I Grew Up in an Apocalyptic Christian Cult
The following article first appeared in Narrative.ly.
“Miss Edwards, do you have another shirt in your locker?” my second period Spanish teacher, Mrs. Buck, asked me on my first day of high school, making sure the whole class could clearly hear my dilemma.
I looked down at my breasts, their little white mounds pushing up and slightly out of a shirt that was low-cut and tight-fitting, but not too provocative, at least I thought.
Mrs. Buck’s orders to return to class the next day only if I had appropriate clothing came as a shock for two reasons: Firstly, I didn’t own a lot of clothes. Secondly, I grew up in a community where boys and girls spent a lot of time naked together. I did not understand the proper rules of dress code. Showing a little cleavage was no big deal to my teenage mind.
All my life I had been taught that constantly moving was part of our family’s duty to God. I had lost count of how many places we had lived. I wanted to be normal, so I convinced my parents to let me enroll in Rowland High School, in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley. Earlier that morning I had been thrilled to start classes. At 15 years old, it was my first day at any school, anywhere, ever.
On my way home I cried profusely for being ostracized for reasons I didn’t understand. I stopped at the local library, where I often went to read glossy women’s magazines. An issue of “Seventeen” caught my eye. I flipped through it. In a side bar, black bold letters read, "Did you grow up in a cult? Take this quiz and find out now."
I had heard the word “cult” when I was younger and had been trained to answer that, “No, I had not grown up in a cult” or “What’s a cult?” if anyone ever asked me.
Intrigued, I flipped to the story. In a sidebar black bold letters read, “Did You Grow Up in a Cult? Take this quiz and find out now.”
I stopped crying. Maybe there was a reason for my being ostracized. I turned to the quiz. I had to know the truth.
First question: “Did you grow up in a secluded environment?”
I thought about my early childhood in Thailand, before we moved back to the States. Every home I lived in there was required to have walls at least eight feet high, topped with loops of barbed wire or jagged glass sealed into the cement. The gates were boarded with plywood. I lived with my family and 30 to 40 other people. I was told they were my "family in the Lord.”
We called ourselves “The Children of God.” I wasn’t allowed to leave without permission. If I did, I would be banned from ever returning and doomed to eternal hell and condemnation in the afterlife. My parents and the other adults I lived with told me that I was allowed to leave, but if I did I’d be giving up my birthright as one of God’s 144,000 chosen and would forfeit my spot in heaven come the apocalypse in 1993.
“Were you under the influence of a charismatic leader?”
I thought about David Brandt Berg. He lived in hiding. My parents followed him but were never allowed to see him. I never knew what he looked like. In photos he would white out his face and draw a picture of a lion head. He called himself “Father David,” but we kids were required to call him “Grandpa.”
(Editor's note: For more great content from Narrative.ly, check out these three stories: Please Punch Me, Chasing the Ghosts of Franco, The Voices in My Brother's Head)
“Were you coerced to recruit members to your group?”
I thought about the trips I’d go on, during which I was taught to tell people about Jesus and his love. We called it “witnessing.” These recruiting trips were the only times I could go beyond our compound.
“Were you taught that the outside world was a forbidden place, and did you feel guilty for wanting to leave?”
The world outside was referred to as “the system.” It was a scary place filled with evil, corruption and devilish temptations and desires. Father David referred to anyone who was not part of the Children of God as “systemites.” He sent out comic books with illustrations of what these systemites looked like—ultra-cool boys with slicked-back hair and baggy pants, girls with dyed hair, dangling jewelry, painted fingernails and lots of make-up. They were lost and it was our job to save them. We were taught to be natural and wear our hair long with minimal fuss. Make-up and jewelry was forbidden. Boys kept their hair short and men were not allowed to grow facial hair. Father David shunned any attention to fashion or outer appearance. “Worldliness,” he called it, was a device of the Devil. I was told I was special because I was born into the Children of God. Over time, I learned to believe it.
Until I picked up that issue of “Seventeen,” I thought we were just part of a religious missionary group with strict rules. I followed my family and trusted them.
All of our lives, we had never been allowed to choose where to live, what clothes to wear or what food to eat. Everything had been decided for us.
