Not Without My Sister (7 page)

One evening, he announced during a meeting, "I want everyone to write down in order of preference who you would like to be on the date schedule with. You won't be guaranteed that you'll get the person you asked for, so put down your first, second, and third choices." While the adults were given a choice, Paul arbitrarily decided my and Armi's date schedule. We had to have a date--sex in other words--with both Patrick and Nicki, twelve and nine years old, once a week.
When Nicki and I were five years old at the campsite, I remember fooling around with him and mimicking sex like we had seen the adults do, and it was fun. I liked him. But being forced on to a schedule where I had to perform whether I wanted to or not quickly turned it into a duty. I resented being parcelled out without any consideration for how I felt or what I wanted.
Besides our dates with the boys, Armi and I were also scheduled with the adult men. Paul Peloquin would ask me to masturbate as he got off. He said it turned him on to watch me. I hated it, especially since I was afraid of him. I would imitate the motions as I had been taught, but felt nothing but fear that if I didn't please him he would lash out in anger.
I had been taught that black was white until my normality was upside down and backwards--but there was some kind of inner spark of morality deep-seated in me that told me what was really right and what was wrong. Sex with men old enough to be my father—with anyone I didn't choose—was wrong. Their touches were uncomfortable and awkward. It was an assault on my body that I had to grin and bear; I was powerless to stop it. I was trapped. Dad should have saved me, but he didn't.

Jeremy Spencer worked with Dad on
Life with Grandpa
as the artist. He lived in the small, detached room in the courtyard that was built for the maid. On our dates he would play a tape of saxophone music. The routine was by now familiar—undress, pray, kiss, and then give him a hand job. Jeremy would try to masturbate me but it just ended up feeling raw and hurting. I would move position so that he would rub a different spot, but I never understood why he—and the other men--kept on rubbing and rubbing. If I said I did not enjoy it they would accuse me of being prudish or proud. I just pretended to have an orgasm to get them to stop,,
Because we were supposed to "be loving and share," my protests were seen as rebellion which was the spirit of the Devil. Eman Artist worked directly with Mo he was treated as special and had the pick of any woman or girl he wanted. He was a short man, overweight, wore glasses, and had already lost most of his hair even though he was only in his early thirties. I had just started to develop breasts and they were tender. Eman liked to come up behind me and feel me up, or wrap his arms around my chest and squeeze me tight. It felt like he was suffocating me.
"You're hurting me," I would say, as I pushed him away.
"You're just little Miss Queeny, aren't you?" he'd snap back. "So proud,
Queeny
," he would mock, emphasizing the word "Queeny." I hated that name.
I managed to avoid him for a while, but then the dreaded evening came when he asked me to come to his room for a date. I could not bear the thought of being alone with him. In desperation, I went to my teacher, Sally, and said I could not do it.

