Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult (34 page)

His dad must have also talked to him about not displaying too much emotion, because it wasn’t until I put him to bed that night that I saw tears in his eyes. He quickly brushed them away and turned over saying,“I’m happy you’re here, Mommy.” He had called me Mommy, and he would continue to call me Mommy until he was well over twenty years old.

Late that night, after the children had gone to bed, I talked with Jerry and Mara, who was now called Mona, her real name. “Thor seems genuinely happy and content here,” I said wistfully.

“Yes. In the beginning he was telling us all these things we should not be doing—like eating white sugar, or watching TV, or me smoking cigarettes,” said Jerry with a laugh. “But he soon started to like the system way of life much better, and now he doesn’t even want to talk about the time he had in the Family.”

“Has he mentioned me often?” I asked, getting to my main concern quickly.

“No. Only the first few weeks,” replied Mona in her usual truthbe-told manner. I usually admired her Libraish balance on life’s most emotional issues, but this time it hurt too deeply. However, I knew better than to cry in front of them. I had promised no emotional displays.

“Well, I suppose that is better for Thor. How is he in school?”

“He had to be put back because he forgot most of his French. But he does very well now, especially in math,” said Jerry. “Of course, he’s had a few run-ins with other kids. One in particular was a bit messy when he broke the nose of a policeman’s son.”

“Oh, no!” I cried. “We have always taught Thor antiviolence!”

“Oh, don’t give me that peace bullshit. You know Mo talked about killing every Antichrist israeli, and every non-Christian goes to the fires of hell. Real peaceful stuff!”

“That was just a madman’s ravings. I never believed that either, and I certainly never told Thor that.”

“Well, don’t worry. Thor is a good boy. And his fight was really to protect his sister. Seems this boy pushed his sister off a swing, so he punched his nose.”

I knew that Jerry had been quite a fighter, growing up on Long Island, but I made no mention of this. He seemed almost proud of his son.

I went to bed late, and the next morning, I took Thor to the beach, despite freezing weather. We played among the sand dunes all day, and that evening I felt a chill. I ignored it. For three days, I spent all day with him, exploring the surroundings of Perpignan with my son.

I wanted to be able to imagine every minute of his day. How could I leave him? Of course, I would have liked to stay there and never leave. But life was not so easy. I had another child in Italy, and I had promised Paolo I would be back by a certain date. He had work to do and could not watch Athena indefinitely. Also, I promised Jerry I would not make a scene and beg for Thor to come back with me. This was a beginning in reestablishing my connection with Thor. I told myself that I would work things out. However, leaving Thor was an emotional wrench on my spirit that I was not acknowledging, though my body did.

When I left on the train to return home, I had a high fever. Eight hours later, when Paolo picked me up at the station in Italy, I was almost delirious.

My fever raged for three days, and then a doctor was called. He diagnosed me as having pneumonia, and given my pregnant condition, he suggested I be kept in bed and taken care of. I was moved to Paolo’s aunt’s house, and for days I was oblivious to this world.

“You must think of Athena, and the new baby,” I remember Paolo’s aunt telling me every time she tried to spoon some homemade broth into my mouth and I refused. I think I again wanted to die. It seemed such a good idea.

After seeing Thor so happy and content in his new surroundings, I thought to myself that I had been a very bad mother. I was now a very unhappy wife, and although I loved my daughter, Athena, I would probably not be a good mother to her either. Why should I go on having children?

Why not just die now? I had no will to be healed. I seemed to have made a mess of what was most precious in life to me—motherhood. Thor now had a new mother, and for Athena—better no mother than a bad mother, I thought. I wanted to die, and I was not afraid of death.

Then I remembered that I had rebelled against God. “Curse God and die, ” Job’s wife had told him in his darkest hour. Good old patient Job had not cursed God, however. He said,“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” Job was another story I did not like. It was a man’s story. Who would want to live after all his children had been killed, just to learn a lesson? So what that Job got more children back? They weren’t the same ones. How could God imagine that one set of children could replace another?