For the next few weeks after taking the “Seventeen” quiz, the words ran like a manta through my mind: Oh my God ... I grew up in a cult ... Where do I go from here?
* * *
The Children of God was founded on the shores of Huntington Beach, California, in 1968. David Berg was the youngest child of evangelist Virginia Lee Brandt and Hjalmer Berg. After several attempts at following his famous mother’s nationwide evangelical mission, Berg was kicked out of the Christian Missionary Alliance, a group his parents belonged to, for alleged sexual misconduct, although Berg claims he was expelled for trying to preach to Native Americans who came into the parish, as he put it, “dirty and barefoot,” eager to hear the gospel.
Berg partnered up with Fred Jordan, a television evangelist and founder of the American Soul Clinic in Los Angeles, an organization dedicated to training missionaries for the foreign field. Together they promoted a television program called “Church in the Home,” which broadcast sermons to people’s homes via a weekly television program. Their partnership lasted for 15 years. During that time, Berg developed a philosophy that any action was justified as long as it was done in the name of God’s work. This philosophy would be a founding principle of the Children of God.
Berg, along with his wife and four children, began offering assistance to a small group called Teen Challenge at the Light Club, a Christian coffeehouse near the Huntington Beach pier. Soon they were running the mission full time, keeping it open and alive seven days a week with songs about Jesus and a message of the end times.
The word “church” was never mentioned. Father David detested the church. His group of followers began to grow, as did his prophecies and revelations, which included apocalyptic visions, claims against the established church and a plethora of “laws” condoning sexual freedom.
In the 1970s he began vigilant protests against the established church. His protests were called “Woe the Church Ministry” and members dressed in sackcloth, held thick wooden staves, smeared ashes on their foreheads and stormed into Sunday morning church sermons to warn the congregation of the end of the world.
In a practice called “flirty-fishing,” Father David instructed the women to use sex to entice new members to the group and gather donations. He appointed a woman named Karen Zerby as his chosen prophetess. He called her his “first wife,” but he was known to sleep with any woman who had the privilege of meeting him. We learned to call Karen Zerby “Mama Maria.” She headed the flirty-fishing movement, which, along with the Woe the Church Ministry, attracted attention from the media, often landing the Children of God on the front page of newspapers. As the group grew to hundreds and then thousands, it was time to organize, and according to Father David’s orders, flee from the western world that would be the first to burn in hell come God’s judgment and the apocalypse.
* * *
My mom was born and raised in Malmo, Sweden, to an alcoholic father and a harsh, distant mother. As a child her parents dropped her and her younger sister, Eva, off at a Lutheran church every week. Mom loved the sermons and excelled in church activities, eventually becoming a scout leader. In high school she became a full-time babysitter for one of her teachers, then quit her babysitting job to travel to Tunisia. As a young woman she was a traveler full of adventure. She told stories of traversing the Swedish slopes, getting caught in a blizzard while skiing and bravely crossing a narrow bridge swinging high above a Norwegian fjord.
On her way to buy a ticket to Tunisia, Mom met Thomas, a member of the Children of God who she described as “having eyes that were full of light.” She said he was glowing with an aura she had never seen. He sat on a street corner strumming a guitar. She sat down next to him and he told her about Jesus. He invited her to come to their house that night for dinner. Fish soup was on the menu. Mom was a strict vegetarian.
When she told them about her dietary restrictions, one of the members told her, “It’s O.K. Just put the fish on the side.”
She was ready to either hear or deliver a lecture about conflicting dietary beliefs. To her surprise, they didn’t judge her for being vegetarian, nor did they try to convince her that she should change her habits. It was then, she said, that she felt an acceptance she had never felt before. She was part of a community. She had found her family. She dropped everything she had, including a fiancé back home in Sweden, to join the Children of God. She was just one of thousands to “forsake all” and follow Father David Berg.
Shortly afterward, Mom and Dad met in Spain in 1978. Dad, a promising geology student, had dropped out of UC Davis two weeks before he would have graduated at the top of his class to follow his five older siblings into the Children of God. The McNally family lived across the street from him in South Pasadena and most of their kids also joined.
