Chapter 3
Fairytales and Thunderbolts
I was fast asleep when I felt something tickle my face, waking me up. It took me a second to register what was happening as the thing ran right across my cheeks, scratching me with sharp little toes.
I screamed out in terror. ‘Arrrggggh. Moooommmmmmy’.
My yelling woke the others. I shared my bedroom with four other girls under the age of ten. ‘Natacha, be quiet,’ snapped my friend Anna who was sleeping in the bunk above me. She leaned over to chastise me, but as she looked down her eyes fell on what had made me scream. Her mouth opened in horror for a split second before she started yelling too. A brown lizard stared back at us, probably more terrified than we were. It ran for cover under the bunk, making me scream even louder: ‘MOMMY! HELP!’
The door flew open. My brother Matt stood there with an exasperated look on his face. ‘Natacha, what is this racket?’
Great gulping sobs came out as I tried to explain: ‘Lizard … bed … it was … on me … want … my … mommy.’
Matt sighed and shook his head at me with annoyance. ‘Cry baby. Mom is out. It’s only a silly lizard.’
He disappeared for a second and came back with a broom. He poked it under the bed, ordering the lizard to shoo. I watched with relief as it slithered out of the door and down the corridor, no doubt to join the rest of its friends in the attic where they nested.
I was just about to throw my arms around my big brother in thanks when the shape of adult bulk appeared in the doorway. Uncle Ezekiel. He was a heavy-set Australian man and probably the meanest uncle in our house.
‘What in God’s name is going on here? You children could wake the dead. Get back to sleep immediately or you will get a spanking, mark my words.’
‘There was a lizard,’ Matt tried to explain. ‘It scared them. They are only little. We should do something about that nest.’
Ezekiel stared at Matt with a look of disgust.
‘How dare you speak to me, boy. I was not talking to you. Nor did I give you permission to talk to me. Get out!’
He raised his fist in warning. Matt ducked under his arm and ran out.
‘We are sorry, Uncle. We promise it won’t happen again,’ said Sara.
‘It had better not or you will get the swat. Do you understand?’
I pulled my sheet up to my chin and nodded with wide-eyed fear. The swat was a plastic fly-swatter, which was used to discipline us when we were naughty. You got hit on the bare bottom with the handle and it stung like mad.
Uncle closed the door. I could hear Anna and the other kids breathing. I could tell they were still awake but no one dared talk in case Uncle heard us and came back. Our teacher, Aunty Joy, usually slept in the room with us. Her presence always reassured me, but tonight her bed was empty. I wondered if she was upstairs in Ezekiel’s room or if she’d gone flirty fishing with Mommy and the other ladies.
I tried to go back to sleep but it was too stuffy and the polyester sheets itched. I was terrified the lizard would climb inside my mouth or my ears when I was asleep. I was also bursting for a pee but I knew that if anyone heard me I would get the swat for sure. Under the commune rules, children were expected to last a full night without needing the toilet. I tossed and turned half the night, trying desperately to control my bladder and not wet the bed.
The next morning in school I could hardly keep my eyes open. We sat at rows of little wooden chairs and desks. Children of all ages shared the one large classroom, with the little kids at the front and the older kids at the back. A small fan buzzed in the corner but the windows were closed, allowing precious little breeze into the stifling tropical atmosphere. Everyone was quietly reading on their own, with the older kids occasionally pausing to scribble down a note. The quiet, the lack of sleep and the heat made my eyelids heavy. I could feel my chin about to droop down onto my chest when Aunty Joy’s voice startled me: ‘Natacha, wake up please, little lady.’
I sprang to attention, sitting bolt upright on my chair with arms folded tightly across my chest. Aunty Joy pulled up a seat and sat down next to me. Her youthful Thai features erupted into a pretty smile that lit up her face. Joy was my favourite teacher.
‘Natacha, I have something very special for you to read today.’
