Читать книгу Escaping the Cult: One cult, two stories of survival - Kristina Jones - Страница 16

In the days and weeks that followed I became even more fidgety, constantly scratching myself or twitching my legs. I had trouble sleeping, not least because Clay was so often in the room at night with us. I was constantly on edge, wondering if and when he might hurt me again.

My dad was still away most of the time and I saw less and less of my mom and Leah. I still missed Joy and began to lose interest in lessons. At least Joy tried to make them fun. Clay had zero interest in teaching kids and didn’t care if we understood anything or not. I was so scared of him now that even the sound of his voice made my hands start to tremble and my legs involuntarily go into spasm.

I didn’t have the words to articulate to anyone what had happened to me. I didn’t even know for sure it was wrong. I only knew I had hated it, it hurt me and that it made me feel dirty. Worse, I had a strong sense that it was definitely something I would be in big trouble for if I ever told.

So I kept quiet.

Each morning when I woke up my first action was to look over to the single bed in our room and see if he was in it. If he was I stayed silent and still as a church mouse. If the bed was empty I could relax a little and chat to my friends.

One morning, a little after dawn, I got a surprise.

Someone switched the light on. ‘Up time, children. We are going out to sing the praises of the Lord.’

It was my mother! Rarely did she come into our room. I was delighted. ‘Mommy! Good morning.’

‘And good morning to you, my darling. Good morning to all you lovely children. Good morning, Jesus. Good morning, love. Good morning, good morning, good morning.’

She was laughing and doing little twirls around the room. We were delighted. ‘More. More, Mommy, please.’ She beamed her radiant smile towards me and winked. ‘Okay, Natacha, just for you.’

Then she rose up and up, arching her feet until she was standing on the very tops of her tiptoes, her arms up high above her head in a perfect arc.

‘Wow,’ said one of the other girls.

I beamed with pride. To me, my mommy was one of the most beautiful ladies in the world and I was intensely proud of her past as a ballerina. This was something I regularly boasted about to the other girls. As they all gawped in wonder at her moves I thought I might burst with pride. At that precise moment I don’t think I could have loved her more.

She was as giddy and excited as a little girl herself as she hurried us along to get up and ready. We were going out into the city to take the love of Jesus to the needy, she explained to us. And this meant another bonus – we got to dress up.

Material possessions, including clothes, were generally frowned upon. That was convenient because we didn’t have enough money to buy new clothes anyway. The women wore long skirts and T-shirts (no bra or underwear), men tended to wear shorts or jeans with a T-shirt, and we kids wore whatever could be reused, handed down or had been donated by well-wishers. I had only two sets of clothes for everyday use – a frayed pair of old jeans that had been my brother’s, some shorts and two tops. But when we were sent out witnessing, like we were today, we got dressed in our special clothes. Cute white kids performing songs and dances in frilly dresses, ankle socks and bonnets pretty much guaranteed bigger donations.

My best witnessing dress was made of pale yellow satin with a ruffled skirt and a matching hat. I hated the sensation of it on my head, especially in the boiling hot sun. It made my head itch. But I loved the dress and the lacy hemline on the skirt.

We ate breakfast – blackened, mushy bananas that had been sitting out for too long. Then we were ordered into the battered commune minivan. The van rarely got used because petrol was considered a luxury and a system thing. It was usually left parked out on the driveway in the sun. As we got in I was hit by a wave of intense sauna-like heat that made it hard to breathe. One little girl started to cry and Clay tried to calm her down by shouting at her. I shrank back into my seat. Sitting next to Clay was Ezekiel. I glared at his back, hoping a thunderbolt would follow. I hated his guts.

Then an unexpected visitor got in the front seat. My dad.

He turned to face us with a grin. ‘Well, bonjour. I got back home late last night so I decided to come with you all today. I hope that is OK with everyone?’

The men nodded deferentially. My dad was a leader so of course it had to be OK.

We drove for about three hours. The sun was reaching its midday peak by the time we found a parking spot on the edge of the city. We could never afford to pay for car parks so we often drove around a city for ages, trying to find a free spot. I don’t know which city we went to because no one bothered to tell us. It didn’t really matter anyway. All of the places we visited for witnessing were system cities with system names. They were inhabited by systemite people who in our eyes were foolish and lost. Our job was to warn them of the End Time and urge them to save their souls by joining us or, better still, giving us some money. We usually formed into little groups of two adults and a couple of kids before splitting up and taking different sections of a neighbourhood. Some went into shops, other knocked on doors of houses. The day was turning out better than I had hoped when my father picked me up and whispered that he, Mom and I were going to form our own little group for the day. ‘And we are going to come back with the most money, aren’t we, Natacha? Do you think you can do that? Can you help Mommy and Daddy do this?’

I was grinning my face off, too happy to speak.

