He placed a tape in the machine and sat on
the couch beside me. We watched a documentary on the life of David
Moses. It showed his lavish lifestyles and his luxurious
accommodations throughout the world, while his followers lived in
poverty, used outhouses, and slept in dormitory-like places with no
showers or air-ventilation, received no medical or dental
attention, and suffered from malnutrition.” Sally began fidgeting.
“Relax,” he said forcefully to her, “we’ll be here indefinitely and
there’s lots of time to take it all in.”
Una and Andy brought down supper and served
it in the basement. In protest, she stripped naked and refused to
eat, demanding to be released as a prisoner of conscience, but Una
came over and pinched the skin on her arm with all her might until
she screamed. “Put your clothes back on, you little fool,” she
whispered, “or you’ll live to regret it.”
Her body I’m ashamed to say, though
skeletal, made me immediately excited.
“You’re so thin,” Mary said aloud and began
to cry, helping her re-dress. I almost became overwhelmed with
emotion. When she’d dressed, she still refused food and drink,
instead, she prayed and chanted, however, when Mary came over and
hugged her again, I saw for no reason I could fathom, that she
accepted some spaghetti from her.
“In your letter to your parents,” Rick said,
after eating, “you stated that you had to break off from your past,
renounce your parents and their lifestyles and things like that.
The bible says that you should honor your father and mother. How do
you explain this discrepancy?”
“The bible means your spiritual mother and
father,” she answered cleverly.
“But then, why wouldn’t the bible say that?”
he asked just as cleverly. “Here, look at this.” He passed her the
bible, opened where the verse had been taken. “Read it,” he
commanded loudly. But she couldn’t seem to focus on the words.
“There’s little doubt what the bible means if you read it in
context,” he continued loudly. “It means, honor your actual
parents.”
“You are the Black Satan,” she hissed and
spit into his face again.
This caused some confusion among everybody,
and she made a dash for it, but Una, who had been standing beside
the couch, grabbed her, and forcefully dragged her back, then
patted her on the head. “Good, puppy,” she whispered.
Sally and I had always hated when she did
that.
“What kind of God do you worship, Sally?”
Rick said in a booming preacher’s voice. “What kind of God tells
you to spit into my face?” Sally sat back and pretended to yawn. It
was really phony. “Tell me, Sally, what kind of God tells you to
hate your family, to hate your mother and father? Look at them,
they love you. That’s not God telling you to hate, no, that’s
Satan. You’re the devil-worshiper, not your parents.”
“The Devil is everywhere,” she repeated
without emotion. I could tell she was on the verge of defeat.
“The devil is this man,” Rick said and
showed her a picture of David Moses. “This man is not Jesus. He
raped his daughter-in-law. He’s had sex with minors. He used to be
a–” Rick stopped with a smile and caught her eyes. “Do you want to
guess what he did for a living before he became a preacher?” He
paused and waited a few seconds. “No?” he asked, “if you’d guessed
a salesman, you’re right, but some of his old associates say that
he’s better described as a con-artist. Did you know that he has
left the United States because he’s wanted by the American
government for assault, tax evasion, and sex abuse?” Sally’s cheeks
turned red and I knew he was getting to her really quickly. “Did
you know,” Rick continued, “he threatens to kill any former members
if they bring suit against him?”
In this manner, point after point, until
almost eleven o’clock p.m., Rick whittled away Sally’s resolve.
When she went to bed that night, she looked exhausted.
Rick and his helpers drilled Sally with
clever questions the whole next day and she tried to answer them,
but I realized her responses were wildly inadequate. We also
watched the video again on The Family of Truth. She ate three or
four of Una’s homemade meals that day, her favorite dishes, and
went to bed by nine o’clock.
Her old self was nearly bursting through,
and in the early morning of the next day, as the smell of Una’s hot
Caribbean black-eyed bean and rice breakfast floated down to us,
she came out from her bedroom and I knew she was her old self. She
looked me in the eyes with love.
“They raped me,” she announced when
everybody was gathered around, then she went over and hugged Una.
It was very emotional and I began to cry.