She handed me a large comic book, wrinkling her nose with excitement. The humidity made its greying pulp pages feel slightly moist to touch. I stared at the cover. It had a picture of a pretty young teenage girl with lustrous long black hair in a braid. Aunty Joy began to sound out the title for me.
‘He … van … s. Can you say that?’ beamed Joy.
‘Hev …’ I stammered, struggling to match the letters she pointed to with the correct sounds.
The next word was easy. I could guess its meaning from the picture.
‘Girl,’ I said triumphantly.
‘Well done, Natacha, you clever girl.’
A thrill ran through me as I looked at the image.
‘Do you want to read it together, Natacha?’ she asked.
I nodded so hard I thought my head might fall off. I rarely got individual adult attention and was determined to milk this for all it was worth. My clammy fingers fumbled with the thin paper as I opened it several pages into the story. A girl dressed in a short white robe was throwing two men backwards as if using magic. Her robe was see-through and her nipples stuck out through her dress. I was a bit fascinated by that because a couple of days earlier a visiting uncle had shown us a poster of another lady with similar sticky-out nipples and told us that nipples were his favourite thing in the world. He had grinned when he told us all little girls would grow up to have sexy nipples like the lady in the picture, too. Anna had whispered to me afterwards that the uncle was naughty to say that to us.
The men in the picture were dressed in helmets and sinister uniforms with armbands marked 666.
‘What’s Heaven’s Girl doing, Aunty Joy?’ I asked, puzzled and happy at the same time.
Joy laughed and pulled me closer to her.
‘She’s using her powers to fight the soldiers of the Antichrist. See, she’s shooting them with lightning. What do you think that word says, Natacha?’
She pointed to the large graphic letters drawn above the image of the dying men. I shrugged.
‘Zap!’ said Joy.
‘Zap!’ I repeated back, feeling very pleased with myself. ‘But Aunty Joy, why is she doing that?’
‘Because she’s in the End Time Army. You’ve heard your Grandpa David tell us about the End Time Army in his letters, haven’t you?’
Of course I had. For as long as I could remember it had been drilled into me that I was an elite child soldier in God’s army. Every day we were training and preparing for the End Time war, which would mark the beginning of end of the world. We were told Grandpa (which is what we children were instructed to call our leader, David Berg) had been sent a prophecy directly from God that the war would begin in 1993. My brothers assured me I would be ten by then and definitely old enough to fight.
Every day we listened to tapes of Grandpa talking to us. He explained how the Antichrist was already living on earth and making his evil plans to destroy the world. He said Europe and America were already under the devil’s control but the system people who lived there didn’t even know it. That’s why they laughed at us. They thought we were crazy but that was because they were the stupid ones.
Grandpa’s tapes also explained that when the war started, floods and earthquakes would ravage the world and a deep darkness would cover the earth. Joy showed me pictures of what this would look like. It was really sad – there were no flowers and all the buildings had been destroyed. He called this the ‘great tribulation’. At the very end of the war there would be the battle of Armageddon, which is when God would fly down from the sky on his chariot. We would fight by God’s side and die, and then we’d go to live in heaven.
I couldn’t wait to get to heaven. Art was my favourite lesson because we go
t to draw heaven with crayons. I especially loved colouring in the outside walls of the heavenly city because they were made of precious stones, like rubies and emeralds, so I got to use lots of different colours. The main city was shaped like a pyramid and right in the middle of it there was a giant crystal skyscraper over 600 metres high. Aunty Joy said that was twice as high as the Empire State Building, which she explained was an important government building in America. Joy said anything wicked men could build God could do twice as well.
And there wasn’t just one pearly gate like the stupid system people believed, there were twelve – three on each wall.
People didn’t need to walk anywhere in this magical city, they whizzed through the air instead. And because I was going to be a glorious martyr it that meant my family would get a solid gold house on one of the top levels of the pyramid, areas reserved only for important people like us.
But absolutely the best bit about the war was that I would have a special superpower. I wanted this more than anything in the entire world. Joy promised us God would give all the children in the End Time Army an individual power when he was ready. But first we had to prove to him how brave and worthy we were.
