Leaving Isn't the Hardest Thing(7)

Our little family—my parents, my two older sisters, and our little brother—teamed up with another small family. Other members would pass through occasionally. But for the most part, it was just us. And we were often desperately poor.

Sometimes, when we were strapped for cash, my mom and dad would head out to a local pool hall or pub. My dad’s as affable as a golden retriever, tall and handsome in that inoffensive way that makes you trust him. And he can talk to anyone. Which helped temper my mom’s presence. Her coal-black hair offsets those pale blue eyes she’ll lock on you, making your bones shiver. There’s an intensity to her beauty, like a coiled snake. But they’d order a drink and rack a game. And my mom would biff the break. My dad would patiently remind her to watch the cue ball. And he’d strike up a conversation with the guys waiting on the table. “How about a friendly game? Sure, we can put a little money on it. Make it interesting.” No one minds taking money from a couple of dumb American tourists. That’s when my mom, with skills earned from a misspent youth in NCO clubs and Berlin dives, would attack. My dad’s not bad at pool either. But he rarely got a chance to shoot before she’d cleared the table. Beginner’s luck.

   They were a perfect team, or so I thought. But they fought, had affairs, split up, got back together, and had more affairs. Yet I remember being happy.

I remember busking on street corners, and strangers would give us money and food. I remember playing in the campgrounds, one infested with tarantulas, and one down by a beach where we played in the ocean, and one near an outdoor movie theater where we’d pile our blankets on the roof of our bus and watch movies we couldn’t hear. My dad got me a dog. We went to school where I got to wear a tie, even though it was just a clip-on. But I was younger than my sisters. If you ask them, Ann, my other middle, with whom, as is the law of middles, I fought with constantly, or Valerie, the oldest, who at seven cooked our meals and washed our clothes and nursed our wounds, they have different memories of that time. Mikey, who was doted on like all boys smart enough to be born last—maybe it’s better he doesn’t remember at all.

Then, right before I turned seven, we left.

My parents thought if they left the cult, they could salvage their marriage. But moving to Texas doesn’t save marriages, not theirs certainly. My dad once told me they’d married without ever having a conversation. They were traveling around England, living in a double-decker bus with “Children of God” painted on the side in that groovy, flower-power lettering, when someone said they should have a mass wedding. It would be revolutionary, man. My dad asked my mom because she was pretty and seemed nice. Their marriage only makes sense knowing they’d put exactly as much thought into it as choosing a movie to watch.

   Soon after we arrived in Texas, right after my seventh birthday, my dad left, went back to the cult in Germany, where my sisters soon joined him. I was fucking devastated. They shouldn’t have split us up. When you’re raised with siblings, you’re not so much an individual as part of a whole. And they fucking cut us in half. Might also have helped if they’d explained. I don’t think they ever told us. Valerie did, in the back of our grandma’s closet, where we’d hide behind a stack of National Geographics. Valerie didn’t know why, though. She just said the word “divorce,” and this being the ’80s, we knew that meant the end of us. All I knew was my dad left me, and then half of me, my sisters, were gone too.

For a few years there, Mikey and I had a pretty typical American childhood circa 1984–1987, complete with an asshole stepdad, Gabe. Gabe was younger, only twenty-three when Mom met him at the chain steakhouse where they both worked. He was cool at first, like a big brother. He rode dirt bikes and always had change for the Pac-Man machine when we had to wait for Mom to get off work. We moved out of Grandma’s house in Amarillo, to an apartment in Oklahoma City.

   We rejoined the cult when I was nine. By the way, if your kid hasn’t seen her real dad in three years and you tell her you’re all going to Dallas to meet someone, but it’s a surprise, that surprise better fucking be her dad. That surprise was not my dad.

The Family I knew no longer existed. They’d grown to ten thousand members and lived in houses now where they’d cram in as many people as possible—closets and hallways were used as bedrooms. In Dallas we shared a room with maybe fifteen kids, and I shared a bed with a nose-picker named Melody.

There were rules for everything, from how many sheets of toilet paper you used to what to say when someone gave you a compliment (not “thank you” but “praise the Lord,” because you didn’t do anything good, God did, although God wasn’t responsible if you did something wrong). The home was run by elders called shepherds who controlled everything we did and how we did it. My parents were replaced by a shepherd named Mercy, or that was her Family name. Family names were usually something biblical, or a cure for physical or spiritual sickness. I once knew a Victory, named so medicinally to treat her asthma. As a cure, the name was as effective as “Mercy.”

There was no television and few games. The cult had its own music, its own books, its own language of code words and acronyms to keep us apart from the System, the outside world, and the Systemites—that’s you. There wasn’t any school since we already knew how to read and write, all you need to fulfill your godly roles. Kids had a purpose—cleaning the homes, taking care of the other kids, memorizing Bible verses, and studying Family doctrine to prepare for the End Time. We had to leave America.