by Fleur Beale
The best thing about the visit was getting to know ten-year-old Cherish. They clicked immediately so that Tendy found it hard to believe she hadn’t known her sister all her life. They spent a lot of time together, chatting and just being sisters. When they were alone, Tendy told Cherish about her life outside; she told her all the good things about their father and about the fun they’d had when they were kids. She made sure Cherish knew she had a family out in the world, who loved her and would welcome her if she ever wanted to come and visit.
Her relationship with Dawn was different, and when they had time together, they’d talk about the community and their father. Dawn embraced the community ideology that Phil was the one who had wantonly sent his own father to prison, that Neville was utterly innocent and Phil wicked to make up such terrible stories about him. She had no reply when Tendy suggested that perhaps what had happened between their grandfather and their father was nobody else’s business. What would happen, Tendy asked, if she stood up to Hopeful because she disagreed with him? Would the whole community hate her as well?
Whenever Dawn didn’t have a counter-argument she would use the standard community tactic of quoting scripture or of twisting the meaning of the debate.
After her initial warmth, Sandy/Prayer kept herself aloof, apparently scared to get too close for fear her daughter would leave again.
Tendy had to have a wisdom tooth out while she was there. Dawn drove her into Greymouth for the appointment, with Tendy feeling conspicuous in the blue dress, until she realised that nobody knew her, and to the people of the town she was just another community person. She was still a smoker and had managed so far by sneaking out at night when nobody could see her, but the stress of the up-coming appointment got to her and she told Dawn she didn’t care, but she needed a smoke. So there she was, wearing the long blue dress, puffing away on her cigarette, and laughing at the ridiculousness of the situation.
After the extraction she was in a lot of pain and needed strong medication. She woke the following morning with her mum stroking her face and saying, ‘Come on, sweetie. Wake up now.’ She felt that her mother had been standing watching her sleep. From then on, Sandy would let herself show that she did love her, and knowing that changed things for Tendy. Yes, there was all the hurt and nastiness, but now she knew absolutely that Prayer did love them all. She was able to talk to her mother about why she left them, and to ask her how she was able to do it. Prayer told her she’d asked Phil to let her have half the children, but he refused to split them up. When she got back from America she couldn’t eat, she lost weight, and they had to take her to the doctor. But despite her distress she believed what she was doing was right because if she was in the community her children, too, would be saved. Hopeful taught that even if only one parent was in the community then the children would be granted eternal salvation. Her only option as she saw it was to return to the community to serve God without her children; she had to do it to save them from damnation.
There was a family night while Tendy was there, when each family cooked their own special meal and went away to designated rooms to watch DVDs. Tendy, Prayer and Cherish cooked a feast. After they’d eaten they watched a DVD of Bible stories. The acting was as dire as the dress Tendy was wearing.
By the end of the first week she was exhausted from the mental strain of balancing the warmth and love against the full-on preaching. It was scary because she could feel part of herself being sucked in. She got frightened. What if she ended up not being able to leave? Yes, she’d have her mum and sisters, but to live their life of blind obedience? The thought horrified her and she told her mother she was going to leave at the end of the following week. Her life changed immediately. She wasn’t allowed to be alone with Cherish and she had to spend two nights in a small caravan being preached at by Prayer and Dawn in a gentler version of the men’s meetings. She handled it by going into sulky teenage mode: ‘Okay. Whatever you say.’ ‘I don’t give a shit, I just want this to be over.’
She kept repeating in her head: I’m going. I’m going.
At the end of the two weeks she changed back into her worldly clothes, folded the blue dress and left it behind along with her mother and sisters.
Her fortnight in the community turned out to be the best experience of her life, but the hardest as well. The good parts were discovering her mother did love them, learning about her early childhood, and Prayer giving her the teddy-bear that had been hers when she was little. The hardest part was cutting herself off again from the loving side of her mother, and she hated leaving Cherish.
Tendy returned to the world and went straight back to her old lifestyle. All the preaching and Bible-bashing she’d endured in the community made her wary of religion; she felt she needed to build her own self back up, and to do that she had to turn away from Christianity.
Israel, too, continued to live without God in his life. He graduated with two degrees from the University of Queensland with excellent grades and was courted by firms wanting to employ him. Instead, he worked in a café making cups of coffee and barely enough to live on. He’d never been so alone, estranged from his father, and out of touch with his siblings. His closest friend was the young man his father had objected to, but he was no substitute for family. Israel lost the faith that had been so important to him throughout his life and the future looked pointless and bleak. He was no nearer to understanding how God could have let such terrible things happen to their family.
Justine was in a happier situation, engaged to be married and secure in her faith. A problem arose when she discovered she had to have permission from both parents in order to marry at 19. She would have to ring the community to ask her mother to sign the papers, something she didn’t want to do. Would Prayer agree and be happy for her, or would she preach at her and refuse?
In the end, there was no problem, since Prayer was happy to agree and Justine went ahead with the preparations, wondering all the time what it would be like to have her mother there to discuss things with. She had her bridesmaids, but she missed her mother, and her sisters. It was a struggle, trying to come to terms with the emotions of getting married without their support.
