Before
It wasn’t until Kestrel was twenty-six that she first had to confront the c word. She and Hank were browsing the farmer’s market on a Sunday, and she shared some stories about Farm Home she’d thought were amusing.
She was used to playing commune girl and treating her potentially upsetting childhood like a joke, but Hank looked serious as he said, “You know, sometimes the way you talk about Farm Home, it sounds like a cult.”
Kestrel gasped. “A cult? No, it wasn’t even religious. It was just a place where people tried to live a noncapitalist lifestyle. I mean, the basic idea of it was good. I just couldn’t get myself to fit in there.”
Most of the cults she’d heard about were extreme examples—men using God as an excuse to sleep with teen girls, or apocalyptic maniacs conning their adherents into mass suicide. That definitely wasn’t Farm Home.
But that c word clung to her, haunted her, infected her, till she felt she had to prove Hank wrong.
So one Saturday evening before heading out to their weekly friend-group karaoke, they sat on their cozy thrift-store couch to figure it out.
Hank searched “how to identify a cult” on his phone while Kestrel looked up dog photos on hers.
“It says one sign of a cult is a charismatic leader,” said Hank. “Was Teacher charismatic?”
“Hardly,” said Kestrel. “His lectures were insanely boring.”
“So you wouldn’t attend unless you had to. Was it an option to skip? Would you be punished?”
“No.” Kestrel paused. “It was just . . . understood.”
“Okay.” Hank read some more. Kestrel admired some sheepdogs.
“It looks like cult leaders don’t necessarily need to be captivating but they all seek control over others while evading accountability for themselves.
Criticism of the leader is discouraged or even punished.
And they might lack empathy, claim that they always know best, need a lot of flattery . . .”
Kestrel remembered how often she’d praised Teacher to get his approval, and she felt a little sick to her stomach. For someone not particularly appealing, just how had he managed to get two hundred people to do whatever he wanted?
“But still,” said Kestrel, “the word cult is extreme. Everyone is over diagnosing cults lately. They’re hotter than murder podcasts and perms.”
“Do you mind if I keep reading?” asked Hank. “I find it interesting.”
“Go ahead,” said Kestrel, but even a photo of a poodle gleefully leaping into a swimming pool couldn’t get her smiling.
“This says that a cult exerts power over its members by controlling their behavior as well as the information they receive—”
“See, this is what I mean about going too far,” said Kestrel. “Every group has rules, right? Schools control what students can do, when they can eat or use the bathroom, even what they wear. And the teachers decide what information they learn. So isn’t high school a cult by definition?”
“Good point,” said Hank. “So, I guess in a school—at least, a noncult school—there would be checks and balances. A principal could discipline a manipulative teacher, a school board could fire a power-hungry principal, voters could vote in a new school board, et cetera. But in a cult, the leader is considered the best and sometimes only authority over the people’s lives. ”
Kestrel paused, scrambling for contrary evidence.
“But Teacher wasn’t the only authority. There were times when the police came poking around, and the adults always followed their instructions.
And I had to answer to any adult in Farm Home, not just Teacher.
In fact, I was shocked when I saw how kids in the regular world only answered to their parents! ”
Hank looked at her thoughtfully. “I keep thinking about how you were separated from you mother—”
Kestrel flinched.
“Hey, Kes, do you want me to shut up?” asked Hank, his eyebrows worrying together. “Am I pushing you into this before you’ re—?”
“No of course not!” said Kestrel, desperately replaying a slow-motion video of a corgi running on its squat little legs. “It’s fine, go ahead.”
“So, by giving all adults authority over all the kids,” said Hank, “was Teacher sharing power equally? Or was he actually diluting the authority of the actual parents, and so making himself the supreme authority over all?”
That one left a mark. Teacher knows best. Everyone always said so. Even her mother.
“‘Cults create fear to keep people from leaving,’” Hank read.
“Teacher never threatened to shoot anybody if they left or anything,” Kestrel said, but her head was nodding as if determined to agree with Hank all on its own.
In her four years there, Kestrel only recalled a single member leaving Farm Home, and after his departure, everyone talked about him like he was as good as dead.
She remembered other kids whispering fearfully about “the world” and “How does anyone survive out there?” Only Farm Home was safe—that’s what they learned.
Eventually Kestrel gave up on the healing power of dog photos and snuggled in close to Hank to read along with him.
His steady warmth against her side, his strong arm around her shoulder, made it bearable to think about things she’d never dared explore.
Karaoke was forgotten, and sometime later, the internet returned one of those rare completely consensual verdicts.
“Holy shit,” she said. “I grew up in a cult.”