After Mene, the leaders were convinced that there were other potential doubters and dissenters. Because Mene had been the good girl, all the good kids were under suspicion too. I worked hard and tried my best to keep the rules, but Marianne had it in for me in her room that day and would not give up until I had confessed to some crime.
I could not think of anything to confess to. ‘I don’t space out,’ I insisted. ‘I’m not imagining or seeing anything.’
Frustrated, she paused, and then looked angrily at me. ‘Well, that’s even worse! The Devil is speaking to you and you don’t even know it.’
I could not believe such nonsense. I let out a laugh, and then stifled it quickly. But not quickly enough.
‘You think it’s funny?’ Zadok chided. ‘This is serious and the Devil is out to destroy you. If we don’t break you, God will have to do it. And believe me, that is so much worse.’
Then came what I believe was the real reason for the correction. Marianne had been given the reports I had written at the camp and these showed, she claimed, that I had been harbouring bitterness against God and ‘my brothers in the Lord’. She told me I needed to forgive those I felt had wronged me. She also accused me of making an idol of Dad in my heart. She had heard reports from people in the Home that I had been talking about missing my dad. This was proof I had made an idol of him. I had to forsake him and give him to God.
‘God is a jealous God,’ she scolded, ‘and he will have no other gods before Him.’
I treasured Dad’s rare letters and read them over and over again when I missed him. The hope that I would see him again kept me going. Now she was telling me I had made him an idol that I needed to destroy. This attack was the final straw, the hurt nerve that could not be touched. I broke down into tears. How could I forget my own father? All my feelings of abandonment and loss of the person I loved most in the world burst out, and I could not control it. I desperately wanted to hold back the tears but couldn’t.
This display of emotion satisfied Marianne that she had finally broken my pride and rebellious spirit. She pronounced my ‘sentence’; I would have to spend the next month in isolation, reading and writing reactions to Mo Letters on rebellion, yieldedness, submission and demon possession. I would have an adult ‘buddy’ who would read with me – I was not allowed to talk to anyone else.
Changing my attitude would not be enough though. I was also asked to change my name. Celeste was too spacey (because it meant ‘heavenly’ in Spanish). My head was too much in the clouds and I needed to choose a more down-to-earth name.
‘You have a few days to think and pray about it, and then you can get back to me on what the Lord shows you,’ she said.
For three days I could drink only soup and water. The hunger pains were my only company as I was confined in a small room apart from everyone else. At the end of the three days, Marianne asked,
‘Well, have you decided on your new name?’
I nodded. ‘Joan, after Joan of Arc. I want to be a fighter like her.’
Marianne was pleased with this. ‘Jesus needs fighters in his Endtime army,’ she said. ‘Good. I’ll let everyone know.’
During my month of isolation my mind and feelings went numb, almost as if I went into shutdown mode. I remember this time as a blur, where one day blended into another. At the end of the month, the commune gathered to say a prayer of deliverance over me. My head was anointed with oil and everyone laid hands on my head, speaking in tongues. The demons of pride, self-righteousness and rebellion were supposedly cast out of me.
I was confused. Was there really a struggle for my soul in Heaven between God and the Devil? Why didn’t I feel it then? I still had no idea what I had done wrong or what part of the Devil Marianne had seen in me, but I was just glad and relieved that it was over.
Later I found out that I was not the only one who had gone through a breaking when I was stunned to read two Letters of Confession, published for the whole Family, in which Dad confessed his sins as part of a public demotion and retraining at the Kings house. First, he admitted his fame with Music with Meaning had made him too proud. During his years in college he had dabbled in the occult. The demons must have latched on to him and he asked for cleansing prayer to rid him of their influence. I was hurt when he wrote that the women in his life were better off since he had left them for the Lord.
Did he really believe that? I wondered.
In a second Confession, he said that he had made an idol of his mother, Krystyna. Mo had said that demons could ‘hitchhike’ into your home, riding in on photographs. To break her hold and get rid of the evil spirits on her photographs, Dad had burned every picture of our grandmother. She was a Catholic and a loving mother before her death. How was anything about her demonic? I was heartbroken that he had destroyed these irreplaceable pictures that had been given to him by his father and relatives on his trip to Poland in search of his roots. The only photograph left of our grandmother is the one he gave me to keep on his return.
On the back of the Teen Training Camps, ‘retraining centres’ were being set up in key locations around the world for the Family’s teenagers and ‘rebel’ adults to be sent to for further training. At the same time, Mo went too far in his meddling with Filipino politics and the military, and the Family wore out their welcome. The media picked up the story and Mo declared the Philippines a ‘reaped field’. Marianne was ordered to move her entire Home to Tokyo. During this period of transition, Armi, Krys, my little sister Juliana and I were sent a nearby complex in Manila so huge it was known as the Jumbo. Krys still lived with us in the girls’ teen room even though she had just had a little baby girl. She had difficulty bonding with her child and didn’t take care of her properly because she wanted to share in the few fun things the rest of us teens were allowed, instead of staying back all the time, watching a baby she hadn’t wanted.
It was here I met Paul Peloquin again. He came to film another strip-dance video for Mo. He pulled me aside. ‘Sweetie, Grandpa has made a special request. He wants you to dance. We’re not really supposed to film underage girls dancing nude anymore, but this is just an exception.’
The new rules were supposed to stop all displays of child sexuality but the leaders wanted to make him happy.
‘He thought your dance for his birthday last year was very sexy.’ Paul winked at me. I didn’t want to do this dance – I felt used, put on display for some old man’s entertainment. But no one said ‘no’ to Grandpa without serious consequences so I agreed. And just as before, Paul coached me from behind the camera. When the song finished, I was applauded for my humility and yieldedness to the Lord. Everything was always about yieldedness and submission, but I was beginning to wonder if it was really God who we were submitting to, or the whims of our leaders.
The time had come for a team of us to move to a school being set up in Japan. When I was told that Juliana was to stay in the Philippines, I worried if she would be all right without Dad or me around. I had tried to look out for her as best I could over the years, but in reality there was little I could do.
I was determined not to leave before seeing my father. Even though the location of World Services was supposed to be a secret, I knew he was still in the Philippines. The day before flying to Tokyo, I was given permission to spend two hours with him at a hotel. I was put in a van and blindfolded so I could not see where I was being taken. After driving around for an hour, the van came to a stop. When they took the blindfold off, I was greeted by my smiling dad. I was so happy to see him again, if only for a few hours.
‘You’ve got grey hair!’ I exclaimed. He had aged since I last saw him almost two years before. He kissed me on the forehead just as he did when I was a little girl. ‘How’s my baby?’
‘I’m not a baby anymore,’ I said, standing up tall.
“Well, no matter how old you are, I’ll always be that much older than you – so you’ll always be my baby,’ Dad teased. I smiled, half annoyed, and half enjoying his fussing.