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overboarding, which entails throwing a crew member overboard as a form of reprimand, picked me up by my shirt again, but this time it was to pull me back into the boat. We returned to the marina in silence. I was soaking wet and humiliated at what had happened, but there was a part of me that thought that deep down, Mike Curley might just respect me for not backing down.
    —
    A FEW WEEKS AFTER WE moved to Flag, we went back up to New York to see my father.
    Shortly after we arrived, as we were sitting around the kitchen table, he asked, “What are you doing there in Florida?”
    “I’m a housekeeper,” I said.
    “Your mother moved you to the cult to be a housekeeper?”
    “Well, yeah. We clean hotel rooms that people pay money to stay in.”
    “You’re learning to clean hotel rooms? That’s what you’re learning?”
    “Well, yeah, but we just got there. It’s part of basic training.”
    I started getting flushed. I felt the need to defend my position and what we were doing to help clear the planet, but I was not able to present it to him the right way and ended up ultimately doing the work a disservice.
    “How much are you making?” he asked.
    “Fifteen dollars a week.”
    “Donna,” he yelled to my stepmom, “get me the Help Wanted section from the paper.”
    He found an ad and showed it to me. “You see this? A hundred twenty-five dollars a week for a housekeeper. And you’re making a lousy fifteen bucks.”
    “Well, Dad, they’re giving us room and board,” I said, once again trying to defend it. But ultimately it was no use. He was convinced that he was right and he felt the need to belittle me and what I believed in to prove it. Little did he know that by attacking Scientology, he ended up simply pushing me back into its arms.
Them
against
us
. I thought, this guy has no idea that I am fighting for
his
eternity.
    We returned to Florida, and I have to admit, Dad pointing out that I was making only fifteen dollars a week along with all of the hard labor was starting to bother me a little. I was here to do important work and be sent on vital missions. And more important, to wear heels, stockings, and a uniform with a cap, Navy style. I imagined myself clicking around the organization in my heels and yelling at people to clear the planet. But that just wasn’t happening.
    It was right about then that I noticed that one of the kids from my Sandcastle crew was wearing a uniform and was “on post,” meaning that he had a real Sea Org job that definitely was not cleaning toilets.
    “How the fuck did you get off the EPF?” I asked him.
    “You have to complete the courses and show up to study time,” he replied.
    Nic and I had been taking the opportunity of study time to hide in the bathroom and take a nap in the tub or take the hotel shuttle buses back and forth from the Fort Harrison to the Sandcastle, enjoying a break and some air-conditioning. Up until this point I was under the impression that my bad attitude was what was holding me back from moving on from the EPF. That once I had a more positive mindset, I would be magically rewarded, promoted, and assigned a uniform and, of course, the all-important heels.
    Nic and I quickly changed our ways and got on course. We wanted off of the EPF, and soon.
    While I was making progress and heading in the right direction with my training, there was one thing I couldn’t come to terms with. I thought a lot about my infant sister, Shannon, a sweet little blond, blue-eyed thing. Whenever I could, I went to visit her in the nursery,where she stayed during the day while my mom was working. “Nursery” was a charitable term for the motel room in the Quality Inn filled with cribs of crying, neglected babies, flies, and the smell of dirty diapers. The only ventilation came from a huge fan by the window.
    This was where Sea Org members and staff dropped off their babies at seven in the morning and then picked them up at ten in the evening when their workday was