Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (16 page)

The producer liked my dancing style and put me in the front line, next to the lead singer. When Esther arrived, she moved me to the back of the line, and put herself in my place. I did not mind, since I had never had formal dance training, and I was sure it would be noticed by the professionals we were soon to work with. They would find out what amateurs we were, Esther included.

Our little makeshift show was fine for the little radio programs and small theaters, but when the producers told us we were to go on national TV, they suggested we get a choreographer. My old nursery friend from Ellenville, Salome, who had been a professional dance instructor before she joined the Family, was sent from Italy.

I was overjoyed to see Salome, but she had changed quite a bit.

Working in Italy for two years now under top leadership, she had lost some of her rebelliousness. She had also gained a considerable amount of weight, and although she was by far the best dancer among us, the producers usually kept her off stage. Salome was a wonderful and sensitive teacher. She knew I had no training, and so she took me aside and developed the natural talent I had for dancing. I always thought of her as my miracle worker. We learned a little jazz and a little modern dancing, we did stretching and other exercises and practiced routines for six to eight hours a day. Of course, Esther rarely showed up for practice, and I knew she would be in trouble on stage.

During our first stage rehearsal for the Guy Lux show, the most popular variety show in France—the equivalent to our Ed Sullivan show of the 1960s—the TV producer made Esther leave the front line and brought me from the back to take her place. It was obvious she could not dance, even the simple little two-step we did. He, of course, had no idea that she was our Queen. Ever since that day, I was always in the front line, even when the former professional dancers came to join our group.

The number in the Show Group fluctuated between two dozen to thirty, including singers, musicians, dancers, technicians, managers, and leaders. Singers competed to get the spotlight, of course, but the worst fighting was between the leaders.

Esther finally maneuvered the control of the Paris Show Group out of her sister Hopie’s hands. Hopie gave up the reins willingly, explaining that she was a pioneer, and she departed to start a new work in some unfamiliar Arab land. Esther was now with us constantly. She left most of her five children in Italy at the school, but she brought her baby and a personal nursery worker with her. Even with the fine nursery established by her own trained people, she did not leave her baby with regular child-care workers. Later, as we got more popular, Esther brought her oldest daughter, who was still a pre-teen, to sing in the show.

Because I was spending so much time away from Thor in those early days, I finally tried to leave the Show Group, saying that I needed to help out in the nursery. That resulted in my being given nursery duty in addition to show practices. I was usually relieved of making my quota on practice days, during the week, however, I had to make it during any weekend we stayed home, and that meant bringing Thor with me. My little boy learned hustling before he was two years old.

The fun and glamour of being involved in TV, live shows, and recording were somewhat diminished by the constant surveillance of the Family leadership. One was never quite certain how to act, since we lived like “normal” COG, but we had to behave like some special stars in public. I still never had my own money with which to buy clothes. All our clothes were either bought by Esther or made by a seamstress with Salome, who designed the costumes. We were supposed to look nice, but I was never sure what nice meant when one had no money to buy anything.

One day, as we were loading the bus to go on tour, Esther was standing in the front of the bus giving her usual speech on how to act. Being the last one on the bus, I had to pass her. We were going to be in southern France for almost a month, and I did not want to be away from my two-year-old for so long, however, staying home was out of the question. I was told that there were other mothers on this tour, Queen Esther included, and if they could make the sacrifice of being away from their children, so could I.

Esther looked at my legs as I walked down the aisle. “Jeshanah, do you have nylons on?” she asked in front of the whole group waiting on the bus.

“No,” I said, thinking it was an honest question requiring a simple answer.

“I can’t believe that you are not wearing anything on your legs. Proper girls do not go around with bare legs, Jeshanah.” She embarked on a ten-minute speech about how she never again wanted to see any girl in the Show Group representing God’s Family with nothing on their legs.

If she ever saw it again, that person would be out of the Show Group fast.

