Not Without My Sister (18 page)

I loved catching grasshoppers and beetles and bringing them home with me. I desperately needed something to belong to me. I'd tell my pet bug a bedtime story and drift off to sleep with a protective hand covering it. Inevitably, on waking the next morning the hapless creature was either dead or had escaped, and I'd mourn its loss until I replaced it.

Not long after I turned ten the "Techi Series" of Mo Letters came out. Maria's daughter, Techi, was now nearly twelve and beginning to experience the roller-coaster of adolescence. She had a fiery little personality, which was apparent in all the Mo Letters where she engaged in lively conversations with Grandpa.
Maria took it on herself to oversee the breaking of Techi. In the Techi Series, she was treated as the next potential Mene. Her questioning mind was seen as the voice of the Enemy trying to snare her with doubts. If she yielded to him, he could possess her. Techi's sessions of correction and prayer were recorded.
The Techi Series marked a shift in the Family's policies and methods of teen training. It was called the DTR—Discipleship Training Revolution. Things started to tighten drastically. Every evening, we had to write daily Open Heart Reports. We had to log the smallest detail of our day, down to how many times we used the bathroom and how many glasses of water we drank. Every negative thought, all the lessons we had learned, any conversation we had with our peers, and a written reaction to all the Mo Letters we read had to be recorded. We were also encouraged to report on our classmates.
Shepherds used this information to discover any doubts or potential character flaws, which they could use against you later. To write too little was very serious, but it was impossible to come up with a new lesson every day. I became a very creative writer, making up scenarios from which I "learned."

Every week an adult would be paired up as our walky-talky partner and take us for a talk where we were meant to share our hearts, or bare our souls. It was assumed we'd be more willing to talk freely with someone who was not our immediate teacher. Everything we said was, of course, reported back to our shepherds.
Two years into our stay in Thailand, Celeste and I were suddenly moved to the Sex-Vice Center, a "selah" or secret home where much of the Thailand leadership was based. I had no idea why we were moving; it all happened fairly quickly. Celeste and I were packed into the jeep and driven to a mall car park, where an uncle from the Service Center home met us. Before we were transferred to another vehicle, he sat us on a ledge in the parking lot for a talk.
"How would you like to pick a new name?" he asked. "Um, no thank you," I answered politely. "I'm all right with my own name."
"Well, in this case you don't really have a choice, honey, because you'll now be living at a selah home where every-body takes on a new name as a security precaution."
This was not entirely true, because only Celeste and I were made to change our names. She had already changed hers from Celeste to Joan and I did not see why she had to change it again.
"So, what name do you think you'd like?"
"Well, I've always liked the name Claire," Celeste offered.
"That sounds good. It suits you. So you'll be Claire from now on. What about you Julie?"
"I don't know" I wanted none of it. I had always been Julie, and it felt like a piece of my identity was being taken from me.
"Well, if you can't think of a name, we'll have to assign one to you. How about Anna?"
That was the ugliest, plainest name ever. "Well, I don't really like it much."
"Well, honey, we don't have much time. If you can't think of one, then you'll have to be Anna."
Claire and Anna, Anna and Claire. I never got used to the sound of our new names. I cried quietly in the back of the jeep. Everything was out of my control. Where I went, what I wore, who I was!
As we were driving, we were suddenly told we had to be blindfolded. Where we were going was a state secret!
The jeep finally stopped and our blindfolds were removed. "God bless you, Claire and Anna! Welcome to your new home."
My time there was miserable and lonely. Yet again, I cleaned, cooked and washed the breakfast, lunch, and dinner dishes. The other half of my day I did school work and had Word Time. As I was ten years old, and the next child under me was six, I had,to spend my remaining time in the younger kid's group.
It must have been obvious that I was unhappy, because four months later, I was allowed to return to the Training Center. Celeste remained behind. She was too high a security risk to leave. I only found out later that the reason we had moved was because her mother had stepped up the search for her.
Much had changed while I was away. The school had been thrown into a state of red alert. The police had raided communes in Australia, Argentina, and France; kids had
been taken away by Social Services; many adults had been arrested on charges of child abuse. A custody court case against the Children of God had begun in England. The Heavenly City School in Japan was under investigation, and everywhere the Family was being exposed in the media.
The Bangkok Training Center seemed a likely next tar-get. The school underwent a facelift. All the rooms and class-rooms were redecorated, and we received new uniforms, books, and school equipment.
We were inundated with letters and comics on the subject of religious persecution. A series for children called "Deceivers Yet True" gave examples of famous people in his- tory and the Bible who had to lie to protect those they loved. We were told that sometimes it was necessary to lie in order to preserve the truth. Because the System was of the Devil and not of God, outsiders would never understand. Sys-temites looked on sex as something evil and wrong, whereas we all knew it was beautiful and good. And what the System might call abuse was not really abuse at all because it was all done in love.
