Cult following, p.10
Cult Following, page 10
Now it makes sense. I feel the burn of my tears on my cheeks. I wish I could stop them. I don’t want him of all people to see this. As they flow, I feel a flash of joy in his eyes. His face then crinkles with disgust, like he smelt something rotten.
‘The biggest change for you will be that you are now on Silence Restriction.’
I look at him, confused.
‘On Silence, you cannot communicate with anyone other than me and your assigned Leaders. When I say communicate, I mean no talking, no hand signals, no eye contact. This will give you more time to commune with the Lord.’
My brain starts to churn up an internal defence while my lips say nothing. Did I do all those things? Could I influence people? I knew I made fun of certain adults and I did have questions about some of the stuff that was read out to us. And I knew I had lied before.
‘For how long?’ These words come out without realising.
‘Rebekah!’ A flash of white-hot anger shoots out of him. ‘It’s not about the length of time. THAT’S NOT THE POINT, IS IT? You can go.’
I leave his room as he shouts behind me, ‘Effective immediately!’
*
The walk down the stairs is a daze. There must be noise in this house full of people but all I can hear is the sound of heavy marching in my head. Thud, thud, thud. An army of blood pulsing through my ears and it’s deafening. I walk into the kitchen where the girls are still making lunch. They haven’t moved. How can they be in the exact same positions but everything is different? Flipped on its axis.
I keep my head down as I walk by. My feet get quicker. I fling the back door of the house open and fill my lungs with a gallon of cold air as I break into a run towards the caravan that my parents now live in. My fists punch the plastic caravan door.
By some miracle, they’re in.
‘Mom,’ I whisper, desperation binding my throat. ‘Mom, they put me on Silence Restriction. How can they do this? I am not even a teen.’
I look up at her, hugging her waist, clinging to her. She gently pushes me off and says ‘Shuuuushhhhh!’, her finger going up to her lips.
I can’t tell what she’s thinking. Is she sad? Is she scared? Is she maybe just as scared as I am?
My dad sits at the other end of the caravan, he looks detached.
‘You can’t come in here, Bex,’ he says.
*
Things at the Teen Camp change rapidly. Families leave and within a week, 21 teenagers ranging in age from 10 to 18 take their place on the Victor programme. It’s not that many – some of the teen camps that we’ve heard about house hundreds.
Our routines become a severe combination of army training and a spiritual camp. Everything is amplified. There is a cruelty with this new regime and it is strong and encouraged. We used to be told the words ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you’ when we were being disciplined, but now, it feels like it’s open season for the adults to come up with tools that are not just physically violent like the public beatings, but feel like psychological torture – silence restriction, isolation. The Philippines is considered to be making the best strides with their methods, methods that came with the following instruction: ‘When a child is having serious problems and is fighting heavy spiritual battles, the key question is not so much which method to use but when to use which method’. They want to beat the devil out of us. Isolate us. But for me, well, I’d rather take a beating a day than be on Silence Restriction. It takes everything away – humour, cheekiness, needs, being ‘seen’.
Silence makes you invisible, disconnected, to walk into a room and for everyone to look away creates a level of daily, underhanded abandonment. To never share a joke, or a story, or even a look with other people. It confirms every day that you are perhaps worthless and meaningless. It creates walls around you that are transparent, but feel real and are heavy with heartache. The only thing that all of us can hope for is that this is just another one of Moses David’s phases: that it will all be over soon.
*
I sit in the dining room with an A3 piece of card and a red permanent marker in front of me. It’s four months since I have been put on Silence Restriction. Nineteen of us were put on it in total – at least I’m not alone. The smell of the marker makes me dizzy, but in a nice way. I once took a big sniff of this pen and it gave me a headache for the rest of the afternoon.
Got to be careful with this stuff.
I am writing out my fourth, maybe fifth sandwich board since I started the Programme. I draw big thick red letters that read: ‘I AM ON SILENCE RESTRICTION’. On the other side, it says, ‘PLEASE DO NOT TALK TO ME’.