When people ask me what compelled them to join, I think back to the times in which they were living: the 1960s. It was a time of protest, political turbulence and school rebellion. Baby boomers were coming of age, exploring sex and lowering their inhibitions. Hippies on the streets of California were looking for answers and Father David believed he had them. He incorporated the movements of the ’60s into his evangelical mission, even writing a letter called, “C’mon Ma! Burn Your Bra” and a series of letters on “revolutionary sex.” Father David believed that we could return humanity back to the Garden of Eden, the way God intended, a world of peace with humans living close to nature and serving God. He understood that the youth of the generation were ready to believe anything.
Members were required to forsake all, cut off all ties with their families and devote their lives in service to the Lord. Father David was God’s mouthpiece and claimed to be his prophet. He offered young people the promise of freedom within the confines of his leadership. If there is such a thing as a modern-day prophet, Father David fit all the requirements. He had the charisma that would lead one of the most infamous cults of all time.
The Children of God outlasted most cults formed at that time. We kids had the burden to bear. It was our job to save the world and return the pagans, all other beings outside of the group, back to God’s natural state.
My family’s move to Thailand in 1985 was based on a prophecy that Father David received. My family was living in Los Angeles at the time. One day Aunty Mary, who was also part of the Children of God, came running into the living room to tell us of the latest news Father David had received from God. Her hair was tied back in a little bun and she held a freshly printed magazine. She flipped through the pages and landed on a picture of a woman wearing the same spiky crown that rests atop the head of the Statue of Liberty. The woman’s legs were spread open wide and she was holding a globe of the world in one hand. In her other hand rested the fate of the world, symbolized by a handful of poverty-stricken, third-world folk at the mercy of her wrath. In between her legs were the Pentagon, the White House and other buildings representing lust, sloth and greed. Father David was ordering all of his followers to move out of western civilization. The west was evil, he’d say, and would be the first to burn in hell. He’d had a revelation from God that the world was going to end in 1993 and it was our job to warn everybody. We were part of the 144,000 with spots in heaven and we could take whoever was willing with us.
* * *
I missed the ‘80s entirely. I had a minimal education that included learning fractions and geography, reading portions of the King James Bible, and memorizing chapters upon chapters of scripture and reciting them on command. I was forbidden from reading outside books, watching movies, listening to music or talking to anyone outside of the group.
Our days were spent taking care of the compound, raking leaves and caring for children who weren’t much younger than me. We were cut off completely from family and friends who were not part of the Children of God. I never knew my grandparents. We learned to call the adults in our community “Uncle” and “Aunty.”
We woke up every morning at seven a.m. By 7:30 our rooms were immaculate and spotless, the bed sheets unwrinkled and firm. We slept in rooms sometimes filled with 15 to 20 children on bunk beds, trundle beds and rollaway beds. One adult was assigned to watch us kids during the night. With little water supply and limited space, we kids showered communally and slept in tight quarters. Having to take our clothes off in the humid tropical afternoons or during nap time was not uncommon.
After morning prayer, we gathered ourselves into neat rows and stood at attention, each line containing eight to 12 children determined by age. Mom had been giving birth to a new baby every year and was now pregnant with her eighth child. We stood shortest to tallest. I was usually somewhere in the back with my twin sister, Tamar, close behind. Our sister Mary Ann, who was older than us but a bit shorter, stood in front of me. I liked being sandwiched between my two sisters. We marched in single file, quoting a verse or shouting a quote in sync with our steps.
On queue we’d file down the stairs and through the hall. We arrived at our designated tables for breakfast. We sat at our assigned seats and ate thick rice porridge or curdled powdered eggs and steamed rice sopped with soy sauce. The food was bland and tasteless. During lunch we slapped the slabs of boiled tofu under the table, where they stuck like gum or splattered to the floor. We balled up the rice in snowballs and had food fights when the adults weren’t looking, until someone got hauled off to the bathroom for a spanking and we all laughed like hyenas.
The Children of God had grown to include 12,000 members spread mostly across third-world countries, and an official campus was established in Japan called The Heavenly City School. It housed up to 300 members, consisted of multiple compounds spanning a whole block and was fully equipped with a studio where they produced religious tapes, posters and videos for distribution. In Thailand, we began distributing the media they produced for a suggested donation. Father David said that since we were on a mission to save the world, people would offer us gifts and we should accept them readily. Once some of the Thai aunties talked the colonel of Southern Thailand into letting us stay in his island property on Phuket for reduced rent. We enthusiastically agreed.