The next few months we read, studied, ate, and breathed Persecution Preparation. World Services released statements on all the Family's beliefs and doctrines, which we had to learn by heart. Our teachers held mock court trials and grilled us with questions the Enemy might fire at us on sexual abuse, Family life, and our controversial doctrines. We memorized the correct answers to shoot back to the authorities.
A giant purge of all Family publications was ordered across the world. Any Mo Letters that condoned sex with minors, or of an extreme sexual nature like Flirty Fishing,
were torn out and burned. Any sexual content was removed from our True Komix, books, and publications like
Life with Grandpa
. Anyone with the least talent had to draw bras, underpants, and negligees to cover naked private parts. The
Heaven's Girl
book was burned and all evidence of its existence expunged completely.
History was being re-written.
Then, suddenly, I was recalled to the Service Center. I had just turned eleven and did not fancy being stuck there again. To my pleasant surprise, three other girls my age had joined while I was away. Celeste taught us Maths and English. She encouraged me in my artistic endeavours. I discovered I could draw and became quite accomplished with oil pastels.
By this time, I had accepted that Dad was never coming back. I put him as far from my thoughts as I could. He was now just a cherished idol in my temple of memories.
One day, Celeste found a pair of his underpants tucked into one of her suitcase pockets. Dad had left them behind three years before and had forgotten them. Little bits of his cast-offs were precious souvenirs to us. One of her other treasures was a pair of Dad's holey socks.
"Hey, look what I found." She held them up for me to see. This was as sacred an item as the Shroud of Turin and I grabbed the worn red underpants from her hand.
"Dad's underwear!" I shouted in glee. Celeste deftly snatched them back.
"They're mine! I had them in my suitcase."
"I want them! Please, I'm the youngest and you already have his socks! It's not fair!" I caught one side of the underpants and a relentless tug-o-war ensued. In the end, she got the underwear and I had to settle for the holey socks.
Not long after returning to the Service Center, the entire Home packed up and moved. They were concerned that somebody might have discovered their whereabouts, so in true Family fashion, they did the little disappearance act. The new house was much smaller, and had no garden. From this time on, Celeste and I were barred from going outside, and I found the constant indoor confinement unbearable. For exercise, we would run up and down the staircase one hundred times, or do a Jane Fonda workout video. Celeste tried to keep us girls entertained by teaching us dance routines, but we were bored brainless.
A few months later, the worldwide media frenzy seemed to subside and the leadership deemed it safe enough for me to return to the Training Center.
The night I was scheduled to leave, my departure was suddenly delayed. The Home shepherds were rushing about frantically. At 10 p.m., I was called downstairs, and my flee bag was loaded into the jeep together with some suitcases and mattresses. To my surprise, Celeste got in the back of the jeep with me.
"Are you coming back to the Training Center with me?" I asked Celeste.
Celeste looked nervously to Auntie Ami sitting in the jeep with us, as if she wasn't sure what to say.
Auntie Ami spoke up. "Anna, there's been a change of plan. Something very serious has come up. You won't be going to the Training Center yet. We're going to go some-where else for a while first."
"Oh, where?" I asked. I had no idea what was going on.
"Well, you don't really need to know yet. Why don't you just trust the Lord, okay? Now, I know the windows are black tinted, but just as an extra precaution I'm going to have to ask that you and Claire lie down on these mattresses on the floor."
The mattresses felt and smelt damp. "What's happening?" I whispered to Celeste.
"I don't really know," she said.
My bones collided painfully with the hard metal floor as the jeep (which had no shock absorbers) hit one pothole after another. We must have driven beyond the city perimeter. It was now 2 a.m., and we had been driving in dizzying circles for the past four hours. Staring at the fleeting shadows thrown across the roof by passing lights, it seemed we had been driving forever, and would continue to drive ... forever.
I could hear Celeste, Joan, Claire—my sister—breathing beside me. I often forgot what I was supposed to call her. After some time, we were finally told that bad people were trying to find us and take Celeste away. I was not being looked for, but they packed me in for the ride anyway, assuming that if I were recognized they would guess Celeste was nearby. I wondered whether I was so much a threat to her security as someone to keep her company. Finally the jeep stopped. I was relieved; the need to pee had passed beyond urgent. The jolting of the vehicle made the waiting particularly uncomfortable. But I held it another half hour as we continued to lie down, waiting for permission to sit up and tried to make out what was happening by the sounds around us.