"He's horrible, pushy, and disgusting," I told her. "Sweetie, sometimes it can be difficult to share but God gives us the strength to do it. Why don't we pray together?" She laid her hand on my shoulder.
I listened dejectedly to her prayer, feeling betrayed and helpless. If she was not going to stop it then no one would. She handed me her tape recorder and suggested I play some music and do a dance for the loathsome man. She even escorted me to Eman Artist's room. I hated her. I hated the fact that I was being forced to suck the dick of a perverted, fat man who persisted on pushing himself on me when he knew I hated it. The worst part was the way he gloated. He had power over me and there was nothing I could do about
it.
He smirked as he exposed himself. "Suck me off," he ordered. Forcefully he pushed my face down on to his penis until I gagged. But although he puffed and groaned, nothing happened. So he asked me to dance for him, directing me to wiggle and rub my bottom in a suggestive way, as he tried to get it on himself. He failed to climax and his impotence made him agitated and more demanding. After what seemed like hours, I stumbled out of his room and cried myself to sleep on my own bed. The assault was over, but the nightmare continued to haunt me for years.
I never thought of telling Dad how I felt about the incident, especially after one evening when I walked in on him lying on the bed half-dressed with Armi. Upset and dreadfully embarrassed, I left the room quickly. The thought of my dad having a date with my best friend deeply disturbed me. He did it too, just like all of them. Of course he wouldn't rescue me. We never talked about any of my sexual experiences, nor did he ask me. In fact, I rarely saw him. He was completely stripped of all his parental responsibilities--he was my father in name only. I spent most of my time with Michael and Patience, who acted as my foster parents.
But to Michael, I was more than a daughter. Like all the girls, I walked around in little panties during the day. After a game of badminton with him, he came up to me and flicked my panties playfully.
"You've been a good girl recently. As a reward we should have a date," he said.
I gave a weak smile, but inside I was screaming,
Why? What sort of a reward is that? Your penis down my throat is no reward for me.
That was the last thing I wanted. I finally reached my boiling point. I was tired of anything do to with sex. I was fed up of what seemed to be a never-ending hell. I decided to risk it--I figured I had nothing to lose--and I went to Paul Peloquin. "I don't want to have dates anymore. It's not fun, I'm sick of it," I said.
His face turned bright red. "That is the spirit of rebellion speaking in you," he shouted. "Go to my room and wait there."
My stomach churned. I was in trouble. When he entered the room an hour later, Paul told me he had a letter to read me, called "The Girl Who Wouldn't." It was a stern Letter of Correction from Mo to a woman who had refused to have lesbian sex with Keda, one of his leaders.
Afterwards, Paul applied what the letter said to me. "You know that's your problem. So full of pride and self-righteousness, thinking you know better than everyone else. Do you think you know better than God?" He fumed. "It's the woman's place to yield to the man and given them what they need. It's not about
you
. You'd better be willing to sacrifice and show a little more love, damn it. You're yielding to the Devil, you know? Rebellion is witchcraft."
I had to write a Letter of Confession and repentance, but inside I hated Paul. I hated being forced to have sex, with no way to escape from it. I started to have violent thoughts about him and wished he would die. I felt I was going crazy with so many bottled up feelings that I couldn't express. Sometimes I would go outside in the early evening just to be alone for a few moments and daydream. One evening after a game of badminton, as the sun was setting I heard haunting music from over the high wall. I lingered and as moths fluttered, attracted by the lamplight that illuminated the court, I listened to the words.
"Flashback warm nights . . . suitcases of memories . . . time after time. . ."
I was mesmerized. All our songs had to be inspirational, about witnessing, Jesus, the Bible—the words of this song captivated me. They were poignant and filled my head with dreams of love and romance and pain.
"You're calling to me... can't hear what you've said. . ."
I wanted to cry with the pain that the song drew out of me.
"If you're lost you can look and you will find me. . . time after time. . ."
I felt as if all my dreams and hopes and aspirations for the future were in the words of the song—and a sense of loss, of being lost in a world I longed to find my way out of.

" If you fall I will catch you... I'll be waiting. . .time after time. . ."
Night after night, I would wait outside in the dusk for that record to be played again. Whoever was playing it could have had no idea that, just the other side of the wall, I was listening and dreaming. Restricted behind four walls, with few changes of scene, us kids came up with ways to entertain ourselves and have fun. Armi and I taught ourselves to do the splits, cartwheels, and backflips. We even put together a half-hour circus show with the boys that we proudly performed for the Home.
Through the good times and the bad, Armi and I were inseparable; she was my best friend and my closest confidante, so when I found out that she was leaving for Teen Training at the King's House—Grandpa's Home—I was devastated. It was the greatest privilege and honor to be invited to his house, and I wondered what I had done wrong that I had not been considered worthy enough to go too. I had no idea at that time that teen training at the King's House would be no honor, but purgatory.
"We're going through some changes of personnel," Marianne told me, after summoning me to her room. And it seems it would be best if you joined Serena. There won't be anyone your age here." Michael and Patience and the boys were also leaving for another commune in Manila.
"What about my dad?" I asked.
"He's needed to write
Life with Grandpa
here," she said, not even trying to soften the blow when she saw my crumpled face.
I burst into tears. My dad and my best friend were being taken from me in one fell swoop. I had nothing left. Perhaps in an attempt to cajole me to obey, Marianne explained that little
Victor needed to go back to his mother, and since it had been six months and he would have forgotten her, I was needed to accompany him. "He knows you and it will make it easier for him," she said.
Victor was a darling, with chubby cheeks and big, brown eyes. I could not understand why he had been taken away from Serena in the first place. Nothing at this point made any sense. But I cared about him and, knowing that I had no choice, agreed to go.
The night before I left, Armi and I made a pact. It was not long before the Great Tribulation, and no matter where we were in the world we would meet at the edge of the jungle outside Manila. I was an avid reader of the "Survival Sam" Comix series that described how to set traps, live off the land and get clean water in the wild. We drew up a list of essentials we would need, like rope, matches, water-purification tablets and a Swiss army knife.
"I'll be there, waiting for you," I said. "No matter what happens, do you promise to be there?"
"I promise," Armi assured me.
It might have been a fanciful dream, but I believed it with all my heart, and somehow it made me feel better.

