Not Without My Sister

by Kristina Jones, Celeste Jones, Juliana Buhring

  "It's good," he replied a little hesitantly. "I've made some friends. It's difficult, though. I'm expected to be an example all the time. I just want to be like everyone else."

  We all knew that he was destined to become one of the last two Endtime Witnesses along with his mother, Maria, who had been elevated to the status of prophetess. Grandpa had prophesied that together they would fulfil this role talked about in the Book of Revelations, and that Davidito would die as a martyr at the hands of the Antichrist soldiers before Jesus' return. While I had nightmares that maybe one day I would be killed as a martyr, I could not imagine what it was like knowing your fate was to die on the streets of Jerusalem. I wanted to ask him how he felt about this horrible fate, but thought it might be cruel to remind him. It was a tall order having to be the perfect reflection of his parents all the time when all he wanted was to hang out with us and enjoy life.

  One afternoon we were gathered together for Correction, under strict silence. I lay on a futon at the back of the room, as I had been sick for a month with swollen glands and a temperature. That summer almost the entire teen group had come down with kissing fever, or mononucleosis. But sick or not, a Correction had to include everyone. Peter Amsterdam walked in, flanked by our teen shepherds. They sat facing us.

  After a prayer, Peter Amsterdam thundered sternly, "The sins of your foolishness and worldliness have come to the attention of Grandpa himself."

  We looked at each other. What was this about?

  He continued, "Some of you were caught listening to a compilation of System music! Sad to say, Pete was part of this. It doesn't excuse him but you all have had a part in being terrible influences, and allowing the Devil to get in."

  I had no idea what Peter Amsterdam was talking about but again we were all in trouble for the actions of some. The list of our supposed sins was long. We had indulged in foolish talking and idleness instead of memorizing Bible scripture. We dressed worldly or cool. The girls flaunted long earrings and short tank tops.

  At the end, the ringleaders were singled out and marched to the front. Peter Amsterdam produced a leather strap, and the guilty boys were given a belting in front of us as an example to all. We were all crying and shaking. When the punishment was over, he bawled, "Get down on your hands and knees and pray for mercy!"

  It wasn't the end of it—a long list of punishments was devised for everyone for the backsliding and relaxed attitude that had led to this crime. Four of us teens who were not yet well were moved that night to the sick house, glad that we would escape at least some of the months of punishments the rest of the group would suffer. A few weeks later, I caught whooping cough. After two terrible months, and just as I was about to be released from quarantine, I was exposed to chickenpox. The shepherds told me that this meant I had to remain in quarantine for another month. It came to mid-November and I had been five months in confinement. I was going stir crazy, bored, cut off from my friends, and I was desperate to do some work, anything to keep me occupied. I hit a low of deep depression.

  Then, unexpectedly, Dad arrived at the School from the Philippines. "Dad!" I hugged him. "I've missed you so much." I expected sympathy from him, but for the first time in my life, he lost his temper. I didn't feel he had the right to scold me. He hadn't lived with me for years. Raising his voice, he launched in with an attack.

  "I heard you've been sick for months. You've been disobedient! You haven't taken your Get Out time faithfully like Grandpa ordered!" A Mo Letter called "Get Out" had been written about my dad, when he got deathly sick with hepatitis at Loveville in Greece. Mo wrote, "We can't have a show depending on a sick man," and ordered a regime of daily exercise to make sure that he stayed healthy. Since that day, Dad had always been faithful with his daily exercise, jogging or doing yoga exercises.

  I was shocked and the tears were brimming. He must have received a bad report from the teen shepherds, I thought. For me to be sick for so long reflected badly on him.

  Facing this angry man, in an instant the image I had of my perfect father was shattered. I thought he loved me; he had never lost his temper before, he'd always been fair. But I did not recognize the man in front of me now What had happened to him the years that we were apart? Was he really just like the rest of them, irrational and temperamental?

  As he continued ranting, I shut down, blocking him out. Throughout my months of illness I'd hated feeling helpless; but I hated even more everyone's judgemental attitude towards me, like it was something I had done wrong. Now even my own dad had turned against me. I couldn't believe it.

  Unfortunately, I became ill again. Two days later I came down with another temperature and broke out in hives. My body swelled up with bright red bumps all over and my lips and eyes puffed up to three times their normal size. I didn't recognize my own reflection in the mirror. On the third day, Dad came to see me at the Blue House. He told me he had been praying desperately about the reason why I had been afflicted for so long.

  "The Lord showed me that you have been put under a curse," he said. "Your mother is a backslider. She has left the Family."

  I struggled to take it in. Mum had left the Family! It was devastating and shocking news. For the past year, ever since that letter, I had hung on to the hope that I would be allowed to visit her. I didn't even know if she was still in England. I had no idea where she was, or what she was doing.

  "Yes, she has gone back to the System, to the pit, to wallow in the mire," he said disdainfully. "She has asked for you and wants to take you out of the Family—"

  My mouth dropped open with shock as wild thoughts and emotions surged through me. She had asked for me! She wanted me! But did she even remember me? It had been so long.