The back door was thrown open. The bulky outline of Uncle Philip, a towering German, loomed over us and behind him I could see the night sky, lit dimly by Bangkok's polluted smog. He was joined by Uncle Paul, a stocky Filipino, Auntie Ami, and one of the head area shepherds, Auntie Christina.
"So girls, isn't this exciting?" Auntie Christina gushed. "It's almost like it will be in the Tribulation when we have to hide from Antichrist forces."
Ever since I could remember, we had been living in the Endtime, with the Great Tribulation just around the corner. Sometimes it got tiring to always be living under the shadow of the Endtime. I wished it could just be over with, one way or another, like my spankings. After a round of desperate prayer, we were informed of the plan. Quick and casually, we were to enter the motel about fifty meters away. The six of us were split into groups of two and we slunk in, a pair at a time, through the lobby. Uncle Philip and Uncle Paul were to remain with us as bodyguards. As Uncle Paul was Asian, he was the only one who was allowed to leave the room to buy our meals and pass on any messages to couriers.
There was only one double bed in the room, which we shared with Auntie Christina and Auntie Ami. The two mattresses from the car were snuck up to the room, and our bodyguards slept on the floor, one in front of the door, and one at the foot of the bed. The novelty of playing "hide and seek" faded quickly. With six of us holed up in a twelve-by-sixteen-foot room for six weeks, never seeing daylight, my eleven-year-old energy was very soon screaming for release.
I vented my raging frustrations to my sister during our daily shower time. She bore it all calmly, the level-headed per-son she was. I did not care anymore if they did find us; I rather
wished they would. I began to imagine running on to the balcony, hoping someone would spot me and perhaps become suspicious. One day, when everyone was napping, I plunged out on to the balcony and looked down over the side, on to a courtyard surrounded by apartments, everywhere as empty as a ghost town. I slowly returned inside, nursing my disappointment.
We tried to find ways to amuse ourselves. Celeste would roll up a sock into a ball, and we'd play Toss the Sock. I cut out our milk cartons and fashioned them into a pop-up manger scene. Six weeks passed like this, before Auntie Ami informed us that we would be moving to a slightly bigger place. The night we moved had its comical moments. That morning, Auntie Ami had plaited my hair into many tight little braids, so that when they were taken out that night, my naturally wispy hair was transformed into a frizzy Afro. I was dressed in a florescent orange and white-striped Mickey Mouse shirt and fluorescent orange tennis shoes. My sister was similarly costumed. Never mind that it was ten at night, our Systemite disguise was rounded off with massive pairs of dark sun-glasses that covered our entire faces. We strutted through the hotel lobby, ignoring every turned head with the confidence only such a disguise could inspire.
After a three-hour drive, that would usually take half an hour, we arrived at the tiny flat where we would live for the next six weeks. We found out that the telephone number and address of nearly every Family home in Thailand had been compromised, which was why the Service Center was no longer a safe hiding place. A couple of ex-members had succeeded in infiltrating a Family Home in the Philippines. They had gained entry by imitating Mo's voice over the phone. Once inside, they persuaded the Home shepherds to leave for important leadership meetings in the US. With the shepherds gone, these two men, who had once worked in top positions in World Services, began a daring attempt to "exit counsel" the Home members by teaching them classes debunking Mo. Sixteen trunks of
Music with Meaning
archives, and un-purged group publications were stored in Manila. These two men took it all as evidence to expose the Family. It emerged just in time for the British custody case that was still going on in the UK.
The night we were spirited away, one of these men had called the Service Center in Bangkok, again imitating Mo's voice as he had done in the Philippines. Since the infiltration in the Philippines had gone so well, they thought to infiltrate Thailand next. Only this time the Home shepherd who picked up the phone became suspicious. The two impostors fled the scene, but they managed to take with them trunks of compromising material, including video footage the Family had overlooked and failed to destroy; this is the only video evidence that now remains connecting the Family to the abuses of their past.
In early December, we received the good news that an ideal house had been secured. We had the job of cleaning and setting it up before the entire Service Center moved in. Nothing prepared me for the appalling state of that property. Dirt, slime, rat and lizard droppings, spider webs, and bird feathers had combined into a hardened crust that coated every bare space of wall, roof, and floor. The smell was horrible. We got down on our hands and knees and scrubbed into the wee hours of the morning, to clear a clean space to sleep that night.
The next few weeks Celeste and I worked till our fingers were wrinkled and red. We scrubbed methodically, cleaning one room at a time. They were so filthy that it took the both of us over two days to complete one room. We wanted to have the house ready for the Service Center to move in by Christmas. We made it too, on December 23. We spent Christmas surrounded by people for the first time in four months.