I arrived late in the evening at my new destination--Dan and Tina's Home—with baby Victor in my arms. I was uncertain of my future; my stomach tied in knots.
Serena came flying into the living room with Mariana and Juliana, beside herself with joy. "Victor! He's grown so big!" she exclaimed. I handed him to her but he didn't recognize his own mother and screamed and his chubby arms flailed at her face.
He continued to struggle and turned to me, his little face red and blotched and held out his arms. I took him and rocked him, while Serena looked on distressed. I was the one familiar face he knew, but still he cried and cried late into the night. I tried my best to comfort him, but he wanted the only mother he knew—Claire.
Eventually I was shown to my bed, the top of a triple-bunk bed in the enclosed porch that had been turned into a children's bedroom. Emotionally worn out, I lay in the dark with the other children, wondering why I was being punished by being sent into exile. It was total banishment. No contact, no telephone calls, no visits.

Dan and Tina had four children: Peter, who was ten like me, two younger brothers and a little sister. The house had four bedrooms, and in addition to Serena and my sisters, two other couples lived there--Peter Pioneer and Rachel, whom I knew from
Music with Meaning
, and Joseph and Talitha, a German couple who spoke English with a heavy accent. Juliana had made friends with their fouryear-old daughter Vera and they spent most of the day with Talitha.
I found it hard to adjust to being with Serena again after so many months of being apart. She felt a virtual stranger to me and I spent most of my time at first caring for Victor. It took two weeks for him to stop crying, and by six weeks he showed no signs of missing his former foster family.
For the first time I began to sympathize with Serena, who had struggled for many years with a debilitating condition that made it very painful for her to walk, especially when she was pregnant, which she was at the time with her third child by Dad. Her knees swelled up to twice their normal size and this crippled her ability to help in the Home. Then Victor contracted tuberculosis, which was endemic in many parts of the East. Medical care was expensive. Finally, it was decided that they both had to go to Germany to get proper medical attention. Being sent back to the West was a mark of dishonor, and to have to resort to doctors meant she was weak in faith and had spiritual problems. Everything was hush, hush, and Serena never said goodbye. The day she left, Tina asked me to distract Juliana.
"She's not going with them?" I asked.

"No. It would be too much for Serena. She's eight months pregnant, and Victor is sick. Mariana is the oldest so she'll be able to help with Victor." Mariana was only five.
I felt terrible for Juliana, the middle child, who was now left without a mother just like me, only Dad wasn't here either. Immediately I felt I had to try and protect her and be a "mother" to her. Dan and Tina were appointed our legal guardians. I was ten and Juliana was four. I didn't mind Tina, but I was afraid of Dan and tried my best to stay out of his way. He beat his boys with a metal flyswatter, sometimes a hundred swats at a time. Their shrieks made my blood run cold. After a beating, their bottoms would be bloody and swollen for days.
There was always the fear hanging over me that one day he would beat me too, but I was lucky he never did. It was his two younger boys that were beaten the most, and they often behaved violently themselves, attacking me as if passing on their pain. Once they even tried to strangle me. That scared me even more and I began to withdraw into myself. Juliana moved in with Joseph and Talitha, but, unlike me, she did not escape Dan's violent outbursts. There was little I could do to prevent the beatings he inflicted on her every day, mostly for wetting her bed, something I thought was completely unfair. When anyone would get a beating, the screams would resound through the house and a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach would grip me until it was finally over.
I'd close my eyes and grit my teeth and mentally beg,
Dad—please come, please come
. The hope that he would somehow hear my silent prayers and come to take us away soon kept me going through the days.