Three hours of door knocking later and the novelty factor of spending time with my parents had well and truly worn off. We were walking around tree-lined streets with rows of green-roofed villas set behind lush gardens. Dogs barked and voices rang out from behind the walls. I was hungry, dehydrated and exhausted. Hours of selling the End Time in the middle of a tropical afternoon began to play with my mind, and I was half expecting a red demon with horns and a tail to come rushing out and eat me. My satin dress was so hot and stifling, I longed to tear it off and go naked – anything to feel cooler for even a second. I kept pulling my hat off but my mother kept putting it back on my head, telling me it looked nice. She may have been right about the hat but my scowl certainly wasn’t sweet.

At each house my dad did the knocking and the talking while my mom stood there beaming, either holding onto my hand or carrying me so the occupants could get a better look. Old ladies cooed over me and little children laughed and pointed. I was like an animal in a zoo. Women insisted on touching my strawberry-blonde locks to see if they were real; they stroked my cheeks and kissed my head. I hated it. I hated being touched at the best of times, but the constant physical attention by systemites, whom I knew to be bad people, was completely traumatic.

I was really struggling not to cry by this point. Fortunately for me a French woman lived in the next house we knocked at. She recognised my parents’ accents and started talking to them in French. They were delighted and began jabbering back. The woman was pleased but a little bemused to find two of her countrymen selling Christian literature in a Buddhist country and was curious to find out more. Where had they come from? How long had they been here? She invited us in. I could have wept with joy when we walked into her hallway with its cool marble floor. She ushered us into the living room. I had never seen anything so beautiful in all my life.

There was a big sofa with fat velvet cushions, long flowery curtains and bookshelves lined with hundreds and hundreds of pretty candles in all sorts of different colours and patterns. My eyes roamed wildly, trying to take it all in. She saw me and smiled. ‘I see you like the candles? I make them. That’s my hobby.’

The house was so clean and tidy, nothing like the overcrowded, worn-out living spaces in the commune. I wanted to touch everything.

The lady had a son a couple of years older than me. While she sat and talked to my parents she instructed her son to take me into his bedroom and show me some of his toys. He opened a huge box stuffed full of teddy bears, cars and figurines. He was generous, letting me touch any toy I liked. At one point the lady came up to check on us and brought us an ice lolly each. I began to think this place might even be heaven.

All too soon I heard Mom shouting up the stairs. ‘Natacha, ma chérie, we must leave now. Say thank you to the lady.’

I didn’t move. I think I hoped if I said nothing they might forget I was there or go without me. Not to be. A few minutes later my father came bounding up, looking cross. He reached down to pick me up. I clung onto a small fluffy bear that I had fallen in love with. The little boy looked at me, then at the bear, then back at me.

‘She can keep it,’ he said to my dad firmly.

‘No, she cannot,’ said my dad, more for my benefit than the little boy’s.

‘It’s OK,’ the boy replied. ‘I have lots of them and I think she really likes him.’

My father didn’t reply. Instead he grabbed the bear out of my vice-like grip and put it down on the bed. ‘No.’

We were barely a few feet away from the gate when I started to yell – great big gulping sobs of anger and hurt. By the time we caught up with the other teams I was sobbing so much my breathing was erratic. My parents studiously ignored me, presumably thinking I’d stop when I got bored. Usually my occasional temper tantrums didn’t last long, but this time I just couldn’t stop crying.

Everyone was hungry, having not eaten all day. The mission now was to find a restaurant that was willing to feed us for free. We hadn’t raised enough to be able to buy dinner for the ten adults and children that formed our total party. As we paced a nearby market, the adults asking stallholders to donate some food, my father had to tow me behind him, my feet dragging in the dust, snot dribbling down my filthy cheeks. I looked like a sad ragamuffin clown, such a pathetic sight that eventually a food vendor took pity.

‘Little girl is sad. Poor girl. Come inside,’ she said, ushering us towards the wooden bench seats outside her little restaurant.

She bent down so she was at my height and looked at me with kindly brown eyes. ‘No cry, little girl. Be happy. Always be happy.’

I know she was trying to be nice but her kindness just made it worse. I paused for a split second before letting out another series of great gasping sobs.

I don’t think I was crying because my father wouldn’t let me keep the little boy’s teddy bear. I was crying for the life I had glimpsed. I was crying for the kindly candle-maker and her neat house. I was crying for a normal family like theirs.

However, compared to my brother Vincent I was a blissfully happy child. From the day he was born Vincent was different. He was sensitive, quiet, teary and thoughtful. He was also always in trouble.

Within The Family, parenting was a shared responsibility. If an adult saw you do something wrong they didn’t have to tell your parents about it, they just went ahead and sorted you out themselves. For the aunts and uncles, themselves often hungry, tired and under stress, the burden of dealing with other people’s children was often a pure annoyance. Of course there were exceptions like Joy who genuinely loved kids, but most adults I came across, even those with their own children, seemed to treat us as an irritation at best, devil spawn at worst. And Vincent had an innate ability to bring out the worst in them.