Her bridesmaids organised a trip to the West Coast for her hens’ night, and while they were there they decided to visit the community. Justine and her cousin didn’t go with them because they knew they’d be recognised and blow the girls’ cover of being a university group. The others went, were welcomed, shown around and given lunch, but people got suspicious because of the photos they took and the questions they asked. Dawn took down the number plate of their car which happened to belong to Justine’s future sister-in-law. The community did the research to find out who owned it, and a few days later, when Justine was round at her fiancé’s house, Dawn rang asking to speak to Renee Van Kekem. Renee wasn’t there, so Justine spoke to her instead, trying to get her head around the fact that Dawn was ringing her fiancé’s house. Justine assured her that she had nothing to do with the visit and told her the girls must have just been curious. She thinks that the community must have been worried that another raid was planned.
The family gathered for the wedding. Phil, Bev, Crystal, Andreas, Mitchell and Jess flew in from Coffs Harbour. Israel and Tendy arrived from Brisbane. Prayer and Dawn stayed away.
Phil and Israel put up a good front for Justine’s sake but, even so, Faith noticed that neither spoke to the other. She took Israel aside during the reception, telling him that he could come and live with them for a while if he would like to. He declined; living with his aunt was the last thing he wanted to do, but during the plane trip home her offer occupied his mind.
When Israel got back to Brisbane he saw that his dad was right, that there were aspects of manipulation and control in his relationship with his friend. The time away had given him a much clearer view, and he knew he needed to extricate himself. Going to New Zealand would be a good way out.
He rang to tell Faith he’d like to come. They welcomed him into thei
r family and he stayed with them for 18 months.
Faith helped him talk about his past and to confront at last what he really felt about it. For the first time in his life Israel could be honest about how it had affected him. He’d arrived in Christchurch having lost everything – family, faith in God and his best friend. With nothing else to lose, he began the process of rebuilding from the start, learning to accept things rather than covering them up. Faith helped him confront his demons, one of which was the whole issue of control. She helped him see that he and his dad were repeating the pattern that Neville had set up, of love being conditional on obedience. They had each broken away by rebelling, but the rebellion left them estranged because that was the pattern they knew: You are either with me or against me and there is no compromise. Once Israel understood the concept of unconditional love, he was able to accept his dad as he was, without the frustration of needing to make him do things differently. Phil was who he was, and Israel found that it was possible to love him in spite of disagreeing with many of his ideas.
Under Faith’s guidance Israel was able to mend his relationship with his dad, and also renew his contact with his siblings. She helped him understand more about the community and their beliefs, which in turn led him to an appreciation of free will and free choice. He saw that Sandy went back because she had to; the community didn’t allow free will, but God did, so she was free to do what she believed to be the best for her children. Once he understood that, he was able to accept that God did still love them, and therefore there was hope of a brighter future. He started going to church again.
Faith’s pragmatic approach appealed to Israel. Yes, some things were simply inexplicable and on those matters you just had to have faith in a loving God.
He got his life back on track, helped by his cousin who was instrumental in getting him a good job in a finance company. Eighteen months after he went to live with Faith, Israel got a promotion at work which would involve leaving Christchurch to live in Wellington. The prospect of leaving made him realise how much Justine’s friend Jessica meant to him, and he asked her to marry him. At his wedding to Jessica Hooper early in 2007, Israel thanked Faith, saying that she had saved his life.
Tendy was also getting her life together. The turning point came when she was again in Brisbane and feeling at rock bottom. She rang her father, asking him to come up and visit her, not for money or for anything; she just needed to see him. He told her he was going to Thailand for business in a week’s time but that he would see her before he went. She rang the next day, and the next. He promised again that he’d see her before he went, but he never came.
That broke her. She’d needed her dad and he wasn’t there. But the effect was to make her decide she’d have to do things for herself. She was Phil’s daughter and his strength and attitude in solving problems was ingrained, even though he’d let her down.
She put all her strength into action and sorted her life out, getting on top of her bills, ceasing to blame the community and her dad for her troubles, and learning to accept what had happened to her family. She drew on her two weeks with her mother, and could see that Prayer and Dawn were where they wanted to be. She felt she’d been able to say her piece about that and accept their point of view. She decided to let it all go and move on.
Tendy got a good job and is now in a stable, loving relationship. However because her partner was estranged from his wife, at first Phil didn’t approve of the relationship and wouldn’t condone it. Tendy felt excluded from the family. When she rang Phil, he was always busy, always in a meeting. It would have been easier to talk to the Pope. She felt steadier by now and though it didn’t make her go into meltdown, it hurt, especially when she knew he spent hours talking to Justine, Israel and Crystal. Anything they wanted, he would get for them. Any time they wanted to talk, he would listen.