It seemed to me that God was still on my case. He wasn’t going to let me live happily and He wasn’t going to let me die. One thing was sure though. When I finally did die, I would have a whole lot of questions to ask.

Paolo kept bringing Athena in, saying she needed me and was crying for me. Athena was like a doll. She had the beautiful Italian features of her father, and the defiant fire of her mother. She had always been a handful. When she was a newborn, screaming her lungs out with colic, even the nurses in the hospital said they never saw a baby cry so long and so hard. She wasn’t going to sit back and take anything she didn’t want to. I thought Athena would do all right in this hard, tough world, but she probably needed a mother’s love as much as Thor did. I decided to get well for her.

We wanted to have our next baby at home. When the midwife arrived at our old stone house in the tiny village, I was already quite far along in my labor.

“This bed is too low! Put her on the kitchen table!” she commanded.

She was a big, heavy Italian momma, and she was uncomfortable stooping to our low bed as she prepared me for delivery. My baby was born on the kitchen table on a tiny lane called Canevai, meaning the dog’s way, in an old, picturesque Italian village by the sea. The small stone house she was born in has since become a national monument because it was built in the year A. D. 500. It had probably been the birthplace of many babies, and she was the last!

When they brought her to me, wrapped in a rough blanket, she was sucking on two fingers. We had chosen the name Genvieve, after the patron saint of Paris. As much as Athena was noisy and lively as a baby, Genvieve was quiet and calm. I often checked her crib to make sure she was still alive.

I spent most of my time writing, crocheting, and raising the children.

I started to teach Athena to read when she was three years old. She was bright and eager to learn. I taught her in English, and spoke English to the children all the time since their relatives spoke only Italian.

One day, Paolo came in with a man who looked vaguely familiar.

“Hi, Jeshanah,” he said with a huge smile that I had almost forgotten.

“You remember me, don’t you?” He had an Asian face, but an American accent. Holding a guitar in his hands, and carrying the trademark lit-bag that all good Family members have, I knew he was a COG.

“Well, I see you don’t remember my name. I’m Sojourn. And this is my daughter, Crystal,” said the stranger as he held out his hand.

I looked down and saw the little girl for the first time. She also looked Asian, and had a warm, friendly smile. I offered her some candy, which she refused sweetly. Then I remembered that Family children don’t eat candy.

I had met Sojourn in Paris, but having met hundreds of people briefly at that time, I hardly remembered him. He remembered me of course, since I was in the Show Group. He could not believe Paolo when he told him I had left the Family. Sojourn and his wife, Maggie, along with their two little children, spent the next few months parked outside our house, eating in our home and staying inside with us most of the time.

They both tried to persuade us that the Family had changed.

“You are so talented, Jeshanah. You must come back and use your talents for the Lord,” Sojourn told me one evening. “We need more leaders who are concerned about children.”

“I don’t want to be a leader. I never did. Listen, I love the way you guys are, and how you live so freely. But the leaders are not like that. People change when they get power, in the Family as much as in the world.”

“That’s why we need people like you, Jeshanah. You have the power and the heart to be a good leader.”

“But she doesn’t want to, Sojourn. She just told you,” interrupted Maggie. “She has three children now, and I am sure that keeps her busy enough.” I was thankful that Maggie included Thor as one of my children. Even though I saw him only twice a year, at Christmas and in the summer, he was always on my mind, and I guess Maggie realized that, being such a loving mother and a caring person.

Separation from Thor was still a source of grief for me. Although Jerry said I was allowed to visit him whenever I wanted, Paolo did not give me much free time. Now that we had two children, Paolo did not want to take care of the little girls while I was gone, and the train trip was too long to take two small children alone. I had visited Thor only one more time in the next year, when we all took a vacation there in the summer.

“if nothing else, you should stay with the Family to be an example to Thor,” said Sojourn, seeming to read my thoughts. “He has no spiritual training with Cal.”

“I don’t think you should be prying into Jeshanah’s life,” said Maggie.