It was one long year later, when I was eleven, that without warning, Dad arrived suddenly at the doorstep of our home with Jeremy Spencer. Now I knew how Serena had felt when she'd seen baby Victor again. I screamed, "Dad!" and flung my arms tightly about him.
He gave me a big hug. "How's my girl?"
"Oh Dad--I missed you."
"Well, we're together now We're going to live on a farm!" he said.
"A farm? Where?"
"In Macau."
"Where's Macau, Dad?"
"It's a Portuguese colony near Hong Kong. We're going to live on Hosea's farm. You know who Hosea is, don't you?" He didn't wait for me to say that I did. Everyone knew who the entire Royal Family was by heart.
There was a part of me that was curious to meet Hosea Mo's youngest son. I had read about him in the Mo Letters, but even more, I didn't care where we were as long as I stayed with Dad.
Hosea's farm was located in a little Chinese village called Hac Sa. The property included a fifteen-room cottage, two smaller cottages, stables, and farmland, where some forty-five members lived. Hosea had two wives, Esther and Ruth, with seven children--two girls and five boys—between them. The evening we arrived, I was unwell and had been throwing up all day. The temperature was 10 degrees--and that was cold compared to the Philippines where it is hot all year round. Esther immediately wrapped me up warm and soaked my feet in a bucket of warm water.

"You might have a fever," she said, concerned, and took my temperature, which was just slightly higher than normal. "Just have a good rest tomorrow," she cooed.
I hadn't been made such a fuss over in a long time, and Esther was the warm, motherly type, the way I had dreamed my mother would be.
Dad, Juliana, and I were shown to our room in one of the smaller cottages. It was cosy, and I liked the idea of staying in a smaller house apart from the main commune.
The next morning I had a better look around. There were no walls around the houses like the Homes in the Philippines. Chinese families lived next door to us and I would see them playing table tennis or cards outside. Because of the language barrier I was unable to talk with them. I also met Crystal and her husband, Michael. This woman was the same Crystal who had been my nanny in Greece many years earlier.
"Welcome," she said, smiling at my father. "And I remember you," she said, giving me a wink.
It didn't seem ten minutes before he started a full-blown affair with her. Her husband didn't seem to mind.
While Esther was the kindest person I had ever met, I discovered quickly that Hosea was a violent and explosive man. I saw him beat his boys and he would grab them by the back of the neck, nearly choking them. David, Hosea's second oldest son, was fifteen and I was shocked when I found out he couldn't read. The boys never had good schooling. David and his older brother Nehemiah shouldered most of the responsibility of the farm and animals. They were expert farmers, but lacked the basic 3Rs. David was very self-conscious about this and it contributed to his low self-esteem. I had learned to read before I was three, and so too had Juliana. I couldn't understand why boys that age had never been properly educated.
We had to get up at five in the morning. Waking up before dawn took some adjusting to. Hosea's boys would milk the cows, collect the eggs from the chickens, feed the goats and horses, and clean out the stables. In the meantime, I was given the job of making breakfast, and soon lunch and dinner for up to forty-five people. I was often on my own in the kitchen and struggled to lift the pots and pans, which were industrial size. I also received a few cuts and burns, though thankfully nothing too serious. I followed recipe books and experimented on my own. I made pasta salads, stews, and roasted heart and beef in the oven.
Apart from Hosea's two daughters, I was the only other pre-teen girl. I found out that the boys had regular dates with the adult women there, but I was not prepared for when I walked in on Aaron, who was thirteen, having sex with Crystal, their teen shepherdess, on her bed. Embarrassed and disturbed, I quickly closed the door. The boys rivalled for my attention, and constantly teased and badgered me for sex. I was appalled by their behaviour. They made holes in the bathroom walls so they could spy on me. They called me prudish and stuck up. I didn't care. What little natural curiosity I had about sex had turned to disgust, and I made it clear that I was not interested.
I'll never forget one morning when David came into the kitchen while I was preparing lunch and asked me, "Do girls get horny?"

"How dare you ask me that," I snapped. "Of course they don't." I had no idea that girls could want sex or that it could be a pleasurable experience. I stormed off in a huff, while he just laughed.
Everything we read still emphasized sex. A new book was published for teens and pre-teens, called
The Basic Training Handbook
. In it I read about my friend Armi and the teens in Grandpa's Home, who had gone through a training program led by Sarah Davidito and Maria. The strict discipline, corrections, date schedules and confessions I read about made me glad that I had not been invited.
During the week, Dad worked with Jeremy Spencer on Life with Grandpa. But on Freeday, we would go out together for walks by the beach. He also taught me to ride a bicycle by holding on to the back of my bike and running alongside me. I fell and cut my leg and knee quite badly—I still have the scars--but he pushed me on even when I got discouraged and almost gave up. It took two days of determination on both our parts, but soon I could pedal off without wobbling. I was beginning to enjoy living with my father for the first time in two years. But after only three months he was unexpectedly summoned back to World Services. When he told me the news, I felt hollow.
"Oh no! But Dad--why?"
"I'm going on my own with Jeremy," he said, despondently. "You and Julie have to stay here--but it won't be for long, I promise sweetie."
"Dad, you know you can't promise anything," I said despondently.

