Not Without My Sister: The True Story of Three Girls Violated and Betrayed by Those They Trusted. Kristina Jones
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to clean up the mess afterwards and how dangerous broken glass was.
‘We’re going to have desperate prayer and fasting,’ he shouted, ‘and no alcohol for the next three months.’
Fervently, everyone got down on their hands and knees, and took turns praying for forgiveness for the next two hours. The floor was hard, cold marble, and my knees began to ache and my legs tingled with pins and needles. I was relieved when the tongues and weeping finally died down, thinking that maybe we could get up and sit down again. But then the prophecies started. I tried to move into different positions to get comfortable, but I was scared that Paul might notice and single me out for punishment.
I had good reason to be scared. Paul thought I had disobeyed him during another public correction. Armi had been found with a note under her pillow that she had written as a prank, forging someone else’s name to the letter. It was supposed to be for a laugh, but jokes like this were taken seriously. All of us children were called into the living room for a correction. Paul told us to close our eyes while he prayed and to keep them closed as he read a Mo Letter. When he said ‘Amen’ at the end of the prayer, I immediately opened my eyes.
‘Celeste, how dare you disobey! You’re rebellious, and disobedient,’ he shouted. I did not know what I had done wrong at first, but then I remembered he had said to keep our eyes closed not just for the prayer but for the entire length of the letter. I tried to explain.
‘Stop talking back! Now go outside and stand against the wall NOW!’ Paul shouted.
Shaking like a leaf I went out of the room and stood next to Renee, who had been sent out earlier for not sitting still. After half an hour, he called us back and told me to stand and listen, or else.
Trying my best to obey, I stood upright, but, as the time wore on, my legs became uncomfortable and tired. I leaned the back of my leg on the couch that was behind me.
‘There you go again! Disobeying orders!’ The man had eyes in the back of his head. ‘You asked for it, Celeste. Let this be a lesson to all of you.’ He told me to hold out my hand and rained down blow after blow on it. The pain was so excruciating I could barely move my wrist for a week. That night I sobbed quietly as I fell asleep exhausted, hurting and angry at my unjust punishment and humiliation in front of my peers.
I hated unfairness and injustice, and like Paul, my teacher Patience had a terrible temper; she had very little of the virtue she named herself after. She would cuss and swear at us when we made mistakes or slap us across the face if we tried to explain ourselves. ‘Stop talking back,’ she would snap.
One time when she was teaching us to write in cursive, I struggled to follow her instructions. She slammed my book closed and shouted, ‘Are you bloody stupid or something? Stand in the corner now if you won’t obey and do it right.’
My mother would never treat me like this, I fumed as I stood against the wall for the next half hour. I often thought about my Mum…
I knew Sri Lanka was an island south of India, and I hoped that we could go to visit her and Kristina and David, or maybe they could come and visit us. Somehow it made me feel closer to them, living in a similar culture. I always imagined Mum would be just like my dad. He was never unpredictable, bad tempered or violent. This made me love him all the more. I never wanted to hurt or disappoint him and would do my best to obey him. On the rare occasions he did spank me, it was usually because he was expected to by another parent because of something I had done – like when I raised a tent peg in anger at another girl during an argument, or when I snuck my friend Koa some marbles when his mother had forbidden him to play with them. Dad never gave more than six swats with his bare hand or a slipper.
‘Sweetheart, it hurts me more than it hurts you to have to spank you,’ he’d say and he’d sigh. The way he said it, his face and tone of voice made me believe him.
‘Honey, you know Jesus died for your sins on the cross,’ he said. ‘He saved you, now you don’t want to disappoint him, do you?’
I shook my head as I imagined Jesus hanging from the wooden cross, nails making his hands bleed. I had watched Jesus of Nazareth, and the death scene was frightening. But the fact that I had disappointed my dad hurt more. After the talk he put me over his knee and counted out the swats. ‘One … two … three … four … five … six.’
I tried not to cry. Usually, I just braced myself and closed my eyes because I had my pride and did not want him to see me in tears. Dad never nursed a grudge. As soon as it was over, it would be as if it never happened. If only all adults could be like him, I thought to myself. He was my hero. No one and nothing could touch him. But that made it hard for me to acknowledge anyone else’s authority.
The monsoon season in the central hill country where we lived falls from September to November, so to escape the wet and cold, we packed up and moved to the Northeast coast of the island where the weather was warmer. The holiday resort we moved to was a collection of bungalows and a swimming pool five minutes away from the beach. Our little family stayed in our own small bungalow. Juliana – who by now was two years old – did not react well to the hot weather and suffered terrible heat rash. She was constantly itching and scratching at herself and making herself bleed. Serena covered her in pink calamine lotion to soothe her. I felt so sorry for her as she also had a bad case of cradle cap on her head. It was no wonder the she learned to swim early.
Three-year-old Mariana had a fear of water and refused to go in, but Juliana loved it. I often joked that she was like a fish, bobbing up and down in the water.
Every day was like a holiday – even school was fun as we sat round on Patience’s bungalow’s balcony and she showed us the shells she had collected and made into a collage. But we never had a chance to settle in our new hideaway. A few months earlier, the story had spread around that a Family member had spotted Mo sitting by the swimming pool of a hotel in Colombo. His cover had been blown, and immediately, Mo and his personal entourage left the island. In the endless reams of rambling letters he wrote to us, he always said that the Family was his biggest security risk, as they could not keep quiet. He was supposed to be our shepherd, our prophet who loved us and yet he showed such mistrust of his own followers and ran away from them. I wondered why.
Mo also frequently changed his views and opinions and yet we were supposed to obey his every word. We had fled the West to escape an atomic war and then, hardly a year later, Mo said his interpretation of scripture was wrong. An atomic war would not come before the Antichrist’s rise to power. Instead, Jesus would return first to rescue the saved to heaven. I was still worried, though, about what we might have to suffer in the Great Tribulation.
‘I don’t want to die as a martyr, Dad, or be tortured.’
He sought to reassure me. ‘It’s okay, honey, God will give us powers to defeat the Enemy.’
As if it were a state secret, he winked at me, then quietly opened his dresser drawer, pulling out a sock. ‘Look – this is our Flee Money to use to get us out of danger,’ he said, as he showed me two gold coins he’d hidden in the sock. Every family had been given a stash of gold to hold on to, under strict orders that it was not to be spent under any circumstance other than an emergency.
Just after my eighth birthday, in January 1983, civil war broke out between the Tamil Tigers, who were fighting for independence, and the Singhalese. Our resort was right in the middle of the fighting zone and we had to pack up the camp within days and evacuate. Over one hundred of us were divided into small travelling teams and flown out in an eight-seater military plane to the airport and tickets were bought for everyone. Our gold coins were cashed in to get out of the country to safety. Those who were crucial to Music with Meaning, were to go to the Philippines. The others went to India and other neighbouring countries. I had no idea where I was headed to – I had never heard of the Philippines – but I was happy that I didn’t have to say goodbye to any of my friends: Armi and Mene, and Renee and Daniella. Whatever happened, we would be in it together and that made the journey into the unknown just a little less scary for me.