Four months seems far too short. I can’t quantify it. So much and yet so little has happened. The days have all felt the same because they are, exactly, the same. I make holes in both pieces of card, tie them together with string – two double knots to keep it secure. I don’t know why I have to make and wear this sign; everyone knows I am on ‘Silence’. Pretty much all the Teens are on ‘Silence’. Kate isn’t, but that’s because she is silent and invisible anyway – she made herself that way for protection.
Smart.
The only difference in the days that go by, in the weeks and months, is who is in trouble for what and what new way they have chosen to punish us. Saphira is in a caravan, way out in one of the fields. For almost two months, she’s been in isolation. Particularly rebellious, she is maybe one of the worst – she did things that were deliberately disobedient, pretending to be the Aunties, sexy dance, she flipped someone a middle finger. Once she was told off and made to stand in another room but we could see her shadow dancing around madly to make us laugh.
The Lord tried to break her one night when she was making dinner and a 10-litre pot of boiling water fell on her and poached her arm. That was the first sign of her ‘going wrong’ and His judgement of her.
Shiloh was put out in another caravan for a month. She learned her lesson very quickly.
I know that it’s the worst to be in isolation, but at least they don’t have to do the ‘End Time Army Training’ that the rest of us have to do. We run around fields endlessly, digging holes and filling them back up. We lift concrete stones or bricks while being screamed at, all in an effort to get us into shape for Armageddon. But, I suppose, the army training makes sense. If we are to spend the next seven years fighting Antichrist soldiers, we should be strong and able to run. Preparing for the end days, the days that the lasers will come out of our eyes and fire from our mouths to burn Satan’s men.
I can’t wait for that.
I look at my sandwich board: this is pretty much ready. I pick it up by the strings, slip it over my head and straighten it up so the message is loud and clear.
Better get back out there.
I walk into the kitchen to start on the dinner prep. I pull out the big white vats where we keep the wheat flakes. I’ve tried everything I can with this rough ingredient to make it edible. I’ve made it into granola by laying it out on trays and putting it in the oven to crisp. I’ve turned it into porridge. I’ve even tried to grind the flakes up to make them into bread – it just turns into bricks. But the white vats are all empty.
We can’t have run out.
I know the wheat flakes are kept outside in the barn, but I’ve never been out to fill the vats up from the source. Usually an adult does that. The concrete outside crunches under my shoes; I’ve wearing super old black plimsolls that smell of rubber and I can feel the cold of the ground underneath them as if I’m barefoot. Before I was in the Victor Camp, I used to stand on tiptoes in these and pretend that I was wearing ballet shoes.
Can’t get away with that now.
I push the big wooden door of the barn; it swings open with ease and I slip inside, dragging my vats. The smell of must and mould hits me. It’s not gross though, just different, with a kind of woodiness to it. There is only one window in here and it’s boarded up. I walk slowly in the darkness towards the shapes of the sacks.
As I pull the wheat flakes into the vats, my eyes adjust to the darkness and I start to see clearly. My hands go in and out of the big sack. Then I start to make out shapes on the sack itself. There’s a large, almost life-size head of a horse. Underneath in capital letters it says ‘BRANFLAKES’ and then ‘HIGH-QUALITY HORSE FOOD. 50 KG’.
No wonder!
Of course it won’t make good granola, it’s for horses. And it’s stale, expired for over a year. I feel vindicated that we couldn’t do anything good with these stupid brown pieces of wheat. And it’s not even WHEAT! I think about all the kids trying to chew these for hours, getting unbearable jaw-ache and it all makes sense.
HA! Kate is going to love this.
I wonder when I’ll be allowed to tell her. She sleeps just feet away from me, but of course, we haven’t spoken in months.
I drag the vats of horse food into the kitchen. The other girls are assembled at their stations, everyone looks down as I walk in. Out of habit I look down too – it’s the easiest way to avoid trouble, just look down at the red stone floor.