I turned another page of the book.
Heaven’s Girl had been captured and was about to be fed to some lions. She looked really worried and I was scared for her. But as Joy continued to read out loud I worked out that the nasty men had changed their minds about throwing her to the lions because they said they wanted a bite of her themselves instead. That really got me confused. Why would they want to eat her?
In the drawing on the next page she was being held down by the soldiers. Two of them had her by the ankles, spreading her legs, while a third loosened his belt buckle.
I suddenly felt very flushed and uncomfortable.
‘Aunty Joy, what are those men doing to Heaven’s Girl?’
I knew what sex looked like – I’d seen the adults do it in their love-up sessions lots and lots of times – but this was different.
‘Can’t you see, Natacha, my dear?’ said Joy. ‘Look at what a wonderful example Heaven’s Girl is setting for you. They want to rape her by force, but Grandpa David tells us there is no such thing as rape if we follow the true laws of nature. A woman of the Bible should submit willingly to a man and satisfy him. God created sex and he created a man’s need for sex. He created woman to serve a man’s need. Heaven’s Girl is using this God-given opportunity to share the love of Jesus with these soldiers. She is going to love them so much that she will turn them back to the path of Jesus. She shares her love with a big smile and a song in her heart like all good girls should. Isn’t that a beautiful thing?’
After Aunty Joy and I finished a few more pages of the book she closed it and promised we’d read some more tomorrow. I didn’t really mind her taking it – that picture had made me feel a bit sick. I couldn’t shake the thought of Heaven’s Girl’s smiling face as the soldiers did things to her. Would I have to do that when I was bigger? Would I be brave enough?
I began to feel a bit shaky so I tried to think about what always made me feel happy – what superpower was God going to give me? My brothers and I used to argue about it all the time. Was it better to be invisible or be able to run really fast? Did boys get better ones than girls? I bawled my eyes out when my brothers teased me by insisting that they did.
I was really into the idea of shooting thunderbolts from my eyes. I would practise my pose for hours, standing with my feet firmly planted one in front of the other, and trying to look as mean and scary as possible as I narrowed my eyes into my best thunderbolt death stare.
‘Nap time.’
Aunty Joy’s voice snapped me back to reality.
‘Children, back to your room, PJs on and get on your beds, please.’
I groaned inwardly. I hated nap time. I would much rather have been allowed out to play in the garden where there was the big flame of the forest tree. The tree had big orange feathery plumes on its branches, and whenever we got a chance the other little girls and I would skip around it pretending to be princesses in a castle.
Without a word we filed back to our room, stripped down to our underwear and put on the sleeveless T-shirts that we wore as our pyjamas, before climbing onto our bunk beds. Some of the uncles had built them out of salvaged wood. The bolts holding my frame together were loose, and whenever I moved it creaked and swayed.
Uncle Ezekiel came into the room to supervise us. I hated the way he spoke through his nose.
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, but the images of Heaven’s Girl and the soldiers invaded my mind. I was always a fidgety child, and being mentally uneasy made it worse. I couldn’t keep still.
‘Natacha,’ barked Uncle Ezekiel. I froze at my name.
Ezekiel and Aunty Joy were sharing the single bed – she was bare breasted and her hand was moving up and down under the blanket.
‘Keep still. Go to sleep. All you children go to sleep. Now.’
I screwed my eyelids tight, willing myself to sleep, trying to ignore the squeaking and animal grunting coming from Joy’s bed. I shuffled around in a bid to get comfortable.
A strong hand clamped around my forearm. Uncle Ezekiel’s face was glaring at me.
‘You disobedient girl. Get here now.’
He dragged me out of the bed so roughly that I fell face down onto the cold floor.
Uncle Ezekiel, now completely naked, stood over me – his penis wagging like a disapproving finger. He reached towards me and pulled down my underwear. I knew better than to struggle, instead clenching my jaw for what was to come.