However, her father was doing some soul-searching of his own, and to his horror realised that he was following his father’s pattern again, casting out a child who disagreed with him. He bought plane tickets and told Tendy he wanted them to come down so that he could meet Justin. That led to a two-hour phone call, when Phil simply shut up and let Tendy talk, which hadn’t ever happened before, and she was able to tell him everything she’d been wanting to say for years. She told him she didn’t want something to happen to him while they still had a bad relationship. Now when she rings up she gets put straight through, and is hopeful that their relationship will stay strong. All she wants from Phil is for him to listen when she rings up and talks to him about her life, the good parts and the bad.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: REACHING OUT
It seems that every time you try to forget about it or move on with life it’ll come up again; your mum will call, or your sister will call, or you’ll get a letter. So I just try and forget but it doesn’t work because I keep getting reminded. CRYSTAL
When she finished school at the end of 2006, Crystal wanted to get away from Coffs Harbour. She was in a rut and needed to spread her wings. She decided to begin a university nursing course in New Zealand where she had plenty of family, including Israel and Justine. Justine had left home when Crystal was 13 and the sisters looked forward to reconnecting. But it was Israel she’d missed the most: the brother who had been the anchor of her childhood and was more a parent than a sibling.
Crystal didn’t like being away from home and she missed her dad, but she settled in, helped by living with Justine and Dion. Early in the year there was also the excitement of the birth of their daughter Annabelle.
Not long after Annabelle was born, Crystal was home by herself when Dawn rang to chat to Justine about how she was getting on with her new baby. With Gloriavale’s expansion, the hierarchy doesn’t seem to exercise the same iron control over communications with the outside – whether this is a deliberate policy or just a result of the dynamics of size, the Coopers don’t know. The community is technologically advanced, using computers to keep track of their businesses and to communicate with clients. There are also computers in the school so that all the young ones grow up with technological expertise. There are phones throughout the accommodation blocks, used to communicate between the blocks and within the buildings. Some have access to outside lines.
On the day Dawn rang, Crystal ended up talking with her for about an hour and a half, chatting over family news including the birth of Dawn’s son Loyal. But then the conversation changed. Dawn switched into a diatribe about how their grandad had gone to jail because of the lies people told about him. She said he was a martyr who was prepared to suffer for his faith and his community. She wanted Crystal to go to Gloriavale and stay for a week or two to see for herself what they were really like.
Crystal felt she already knew. To the community, her Christianity was a sadly diluted travesty of the real thing; they lived the one true life and believed that she would only find true Christianity with them in Gloriavale. She didn’t even try to tell Dawn that, in her opinion, they lived in a box where they were controlled by Hopeful who pretty much acted as though he was God. She didn’t accept the invitation.
Crystal began her nursing degree at university in Christchurch, working part-time in an old people’s home to help support herself. But the community was never far away. Dawn rang again to speak to her about a programme her midwife had seen on television, where a young girl had said negative things about the community. Dawn said she was shocked to discover that Crystal was that girl and wanted to know what she’d said. Crystal told her that she’d only spoken the truth. She’d told the story of the visit where their mother had looked at them and said she wished now that she hadn’t given birth to them.
Dawn couldn’t deny what had been said because she had heard her mother, but she was sure she hadn’t meant it like that. Crystal felt there was no other meaning to take from it. It was what it was. But as in her debates with Tendy, when Dawn was in a corner she twisted meanings or quoted from the Bible. Crystal knew it was useless to argue with her or to tell her she believe
d their mother abandoned them, because the community has such a stranglehold on the minds of its people.
Towards the end of the year, Crystal bumped into her Aunt Miracle and her husband Perry who were in Christchurch for the day, clad in their community uniforms. Shortly after that meeting, Crystal got a letter from her mother, the first contact Prayer had made since the disastrous visit several years before. The letter upset Crystal and she rang her dad. He read the copy she faxed him and told her not to take it to heart; it was living in the community that made her mother say the things she did; she didn’t really mean them herself.
Sandy/Prayer’s letter to her ‘dearest Crystal’ is a mix of a loving message to a lost daughter, a stark explanation of why she chose not to be her mother, and a dire warning to Crystal against her way of life. Crystal’s chance meeting with Miracle and Perry had prompted Sandy to reach out to her daughter since it seemed God’s way of telling her to make contact.
She had been delighted to hear from Miracle that Crystal looked like her – the only one of her seven children to do so. She was happy, too, that Crystal had chosen nursing as a career. Sandy had intended to work in an old people’s home until she found ‘greater fulfilment caring for the people of God’.
She explained how, when she was growing up, she stood up for her beliefs and how she was always searching for kindred spirits. She totally surrendered her will to God and found her spiritual home in the community Neville had created, committing herself to ‘follow God and endure to the end’.
She wrote of her love for Phil ‘and the wonderful man he was then’, blaming his interest and involvement in business for his desertion of her and the community. Phil didn’t know her very well, she asserted, if he believed the outsiders who assured him that once he had the children, she would follow him outside. Her family were only one part of her life and if it was God’s will to allow her children to be taken from her, it was not for her to question God. She grieved but believed that Phil would realise his mistake and return with the children.