Keep looking down.
I sit at my spot in the kitchen and start to prep, noticing I’ve already got a splash of water on my ‘Silence Restriction’ sign. Anxiety flutters through me.
That isn’t going to go down well.
*
She sits on the end of my bed. It’s dark, but I can see her clearly. Her brown hair is so neat, it’s as if she has just brushed it. Side parting.
I could never get my hair that tidy.
She wears a polka-dot dress with a white bib with ribbons on it. Her hands are folded in her lap.
‘You’ll be OK,’ she whispers into the dark.
I want to believe her.
‘This kind of thing happens all the time. I’ve been sick and I haven’t seen my brother in six months too. But he is OK and I am OK, it just feels bad right now.’ Her eyes are big and she looks straight at me. She smiles and looks around our dorm. ‘I have always lived here, this is my room,’ she says.
A chill runs through me; I want to tell her it’s not safe to talk to me.
‘You can always talk to me,’ she says, her hand reaching out to mine.
I open my eyes and she’s gone.
*
I am six months into the Victor programme.
I gently touch my thigh, feeling the welt and bruise through my bobbly trousers. My finger traces the bumps like braille across my skin from the paddling that I had earlier today. It’s not unusual for these to happen and it’s easy to get one: you only need 12 demerits in a week to warrant one, or four in one day, and you can get a ‘double d’ for dropping a plate. And like braille, paddlings are used so we receive a message:
‘Were you daydreaming?’
‘You clearly aren’t HERE!’
‘Your mind is not on your work.’
‘You are not being of the Lord.’
The public beatings started as soon as the Victor programme did. And they became more inventive with each new leader that came to the camp. One afternoon, about 20 of us had to sit and watch my brother Joel get beaten with an oversize chopping board with a dozen holes drilled into it so that it could ‘break the air’ easier.
This one was particularly brutal. Joel had been particularly rebellious. Even though these paddlings happened almost daily, this was one I will never forget.
Mary Malaysia was reading Grandpa’s new letter, ‘Make Love to Jesus’. She was explaining that we can start to commune with Jesus in a new way. The adults in the group could ‘trip out’ while making love and actually have sex with Jesus. The comic-style drawings showed people in all kinds of sexual positions with Jesus. Conjure up His spirit and show how much you really love Him and are dedicated to Him. This is supposed to be done in private, unless you are an adult.
But here, there really is no privacy.
At the end of devotions, the speaking in tongues starts:
Shadabadah
Sheeebahdaabah
Shaaabahdaahbah
Thank you, Jesus. Praise you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.
The overlapping rumble of voices gains momentum:
Yaaabaaashaaabahh
Sheeebahdaabah
Shaaabahdaahbah
Hallelujah. Praise you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.
It gets louder and picks up speed:
Shadabadah, deeebaaadaaaabahhh
Then, cutting through the tongues is Joel’s voice:
‘Yes, Jesus. That’s it, Jesus.’
His sarcastic tone that I know so well.
Sheeebahdaabah
‘COME ON, JESUS!’ he says, louder.
Shaaabahdaahbah
‘Fill me with your SEED, JESUS,’ he mocks.
Thank you, Jesus. Praise you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.
‘FUCK ME FROM BEHIND, LORD, AND FILL ME WITH YOUR SEEEDS!’ he shouts.
The speaking in tongues stops dead. All eyes are open. I want to laugh but the whole room is as paralysed at his outburst as I am.
*
A few hours later, and it’s time for the punishment.
Joel walks in, head down. Titus, the leader who is going to paddle him, takes his position. Joel not only mocked a Mo Letter, but he brought in homosexuality, which is a sin.
This is going to be bad and there’s nothing any of us can do to save him.
A blaze of fire rushes out of my mouth, quick as lasers and hotter than brimstone. It burns a giant hole through the wall, revealing a golden path on the other side. I climb through it.