* * *
It was at this home in Phuket that I began to think about the reality of my situation. I was five years old and 1993 was just seven years away. I would be 12 when the world ended. Father David said we would be God’s martyrs. It was the price we had to pay for being God’s chosen ones. Most of my childhood was spent fantasizing about the details of my death.
It only recently occurred to me how often I was forced to think about death as a child. When children are forced to think about death they don’t think about what will happen in the afterlife. No. When a child thinks about death they think about the exact moment of death. What must happen in order for a person to die? Will it hurt? Will I be able to handle the pain? How will it happen? How will I die?
I knew for sure that I was going to heaven since I was one of God’s children, but the threshold to get there seemed insurmountable. I began to think about all the possible ways that I could die—primitive ways that I’d heard about, mostly from the Bible stories we’d read at night or from movies that we were allowed to watch on weekends like “The Ten Commandments” or “Jesus of Nazareth.” I formulated elaborate images of my mind of being burned at the stake like Joan of Arc; being crucified upside down, where the head fills with blood and slowly bursts; being beheaded like John the Baptist; or stoned to death like the prostitutes in the Bible stories or movies we’d watch.
We had imitation attacks where some of the men dressed up in black uniforms and carried broomsticks for guns. They’d burst through the front doors close to bedtime. We’d all hide under the stairs and prepare to stay as still and quiet as possible until they’d tell us to come out and we’d sing songs in a state of euphoria, raising our arms in the air and pretending that we were flying up to heaven to meet Jesus at the pearly gates. How did nobody understand that I was terrified about what would have to happen in order for us to go to heaven? Did they not understand that death comes before resurrection?
I felt sorry for these men I imagined, because I knew that they were human too. I thought that maybe I could convert them to our side. I convinced myself that if I could look into their eyes, I could persuade them that I wasn’t guilty of anything and I didn’t think that they were bad either. They were just doing their job. They were soldiers like me; they didn’t have a choice.
At night I prayed that I would get shot. It seemed a quick and painless way to die. I wanted to be shot with a machine gun, so that I would die as quickly as possible. And I wanted to be shot in the heart. I was terrified of pistols and the idea of a wound that might leave me bleeding to death for hours.
I slept on a mattress on the floor and positioned myself close to a wooden bed structure so I could slide under at a moment’s notice.
I was special, I told myself as I cried myself to sleep.
* * *
One night when I was five, my thoughts were interrupted by the flash of fluorescent lights and Mom’s urgent command: “Hurry and get your things together. We don’t have much time.” She told us to be as quiet as possible. Outside the sky was still dark. Mattresses bound with baby blue sheets were stretched across the floor. We had 10 minutes to pack up our things and vacate. We called it evacuation. Father David taught us to have “fleebags” packed at all times with toiletries, socks, underwear and a few pairs of light clothing in the case of a raid, natural disaster or the end time. We were trained to disappear at the snap of a finger.
“Hurry kids! Before the officials get here.” Her voice was pressing but calm.
This time I wasn’t dreaming.
I had heard stories of raids before in homes thousands of miles away in Argentina and other parts of the world. These homes were called “jumbos” and housed up to 300 members at a time. We knew that they were raided during the wee hours just before dawn, similar to the raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco; the only difference is we didn’t have guns or firearms.
After being interrupted from their sleep and snatched out of bed, the children were ordered by officials to board a bus and then taken to social services, where they remained until their parents were proven innocent of child abuse and molestation charges. After being interrogated into exhaustion, the girls were then taken to the doctor to be examined. Social services wanted to determine whether or not they were still virgins. Although I was never sexually abused, I’ve heard many stories throughout the years of girls in Children of God who were physically and sexually abused.
Although I was horrified by the graphic procedure involving a cold speculum and metal braces, I secretly wondered what it would be like to be taken away and placed in a new home, even if only temporarily. Guiltily, I wondered what it would be like to live in a fancy house with high glass cupboards filled with delicate china sets.