We spent our last day together at a hotel in town. Macau was a strange mixture of brash excitement--like Hong Kong, which lay a few miles away across the gulf--and antiquity—its old brick buildings reflecting its history as a Portuguese colony dating back to the early seventeenth century. I was happy for the moment, but sad that we were to be parted so soon.
Eating lunch at a small café table in a cobbled square, I told Dad what was on my mind. "I don't want to stay here without you. I hate Hosea," I burst out. "He scares me."
"Oh sweetie—" he broke off and looked down, despondent. "I'll see what I can do."
After lunch, we had a siesta in the hotel room. When I woke up, Dad was not in the room. I heard noises coming from the bathroom, and opened the door a crack. Dad's head was buried in his arms and he was sobbing. I had never seen him cry so hard. I did not want to embarrass him so I crept back to the room and lay back down on the bed. Somehow it made me feel better to see him cry. At least I knew that leaving us hurt him too.
I don't know if it was Dad's doing, but a month later, Juliana and I were escorted back to the Philippines to what was now called Marianne's Home. A lot had happened during the time I had been away. Paul and Marianne had separated, and Paul had been given a new job as national area shepherd for the Philippines. Marianne's Home had a new mission to Flirty Fish and convert the officers in the Filipino military. No task seemed too big or too outrageous; after all, Jesus was on their side. Mo was adept at using women and sex to influence men in position of power and government.

The best part of moving back to Marianne's Home was finding Armi there. I had missed her, and being with her again gave me a sense of familiarity. I was also eager to hear about what it was like at the King's House, but she had been sworn to secrecy and could not tell me much. I did notice, however, that she had a gold ring on her finger.
"Where did you get that?" I asked, curious. She twisted the ring nervously as she shared her secret with me. "Grandpa gave it to me. It's a wedding ring."
"He made you his wife?" I asked, completely shocked.
She glanced up into my eyes briefly and I saw so much pain and unhappiness there I could weep with rage.
She told me the ceremony took place in Grandpa's bed as Maria sat and watched. I shuddered. She was just thirteen when the mock wedding took place.
"All the girls who went for teen training got a wedding ring."
"Even Mene?" I whispered.
"Yes," Armi replied.
But she's his granddaughter
. The thought disgusted me.
I could tell that there was more she wished she could say, but it was treason to divulge anything about Mo and Maria. If she had been found out, she would have been punished severely. I knew this and didn't push her to tell me more—but it did explain why Krys, another teen girl who lived in our room, had a matching ring like Armi's.
Sometimes Armi and I would pace the front garden for exercise, when we could exchange a few quick confidences out of the others' hearing. One afternoon I told her a dream I'd had. "It was really weird. I tried to get this large egg and run away with it. And you jumped over the wall to escape."
She looked at me in surprise. "I have been thinking about running away and finding my parents." She stopped, and glanced over her shoulder as if we could be overheard. Confiding in each other our inner thoughts was dangerous--they'd say we were murmuring and doubting. We were trapped in that world and could do nothing. I could sense her pain and though we never discussed it again, we had a shared empathy and understanding.
Krys and Armi were put on a regular dating schedule with two adult men, John and Silas. John had been the national area shepherd before Paul took over his job, and Silas was now the shepherd of Marianne's Home's sister commune close by, with his wife Endureth.
One morning I woke up to the sound of someone throwing up in the bathroom. It was Krys. After a few days Armi and I realized she was showing signs of pregnancy. Our teen shepherd, Wind reported it to Marianne and one of the Home shoppers was sent off to buy a home pregnancy testing kit. The results were positive.
'Who's the father?" I asked Armi.
"I think it's John. That's what Krys told me."
The leaders went into panic alert. Krys was just fourteen. There would be no question of taking her to hospital for pre-natal care. We were told not to discuss her situation with anyone or talk about who the father was. Krys was not allowed out of the house and had to wear baggy clothes to disguise her growing belly.