I come up with every excuse I can to see Michael and hang out nearby. One day after dinner, I wait in the dining room while he is on cleanup duty.
As I wait for teen Jessica to finally finish sweeping so Michael and I can be alone, I feel pulled between two forces—desperation to run away and desperation to be near him. Finally, as I walk out to leave, Michael steps outside with me. Before I can say anything, he leans down and kisses me on the mouth. I hold my breath while a rush of pleasure sweeps through me. He loves me, too! He waves me off, and my joy is boundless. For one moment, I’m certain and unafraid.
The next day, I write him a poem, pouring out my love on a small pink piece of note paper. I slip it to him after dinner, and he thanks me. I watch the clock waiting for his response. One hour. Two hours. Six hours. It never comes. Soon it becomes clear he won’t be writing back, and the humiliation sets in. I blame myself. How could I have written something so cheesy! I’ll never write another love poem again, I think, disgusted with myself.
But I don’t have to worry about my humiliation for long. Michael is leaving. He is moving to Japan. I don’t know why. These things just happen. People come and people go—their visa is not renewed, their parents call them home, they are sent away as a punishment.
Despite my shame, I desperately try to find a way to be alone with him to say goodbye. We meet down at the farmyard, and he kisses me sweetly, holding my face, while I try to hold back my tears.
The next day he is gone, and everyone goes on as if nothing has changed. But my whole world has turned to ash. That night I sob into my pillow for hours until I fall asleep. I didn’t know a heart could hurt this much. The pain lodges inside as I go through my chores, cleaning toilets and watching kids, sitting in Devotions. I move in a daze for weeks—slowly coming back to the present out of the gray haze that separates me from the laughter of others.
I will love you forever, I think.
After four months without a word from Mom, she returns. We’re in the middle of a whooping cough outbreak, and Jondy is terribly sick. He is just eight months old, and Mom is furious that nobody told her that her kids were all sick and that her baby could die. She hugs me close for a long time, and I smell her familiar mom smell. I’m happy to see her, especially for Jondy’s sake. He is struggling to breathe, and I don’t know what to do.
Mom seems broken, sad, and lost, but happy to be back, wanting to be welcomed, desperate for connection. I want to give her what she needs, but I feel distant from her. I’ve navigated caring for my baby brother and losing my first love without her or anyone else to talk to. I try to bury those feelings, to act mature. So, I ask her what happened—why she came back.
She begins, slowly. Her experience at WS was not what she expected. She was sent to live in a small, orderly WS home run by a Frenchwoman named Abeille. There were about sixteen people, including children, in the Home, and Mom was put on childcare duty instead of working on editing the Mo Letters.
“I thought, ‘Well, if nothing else, I’ll get to work on publishing,’ but that’s not what I did. I was just so unhappy. I thought, ‘Why am I taking care of Abeille’s baby when I have my own baby at home who needs me?’ I was crying all the time and, finally one night, something went wrong with my heart, like I literally felt it break and I could hardly breathe. It felt like some sort of heart attack,” she tells me.
She thought she was strong enough to put God first, but she couldn’t take being separated from her kids. She had a nervous breakdown and begged to be sent home. After a number of weeks, they finally relented. She left in disgrace, her dream of a greater path of service crushed by her failure.
The Family always had a hard-core emphasis that “whoever does not forsake all that he has, he cannot be my disciple” Luke 14:33. We were scared by the cautionary tale of Ananias and his wife, Sapphira, disciples who in the Book of Acts (5:1–11) sell a piece of property and hold back some of the purchase price instead of giving it all to the Apostles and are struck dead by God.
“When I left, Abeille told me, ‘Your baby Jondy will probably die if you don’t leave him behind and forsake him for God.’ I was terrified it might come true.”
I feel sad for my mother. She seems like a broken version of herself, and it’s hard to see her struggle with everything she’s left behind and everything left in front of her. I help as much as I can, and she is grateful. She tells me she doesn’t recognize me anymore, that I’m not acting like her little girl. I don’t know what to say. I’ve grown up, quickly. I don’t spend time with her after dinner or seek her out to talk like I used to. I don’t need her.
I feel like a traitor, but I spend more time thinking about Michael than my mother. He’s the one person who made me feel special. Whenever people arrive at the Farm from Japan, I eagerly ask if they’ve seen Michael. Usually I’m disappointed, but sometimes I get bits of information. My love for him and the ache of loss is just as sharp as when he first left.
A teen arrives from Japan, and I approach her right away, shy but eager. I can hardly keep from bursting out: “Do you know Michael?”
“Sure,” the newcomer says, rolling her eyes. “I know Michael. That guy’s a player. Always hitting on younger girls.”
My breath stops in my throat, and my mouth moves wordlessly. The realization smacks me in the face: I wasn’t special. I’m just like every other little girl who falls for Michael’s charming smile while he makes his real move on the older girls, who are much harder for a skinny boy with glasses to impress.
I feel a toxic mix of shame and anger. What a fool I’ve been! Dreaming after him. Writing him a poem. I want to gag in humiliation at the thought of that. Never again. Never again, I resolve with silent fury. I will never be the first to fall in love.
I am the Ice Queen.
14
Suffering Makes You Bitter or Better
The news comes as a shock: I’m leaving the Farm.
I’ve never been outside Macau, Hong Kong, and China (that I can remember, at least), and now I’m moving to Thailand. I don’t know who made the decision; all I know is that WS leadership said that my mother, Jondy, Nina, and I are to go, and of course, we obey like good soldiers—stepping out into the unknown to follow God’s will.
Mom seems excited about the move as she babbles about new opportunities. It’s taken her months to recover her strength after her breakdown. She is feeling better each day, but my father is still gone, and after her failed stay at WS and with the new leadership running everything here at the Farm, she feels useless.