  "The Lord showed me that you need to pray against her and rebuke her spirit. Grandpa wrote a Mo Letter about this, called, 'God's Curses.' You should read it."

  A silent tear ran down my cheek. I still felt a bond of love and loyalty to my mother that no one had replaced. Pray against her? It was unthinkable.

  Dad was on a roll. "She's not your mother any more. You need to renounce any thoughts of her and pray against her influence in your life. This is serious spiritual warfare!"

  I was torn between my love for him, my need for his approval, and my instinctive repugnance over what he was asking me to do. Had Mum really put a curse on me? Dad knew how much I loved her. Now he had the leverage he needed to totally destroy my memory of her for good.

  I felt a wave of black despair sweep over me. I was still sick, run down, and depressed. I felt beaten. I gave in. "Okay," I said, but I had no intention of praying against her myself.

  Dad laid his hands on me and prayed fervently. "May the Lord destroy your mother and take her out of the way. She's better off dead then being a tool in the hands of the Devil." The prayer went on a while, and finally he concluded with, "May the Lord to cleanse your daughter, Celeste, completely from her rebellious spirit."

  It almost destroyed me to hear my Dad pray to God to kill someone, backslider or not. Grandpa had often prayed such venomous prayers against his enemies, but now my own mother? That day I shut her away and made a conscious effort not to think about her anymore. It was too painful to go there.

  The next morning I woke up and the swelling had gone down. By the end of the day the hives had disappeared completely. My "miraculous" recovery made me wonder if what Dad had said was true. He certainly took it as a sign that I had been delivered.

  I was finally released from the sick house, and like any released prisoner I was ecstatic to be back in normal life. I started a Family apprenticeship program in photography, which I loved. It was also Christmas; I joined up with the singing team again and performed at the Christmas show that was held at a fancy hotel for all our Japanese friends, over a hundred and fifty people. It boosted my self-confidence and esteem and I started to feel better after so many months of illness and isolation.

  But just a month later, my tourist visa expired and I had to go to Korea for what was
called a visa trip. This was common—members were often coming and going in such a way to renew their visas. It had never been a problem. I left the day before my fourteenth birthday with an adult partner, Sue, the cheerful, auburn-haired former club secretary of Music with Meaningback in the Loveville era. However, when we tried to re-enter Japan, immigration stopped Sue and we were both refused entry. After a night in detention we were put on a plane to Hong Kong. I was devastated and cried the entire flight.

  "I can't believe this has happened," I sobbed. "I was going to out for dinner with Dad for my birthday when I got back." Sue was upset herself. She had left her lover and job in Tokyo and her future was just as uncertain. There was terrible turbulence on the flight, and this added to my anxiety. I thought for sure we were going to crash into the ocean.

  At Hong Kong airport, we were greeted by Zadok and a World Services man named Isaac. Sue disappeared with the World Services leader to a Home in Hong Kong and Zadok told me I was headed to Macau.

  I burst into tears again. Not the farm! I would have to start all over again, away from my dad and my friends. The unfairness of it made me angry. "Don't worry," Zadok tried to comfort me. "Hosea isn't there anymore. There're a lot of teens. It's different." But his words were not reassuring. For days I cried and cried. Zadok and the teen shepherds there became concerned about my emotional state and did their best to try and lift my spirits, but it was no good. I was a physical and emotional wreck.

  Finally, I pulled myself together and started to make friends with the teen girls. The farm had been turned into a training center similar to ours in Japan—but part of it was like a prison camp for wayward teens. For the first time since she was twelve and had modeled for Heaven's Girl in the Philippines, I saw Mene. She had been sent away from the King's House to Macau in disgrace and was a Detention Teen now, kept apart from the main group. The number one crime that could land you in the Detention Teens was spreading doubts, showing a critical and analytical spirit, and questioning the words of the prophet, as Mene had done. She was the first DT placed under the charge of Crystal and her husband, Michael. They were brutally harsh.

  I saw Mene with the other DTs carrying out heavy manual labor around tie farm—mostly meaningless work, such as digging ditches and then filling them up again, or painting and then repainting the old barn, first brown and then green, and then back to brown again. The aim was to exhaust them to break their spirits. My childhood friend looked pale and gaunt but we were forbidden to talk to her or even make eye contact. She was under permanent silence restriction. Sometimes she would disappear for weeks at a time. I learned from the teens that were with her in the DT program that she had been put in solitary confinement in a small attic room, beaten and tied naked spread-eagled to the bed, with a bucket for a toilet, and fed only bread and water.

  The thought of being sent to Detention so terrified me I did everything possible to be seen as a yielded and dedicated disciple. I just wanted to get out of the farm as soon as possible.

  After three months of hearing nothing, we received an urgent message from Japan. My father had gone to the British Embassy to sign a Power of Attorney. He did not expect to be interrogated by officials, but when the consul saw the papers he demanded to know where I was. The Embassy had been alerted to look for me by the British Home Office as I had become a ward of court in London, pending a custody case. My father refused to reveal my location and the consulate had no authority to hold him. He took the next flight out to the Philippines.