I wanted to stand up and leave the bus. I did not care if I was in or out of the Show Group. In fact, at that moment, I would rather have been back in my bed waiting for my sleeping son to wake up. But most of all, I wanted to raise my hand and pose what seemed to me an obvious question,“Excuse me, but where do we get money to buy nylons?” It was the second time that Esther had publicly degraded me for not having something that I had no money to buy. The last pair of nylons that I had been given had half a dozen runs in them now, and no one had replaced them. Besides, I never read any rule that said we had to wear nylons. I didn’t say anything. Why start a scene? I suspected that Esther was waging her own futile battle over my being in the front row, but she knew as well as I did that the producers would not let me go now. My face was on all the publicity photos that they had paid for, so I had to be in the show. Still, she liked to pretend she had the power to kick someone out.

Compared with Esther’s verbal abuse, the letters that Mo was writing at that time seemed innocuous. While the Paris Show Group was becoming famous in France as a clean-cut singing group comparable to the Sound of Music family, Mo had taken a harem of buxom beauties to an island near Spain to pioneer a new method of witnessing. He shared with the Family his enlightening experiences through a series of letters that emerged slowly and eased us into the radical new way of witnessing. I was so engrossed in dancing and show business at that time, I hardly realized what had happened. The whole sexual revolution was going on around me while I spent half my days stretching and learning new steps, and the other half trying to catch up with my son’s growth. I knew that there was something called “flirty fishing” being developed in London and Spain, but I was too busy to wonder about it. When we received the letters called “Flirty Little Fishy,” “Look of Love,” and “Lovelight,” I read them with detached interest, but basically they seemed to be a rewording of what I had been doing all the time, winning people with love—“God’s Love,” of course. It was only later, when we got the King Arthur series of letters, that it dawned on me where Mo was really going with this new method.

These dark, shameful letters would soon become the guiding light of my life as I surrendered my body to God’s supposedly highest calling. But before that would happen, I needed to feel that I had at least a voice inside my soul. For the next three years, I struggled to identify my voice in this strange life I had chosen, and although all I found was a feeble cry from a deep abyss somewhere within, it was enough to keep me connected to myself. I would not explore the depths to locate the origins of this cry for many years. For the time being, I concentrated on the surface crevices. There were cracks in my own psyche and I thought I would block them up—fill them in with something, never imagining that they would merely get larger and deeper. One crevice was caused by my loveless relationship with Cal, which was emotionally stressful for both of us, and it was beginning to affect all facets of my life. Perhaps if I had looked within myself at that time, listened to the feeble voice that was hardly distinguishable then, I could have found creative self-solutions, but instead, I looked to the Family for direction.

“I want to get out of the Show Group!” I lamented to Micah, the leader who had been sent to Paris to help Esther manage our entourage.

Micah had been through many emotional and spiritual trials since joining the Family. We knew from gossip that his wife, whom he had married when marriages were still a personal choice, had been taken from him and given to a man Mo was recruiting into the family. Micah’s two young children were now with his ex-wife and her new husband, and he rarely saw them since they lived in London.

Micah was, nevertheless, always cheerful as he struggled to portray a positive spirit. A well-built, handsome young man of Mexican heritage, he was also a talented musician and songwriter, and perfect to help organize the unruly Show Group. He had established an empathetic relationship with those who came to him for counsel, and because of his reputation as a balanced and just leader, I felt safe approaching him with my problems.

Micah had recently married a former nightclub singer who joined the Family and was now in the Show Group. Talitha was something of a prima donna, until Salome encouraged her to share her large and luxurious array of lingerie among all the showgirls. Since I was her size, I acquired the nicest intimate apparel I ever owned. I actually felt that this was a blessing. I had never been allowed to go out and buy my own lingerie, and the underwear we obtained free from stores and factories, or which our leaders bought for us, was very plain.