Nothing much was said during the raid. Whenever we were ordered to do something, we simply listened and obeyed. There were no questions. We lived every day on the verge of martyrdom, thankful for another privilege, another chance to save the world.
We packed our things and loaded into a Song-Taow, a Thai open-air taxi, which was waiting for us outside the gates. We positioned ourselves to fit on the benches, our fleebags under the seats and all of our possessions bound in large black trash bags. The sky was shifting from black to gray and if Dad was worried he never showed it.
Mom was holding Becky, still a newborn, in her arms. She looked at Dad, who was loading the last of our belongings.
“Are they all here?” She began to count us kids the way she did when she didn’t have a free hand, using her head to nod off the numbers one-by-one.
“One. Two ... Where’s William?”
William was sitting behind Heidi with her fire-red hair, sucking on her pacifier.
“Three ... four ... ” Tamar and I always stuck together.
“Five ... six ... seven ... ” She counted the rest of us. Becky was cradled in her arms. We were present and quiet, never uttering a word.
I didn’t ask where we were going but I knew we had no destination. We were fleeing and I was thrilled by the idea of it.
We drove off into the early morning hours, leaving behind a trail of dust. For the next seven years, every six months we would move to a new home in another part of Thailand.
* * *
When you grow up in an apocalyptic cult and the due date for the end of the world rolls around and nothing happens, it’s rather anticlimactic. There are no pre-apocalyptic ceremonial rituals. No gathering in huddles to pray in tongues and speak to the spirit world. No public apologies about why the world didn’t end the way it had been revealed. Life goes on as usual. Breakfast is still served at 7:30 a.m. Recess is still late in the afternoon. Dinner is served at six. Lights out is at eight.
When the world didn’t end as he had predicted, Father David had a revelation that it was time to move back west. He said God was pleased with our work so he decided to give us an extension. Every year after 1993 a letter came out entitled, “It Could Happen This Year.” I was beginning to have my suspicions. Was there any truth to anything Father David said?
One day, Mom and Dad pulled us kids aside and told us that we would be moving back to America. A home in Chicago had room for us. I didn’t know whether Chicago was a city or a state. Mom cleared up the confusion and soon I was able to locate the Windy City on any map, even a large circular globe.
John and Dad spent a year selling Children of God media at the harbor to save enough money for our flight to the U.S., where we moved into a five-bedroom house in suburban Berwyn with about 30 other members. It was there that I began to see the world I had been warned against.
The rules weren’t as strict as they had been in Thailand, and the first thing I noticed was that we were allowed to eat even if we weren’t hungry. The eggs were fried in adequate amounts of oil and, unlike powdered eggs, I enjoyed these enough to ask for seconds—which, to my delight, I was allowed. The bagels, soft and fluffy with melted butter, filled me with my first experience of white flour delight. For the first time in my life I wasn’t just full. I was satisfied.
After breakfast we were allowed to watch TV. The Winter Olympics were on. The Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding scandal was making headline news. It was my first time watching TV, ever.
“See what happens when people get into sports,” Mom said. Father David had taught us that all sports were evil and of the Devil.
I watched the clip over and over of Nancy Kerrigan wailing in pain as she held her knee. I couldn’t help but also notice the beauty of the sport. When the skaters glided across the ice they looked happy and free. They moved effortlessly and wore costumes fit for ballerinas. They were beautiful. I watched as 16-year-old Oksana Baiul collapsed in tears when it was announced that she had won gold. I wanted to rejoice with her. I wanted to be her. I couldn’t help thinking sports can’t be evil.
Father David died on Oct. 1, 1994, one year after his predicted apocalypse. I was 12 and the world hadn’t ended. My thoughts of death were beginning to subside as my worries shifted to my developing body, specifically my breasts. They were beautiful, I thought, and I didn’t want them to sag like Mom’s did, should I live to see adulthood. I developed impeccable posture, slept with a training bra on at night and taught the other girls to sit up straight, often slapping them on the back when we sat for hours listening to Father David’s letters. Since I had control over nothing else, I figured at least I could control the two new protrusions on my chest.