  This was stunning news. I had one hour to pack my things. I was taken across the border to Canton, and put on a flight to Manila to join my dad and my sister Juliana at the Jumbo Training Center. I was so happy to see my sister again. I hugged them both, delighted to be reunited with them. I had come full circle back to the Jumbo I had left two years earlier. At times, I felt I had been to hell and back. I had fought illness, loneliness, fear, and rejection. But I was far from emotionally mature or confident.

  The Jumbo was closing down and we were part of the team that was left to clean up the property before returning it to the owners. For the next five months, Dad, Juliana, and I were a family once again. In the evenings we would play basketball together, or Juliana would perform for us the hulahoop. I taught her to play badminton, and we listened to Dad telling us stories of his early days in the Family.

  But I had spent so little time with Dad over the past few years that we didn't really know each other as father and daughter anymore. I was continually shocked by his behaviour and comments to me. One day I was discussing with someone in the dining hall my ambition to become a photographer, and my dad overheard our conversation. I can still remember the look of shock and disdain on his face.

  "What? You're going to be a missionary!" And that was that. I did not expect his sharp response. I remained composed and kept my mouth shut, but I thought, How dare he tell me what I'm going to do. There's no way I'm going to be a Family missionary. It was a key moment.

  Another disturbing experience was when one of my childhood abusers, Eman Artist, came from Japan for a visa trip. He asked to speak with me. Seeing him again made me break out into a sweat.

  "I want to apologize," he started. "You know, for the past, if I was pushy. I didn't mean it." He smiled.

  Well, this was good. He was apologizing. Maybe he had changed and things were different now. I was ready to forgive, after all that is what I been told to do.

  "Sure," I replied.

  Relieved, he began chatting to me, trying to be chummy. But as he talked, he furtively placed his hand on my thigh.

  "You're beautiful," he half whispered as he bent towards me. "You've grown up... so sexy," he leered.

  I saw the old lust in his eyes. No! He has not changed at all. I could hardly believe it after he had just apologized. I made some excuse of needing to be somewhere and walked off, deeply shaken. I did my best to stay out of sight for the next two days until he left. It came as no surprise when a few years later I heard that he had been officially excommunicated. Finally, the bastard had been dealt with. But why had it taken so long? Why had he been allowed to leave a trail of damaged girls wherever he went? His behaviour had been reported by myself and others for years. Surely the leaders bore responsibility for not doing something sooner. These questions lingered in the back of my mind.

  One afternoon, Dad showed me an open letter he had written to my mother, entitled "In Defense of Our Daughter." I was appalled by the self-righteous and condescending tone he took when addressing her. He dismissed lightly any notion of sexual abuse in the Family. I knew this wasn't true, because I had experienced it myself—but of course I had been told all my life that it was "love," "God's love." Dad never even asked me if I had been sexually abused before stating so vehemently that I had received the best possible care. How can he say that? I thought. He doesn't even know me.

  Dad asked me to write a letter to Mum, which I did. I stated that I was happy serving God in the Family and that this is where I wanted to be. In reality, it was the only life I knew. I had not been allowed to read my mother's or Kristina's letters. I only had my dad's version of what was happening—"The Devil is using your Mum to attack the Family and try to stop us from carrying out our mission to `save souls for Jesus.' She'd better watch out because she's `touching the apple of God's eye'".

  –I was alarmed. Dad seemed so angry and hateful towards her. Secretly, I wanted to know more: who my mother was, what she looked like and what made her decide to leave the Family? Was she really a crazed monster possessed by the Devil, or simply a mother wanting to protect her daughter, a daughter she hadn't seen for over ten years? I had to find out.

  Part 2

  Chapter 7

  "Julie, time to rise and shine! Up you get!"

  I was unable to move, frozen with fear. If I got up, they would find I had wet the bed. But there was nothing for it. I had to get up...and climb slowly down from my bunk bed.

  "What's this?" I could hear the blood thum
ping through my head. Someone had taken my hand and was leading me ...not again...

  I found myself before the Home shepherd, Uncle Dan, a large, frightening man who was my guardian at the time when I lived in Manila. I was three years old. "So, I hear you've wet your bed again, huh? That's four days in a row now. Do you remember what happens when you pee your bed?"

  I nodded, trembling.

  "I can't hear your brains rattle. What do you say?"

  "Yes, sir," I breathed in a whisper, hoping against hope, he would let me off today. But I was hardly ever that lucky. "Bend over and pull down your panties."

  I did so; sweating heavily as I always did before a spanking, which would turn my heat rash bright red.

  "Put your hands on the chair."

  I obeyed even as I sobbed, "I'm sorry, Uncle Dan!"

  "If you were truly sorry you wouldn't keep doing it. Now if you scream, I'll have to give you more."

  I squeezed my eyes shut as the wooden board the size of a small cricket bat struck my bare bottom.

  Again and again.

  The swats eventually stopped. Uncle Dan put the board down as I pulled up my panties.

  "Now what do you say?" No prompting was necessary. I knew the routine well by now