“I’m very grateful to you, Rick,” she said,
“you’ve saved my life. Thank you. I love you all. Please forgive
me. Five Elders raped me, Ezekiel Observance, Silent Peace, Grave
Revelation, Holy Truth, and Goodness Tranquility. They solicited me
for sex like some child one day when I was cleaning the main
farmhouse. When I refused them, they held me down and slapped my
face. They sexually assaulted me repeatedly. They prayed and read
scriptures as they did it. When they were gone, they made me
forgive them and pray with them!” She shuddered in disgust.
Stan rose and took Mary’s hand and then
mine, and lastly Una’s. We all hugged Sally, but Una pulled away
suddenly, bursting into tears. “They’ve hurt our Sally, Stan, let’s
dedicate ourselves to bringing them to law.”
“That will be hard,” Rick interceded
watching us leerily, as though the intervention had gotten out of
control. “Stan has to file a report on Sally with the local
authorities here.” Stan and Mary sighed. “They’re wily,” Rick
added, shrugging, “and dangerous.”
Sally was truly grateful for what we’d done,
but as we readied to return home, I was also acutely aware that
Stan might always hold me responsible for letting Sally on that bus
and that my only hope was that she return completely to her old
self.
The limousine came up the extended driveway
straight to the garden walks which led to the back, sides, and pool
areas, most which lay hidden in the shadows of huge maples and
oaks. Many a day Sally and I had played there. Sally came into the
kitchen with Una and I passing straight through the pantry with me
alone, and upstairs to her bedroom. I watched as she crawled into
her bed, and then, she slept for what seemed like days. Peter
Burgess came by the some days later and talked to Sally and I. “I
started my search for you four days after you went missing,” he
said as we sat on the Wassily chairs in the living room, just the
three of us. “I watched them for awhile and I kept a record of how
fast they got complete strangers onto their buses. In one case it
was under ten seconds. I got on that bus myself and traveled to
Ashbury. My evening and night spent there was one of the worst of
my entire life. I’ll tell you, worse than anything done to me in
Vietnam.”
He talked for an hour or so and then left.
Sally excused herself and went straight to bed. She slept without
interruption, but she just couldn’t seem to get enough sleep. What
she must have been going through, I could only imagine.
On the fourth morning, I remember standing
in the kitchen with Una, who made Sally and I thick hot chocolate,
just like Sally liked. She lazily looked out windows which took up
nearly the entire west side of the house, shuffling in her slippers
from one vista to another. The yard fell out into the immense deck
leading to the swimming-pool area, then into a thick group of trees
hiding most of the iron fences that ran for hundreds of feet. It
was a dull grey wet day and it depressed my senses just to think
about it. I estimated that Sally had gained five pounds already
since she had come home, eating her favorite dishes which Una had
turned out one after the other. In between sleeping and eating, she
read books on cults which Rick Edwards had given her; I read them
too. Why she remained lost to sleep I thought I understood. She
still wasn’t herself, and she felt foolish and inadequate. Una and
I baby-sat her. I took the whole week off.
“These pictures of the restaurants in
Jamaica,” she said softly, indicating a set of large ten-by-twelve
photographs hanging on the wall across from the kitchen island,
“they’ve been here for years?” Una nodded. “I’ve never really seen
them before,” she continued. “I’m noticing so much right now. Did
you really own all these little restaurants?” Una nodded further.
“And look at the ceiling,” she continued again. “The stucco design
is intersected with geometric lines like the famous wheat field
circles of England. I never remember seeing that before.”
She giggled. “That’s just been done.”
“What are you cooking now?”
“Some hors d’oeuvres for tomorrow
night.”
Sally yawned and stretched. “It seems I’ll
always be tired and worn-out,” she complained. “They robbed me of
my ability for REM sleep.”
“It is as though you’re trying to contact
your old self by returning to your deep dreams,” I offered.
“I dream only of the horrible assault,” she
said teary-eyed, “I had to put it out of my mind and now it
constantly floods back to me.”
I was in the kitchen with her when the phone
rang. The First Law of Life for orphans and those unlucky by birth
was still in full-force. I suppose it will be until the day I die.
