Not Without My Sister

by Kristina Jones, Celeste Jones, Juliana Buhring

  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.

  Chapter 5

  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.

  "W
elcome," 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.