After Father David’s death, we were still required by the leaders in the home to abide by his rules. Following his death we spent three days fasting and reading a burgundy book titled “The Charter.” In it was a complete set of rules on how members could now live their lives, including sexual limits and boundaries (at what age people could have sex and with whom), weekly allowances on alcohol (a quarter of a cup of wine per week), and rules on what constituted a “home” (members needed four consenting adults, also members, living in the same building in order to be part of the Children of God). This meant members had their freedom; we were no longer required to live in a compound. Four consenting adults and a commitment to tithing and proselytizing was what all members needed to still be considered part of the group.
I woke up one morning after the fast was over and looked out the window. Everyone was scattered on the lawn, with their belongings packed in large black plastic trash bags. I knew what this meant. Because of the new requirements on what constituted a home, everyone was dispersing. I thought about my family. There were now 11 of us kids, all under the age of 14.
“Who’s gonna want to live with us?” I whispered to Tamar on the lawn the morning after Father David’s death.
“We’re so big,” she agreed.
A few days later the leaders gave my family a van. We had nowhere to go and no relatives to take us in. We started going to Sunday services at a Thai Baptist church on the South Side of Chicago. One of the members, Mr. Tassallee, a Thai-Chinese man with eyes the shape of crescent moons, who always wore a crisp dark suit and skinny tie with his hair neatly combed, had heard we needed a place to stay. He had an empty building in the South Side and he offered to let us stay in it rent-free. It was a tall brick building with a small front yard surrounded by a chain link fence. We agreed. Mom was pregnant. Dad had no job. On our first night there we heard gunshots echoing from the alley. We would continue to hear these on a weekly basis. We were on our own.
* * *
I’ve heard many stories about kids who grew up like me and killed themselves because they didn’t how to make it in the world. Some were my friends, others distant acquaintances. They’d blame their parents for not teaching them how to write checks, or fill out applications, or hold their own in a normal social setting. There are girls who became strippers because all they knew how to do was give a powerful “look of love,” as taught by Father David during the flirty-fishing movement. They had no skills for working or making money, so they used their sexuality, just like their mothers did in the early days.
One day John flew out to California to visit our Aunt Mary, who had recently left the Children of God. When he came back I noticed something was different. His hair was slicked back like the systemites in Father David’s comic books. He wore store-bought clothes and sometimes I noticed that he had headphones on. He was listening to system music. Was he becoming a systemite?
He brought good news. Aunt Mary had invited us to come live near her in California. She lived in a house surrounded by bougainvillea and English ivy crawling up brick walls. She had found a house for us near her in the San Gabriel Valley. The Chicago winters were too cold, and California, John said, boasted perfect weather and endless summers.
In April, we piled ourselves into the van as Dad loaded the last of our belongings. He hitched a wooden wagon to the back and we loaded it with foam mattresses. Dad and John took turns driving. Tamar made white-bread tuna salad sandwiches that we would stop to eat along the way. Bobby was a baby and we passed him from person to person. We didn’t have much food after moving to the house in the South Side. Mary Ann sat behind me looking gaunt. The rest of the kids shuffled in their seats. Mom lay sprawled across the front row, her stomach bulging with child number 12. I could tell it wasn’t just because she was pregnant; something was definitely wrong.
Following the death of Father David, the cult was slowly beginning to disintegrate. We no longer lived in communes. We no longer had his “law.” We no longer functioned like an army. The Children of God was becoming a loose group of families scattered across the world, struggling to make it in a society that they knew little about.
In the summer of 1996, after we had moved to California, the leaders planned a road trip to Lake Tahoe for preteen members to convince us that the Children of God was fun and that there was no place we’d rather be. “Uncle Tim,” one of the leaders, drove a school bus that had been painted multiple shades of blue. On the way to Lake Tahoe, the bus broke down on the side of the freeway and we sat in our built-in beds sweating until Uncle Tim figured out how to get it working again.
I was 14 years old. Before we left, mom and dad had given us an ultimatum: Decide if we wanted to stay in the group or leave. I never asked what compelled them to make this decision, but I think there came a point when they realized they had to put their family first. It was clear that John was becoming a systemite. Mom and Dad decided that if we wanted out too, then they would leave with us. For that decision, I later chose to forgive them for raising us in a cult.
John was now working two jobs: at a bagel shop during the day and a coffee shop in the evening. He made tips and was earning real hard cash, something we had never seen growing up. He drove a midnight blue Volkswagen Beetle and had systemite friends.
