Mom was so afraid of Wesley and what he might do that for the first two years of my life, she never let me out of her sight. In those two years, because of Wesley’s growing paranoia, we lived in over twenty places. We had a gutted-out house in Morgantown, West Virginia, that was only one big room with no windows or furniture, just a mattress on the floor; and a motel room in Cumberland, Maryland, with windows that my mother had to crank open; and for a time we squatted in the servants’ quarters of an old plantation house. The only meat we could afford to buy was chicken neck, so Wesley would hunt. Sometimes he’d come home and throw a fresh deer on the floor, chop off its head, and nail it to the wall for skinning.

When he didn’t catch anything, Mom made pancakes with just flour and water, adding ketchup or mayonnaise, or we ate off Salvation Army meal tickets. Wesley tried to supplement his monthly $211 with odd jobs like painting, landscaping, or bean picking, but they never lasted long. When he decided that it was time to move, usually without warning, we took only what fit in the car. Sometimes I had things like a crib and a stroller and toys, but they were often left behind.

Wesley was drinking hard, whipping Mom with belts and calling Nan from payphones to tell her that he was about to kill us both and bury us in the mountains. He started to shave his head to look like Charles Manson, and spent hours practicing what he called “Manson eyes” in the mirror. His stories went through revision; usually I wasn’t his son, but other times I was the start of his seventh-son-of-a-seventh-son plan to take over the world. Mom just took it as he gave it until November 1978, when she heard the news coming from South America and saw piles of dead bodies on the cover of Time.

The bodies had once been followers of the Reverend Jim Jones at his Jonestown commune in Guyana. They used to call him “Dad.” When he gave the order, they lined up to drink poisoned Kool-Aid and kill themselves in turn: first the children, then the elderly followers, then everyone else. Some of the cult members had argued for life, and Jones only told them that living, “raising up every morning and not knowing what’s going to be the night’s bringing,” was much harder than lying down and submitting to death. Seated at his throne when it was all over, surrounded by his adoring corpses, Jones emptied a pistol into his own head.

The sign above him read, “THOSE WHO DO NOT REMEMBER THE PAST ARE CONDEMENED TO REPEAT IT.”

My mother looked at the bodies, considering what they might have been running from or looking for at Jonestown, and why they stayed even when they knew that Jones was wrong. Mom knew all the tricks; we were living in a Jonestown of three.

She began to steal money from Wesley and hide it in a sock, never so much that he would notice. After some months, one morning she asked him to leave the door unlocked so that she could take me for a walk. Wesley agreed. As soon as he headed off to wherever he went during the day, Mom took me and scooped up what else she could—diapers and one change of clothes for me, my bottle, and my baby book—and ran to the neighbors to use their phone.

For the whole ride to the bus station, she scrunched down in the backseat of the taxi, peeking out the windows and constantly checking behind us, certain that Wesley knew. He had told her for so long that he always knew when she lied, that he could read her thoughts and knew her better than she knew herself. Wesley had powers; he could close a door behind him, sit in the dark alone, and travel through space in his mind. He could have been right there in that taxi with us. Mom asked the driver to stop at the bank so she could get some money, knowing that there was no money and she’d have to write a bad check. Still sure that Wesley was coming, she rushed in for the money, then raced back to the cab like the bank was on fire.

She got on the bus to Hagerstown, from there taking a short flight to Washington, D.C., the whole time terrified that he was driving to the airport and could catch her if there was any delay in the flight. At an airport payphone she called Gramps. Having gone the better part of two years without her calling once, he knew what was happening.

“You on the run?” he asked.

Mom held onto me and waited for the plane. Just by looking at Mom and me—me with bruises and Mom with her face gaunt from not eating, her long hair unwashed and nervous eyes surveying the place for Wesley—a random college student felt sorry for us and bought me a teddy bear. At the Syracuse airport, Nan and Gramps walked right past without even recognizing us. Mom was that far gone, the soul drawn out of her sunken face.

They took us home, fed, and washed us. Three days went by without word from Wesley, which scared Mom more than if he had actually shown up. When he finally called, all he said was, “When are you coming home?” “I’m not,” she told him. He hung up. After that he would call constantly to tell her that he was waiting behind a tree to come snatch me away. Gramps’s brother Shamo was a detective with the Geneva police and sent officers to the house to wait for his calls.

Wesley eventually came to the house and demanded to see me. Gramps stood watch over the situation, loaded shotgun in hand, but I hid behind Mom and wouldn’t go near him. After a few minutes he gave up and went back to Maryland.

“It’s harassment,” Shamo told my mother. “You can get a warrant on him.”  So she did, and a week later Wesley called again.

“I’m in Geneva,” he said. “I’m at the bus station, and I’m gonna go to the police and have you arrested.”

“Okay,” said Mom. “I’ll tell them you’re coming.” She called Shamo, and as soon as Wesley walked through the police station doors he was cuffed. During a brief questioning, he stood up and casually walked towards the door, so Shamo handcuffed him and dragged him back to the table. A judge informally told Wesley to never step foot in Geneva again. Shamo drove him to the edge of town and left him by the road with 79¢in his pocket. That was the last we ever heard of him.