‘Joel, quick! COME!’ I hold my hand out to him through the burning wall. ‘LET’S GO!’
SLAM!
The first blow brings me back into the room.
Joel yelps like a puppy that’s been kicked.
A sharp intake of breath follows. He normally doesn’t make any sound at all. The holes in the chopping board are doing their job, what Titus wanted.
Public beatings are cunning and effective. For most kids, like me, it’s harder to watch a beating than take one. I sit next to Saphira, who was allowed out of her isolation to watch this. The bandages from her boiled arm are a rank orange colour and stink of old meat. Or maybe the smell is because she has to go to the toilet in a bucket – I would puke if I wasn’t so scared.
SLAM!
‘No, No, No! Please! NO!’ Joel cries.
Two adults hold him in place because he keeps trying to wriggle away from the paddle’s path.
I can’t bear to watch; I wish I could close my eyes. We’re not allowed to look away, we have to bear witness to it – it has to be remembered.
It will be remembered.
I will never forget this.
*
Later that day, I walk in on Joel with his trousers down in one of the bathrooms, trying to patch himself up. None of the toilets have locks on the doors, these are not allowed. I catch sight of the skin on his bottom so badly bruised that it’s broken. It looks like marble, but all the streaks in stone are the cracks in his skin and they are bleeding. I close the door before we get caught.
The next day, we have a new tactic sprung on us.
‘We are changing how we discipline you. We have noticed that some of you are holding on to resentment against the Leaders who are administering the paddlings. This is not right, as the paddlings are done out of love and are from the Lord. But to make this situation easier for the Leaders, we will be doing the paddlings individually and blindfolded.’
I welcome the news – I never want to see my brother in that state again.
It’s foolish for them to think that we won’t know who has done it just because we’re blindfolded. Every leader here has their signature bruise. The square buckle of the belt is Jude. Mary Malaysia likes to use a switch, which gives you tiger stripes. Titus goes for a big paddle, which results in a larger spread of bruises and cracked skin.
The purple and red shapes tell-on them.
So, today, when I went in for my paddling, there was no group of kids to watch, no Saphira with her stinking arm, no brothers and sisters to get hurt by my lashings. Just three of the Leaders, a switch rod and a blindfold.
For the first time in a long while, someone looks me in the eye to speak. Which is almost more startling than the sight of the blindfold.
‘Rebekah, you know why you are here?’
I nod.
‘You know that this hurts us more than it hurts you?’
I nod again.
‘Look in my eyes. Let me see you smile. Do you still love me?’
I smile, I nod.
And the room goes dark.
*
It’s nine months since I have been on the Victor programme. Nine months since I have had a conversation, since I stuck my tongue out, nine months since I heard the sound of my own laugh.
Nine months since I became invisible.
I crouch on a flight of stairs, gripping on to a dustpan and brush. Dust gets in my eyes and fluff collects in little balls of grey as I brush all the corners. The smell of these stairs is almost comforting. Out of all the jobs, it’s not a bad one – it’s better than cleaning the bathrooms. Gross. It’s also fast and loud. Sometimes it’s nice to make noise, even if it’s just with a brush, or a mop, or a vacuum cleaner.
On the landing above me some of the kids talk in hushed voices. Sure, I shouldn’t be ‘listening in’ as this is still communicating. But I listen in, carefully choosing when I bash my brush, so that it looks like I am very, very busy.
BASH, BASH, BASH.
‘New Leaders’, ‘Some new Teens’, ‘Kris Scott coming back.’ The brush drops. My heart punches through my chest. Kris? Coming back? He’s been gone since the day they announced that this was going to be a Teen Home. My eyes go dry with excitement.
Kris is coming back. My protector. My brother. Kris is COMING BACK!
I pick the brush back up and start pounding the stairs.
I wonder what he’s been through, how many paddlings, how much trouble he has gotten into. I can imagine him standing up to the Leaders and calling them ‘sonsofbitches’.