One day in the campground as we ate blueberry pie filling from tin cans, Mary Ann, a year older than me, started the conversation that would determine our future.
“Can’t you see what these guys are doing?” she asked, referring to Uncle Tim and all the other adults who had punished us when we were children. “This is not right.”
“Well, what should we do about it?” I asked. High school seemed our only option. Plus, the idea of learning appealed to me.
It was there, among the crackling pines and under a clear blue sky, that we decided to tell my parents. We called home from a pay phone and told them we wanted out. In the same conversation, Mom told us she had just got the results back from a doctor’s check-up. There was a reason why she had been in so much pain on our drive to California and had to lie down across the row of seats. She had been diagnosed with cancer and had a 10 percent prognosis. Although not quite sure what a 10 percent prognosis meant, I knew it couldn’t be good news.
Mom later told me that the doctors had told her something was abnormal back when she was pregnant with us twins. However, since the world would be ending soon, Father David did not encourage visits to the doctor.
I had little capacity to feel sorry for my mother at the time, as I was in my own state of survival, trying to figure out how I was going to make it as a teenager in a world I knew little about. After all that we’d been through she was going to have to fend for herself.
When we got home, dad enrolled us in a home-schooling program because he said that after the sheltered life we’d lived, throwing us into public high school would be like throwing lambs to the slaughter. He was right, but soon we wanted the real deal. We wanted a normal social experience. We enrolled in Rowland High School.
I wanted nothing more than to look cool. The night before I laid out my options. I had two shirts. One was fluorescent green with a short collar and buttons. The other had red, white and blue stripes. It fit me snugly and had a low v-cut, showing a little cleavage. I looked cool, I thought. I was ready to face the world.
Being ostracized by Mrs. Buck on my first day was not the only obstacle I’d face. High school turned into a disaster, with both Tamar and I getting kicked out twice each for having alcohol and weed. Numbing our minds became our way of dealing with the world. We found ourselves in community day schools, where we were the only white girls and often witnesses to bloody fights or unfamiliar gang-speak.
Tamar came home one day with the news of a college that boasted the promise of a stewardess degree.
“Four years, Flor,” she told me excitedly. “Four years is all it takes.”
Her mouth parched from excitement; she told me about a campus that sat high in the Malibu Hills called Pepperdine University. It was beautiful and looked like a palace, with Mediterranean Revival architecture. For the first time in my life I thought about going to college. We could apply to any school we wanted, she said. I was thrilled.
Since neither of us had a high school degree or GED, we enrolled in classes at Mt. San Antonio Community College to start. There were courses in English and history and electives in everything from Spanish to horticulture to dance. I was able to choose what I wanted to major in. This was a novel idea for me. I had never even heard about college growing up. Father David said education was evil. Institutions were places of sin and corruption.
I was beginning to see that for the first time in my life I had a future.
In an honors business class our professor announced that there would be an all-expense paid field trip to UC Berkeley. I raised my hand.
“What’s UC Berkeley?” I asked.
Looking back now, I can see how naïve my question was but I also quickly learned that curiosity was going to be my greatest and only ally. I would have to forfeit seeming dumb for my own survival.
Dad had returned to college to work on a degree, figuring that the best job he could get was a high school P.E. teacher. Instead he rekindled a love for academics, this time for mathematics. I remember waking up at two in the morning and watching him working under the amber light of a desk lamp, poring over a problem that seemed unsolvable. He was working on his master’s. I told myself that one day I would do the same.
Mom began taking weekly trips to the hospital for radiation treatments and was soon cleared of cancer. The doctors called her a “miracle case.”
A year later I received my acceptance letter to UC Berkeley.
My friends congratulated me and made it a point to let us know how jealous they were and how lucky we were — both of us getting a spot in of the best schools in America. They could never get in, they said, no matter how hard they tried or how good their grades were.
“It wasn’t just the grades,” I said. I bit my lower lip and thought hard about it for a minute. “I think my personal statement had something to do with it.”
(Editor's note: For more great content from Narrative.ly, check out these three stories: Please Punch Me, Chasing the Ghosts of Franco, The Voices in My Brother's Head)