether I'm here or not, and the two of you came together like two nuns, so I'm staying. Now what's your story?"

Donald offered a repeat of his previous performance. There were veiled hints of dire consequences if I did not "turn around and confess"; there was explicit spiritual blackmail: I would die at Armageddon. But Donald and his friend seemed to run out of energy; they began to talk about me in the third person, as if I weren't there. They started to preach to my brother.

He said, "Hey. You can't get my sister. So now you're hitting on me? Have some respect. You're in my sister's house."

They left. My brother and I looked at each other. "What was that all about?'' he said. I said I had no idea.

The rules—games—are often obscure. A young friend of mine left the Witnesses and made absolutely clear to them her determination not to return. She sent a letter announcing her determination to the Watchtower Society—which didn't deign to reply—and another to her local congregation. She did receive a certified letter from the local congregation, regretting that she no longer wished to join with them in Christian worship and indicating that they would respect her decision. The letter went on, however to state that the congregation had been informed that she had indulged in certain indiscreet actions of an unchristian nature (and that they had witnesses), and wished to meet with her to discuss the matter, giving a date and place for the meeting and urging her to reply.

(p. 154-158)