Born into the Children of God

by Natacha Tormey

  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.

&n
bsp; ‘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.

  Chapter 7

  Torn Apart

  The Children of God might have renamed themselves The Family in a bid to make some kind of point about communal values, but when I was seven we came to learn just how little families like ours really meant to them.

  It was early morning, when the tropical heat was at its most bearable. Birds sang their wake-up calls, swooping onto the flame of the forest tree with twigs in their mouths ready for nest building. A red-and-yellow butterfly fluttered down and paused on my hand before flying away. I watched it go before turning back to the confusing scene on the driveway.

  An uncle was loading Leah and Thérèse’s scarce possessions into the minivan. My mother and Leah were standing next to it, hugging each other. I didn’t really understand what was going on but I had a sense it was very bad, and because Mom and Leah cried it was only natural I did too.

  My brothers hung near them, trying to cling to Leah’s legs. With a determined look on his face Marc climbed into the van, picked up the bags and started to carry them back towards the house. The uncle grabbed them and put them back into the van.

  ‘No, no, no.’ Marc flung himself at Leah from behind, gripping onto her as if his life depended on it. My mother walked behind, gently trying to prise him away, but he screamed and clung even tighter.

  My parents had been ordered to a new commune in Bangkok; Leah and Thérèse had been ordered to a different city. Leah was highly valued as a flirty fisher and she was still technically single because, although in a committed relationship with my father, she wasn’t married to him. In short, her assets were too useful for her to be allowed to stay in the threesome any longer.

  The senior Shepherds who made the decision had sprung the news on us while my father was away on a mission, denying him the chance to say goodbye to his long-term lover and their daughter. As the minivan prepared to drive away with my beloved baby sister in it, I pressed my face against the window and blew a kiss to Thérèse, who had tears rolling down her tiny cheeks. She was just six. I was seven. As I waved goodbye I could never have imagined that it would be a decade before I saw her again.

  We weren’t the only family to be broken up in such a brutal way. Siblings were sent away, married people separated, older children ripped from their parents – all on the whims of the leadership. I had heard my older brothers talking about how the mother of a friend of theirs had left The Family by running away in the middle of the night. She came back with some men a few weeks later to try to kidnap her son, but the Shepherds had been expecting her to try it and had already sent him to another country so she couldn’t find him.

  My dad was still a Regional Shepherd but was beginning to see his authority wane. David Berg was paranoid about anyone becoming too powerful or challenging his dominance. As such he created a management ethos based on game playing, backstabbing and blame. Even at local leadership level it was impossible to get too comfortable in your role because it seemed that however hard you worked or how competent you were it was never quite enough. Dad had been a Shepherd for over ten years now, and some may have felt that was too long.

  The night after Leah and Thérèse left was horrible. My mom looked pale and in pain, the boys wouldn’t stop crying and I was completely confused, still half expecting them to come back in through the door. Then we had the added turmoil of knowing that we were also on the move at the crack of dawn. Mom tried to be positive about it, saying that as Dad was in Bangkok so often anyway it was a very good thing because we could see much more of him.

  I was sad to leave some of my friends but I was pleased to see the back of that place.

  By 7 a.m. we were on the road, a ragtag family in a battered minibus, a few bundles of clothes our only possessions. The roads were winding and rough, which made me feel so ill we had to stop the car twice for me to vomit by the side of the road.

  As we reached the outskirts of Bangkok I thought we had driven into hell itself. It was a terrifyingly teeming, bustling, overwhelming city that made Phuket look like a tiny village. I had never seen so much traffic or heard so much awful noise. At the traffic lights a man in uniform banged on t
he window. I saw his uniform and screamed: ‘Antichrist!’

  ‘It’s OK, ma chérie. He’s just a system policeman. He was only helping us through the traffic,’ explained my mother.

  Her words did nothing to help me understand. I’d always been told the systemites in uniform were the Antichrist’s followers and were the most dangerous of all. When the End Time came they were the very people who would want to kill us. So why was it that whenever we went outside my parents spoke to them?

  Once we’d traversed the city centre we reached a suburb on the far side. We turned off down a dusty unmade road, surrounded by boggy fields mostly, with a few half-constructed villas along the side. After a kilometre or so we arrived in front of a house with a large red metal gate and a high concrete wall with broken splinters of glass sticking out the top. We beeped the horn and the gate swung open to reveal our new home, a two-storey concrete building with a cluster of smaller one-storey buildings set around a central courtyard. I was disappointed to see there was no beautiful flame of the forest tree here. There was hardly any garden at all, just a few bedraggled shrubs here and there. Virtually all the space had been given over to the buildings.

  We walked into a mess hall where over 150 people were eating lunch in silence. They all turned to stare at us. No one got up to say hello. I started to cry, grabbing at my mother’s skirt. ‘Mommy, I want to go back home.’

  She bent down to reassure me just as a strange uncle walked up and gave us instructions about where we would sleep. My mom didn’t even have time to hug me before he announced her ‘mission’ was as usual to work in the nursery looking after the babies. He picked up her little bag and started walking through the hall, waiting for her to follow. When she hesitated he snapped rudely at her: ‘Come on then, I haven’t got all day.’ The pair disappeared out of view.