Una was in the pantry, and I picked it up. It was for Sally and
like a fool I gave her the phone, never thinking that anyone who
assaults a woman would have the gall to come all the way from
Denver to claim her. With the phone in hand, Sally walked over to
the double glass-doors which looked out on the east side of the
mansion and stretched to look at something. I also looked out and
saw young people along the gate, but it didn’t register to me who
it was. Sally slowly walked out of the kitchen and threw on a
jacket from the hall closet.
I slowly followed her. “What’s wrong, Sal,”
I called lightly behind her.
She made her way to the front entrance. When
she reached for the door, Dad just then came in. “What’s wrong,” he
asked, “Where are you going?”
“Stop her,” I called.
Stan grabbed her by the arm and she pulled
away, but Stan stood between her and the door, trying to back her
up, but to my utter surprise, I still can’t believe it to this day,
she pushed him to the floor and squeezed open the door. I was at
her heels though, and Una came just behind me on the front yard. I
think this is as low as life ever got for us. She turned and
sucker-punched me in the face, just like I’d shown her so many
years before. I fell to the ground, bleeding at the lips. She
kicked me in the stomach and pounced on me. “You’re of Satan!” she
screeched in my ear, choking me with all her might. Una broke in
and seized her by the hair and dragged her off me with one thrust,
then Sally tried to bite Una arms. “Fat black Satan, ” she screamed
further, trying to spit on her.
Stan helped Una and me hold her down. I now
noticed Divine Love and Love Israel out in front of the gate with
their slender arms stretched through the wrought-iron gates toward
us, as though in a dream, they were like ghosts and she struggled
hard to get to them. Silent Peace, the one with the purple
birthmark and one of the ones Sally had accused of assaulting her,
was there. Gathering up behind them on the sidewalk, other members
of the family silently watched, there was maybe even a hundred of
them, their vans and buses parked out on the street. They’d come
all the way from Denver and my hatred of them, and fear, grew
exponentially at that moment.
Mary came running out of the house. “I’ve
phoned the police,” she announced.
“Oh dear, should you have done that?” Una
asked.
Dad was frowning and helping Sally to her
feet. “Calm down, Sally! What’s happened?”
“Satan is in the house!” she shouted.
Stan looked at Una and Mary. “How did they
get to him?”
“By the phone,” I confessed and quickly told
them.
In a moment, they had calmed Sally enough so
that she stopped shouting and struggling. The police arrived and
Stan greeted them at the front gate. I still held onto Sally and
was near tears.
“Look at that,” Una whispered.
The members of the family had moved back to
the busses, reducing their numbers to only a few. I ground my teeth
against them; damn them! They were despicable. The police officers
stepped onto the property with Stan after they’d had a few words
with Thought Jacob, the Head Elder from Denver. The older officer,
a stocky clean-shaven fifty-year-old officer, had a slightly
protruding belly and intense eyes, but looked at me with kindness.
“I’m Officer Jake Allen,” he said. He pointed to the other officer,
“My partner, Bob Woods.”
Officer Woods was a tall slim man, perhaps
one-hundred and sixty pounds and forty-five-years old or so, and to
me, he looked half asleep and bored. I’d already counted two yawns
from him just walking up to us. Sally stared at the event as though
she was an unattached third party and this made me even sadder.
“We’ll have to speak to your daughter alone,” Officer Jake Allen
said. Bob Woods yawned again. “She’s of legal age,” Officer Allen
pointed out, “and you can’t restrain her if she’s done nothing
wrong.”
One part of me felt oppressed by his words
and I couldn’t speak out, even though I felt like calling them
‘Assholes!’ However, they handcuffed Sally. “I’m Patience Hosanna,”
she said with a trembling voice of despair. “I was kidnapped by
Rick Edwards; he’s the black Satan; Una is his agent! Many black
people serve the devil!”
One of the officer’s, Jake Allen, the stout
one, curled up his eyes and placed her in the backseat of their
cruiser. The Officers talked to Sally for some time, and then
leaving the property, talked to one of the Elders, Holy Truth, who
I’d met during the abduction and who was one of the five Sally had
accused of raping her. Several of the members of the family still
waited quietly by the gate on the sidewalk, but most of them now
had disappeared. The police came back and got Sally out of the
cruiser. She was still in handcuffs but now seemed resigned from
trying to escape.