When I told Micah that I wanted out of the Show Group and my marriage, he replied that this was out of his realm of decision-making power, so he sent me to a higher authority, to Esther’s first husband, Jacob, who, of course, was Mo’s son-in-law. Jacob had a large office in the building we occupied in the Bourse area of Paris, although he did not actually live with us. He had been one of the first disciples, so he was in his thirties, about ten years older than I, as evidenced by his thinning hair and protruding belly. He looked rather like a worldly businessman, but we knew better. Jacob was third-incommand in the Family at that time.

“I don’t have a good relationship with Cal,” I explained to him. “We argue constantly, and I know it’s mostly my fault but I just can’t get the victory over this. Also, I don’t like being away from my son so much. With all these practices, shows, and witnessing on top of it, I have hardly any time with him.” Most of the leaders had changed mates at least once, I thought to myself, so why couldn’t I get away from mine?

Jacob listened intently.

“Why are you so sad?” he asked, in a way that made me think that I was special. I burst into tears. I was really sad, and perhaps I did not have a good reason to be.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled.

“Well…what would make you happy?”

I thought for a moment. “I think I would like to be full-time with the children,” I murmured hesitantly, knowing his wife had taken me out of child care.

Child care had grown to a respectable position in Paris. The top floor of our Bourse building had been converted into a nursery for younger babies, but by now Thor was away all week at the school in the country.

Since I had a show on weekends, I hardly ever saw him, usually only when I visited the school during the week. I longed to be with my son, and working in child care would give me that opportunity.

“I can understand that you want to spend more time with your son,” he said. “I think that is reasonable.” It amazed me to hear him say this. Not even his wife, Esther, spent as much time visiting her children as I did. Since I was usually reprimanded for being overly concerned about Thor, I thought Jacob would rebuke me for being so selfish and unsacrificial, but instead he seemed to sympathize with my plight. It was the first time I heard a leader entertain such a bourgeois sentiment as wanting to spend more time with your child. He was a father. Maybe he could understand the confusing emotions that I was experiencing. I was touched by this man’s empathy for my dilemma.

“What if you had some sort of project involved with the children’s department? It doesn’t mean that you can stop participating in the Show Group, but you will be exempt from witnessing. Would you like that?” he posed.

I thought it was a start. Any project with children would give me more time to see Thor. “Yes, that sounds wonderful.”

“Okay, come and see Pearl tomorrow. I’ll let her know what you need to do.” Pearl, who was Jacob’s second “wife,” was in charge of all child care in Paris, which had grown to huge proportions. She came from a wealthy background, and when she joined the Family, her parents became very involved in anti-Children of God activity. The story I had heard about her parents was that they visited a few of our homes in the States with police escorts, but since Pearl was no longer a minor, they were required to go through a long legal process to get her out of the Family against her will. With their money and influence, they were about to cause serious trouble for us in America. I had been told that New York State had started investigating us due to her parents’ insistence.

Therefore, Pearl was whisked off to a secret home in Europe, leaving her new husband, Enoch, in our band home in Boston. We later found out that she had become Jacob’s second wife while in London. With her model’s face and well-kept hair and skin, her beauty was awesome, and I respected the high status she had achieved in the Family, now being mated to Jacob. She was cold and distant, as I had expected, and from her clothes and makeup, I knew that she enjoyed privileges that the rest of us did not.

When I went to see her the next day, she said,“Jacob informed me that I should give you a project with the children. Do you know what he had in mind?” I had no idea what Jacob intended, so I told her what I had been mulling over. “Well, I think it would be useful for mothers to have their own Montessori kits. This way they can teach their own children at home when the kids are with them on the weekends. I also think it would be very useful for the mothers out on the mission field, whose children do not come to the school.” Pearl looked at me with a hint of surprise and hostility. “Okay. Can you give me a plan tomorrow of what you want to do, and I will look it over. If Jacob said you were to have a project in child care, I guess you will have to!” she sighed.