The fly-swat slapped down hard across my buttocks, biting at my tender skin.
I squealed, more from shock and indignation than pain, and clenched my jaw tighter, determined not to give him the satisfaction of making me cry.
‘Naughty, wicked girl,’ he cried as the swat struck again. Then a third time. ‘I hope you understand why I had to do that, Natacha. It was for your own benefit, because I love you. Now get into your bed and ask the Lord to forgive you.’
Tears silently rolled down my cheeks as Uncle Ezekiel shoved me roughly back onto my bed, my knickers still around my knees.
I lay still, my face pressing into the wall.
‘If I catch any children not sleeping then they will get the same thing,’ hissed Ezekiel, slightly out of breath.
With tears streaming I pushed my face into the pillow to wipe my snotty nose, daring not to move further. My head was throbbing and filled with images of Uncle Ezekiel cowering before me, pleading with me not to shoot him with thunderbolts from my eyes. This made me feel better, and I drifted into a fitful sleep, with pictures of Ezekiel begging for mercy.
When I woke up he was gone and Aunty Joy was smiling again.
‘Come along, children, back to class for Memory Time,’ she trilled in her sing-song accent.
In silence we climbed out of our beds, filed back into the classroom and took our seats at our little desks. My bottom still stung and my eyes felt puffy.
Joy had written some words on the blackboard and started to read them out loud: ‘Then … shall … they … deliver … you … up … to … be … afflicted … and … shall … kill … you … and … ye … shall … be … hated … of … all … nations … for … my … name’s … sake. OK, children, Bibles open at Matthew, please. Let’s all practise the verse together.’
We repeated it in unison. I couldn’t say the word afflicted. Joy saw me struggling and laughed indulgently: ‘Oh, little Natacha. AF FLIC TED. It means to suffer, like when you die.’
‘Will I suffer when I die, Aunty Joy?’ I asked her.
‘Yes, of course, little one,’ she cooed as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
‘What if I don’t want to?’
Aunty Joy laughed again, bathing me in her warm, beautiful smile.
‘Little Natacha, if you are not willing to suffer and die for Jesus how will you get to heaven?’
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Knowing I would die at a young age was not scary for me. It was a completely normal part of my life that was reinforced by every adult I knew, including my mom and dad. But it was the suffering bit that got to me. I would spend hours secretly worrying about it. Would it hurt? Would it be slow or quick? Would the person who killed me feel bad and say sorry or would they laugh and enjoy it?
Those thoughts often kept me awake at night.
Joy’s voice snapped me back to reality. ‘Very good, children. Let’s do it again. Then … shall … they … deliver … you … up … to … be … afflicted … and … shall … kill … you … and … ye … shall … be … hated … of … all … nations … for … my … name’s … sake. And again please, children.’
And on and on we repeated it. Again. And again. And again.
Chapter 4
Dances for the King
Aunty Joy had sent me to an upstairs storeroom to fetch some books. Thrilled to be out of the stifling classroom for a few brief moments, I walked as slowly as I possibly could.
At the top of the stairs I paused, wondering how I could drag the errand out even longer. I hit upon the ruse of pretending to be a princess inspecting my castle. Haughtily I practised an exaggerated princess walk, imagining that my brother’s old hand-me-down jeans, which were two sizes too big and held up with a nylon belt, were in fact a beautiful ball gown with a big petticoat skirt. I pranced along, swishing my imaginary dress from side to side as I went.
The sight of a bedroom door, left ajar, stopped me hard in my make-believe tracks – one prancing leg still raised up above the floor. Why oh why hadn’t I noticed it sooner? Being seen or heard by the occupants was something I really didn’t want to happen.
Gingerly I put my foot down, trying to be an ever-so-quiet tiny-little mouse.
I heard the people in the room giggling.
‘Who’s there? Come on, nothing to be scared of. Come and say hi,’ said a male voice.
Born into the Children of God Page 3