They had a strange relationship. I knew that Sojourn, who was a mixture of Hawaiian and black American, used to be homosexual.

Although homosexuality was subtly allowed in the Family at one time, the goal for men was to be able to have sex with women also in order to produce babies. All former homosexuals were encouraged to find mates of the opposite sex, and Maggie seemed to be one of the few women willing to accept a man who liked men. In return, Maggie, a quiet, usually unobtrusive person, had an adoring husband who was gentle and mutually submissive in his marriage relationship, a real rarity among Family men.

They talked to each other with equal respect, and I never saw Sojourn openly disagree with his wife, or use his God-given power as “head of the household” over her. On the contrary, he usually asked her what to do, and obeyed her slightest hints of disapproval, as he did now.

“I’m sorry. You’re right, Maggie. Jeshanah is really probably in the Lord’s Will. I should not meddle.” I could not help but notice his humble reaction to Maggie’s suggestion, and how different it was from how Paolo and I related to each other.

Unfortunately, Maggie was not around to stop Sojourn from talking to Paolo about joining.

Paolo was not doing well with our health food business. We had borrowed heavily to open the shop, and there was no more money to borrow. He eventually sold the shop to a rich banker’s daughter from Torino. After paying off our debts, we had enough money to buy a mobile home and set it up on a piece of land owned by Paolo’s aunt.

Paolo began selling health food in the Italian markets, and encouraged by Sojourn, I began going out singing. Together with Sojourn and his daughter, I took Athena and a guitar, and we hit the open cafes up and down the Italian Riviera.

Maggie stayed home to watch her little boy and Genvieve. We were living a communal life again. It had all the benefits and none of the disadvantages caused by leadership. Finally, Paolo told me he wanted to rejoin the Family.

I had mixed feelings. Ever since Thor had been taken from me, I had lived life with half a heart and half a will. I was not at all happy with my marriage or my situation, but as a mother, there was no alternative for the time being. Joining the Family at that time gave me hope that Paolo would have other sources to fulfill his emotional needs.

I didn’t think I could ever fulfill them. I had married him to bring him into the Family, and I had expected help with his spiritual growth.

If he wanted to join again, perhaps that would be the best course of action for him and for our marriage. When Paolo had “joined” the Family the first time, he did it only to stay with me. This time it was a decision he was making, and I probably went back into the Family because of him.

It seemed to be the lesser of two evils, as the saying goes. Without Thor, I wasn’t completely happy anywhere, so if Paolo felt better living in a community, I did not have any strong opposition to it.

Of course, I did feel that the leaders in Puerto Rico had let me down, but maybe that was my own fault in a spiritual way. I felt that I had been wrong to associate myself with the elite of the Family. Maybe they were the only ones who were corrupt. Perhaps these kind, humble members were different. Also, the Family had recently experienced another “revolution” within their group, and all leaders were demoted.

From what Sojourn told me, most members were living quite independently of leadership and rules.

I told Paolo that I didn’t care one way or the other, that it was his decision. I didn’t want to get the blame for this one, as I had gotten for everything else we’d done up to then. And I didn’t want it to interfere with my visits to Thor.

It was the year 1985. The Family had changed in many ways.

Joining simply meant that we sent in 10 percent of our income, and they sent us the Mo letters and supported some of the poorer missionary fields.

“Missionary work” was now the volunteer work we did in retirement and nursing homes, hospitals, and orphanages.

This was the part of the work that I enjoyed. With Sojourn’s talent as a musician, I taught the children a small dance routine, and we put on performances at social institutions across northern Italy. The children liked performing, and after every show we talked with the old people, the sick, or the poor, holding their hand and telling them about Jesus.

We often received a free dinner from the Catholic sisters or social workers who ran the place, and we took pictures to use in the brochures we carried around. Eventually, we traveled for days in our trailers like Gypsies, from one town to the next, performing with the kids. I was pleased to be bringing light and happiness into the lives of those who were institutionalized, but I had a few worries. What if Jerry found out? And what if I got pregnant again?