When he was 11 months old he was caught sucking the sugar coating off a packet of tablets. He didn’t know what they were and, of course, if he’d eaten them it could have been dangerous. They shouldn’t even have been left within a small child’s reach. But fortunately he licked them and then put them back in the packet after reaching the bitter centre. Ezekiel found him. He picked him up by his skinny little arms and screamed that he was going to thrash him. Vincent yelled at the top of his lungs, and my eldest brother, Joe, ran in. When he saw what was happening he begged Ezekiel not to hurt little Vincent but to thrash him instead. The monster took him outside into the garden and beat him black and blue with a plank.

Getting hit – be it with fists, fly-swats, poles and planks – was all part of the cult children’s daily routine. On one occasion an uncle, I don’t know who because they were too scared to say, threw all of my brothers into an empty bathtub naked and hit them with a wooden paddle as they dived under each other to shield themselves from the blows.

I don’t think my parents ever really knew just how much the other adults meted out violence to their children. Dad was so rarely there and my mother didn’t seem to notice how unhappy we were. Perhaps that’s because in the few moments of quality time we did get to spend with her, we were so delighted by it we never stopped smiling.

The closest they got to understanding came about four months after Clay had abused me in the shed. One of the bigger girls told me in hushed tones that two senior Shepherds were here and they wanted to see each kid individually. I didn’t believe her until we were all called into the dining hall and told to sit in silence and wait our turns. We were not given the chance to ask what was going on and were expressly forbidden from talking to each other. When it was my turn to go in the room I was shaking with nerves. Why would Shepherds want to talk to me? Had I done something bad?

I walked into the room where an aunty and uncle I didn’t know were sitting on two chairs with another facing them. They gestured me to sit down.

‘Now, Natacha,’ said the uncle, ‘I am going to ask you a question and I want you to tell me the truth. Don’t be frightened.’

I nodded.

‘Has anyone ever touched you? Touched you in a bad way?’

My legs started to shake and my mouth went dry. I wanted to scratch an itch on my face. I could have told them the truth about Clay but my survival instinct kicked in. Instinctively I knew the answer they wanted.

I looked them straight in the eye and said no. They asked me a few more questions, and then told me I was a good girl and I could go now.

The next morning after breakfast the children were told to stay behind because the grown-ups had something important to say to us. Salome spoke. In low calm tones she asked us if we loved The Family.

‘Yes,’ we trilled in unison.

‘And are you grateful for your loving family?’ she asked. Yes again.

‘And are you aware that God loves you? Are you aware that the devil wants to take you as his own? Are you aware that unless we love and appreciate our family we will fall into the path of evil?’

On and on she went as we repeated yes to every question.

Finally came her point. ‘Are you aware that God tested you yesterday by sending some messengers to ask you questions?’

As we nodded she raised her eyebrows. ‘So you are aware of this? I know some of you gave godly answers. But how was it one wicked child gave an answer formed by the devil himself?’

At that she flew across the room and grabbed a terrified girl called Samantha. She was older than me, about 13. It seems Samantha had told the Shepherds that Uncle Ezekiel had made her do things to him.

I knew I had made the right choice about staying quiet when Salome forced a bar of soap into Samantha’s mouth, barking at her to eat it to wash away her lies and sinful nature. All of us, from toddlers to teens, stood watching, motionless and powerless.

After it was over Samantha was allowed a glass of water and was shoved back into her chair. She was ordered to remain silent for the next week. Any child caught talking to her would get the same punishment. Then we were sent back to class. No one dared even look at poor Samantha. When she came back into class later she had a handwritten cardboard sign tied around her neck with string, which read: I am on silence restriction for telling lies. Please do not speak to me. Her eyes were red and puffy as she shuffled shamefacedly into her seat.

My father had missed this whole debacle. As usual he was in Bangkok when the Shepherds had visited. But he knew that similar investigations were happening in all communes in response to allegations of abuse within The Family, the story making it into the international media. In a bid to protect the group’s reputation and make it look like they were doing something, David Berg had ordered all communes to talk to the children and find out their stories.

I badly wanted to tell an adult about my experiences with Clay but I was also very confused. No one had ever explained to me that things like that were wrong. It was only the sick feeling in my stomach that made me think there was something bad about it.

I had been brought up to fear and respect adults, and to never question their decisions. That made me think that what Clay did was probably normal or something that every other adult did to children.

Ezekiel soon disappeared, and not long after that Clay vanished too. No one told me why. Not knowing if he was coming back or not made me worry even more.

My trauma was showing in other ways, had anyone bothered to look hard enough. I was becoming severely anxious at any slight change to routine. At night I still couldn’t sleep, often waking up crying.

One night as I climbed into my bed I felt someone looking at me. Startled, I turned, fearing Clay had returned. Instead I saw a little girl in a long white dress staring straight at me. She didn’t smile but something about her presence calmed me.

Over the next few days I saw her everywhere, walking in front of me to class and standing next to me as I ate.

I like to believe she was my guardian angel.